Marksmanship Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.0.5

Precise Shots is a buff that you get after casting Aimed Shot, and, via the No Scope Talent, Rapid Fire as well.

It buffs Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot significantly, making them do significantly more damage and cost less Focus. With only a few exceptions, every single Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot that you cast in an encounter, should be with Precise Shots active. One such exception may be the first Multi-Shot of a fight, which we activate solely to activate Trick Shots.

Aside from wanting the damage and resource boosts, spending Precise Shots is the engine of our Spotter's Mark, which massively buffs Aimed Shot — even more so with Sentinel which has an empowered Sentinel's Mark.

Because Precise Shots does not stack (or, more precisely, you cannot generate it twice without wasting some of it), we always want to weave our Precise Shots Spenders (henceforth called PS Spenders) between our Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Generally speaking, the best and easiest way to do this is simply to follow up every Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire with a PS Spender.

On AoE, this has the added convenience of activating Trick Shots right after spending it with those Aimeds and Rapids. By simply following up every single Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire with a Multi-Shot on AoE, we knock off two birds with one stone: Precise Shots is spent, and Trick Shots is activated.

The only rotational impact from our Apex Talents is that Rapid Fire will now shave off 5 seconds from Aimed Shot's cooldown over its channel time, thanks to Take Aim. This has some impact on our rotational priorities, but those are "baked in" to the listed rotation above and is not necessarily something you need to think about.

Trueshot is our main cooldown. It has either a 90-second or 2-minute cooldown, depending on whether you choose Calling the Shots or Unerring Vision. It lasts 15 seconds, or 19 seconds as a Sentinel. While active, it increases your critical strike chance and critical strike damage significantly, and it reduces the cooldown of your primary Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire abilities, while also quickening the cast time of the former.

It also massively increases the chance of generating Spotter's Mark procs when we consume Precise Shots, and even activates Spotter's Mark for free when you press it.

Trueshot simply makes us better at everything, and because the thing we do best is "lots of damage with Aimed Shot", a very good rule of thumb is to always try to cast Trueshot right before an Aimed Shot. This ensures that we are spending as much time as possible in Trueshot casting our most powerful ability.

Due to the Bulletstorm Talent, another good rule of thumb is to try and enter Trueshot right on the back of a Rapid Fire, once again with the goal of maximizing the power and impact of the Aimed Shots we fire inside it. The "perfect" Trueshot setup tends to be Rapid Fire into Trueshot into Aimed Shot for this reason, with PS Spenders like Arcane Shot/ Multi-Shot always woven in between them.

For both Sentinel and Dark Ranger, Trueshot's button will turn into a different button once pressed; Moonlight Chakram or Wailing Arrow for Sentinel and Dark Ranger respectively. In addition, for Dark Ranger, activating Trueshot also gives you a free Black Arrow proc.

Moonlight Chakram should be thought of as a filler. We absolutely have to use it, but we do not want to use it in a way that interferes with our Aimed Shots, so we tend to wait until we are close to running out of Aimed Shots late in our Trueshot window.

Wailing Arrow is a little more complicated. Because both Trueshot and Wailing Arrow give you a Black Arrow proc, and because we do not want to overwrite these procs, ever, the best setup for a Dark Ranger Trueshot becomes Trueshot > Black Arrow > Wailing Arrow > Black Arrow, before you kick into the normal rotation. This maximizes our Black Arrow spendage from these mechanics, and it can get a little "busy" feeling in the beginning of our cooldowns.

Volley is a talented 45-second (or 30-second) cooldown mostly associated with AoE. It is actually a fairly simple button, but there are common misconceptions about its use and value.

Essentially, because of the nature of the Precise Shots mechanic we explained in the previous session, even though Volley gives us Trick Shots, it is actually relatively uncommon for us to make any use of this "free" Trick Shots whatsoever. Because we tend to run Talents where Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire both give Precise Shots, we have to use a PS Spender in-between all such casts. Because of this, even if Trick Shots was permanently active, we would actually play more or less the same; the need to spend Precise Shots is so pressing, and all of the Trick Shots that Multi-Shot also gives is sort of a happy accident.

This limits Volley's role to two things; a simple damage dealer, and a Double Tap activator.

The Double Tap Talent does not stack, and it triggers off of Trueshot and Volley. In many cases, it is very tempting to cast Volley right before or after entering Trueshot, but this is a trap. When running this Talent, it is mandatory that we get a Aimed Shot or Rapid Fire in between our Trueshot and our Volley, whichever order we are using them in.

On single-target with Trueshot up, it is best to Double Tap a Rapid Fire right before casting Trueshot. Outside of Trueshot moments, it does not matter which ability you spend Double Tap on. On AoE, always spend it on Aimed Shot, ideally inside Trueshot.

I recommend sticking to a simple rule; when running Volley and Double Tap, start your Trueshot windows like: Trueshot, Aimed Shot, Volley.