Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents and Builds — The War Within (11.1.0)

Note that these builds are generic recommendations for arena and battlegrounds. There are multiple viable Marksmanship builds and tweaks that are very powerful in certain matchups. A description of each talent point is below.

If you are looking for advice on which pets to use, there is a separate page on this guide answering that question in detail. Generally, you want a Cunning pet unless you expect the enemy team to burst you in a stun, in which case you are likely better off with a Tenacity pet.

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The War Within PvP Talent Builds for Marksmanship Hunters in Arena

Sentinel General Arena Build (recommended) Sentinel Salvo Arena Build Dark Ranger Wallhacks Arena Build (recommended)

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Best Sentinel General Marksmanship Arena Build

This build combines Double Tap with Kill Zone to create a powerful area of effect burst during your Volley that does not require you to be in line of sight of your target. This is powerful because it will be harder for the enemy to interrupt your casts with crowd control, and also because you will be able to perform your burst damage even when an enemy is behind a pillar.

You should always make sure that you have a Rapid Fire and/or Lock and Load proc ready when you use Volley to capitalise on the Double Tap effect and make sure that your casts go off before the target is able to leave the Volley radius. It is also important, generally, to only use Rapid Fire when you know that you will be able to get the whole channel off, as getting the whole channel off will increase your Aimed Shot damage through Bulletstorm.

This build uses the Sentinel Hero talents for the area of effect damage from Lunar Storm, and to maximise the value from Aspect of the Hydra ( Sentinel uses Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire more than Dark Ranger because it doesn't have the high priority Black Arrow in its rotation).

This build uses Windrunner Quiver to boost your Arcane Shot damage. During combat you alternate between using Aimed Shot to consume Streamline stacks (and generate Precise Shots stacks), and casting Arcane Shot/ Black Arrow to consume your Precise Shots stacks (and generate new Streamline stacks).

When playing with Headshot, you should prioritise Kill Shot over Arcane Shot whenever you have Precise Shots active and Kill Shot is available.

You should only drop Aspect of the Hydra if there is no chance that your target will ever be stacked. It is a "smart" area of effect, meaning that if an enemy is in crowd control, Aspect of the Hydra will not do damage to them. Aspect of the Hydra also triggers Trick Shots, which makes your Volley windows much more powerful when there are multiple stacked enemies.

This build takes Kodo Tranquilizer and you should press Tranquilizing Shot on cooldown, especially when it will purge a magic effect off more than one player.

In games where you feel that it will be possible to avoid damage by kiting, or where you are not likely to be the kill target, you should choose the Cunning talent to boost your mobility.

If you expect to be targeted a lot, killed in stuns or unable to kite enemies, you can swap this to Tenacious for some additional durability.

Sentinel is the better Hero Talent tree currently, but if you did want to play Dark Ranger, you would use the same Hunter and Marksmanship talent trees and the only change would be swapping the Hero tree.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

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Best Sentinel Salvo Marksmanship Arena Build

This build trades the wallhacks talent Deadzone to pick up Salvo for additional area of effect burst and Aspect of the Hydra to cleave your rotation onto a second target.

You should always make sure that you have a Rapid Fire and/or Lock and Load proc ready when you use Volley to capitalise on the Double Tap effect and make sure that your casts go off before the target is able to leave the Volley radius. It is also important, generally, to only use Rapid Fire when you know that you will be able to get the whole channel off, as getting the whole channel off will increase your Aimed Shot damage through Bulletstorm

This build uses the Sentinel Hero talents for the area of effect damage from Lunar Storm, and to maximise the value from Aspect of the Hydra ( Sentinel uses Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire more than Dark Ranger because it doesn't have the high priority Black Arrow in its rotation).

Use this when you are facing two melee players that will be attacking the same target, so you can duplicate damage to the main target onto the off-target.

This build uses Windrunner Quiver to boost your Arcane Shot damage. During combat you alternate between using Aimed Shot to consume Streamline stacks (and generate Precise Shots stacks), and casting Arcane Shot/ Black Arrow to consume your Precise Shots stacks (and generate new Streamline stacks).

When playing with Headshot, you should prioritise Kill Shot over Arcane Shot whenever you have Precise Shots active and Kill Shot is available.

You should only drop Aspect of the Hydra if there is no chance that your target will ever be stacked. It is a "smart" area of effect, meaning that if an enemy is in crowd control, Aspect of the Hydra will not do damage to them. Aspect of the Hydra also triggers Trick Shots, which makes your Volley windows much more powerful when there are multiple stacked enemies.

This build takes Kodo Tranquilizer and you should press Tranquilizing Shot on cooldown, especially when it will purge a magic effect off more than one player.

In games where you feel that it will be possible to avoid damage by kiting, or where you are not likely to be the kill target, you should choose the Cunning talent to boost your mobility.

If you expect to be targeted a lot, killed in stuns or unable to kite enemies, you can swap this to Tenacious for some additional durability.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies and matchups than others.

Survival Tactics is the best overall PvP Talent. It turns Feign Death into your best defensive ability by negating damage for two seconds. This talent is very powerful into burst specializations when timed correctly.

When facing matchups where you are guaranteed not to be attacked, there are occasionally better options, but it is safer just always to play this talent.

Chimaeral Sting is a versatile ability that can be used in many ways, for example:

• To silence an enemy healer while bursting their partner (note that it does damage on application, and the silence only applies after 3 seconds, so you cannot Chimaeral Sting during or immediately after a trap)
• To silence a healer before swapping to them (particularly good against priests as they cannot use Pain Suppression when silenced, when they would have been able to if you swapped with Intimidation)
• To peel a DPS on their go (for example, use Chimaeral Sting on a Mage when they cast Dragon's Breath; they will still be able to Polymorph your healer, but will be silenced immediately afterward and not be able to capitalize on the Polymorph, or to cancel a Shaman's Lightning Lasso when you know it is coming)
• To cancel a Restoration Druid's Tranquility by casting Chimaeral Sting before they use it
• To deny a healer's trinket by casting Chimaeral Sting when they are stunned (when they trinket the stun, they are instantly silenced)
• To apply a powerful slow to a melee DPS when you have no other options

Consecutive Concussion is situationally very useful against melee, as it keeps them at bay for longer and interrupts their damage via the stun in a slow game where you are able to cast Steady Shot a lot. This talent can also be very good into Fistweaver (melee healer) Monks. If you maintain a Concussive Shot on them while your team is kiting, the Fistweaver will be unable to heal.

Your damage relies heavily on being able to get Aimed Shot casts off (and maintaining Manhunter), and Aspect of the Fox will help with that. This is a decent talent whenever you are kiting or in a matchup where it is difficult to get those casts off. You can combine this with Hunting Pack to get the benefit more frequently.

Diamond Ice makes your Freezing Trap undispellable but reduces the duration and makes the target immune to all spells while active. This is useful:

• Against Shadow Priests, Demon Hunters, and Affliction/Destruction Warlocks that are otherwise able to dispel your Freezing Trap
• To crowd control DPS players without the healer being able to dispel the trap
• To keep a target at low health (you can trap a target at low health, then pre-cast an Aimed Shot, your target will not be able to stop your cast, and their healer will not be able to recover the target's health), this is a strategy that is particularly effective in 2v2 arena

Diamond Ice also reduces the duration of Freezing Trap by two seconds, which makes it difficult to justify taking. In Patch 11.1 Freezing Trap was adjusted to have a small damage threshold before breaking, so you can avoid taking Diamond Ice unless you know that your traps will definitely break instantly otherwise.

Ranger's Finesse theoretically can reduce the cooldown of Aspect of the Turtle significantly, but is awkward to use, and there are usually better talents available. The duration bonus to Volley is noticeable. If you play with this talent, ideally, you want to use Aspect of the Turtle early in the game to save your healer's cooldowns to get the maximum benefit.

If your team is able to lock several players in one place for a long time (for example, playing with an Unholy Death Knight with Blinding Sleet and Restoration Druid for Ursol's Vortex) Rangers Finesse combined with Volley and Salvo can lead to enormous AoE burst.

Hunting Pack is a mobility talent that vastly reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Cheetah and applies its buff to your teammates but requires your teammates to be within 15 yards. There are better talents available to you in almost all cases.

This is an interesting kiting tool but requires you to not take Scatter Shot which makes it difficult to justify in most matchups. It is particularly effective against melee specialisations that are not able to remove slows, as the self-knockback does not push you very far.

This talent is rarely useful in Arena as in most situations where you are attacking somebody from a far enough range that you are able to take advantage of the buff, they will likely line of sight your casts. If you committed your biggest cooldown Trueshot and your enemy was out of line of sight for most of the duration, you will struggle to regain momentum.

This is, however, a very powerful talent in Battleground Blitz where you can assassinate players from extreme range.