WotLK Classic Marksmanship Hunter Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Marksmanship Hunter in both single-target and multiple-target PvE situations in WotLK Classic. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS.
Introduction
In Vanilla and TBC, Hunters had to deal with clipping auto shots, resulting in a complex
rotation revolving around weaving in abilities optimally between autos. In Wrath,
auto-shot clipping is finally gone. You will always auto-shot normally, even while casting
Steady Shot. This means our rotation is now far simpler and easier
to manage, falling back to a basic priority list.
Single Target Rotation
Always start by ensuring all the required buffs are active, you have Aspect of the Dragonhawk
up, and
Hunter's Mark is on the target.
Kill Shot
Kill Command
- Maintain
Serpent Sting
Explosive Trap
Chimera Shot
Aimed Shot
Arcane Shot
Silencing Shot
Steady Shot as your filler.
Chimera Shot will refresh
Serpent Sting
for you, so you should never need to manually reapply it.
Arcane Shot
will eventually be dropped from your rotation once you reach around ~430 ArP, as it
is not Physical damage and does not scale well with your talents.
Kill Command and
Silencing Shot
are both off the GCD. You can simply macro these into other spells to ensure you always
use them. If Mana is an issue, drop
Silencing Shot from your rotation.
Trap Weaving
With the brand new addition of Trap Launcher in Season 4, Hunters
never need to worry about trap weaving ever again. You will now always use Explosive Trap
on cooldown regardless of the number of targets or the size of their hit-box. Just throw
your trap from a safe distance away and rejoice at being a range DPS once more!
AoE Rotation
Hunter AoE revolves entirely around two buttons: Explosive Trap
and
Volley. Volley is significantly more powerful in Wrath than in
TBC, and actually makes Hunter AoE some of the strongest in the game. Properly setting
up an Explosive Trap into Volley spam on an AoE pack will do absolutely incredible damage
that very few other classes can even hope to compete with.
Cooldowns
Hunters have several cooldowns that can be lined up for huge burst windows. While the actual timings may vary per fight, in general you should line up all of these on pull and then use them on cooldown afterwards, overlapping them when possible.
Readiness resets all of your cooldowns on every spell when used. This can be used either offensively for back-to-back burst setups, or defensively.
Rapid Fire is a Hunter's most important cooldown. It increases your ranged attack speed by 40% for 15 seconds.
Call of the Wild is a cooldown that Ferocity pets can talent into. It gives both you and your pet 10% more AP for 20 seconds.
Marksmanship cooldowns get a bit complicated because of Readiness.
In an optimal use, you will use all your cooldowns, then go through the rotation of
Kill Command,
Chimera Shot, and
Aimed Shot before popping
Readiness. This
ensures you get to use your most powerful shots twice.
Changelog
- 27 Sep. 2023: Updated for Phase 4.
- 30 Jul. 2023: Minor updates for later phases.
- 18 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
- 01 Sep. 2022: Page added.
This guide has been written by Impakt, an Officer in BDGG, the #2 North American guild on retail. In addition to live WoW, he has also been a classic theorycrafter and enthusiast for many years. You can watch him stream on Twitch, or follow him on Twitter.
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