World of Warcraft: Forever Marksmanship Hunter - Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

The Hunter rotation is built on the principal idea of maximizing your number of Auto Shots while following your ability priority list as much as possible. This means ensuring that you are standing still for at least 0.5 seconds when you have an Auto Shot ready, and just hitting your buttons when they come off cooldown. In general, you will not be pressing abilities 100% of the time; there are gaps in your rotation where you can choose to use utility spells, move around, or just sit and wait to conserve mana.

These lists assume you are using the recommended builds in the Marksmanship Hunter Talents page, and are at maximum level. If you are still leveling, refer to the Marksmanship Hunter Leveling page for leveling rotations.

This will be your rotation for whenever you are fighting either just a single enemy, or you need a specific enemy in a group to die as quickly as possible. Note that this is a priority list, so work your way down from the top, and use the ability listed highest that is available for you to use.

• Put Hunter's Mark up on your target before combat.
• Cast Sniper Shot on cooldown.
• Cast Aimed Shot on cooldown.
• Maintain Serpent Sting.
• Use Arcane Shot on cooldown.
• Drop an Immolation Trap in melee range.

This will be your priority rotation for whenever you are fighting a group of enemies with anywhere between 2 and 7 targets. Note that this is a priority list, so work your way down from the top, and use the ability listed highest that is available for you to use.

• Put Hunter's Mark up on your target before combat.
• Use Multi-Shot on cooldown.
• Use Explosive Trap on cooldown.
• Cast Sniper Shot on cooldown.
• Use Arcane Shot on cooldown, but only against 3 or fewer targets.
• Channel Volley.

This will be your rotation for whenever you are fighting a large group of enemies, specifically 8+ targets. Note that this is a priority list, so work your way down from the top, and use the ability listed highest that is available for you to use.

• Put Hunter's Mark up on your primary target before combat.
• Use Explosive Trap on cooldown.
• Channel Volley.
• Use Multi-Shot while moving.

Rapid Fire is your primary DPS cooldown as a MM Hunter, giving you a massive boost to your attack speed for 15 seconds. Generally you will want to overlap this with your trinket and other cooldowns, like racials. Since this has a longer cooldown at 5 minutes baseline, you will typically only get a single use of this per encounter.

Hunters are known for a variety of unique utility tools that are both incredibly useful and flavorful for the class.

Hunters have a full class of abilities known as traps, such as Freezing Trap. These leave a trap on the ground at your feet, which will persist for up to 30 seconds. If an enemy runs over the trap, it triggers its effect. For Freezing Trap, this means encasing the enemy in a block of ice, controlling them for 20 seconds.

You can only have a single trap active at a time, and when you use a trap it triggers a 30-second cooldown on all trap spells.

Hunters have three most used traps: Explosive Trap for AoE damage, Freezing Trap for single-target crowd control, and Frost Trap for a larger AoE slow that can affect multiple enemies.

Hunters can always have one of their aspect buffs active. Most of the time this should be Aspect of the Hawk as it will give you a massive damage increase. However, if you are confident that you will not take damage, Aspect of the Cheetah will be a better choice while moving to ensure you move faster and can more quickly return to standing still for more Auto Shots.

Hunters have other important utility options available, most notably Feign Death. This will take you out of combat by pretending to be dead, which can be a very useful temporary threat reset on a target. However, this will not apply to your pet, so keep that in mind when your pet is also attacking. If threat is still an issue, you can use Disengage in melee range to reduce your threat on a target.

More WoW Forever Hunter Guides

Beast Mastery Hunter Ranged DPS Talents Marksmanship Hunter Ranged DPS Stats Beast Mastery Hunter Ranged DPS Rotation Marksmanship Hunter Ranged DPS Guide Beast Mastery Hunter Ranged DPS Leveling Marksmanship Hunter Ranged DPS Talents

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