Marksmanship Hunter Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — Midnight Season 1
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Marksmanship Hunter leveling guide for Midnight. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Hunter leveling guide.
Marksmanship Hunter Leveling Guide for Midnight
Marksmanship Hunter is defined by its front-loaded damage and solid AoE
capability. It excels the most in dungeons, but can also be a decent questing
leveler, based around killing enemies before they can reach you, usually with a
strong
Aimed Shot into
Rapid Fire into
Kill Shot combo.
Grab a Ferocity (ideally a Scalehide) pet
to use with
Misdirection and
Scale Shield. Activate them before tagging
as many mobs as possible, usually with
Arcane Shot and
Multi-Shot, and watch the mobs flock to your pet. Make use of the pet
damage reduction from
Scale Shield and use Marksmanship's strong burst
damage to kill the mobs before they kill your pet.
Here is a neat macro you can use for your
Misdirection. You can make
a macro by typing '/m' in your chat box. Make a Macro, call it "MD", and put
this in it:
- #showtooltip
- /use Misdirection
- /use Scale Shield
If you are using another pet with a defensive ability than a Scale Shield, just replace 'Scale Shield' with the appropriate ability name.
If this is your first character, or you simply want to find out more about leveling in WoW in general, we got you covered!
Leveling Gear
When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but two secondary stats on it instead of one.
When using Heirloom items, we recommend using those with Critical Strike and Haste, as they will slightly improve the gameplay flow while leveling. Find out more about Heirlooms in our dedicated guide!
Marksmanship Hunter Leveling Talents
If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.
This is our recommended Leveling Build for Marksmanship Hunter in Midnight. Be sure to click the "Talents by Level" option in the bottom right.
Leveling Rotation
To keep things simple while leveling and learning the spec, use the slider to select your level, and watch as the leveling rotation grows with each level!
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
- Use
Misdirection liberally to transfer all the
threat you generate to your Pet. - Use
Moonlight Chakram after your very first
Aimed Shot inside each
Trueshot window. This button appears in
place of your Trueshot button once it is activated. - Use
Volley when available. Place it on the
ground on top of as many enemies as possible! - Use
Trueshot for large pulls or difficult elite
mobs. - Use
Mend Pet for large pulls to keep your pet
healthy. - Use
Rapid Fire when available. - Use
Aimed Shot when available. Make sure to spend your
Precise Shots stacks on
Arcane Shot/
Multi-Shot first! - Spam
Arcane Shot. Use
Multi-Shot
instead if there are 4 or more targets! - Use
Steady Shot as a filler, and to generate
Focus.
Best Leveling Pet
All pets do the same damage, but they vary in their utility and special
abilities. For Marksmanship Hunters, pets are quite weak, and we mostly use them
as an "anchor" to gather mobs onto instead of ourselves. The best pet for this
purpose is a Scalehide. They
have a 1-minute damage reduction ability,
Scale Shield, that you should
macro into your
Misdirection.
Ferocity pets also come with
Primal Rage which is a Bloodlust effect.
This should be used as often as possible when you are fighting for over thirty
seconds.
You can find a list of all the Pets and the abilities they bring on our Spell Summary Page.
Useful Leveling Consumables for Midnight
When Leveling up from 80-90 in the Midnight Expansion in particular, there are a lot of consumables that can help ease the process, aside from the "regular" PvE consumables mentioned further below.
Gunshoes — Massive movement speed boost that works when
Mounts do not, and much faster than ground mounts.
Goblin Glider Kit — Lets you glide off of ledges and cover vast
distances quickly.
Light-Step Hoofplates — Do not forget this Mount Equipment to
make your mounts faster on the ground.
Fried Bonefish — An incredible amount of movement speed from a Food.
Changelog
- 16 Mar. 2026: Updated for Midnight Season 1.
- 26 Feb. 2026: Updated for Midnight 12.0.1.
- 10 Feb. 2026: Updated for Midnight Pre-Patch.
- 30 Nov. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.2.7.
- 05 Oct. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.2.5.
- 04 Aug. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.2.
- 15 Jun. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.1.7.
- 21 Apr. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.1.5.
- 25 Mar. 2025: Updated for March 25 Updates.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.1.0.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 30 Oct. 2024: Updated for October 29 Hotfixes.
- 22 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Preliminary updates for The War Within Season 1.
- 22 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 16 Feb. 2023: Fixed an issue with the talent order.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes

This guide has been written by Azortharion, a full-timer Hunter Guidewriter, Theorycrafter, Content Creator, and top player since 2014 who is widely considered one of the best PvE Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with hundreds of top parses across all Hunter specs. He is the Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the official Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own, personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!
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