Marksmanship Hunter Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — Midnight (12.0.1)

Marksmanship Hunter has very front-loaded damage, and solid AoE damage. 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 and Misdirection+ Scale Shield, and activate them before tagging as many mobs as possible, usually with Arcane Shots and Multi-Shots, 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 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 my recommended Leveling Build for Marksmanship Hunter in Midnight. Be sure to click the "Talents by Level" option in the bottom right.

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 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

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.

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!

1. Use Misdirection liberally to transfer all the threat you generate to your Pet.
2. 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.
3. Use Volley when available. Place it on the ground on top of as many enemies as possible!
4. Use Trueshot for large pulls or difficult elite mobs.
5. Use Mend Pet for large pulls to keep your pet healthy.
6. Use Rapid Fire when available.
7. Use Aimed Shot when available. Make sure to spend your Precise Shots stacks on Arcane Shot/ Multi-Shot first!
8. Spam Arcane Shot. Use Multi-Shot instead if there are 4 or more targets!
9. Use Steady Shot as a filler, and to generate Focus.

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.