Marksmanship Hunter Patch 9.1 Changes Analysis

For this section of the guide, we will go over all of the important changes for Marksmanship Hunters going into Patch 9.1 of Shadowlands. This page is an active work-in-progress and will be updated as new content is added to the PTR. These changes are not live yet. A full list of changes to the entire Hunter class can be found on our dedicated page below. For an additional list of content coming in Patch 9.1, you can also check out our Patch 9.1 Overview page.

• (July 13th) Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, and Rapid Fire damage increased by 10%.
• (July 13th) Kill Shot damage increased by 15%.

Marksmanship Hunter currently has no talent changes for 9.1.

The whole Hunter Class is getting 4 new Covenant-specific Legendaries. These Legendaries are only available to Hunters of a certain Covenant. Their effects are universal, meaning that they are not specific to any Hunter spec.

• Night Fae: Fragments of the Elder Antlers causes Wild Spirits to proc twice whenever it pulses on less than 5 targets. This is powerful for 2-4 target situations, but it is useless on 5 targets and above, making its viability depend a lot on there being very few or no 5-target situations at all.
• Kyrian: Pact of the Soulstalkers causes Resonating Arrow to also increase your party's Crit by 10% for 10 seconds. It is worth remembering that a "party" in tooltips nearly always refers to the 5-man group inside a Raid group. While this has the potential to be reasonably powerful, you are essentially buffing others more than yourself which is rarely fun when playing a pure DPS class. This can be a very slight party DPS increase if you are stacking very bursty DPS classes in the same group, and everyone synchronizes their cooldowns to Resonating Arrow. This is a level of coordination you will likely not see outside the very top guilds, so we do not recommend this for almost anyone.
• Necrolord: Bag of Munitions causes Death Chakram to also apply Explosive Shot on up to 5 targets hit by it. Explosive Shot is a Marksmanship Talent that, once applied to the target, will explode for AoE damage after 3 seconds. Applying this to multiple targets would mean that you get an immense, instant burst of AoE damage. This is extremely powerful, but requires you to go Necrolord which is our weakest Covenant. The Covenant is weaker than the Legendary is strong, so it is very unlikely that you will ever use this.
• Venthyr: Pouch of Razor Fragments causes extra Kill Shots from Flayed Shot to deal 60% cleave damage to 6 nearby targets. This adds a much-needed AoE component to Venthyr's Covenant Ability, and it is important to remember that the Kill Shots from Flayed Shot are more powerful than regular Kill Shots. However, Marksmanship is a GCD-locked spec, meaning that casting these Kill Shots will necessarily take away from other spells, reducing the value quite significantly. This is still likely to be one of the best Mythic+ Venthyr Legendaries, but it is definitely not going to make Venthyr particularly good for Mythic+.

All Soulbind Trees for all Covenants will be getting new tiers added with new Soulbind abilities. These can have a significant impact on the best Soulbind, or even the best Covenant overall.

We have listed all of the abilities with a DPS impact below.

• Niya — Bonded Hearts — Causes your constantly-generated Grove Invigoration stacks to grant 50% increased Mastery if you are close to non-Night Fae allies when they are generated.
• Dreamweaver — Dream Delver — This is essentially just a 3% DPS buff to your current target. Its activation does have a 0.8s internal cooldown, which is just another way of saying that you cannot generate a stack more often than once per 0.8s.
• Korayn — Wild Hunt Strategem — When you hit a target above 75% health, you gain a 1-minute buff. If you then attack an enemy below 35% health, this buff will be consumed and increase your damage to sub-35% targets by 5% for 10 seconds.
• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos — Soulglow Spectrometer — Causes you to build a damage buff on the target you are hitting which stacks by 1% every 3 seconds, up to 5%. You cannot start another buff on a new target until you have expired one on the previous target.
• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos — Effusive Anima Accelerator — Causes your Resonating Arrow to instantly deal Arcane damage, split between all enemies within 12 yards. For every target hit, the cooldown of Resonating Arrow is reduced by 4 seconds, up to a maximum of 20 seconds at 5 or more targets hit.
• Pelagos — Better Together — Gives you a 52 Mastery buff for 1 minute when you move close to an ally. You can only be affected by one buff at a time. This will pretty much be up all of the time.
• Pelagos — Newfound Resolve — Occasionally spawns a "Doubt" unit near you while in combat. Facing it grants you 12% increased Agility and Stamina for 15 seconds. Depending on proc rate, this could be very strong.
• Kleia — Light the Path — Causes your Valiant Strikes Soulbind Ability buff to also grant 0.25% Critical Strike per stack. It also causes its heal effect to grant you 5% Critical Strike for 12 seconds. Given the 1-minute limit on Valiant Strikes, this is a bit weak.
• Emeni — Pustule Eruption — Causes Fleshcraft to grant you 9 pustule stacks. When you take damage or get healed, they blow up for 48% AP of damage on nearby enemies. Each pustule explosion is ~28% as powerful as an Aimed Shot. Thus, 9 pustules is over 2 Aimed Shots' worth of damage.
• Bonesmith Heirmir — Carver's Eye — Grants you a Mastery buff when you hit a target above 90% health which lasts 5 seconds and stacks to 5, but refreshes its duration when you generate a new stack. There is a 10-second forced gap between initial applications of this buff.
• Bonesmith Heirmir — Mnemonic Equipment — Causes your attacks on targets below 35% health to deal 3% extra damage over 5 seconds.
• Plague Deviser Marileth — Kevin's Oozeling — Causes your Death Chakram to spawn an Oozeling to attack your target. You also deal 2% increased damage to whatever he is targeting. He is up roughly 40-45% of the time, so he is essentially a ~0.9% single-target-DPS buff, on average.
• Nadjia the Mistblade — Fatal Flaw — Enhances Thrill Seeker by giving you a Critical Strike/Versatility buff when its Haste buff ends.
• Theotar the Mad Duke — Party Favors — Gives you a 3% primary or secondary stat buff for 1 hour each day.
• General Draven — Battlefield Presence — Increases your damage done and reduces damage taken by 1% for every enemy within 5 yards of you, up to 3%.

As you can see, there are a number of interesting new Abilities being added. Some highlights for each Covenant include Bonded Hearts which is a significant buff to the already very strong Grove Invigoration, Newfound Resolve which has a "Thing From Beyond"-esque flavour to it, but gives you a massive 12% Agility buff. Its proc rate will determine how good it is. Heirmir's Carver's Eye looks strong on paper, and Nadjia's Fatal Flaw looks decent as well.

There are no changes to Hunter Anima Powers in Patch 9.1 so far.