Marksmanship Hunter DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (11.2)

Dark Ranger is optimal for pure single-target scenarios, at about ~4-5% stronger than Sentinel.

Note that swapping Unerring Vision to Calling the Shots can be worth doing if a 1-minute CD cadence (with the S3 4PC) is more beneficial. But, in a vacuum, Unerring Vision is significantly better, so this call should not be made lightly.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

This build is a solid Mythic+ build for beginners. It does similar AoE to Dark Ranger, and has an arguably more fun Explosive Shot-based playstyle, but the single-target suffers greatly.

We cannot have everything we could possibly want for every single dungeon in a single build, unfortunately. Here are the recommended utility talents to swap to for different, specific Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within Season 3.

• For Halls of Atonement and Tazavesh: So'leah's Gambit, swap Kodo Tranquilizer over to Devilsaur Tranquilizer.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

The goal of Marksmanship is chiefly to cast as many Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires as possible. Another key element is to ensure that you have Streamline stacks for all of your Aimed Shots. Whenever you cast Aimed Shot (and Rapid Fire, with the No Scope Talent), you gain Precise Shots, buffing your next Arcane Shot (or Multi-Shot, on AoE). Whenever you spend these Precise Shots, you gain the Streamline buff, reducing the cast time and focus cost of your next Aimed Shot substantially. You also get Streamline just by casting Rapid Fire naturally, so the ideal case is that you have one Arcane Shot and one Rapid Fire between every Aimed Shot. In practice, Rapid Fire's cooldown is too long to make this happen reliably (though you may get lucky Surging Shots resets!), so we are mainly chasing 1 Streamline stack for every Aimed Shot at minimum — any more is a bonus.

So, between every single Aimed Shot, you should always try to fill in at least one Precise Shots-buffed Arcane Shots. We never want to cast Aimed Shot without Streamline.

Finally, when you cast Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, you also have a chance to generate Deathblow procs, which cause you to be able to cast Kill Shot (or Black Arrow, if you are a Dark Ranger) regardless of the target's health. If you have such a proc, you should always spend it before casting another Aimed Shot/ Rapid Fire, as we do not want to overwrite the proc.

The basic rotation of Marksmanship is best summarized as a priority system. On every global, you simply want to cast the highest priority spell, if its condition is met:

1. As Dark Ranger, whenever you have a Black Arrow proc, use it immediately. In the Single-Target build, only ever use it with Precise Shots, which is the buff that you get from casting Aimed Shot.
2. Cast Rapid Fire whenever it is available.
3. Use Volley whenever it is available. It has to be placed at your target's feet, so it will normally require two clicks to place. You will only tend to have this in your spellbook if you are playing an AoE/Mythic+-focused Talent Build.
4. Use Explosive Shot whenever it is available.
5. Activate Trueshot as many times as possible in a fight. Knowing the fight's cadence helps a lot, as using Trueshot alongside other buffs (or enemy debuffs that increase their damage taken) can massively increase its throughput.
6. Spend Precise Shots procs on Arcane Shot. These procs are activated primarily from Aimed Shot, but can also come from Rapid Fire. They are essential for generating the Streamline stacks that reduce Aimed Shot's cast time and Focus cost.
7. Use Aimed Shot whenever it is available. The goal is to use as many Aimed Shots as possible over the course of an encounter, but also to ensure that every Aimed Shot is cast with at least 1 Streamline stack. We also do not want to cast Aimed Shot if we already have a Precise Shots proc ready, as we do not want to overwrite them!
8. At this point, if you have nothing else higher priority to cast, you should spend excess Focus on Arcane Shot, and generate Focus as needed with Steady Shot. You should always aim to have at least ~30 Focus, in order to be able to cast Aimed Shot the moment it becomes available.

There is only one extra thing you need to worry about for Marksmanship on AoE, and that is Trick Shots. This is a buff activated by Multi-Shot that causes your next Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot to hit up to 5 additional targets for 75% of original damage. It is extremely important to ensure this buff is active for all of your Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires. Note that the Volley Talented Ability activates Trick Shots for 6 continuous seconds, and we will often leverage this to chain multiple Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires together for awesome AoE burst damage.

Exhilaration is your primary self-heal and it has a rather short cooldown thanks to the Natural Mending Talent. Use this when you drop below 50% HP to help out your Healer!

Aspect of the Turtle is your immunity. It can be used to completely negate the damage and effects of most spells targeted on you. Use it if you are assigned to, or in a pinch if you worry that an upcoming mechanic will kill you!

Survival of the Fittest is our most powerful defensive besides Turtle, a 30% damage reduction with 2 charges on a 1.5-minute cooldown each. Use it to reduce damage taken from hard-hitting mechanics. Optimal use of this ability entails using it proactively, before heavy incoming damage.

Feign Death is a very unique Hunter ability. It can be used to drop aggro and combat, and it can also be used to stop casts on you — mobs will usually stop casting mid-cast if you appear to be dead! It will also dispel all Poison and Disease effects from you when specced into Emergency Salve.

This is just some of the key utility of Marksmanship Hunter. We highly recommend checking out the fully detailed Spell Glossary page below to see everything explained in detail.

The game offers the option of an in-game "Combat Assistant", which has two modes; A Rotation Helper that will suggest spells to cast next, and a "One-Button Mode", that automatically performs this rotation for you if you simply press one button repeatedly.

These tools can be worthwhile for beginners, as they provide a reasonable "minimum" level of performance. For Marksmanship Hunter, using just the Rotation Helper is a ~2-7% DPS loss compared to playing perfectly (which almost nobody does), the lower bound being AoE, and the higher one being single-target. Using the one-button mode adds another ~9% to this DPS loss.

Obviously, peak performance cannot be obtained using these tools, but it is something worth considering if you are happy to take the DPS losses above for the sake of ease of play. Do not let anyone in-game or on a forum or Discord tell you that there is something inherently wrong with using these tools! Blizzard created them for a reason, and the game is about having fun, whatever that means for you.