Marksmanship Hunter DPS Mythic+ Guide — Shadowlands 9.2.5
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Marksmanship Hunter in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
Unique Challenges of Mythic+
Mythic+ Dungeons, especially high ones, are arguably the highest level of competitive PvE content that WoW has to offer aside from Mythic raiding.
In Mythic Dungeons as a Hunter, you will be responsible for a large part of the group's total damage output, while in a Mythic Raiding group, you may only be responsible for maybe 7% of it. The skill and execution from the individual players in the group is much more important.
Aside from just doing damage, in Mythic+ you will be responsible for many things to make the group's run faster and easier. Interrupting, offensively dispelling enemy targets, soaking mechanics, using your traps and stuns are all much more common in Mythic+ than your usual Mythic raid.
In this guide, we will talk about getting the most out of your Hunter in Mythic+ dungeons, including the best way to set up your character, how your rotation may change, and tips and tricks for using your abilities in the most optimal way.
If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.
Best Marksmanship Hunter Mythic+ Build
For a more general overview of Talents for Marksmanship Hunter, please visit our dedicated Talents page.
These are our recommended talents for Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+.
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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Explosive Shot is preferred on "uncapped AoE" keys such as
De Other Side and Halls of Atonement, while
Careful Aim
is preferred for all other keys. This assumes you have the
Marksmanship Hunter 4-Piece.
Before the 4PC, just go with Explosive Shot at all times.
Best Mythic+ Covenant and Soulbind for Marksmanship Hunter
- Before Double Legendaries, Kyrian should always be chosen for Mythic+.
- Once you get Double Legendaries, you should swap to Night Fae.
- Once you have both Double Legendaries and the Tier Set Bonus, you should go back to Kyrian for most keys, with the exception of Theater of Pain, Plaguefall, and Streets of Wonder, where Night Fae is usually preferred due to the low target counts.
- Dreamweaver is always chosen for Night Fae, but Kyrian uses Pelagos with 0 or 2 Tier Pieces, and swaps to Forgelite Prime Mikanikos with the 4PC Bonus.
Best Mythic+ Legendary for Marksmanship Hunter
Once you have the 4PC Tier Set Bonus, you should use
Secrets of the Unblinking Vigil at all times, regardless of Covenant.
Before this point, you should run Fragments of the Elder Antlers as
Night Fae and
Surging Shots as Kyrian.
For more information on Marksmanship Hunter Legendaries in different situations, please check out our page below.
9.2 Seasonal Affix: Encrypted
The Encrypted Affix will spawn three Relics on certain packs in the dungeon. These Relics buff the pack they are in, and should usually be killed as the highest priority.
Depending on the Relic that you kill first, you will get a buff once it does.
- Killing the Wo Relic first will grant you a 1-minute stealth and
45-second movement speed boost via
Decrypted Wo Cypher.
- Killing the Vy Relic first will grant you a 15% Haste buff for 45
seconds via
Decrypted Vy Cypher.
- Killing the Urh Relic first will grant you a 200% cooldown recovery
rate buff for 10 seconds via
Decrypted Urh Cypher.
Rotational Considerations for Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+
For the most part, your rotation will remain the same as normal in Mythic+ dungeons. Because of the nature of dungeons, however, with mobs dying constantly and there sometimes being downtime in between packs, we recommend taking the following extra considerations.
Note that the information below specifically pertains to Mythic+. If you require more general information, you should go to the main Rotation page below.
Trueshot and Covenant Ability
Trueshot should nearly always be synchronized with your Covenant
Ability (
Wild Spirits or
Resonating Arrow) and both should be
used as many times as possible throughout the dungeon.
For other Covenants, Flayed Shot should be used on the longest-living
target in the pack, while
Death Chakram should be used on cooldown on as
many targets as possible.
Double Tap
Double Tap should be spent on
Rapid Fire whenever possible.
The combination of
Streamline and
Surging Shots makes Rapid
Fire an extremely powerful ability. You should precast it before packs
start so that you do not have to
spend the GCD while in combat.
Mythic+ AoE Burst Opener for Marksmanship Hunter
- If you are using
Double Tap, activate it shortly before the pull begins.
- Use
Explosive Shot as soon as the pull is engaged.
- Activate your Covenant Ability, such as
Resonating Arrow.
- Activate
Volley.
- Activate
Trueshot immediately.
- Cast
Aimed Shot, or
Rapid Fire if you are using
Surging Shots and
Explosive Shot.
- Cast
Aimed Shot or
Rapid Fire depending on what you cast previously.
- Cast
Aimed Shot
- After
Volley ends, proceed with your Trueshot rotation, and remember to use
Multi-Shot to keep up
Trick Shots.
Note that if you are not Kyrian, you should instead do
Aimed Shot,
Rapid Fire,
Aimed Shot, and you should pop
Trueshot right after activating
Volley.
Key Abilities for Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+
Bursting Shot is a useful AoE interrupt that works in melee range.
It can be used to interrupt abilities that cannot be interrupted normally,
and you can aid in getting caster mobs to join the main pack using this
ability.
Freezing Trap plays the same role as
Intimidation for the
most part, allowing you to interrupt dangerous casts that cannot be
interrupted normally. It can also allow you to remove dangerous caster mobs
from the equation. If there are caster mobs out of position hitting
your group, those are ideal targets to be trapped until they can be pulled
into the remaining group. It can also be used to skip mobs or packs by trapping
a mob, letting the group run past, grabbing aggro by running close to it, and
then running away and using
Feign Death.
Counter Shot is your main interrupt and will be used
often in any Mythic+. As you get to know the dungeons, you should know which
spells are worth spending your valuable, long-cooldown interrupt on, and which
ones you can safely leave to those with shorter cooldowns. Chances are that
you will have one of the only ranged interrupts in your group. Using this on
caster mobs that are out of position in order to force them to run for the tank
is extremely valuable.
Feign Death is an extremely powerful spell in Mythic+. It can be
used to effectively nullify a lot of targeted effects that mobs and bosses
channel on you. It can also be used to nullify targeted spells where you can
see that it will land on you before the cast finishes. Using Feign Death can
cause the boss to pick another target, or completely stop casting
the ability.
Binding Shot is one of the most unique utility spells you
bring to
Mythic+. It is an 8-second root that can affect any amount of targets that
crosses over the arrow. This is used when the tank is kiting to save them from
danger. It can also be used to ensure that mobs stay in place for a number of
reasons, such as keeping them inside your
Wild Spirits/
Resonating Arrow.
Tranquilizing Shot is simple. It is an offensive Enrage/Magic dispel
that can be used to remove beneficial buffs from enemies. An underrated feature
of this ability is that gives you 10 Focus if it successfully dispels something.
It is also slightly faster to cast than
Steady Shot, so it can be
thought of as a DPS spell because it gives you Focus.
How to use Bloodlust / Heroism as a Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+
Marksmanship Hunters prefer to not use a pet at all due to our
Lone Wolf passive. However, you will sometimes be forced to use one to
activate
Bloodlust/
Heroism for your group.
The ideal way to do this is to summon your pet, and then immediately
dismiss it. When there is 0.1s left on the Dismiss cast (or whenever the boss is
pulled), you activate the Primal Rage ability.
Your Lone Wolf will take 20 seconds to stack all the way up to 10% damage done, but if the boss fight is of any substantial length (90 seconds or longer), then this should still be a net DPS increase.
If you cannot or will not do this, then you can also just leave your pet active for the boss fight and dismiss it after it is over, but you should never dismiss your pet mid-fight.
Trinket Considerations for Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+
When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you would want to sim 1-5 targets on 40-second, 90-second and 3-minute fight lengths without Bloodlust and average out the results. This is way beyond what is required for most players, and for a quick "rough" sim we recommend CleaveAdd, 2 targets, 90 seconds, and no Bloodlust.
You can also get a quick overview of good Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page, specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 24 May 2022: Small opener update.
- 21 Feb. 2022: Updated the best Covenant and Legendary and added information about the new Affix. Updated the opener.
- 23 Dec. 2021: Updated and clarified the best Conduits.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Added some information about the Legion Timewalking Affix "Infernal", and changed the recommendation of some Tormented Anima Powers.
- 12 Jul. 2021: Added information about the best Tormented Anima Mythic+ Powers to take.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 19 Apr. 2021: Added information about Binding Shot and Tranquilizing Shot to the utility spells section.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 09 Jan. 2020: Added a section about using Bloodlust / Heroism in Mythic+ as a Marksmanship Hunter.
- 26 Dec. 2020: Updated the recommended M+ Sim Methodology.
- 07 Dec. 2020: Added information about best Covenants and Legendaries for Mythic+, and altered the AoE Burst Opener.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 17 Oct. 2020: Updated the Level 50 Talent recommendation.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Azortharion, a theorycrafter of all things Hunter-related for many years. He is an accomplished player with dozen of top parses for all specs throughout the game's history. He is also the Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the Hunter Class Discord, and you can watch his stream on Twitch. He even has his own personal Discord channel where you can get notifications about when the guides get updated and have direct communications with him.
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