Marksmanship Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Pet Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Lone Wolf

Lone Wolf is a Marksmanship Hunter passive ability. It gives you 10% damage buff whenever you do not have a pet active.

Currently, it is worth having a pet summoned for single-target fights. When you begin to fight multiple targets at once, such as in Mythic+, then it is a DPS increase to go without your pet. Keep in mind that you will give up a significant amount of survivability/utility by not using a pet.

Keep in mind that when you dismiss your pet, it will take 20 seconds for your Lone Wolf buff to reach its full 10% damage bonus. This is to discourage you from swapping between having a pet and dismissing it in the middle of an encounter.

2. Marksmanship Hunter Talent Cheat Sheets

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.

2.1. For Raiding

This build is focused primarily on raiding and should be your default build.

• Level 15: Master Marksman.
• Level 30: Careful Aim for single-target.
• Level 45: Natural Mending by default.
• Level 60: Hunter's Mark for pure single-target fights with minimal target-switching. Streamline can be used if there is very extreme target switching with almost no room to get Hunter's Mark up.
• Level 75: Posthaste; use the others if needed for a fight
• Level 90: Double Tap for almost all situations. Barrage has a heavy multi-target edge.
• Level 100: Lock and Load for all situations. Use Calling the Shots for all situations if you have Unerring Vision.

3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your DPS in various ways.

✔ Master Marksman

? Serpent Sting

✘ A Murder of Crows

• Master Marksman causes your Aimed Shot to reduce the Focus cost of your next Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot by 100%, effectively making them free.
• Serpent Sting is a DoT ability that costs 10 Focus and applies a DoT for 12 seconds. It also does a small amount of initial damage when you cast it. This is generally just to be kept up at all times, and can be useful for multi-DoTting as well.
• A Murder of Crows is a DoT ability that costs 20 Focus with a 1-minute cooldown. It applies a powerful 15-second DoT to the target that deals Physical damage every second. If your target dies while the DoT is active, the cooldown of A Murder of Crows is reset.

All talents in this tier are within 1-3% of each other for pure single-target.

Serpent Sting is a respectable single-target damage option (and not bad when multidotting a few targets either), but we prefer Master Marksman for its ease of use, and therefore we generally do not recommend using Serpent Sting.

Master Marksman should be used by default. It is the best and also the simplest option.

A Murder of Crows is generally not worth using, as it does not scale with multiple targets.

4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your DPS in various ways.

✔ Careful Aim

✘ Volley

✘ Explosive Shot

• Careful Aim causes your Aimed Shot to deal 50% additional damage to targets above 80% health, or below 20% health. This essentially means that 40% of the time, your Aimed Shot will do 50% additional damage, effectively giving you a 20% damage increase to Aimed Shot, although the benefits of the extra execute damage and the opening burst can be greater than this damage bonus alone.
• Volley gives your Auto-Shots a 10% chance to rain down additional arrows on all enemies within 8 yards of your target, as well as your target itself.
• Explosive Shot is a simple AoE ability that deals heavy AoE damage to all targets near your target. It costs 20 Focus and has a 30-second cooldown.

Careful Aim should be your default choice for all situations.

Explosive Shot is not used.

Volley should never be used.

5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your utility, mobility and survivability.

? Trailblazer

✔ Natural Mending

? Camouflage

• Trailblazer increases your movement speed by 30% whenever you have not attacked for 3 seconds. This is essentially just a helpful passive for moving between packs in Mythic+, or rare raid situations where you need to move for a while and are not able to attack anything.
• Natural Mending causes your Exhilaration ability's remaining cooldown to be reduced by 1 second for every 20 (Marksmanship and Survival) or 30 (Beast Mastery) Focus you spend. We can generally expect a cooldown reduction of over 30 seconds.
• Camouflage puts you in stealth for 1 minute and heals you for 2% of your maximum health every second. It has a 1-minute cooldown, and the cooldown only starts ticking once Camouflage has been cancelled.

Your choice of talent in this tier is mostly situational, but for general survivability in raids and dungeons, we recommend Natural Mending by default.

6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your DPS in various ways.

✘ Steady Focus

? Streamline

✔ Hunter's Mark

• Steady Focus makes casting multiple Steady Shots in a row more beneficial. Whenever you cast Steady Shot, you will reduce the cast time of the next one by 20%, stacking up to 2 times. This encourages a playstyle of spending a lot of Focus so that you can most efficiently get it back by casting many Steady Shots in a row, without capping your Focus.
• Streamline extends your Rapid Fire channel time by 20%, making it do more damage and generate more Focus. This 20% increase roughly amounts to 0.6 seconds, but as your Haste gets higher this number will decrease.
• Hunter's Mark lets you mark a target in a fight that you will then do 5% increased damage to until you apply it to another target. If your current target dies with Hunter's Mark active, you are refunded 20 Focus, making it at least slightly useful in AoE scenarios where individual targets die quickly.

Hunter's Mark should be your default choice for most situations, even in Mythic+ where you can pick a suitable target beforehand, and targets are going to die throughout the pull. Streamline has an edge in Fortified situations where trash is much more important.

Streamline buffs your Rapid Fire AoE significantly. Its edge on AoE is very small, however, so it should only be used when AoE is the absolute top priority.

Steady Focus can be competitive if you are still using 2 or more Steady Aims, but it is not part of any particularly good build, so we cannot recommend it.

7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your utility, mobility and survivability.

✔ Born To Be Wild

✔ Posthaste

✔ Binding Shot

• Born To Be Wild reduces the cooldown of your Aspect of the Turtle and Aspect of the Cheetah abilities by 20%, reducing both their cooldowns to 2 minutes and 24 seconds.
• Posthaste increases your movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds after using Disengage.
• Binding Shot fires an arrow at a targeted location on the ground. If an enemy comes within 5 yards of the arrow, and then steps more than 5 yards away from it again, they will be rooted for 5 seconds. This ability has a 45-second cooldown.

Your choice of talent in this tier is mostly situational, but for general utility in raids and dungeons, we recommend Posthaste by default.

8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

This row consists of talents that improve your DPS in various ways.

✘ Lethal Shots

? Barrage

✔ Double Tap

• Lethal Shots gives your Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot a 20% chance to reduce the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 5 seconds.
• Barrage is an ability on a 20-second cooldown that deals moderate Physical damage to all targets in a cone in front of you. It has a 3-second channeling time and costs 30 Focus.
• Double Tap is a mini-cooldown with a 1-minute cooldown. It causes your next Aimed Shot to fire an additional time (although the second Aimed Shot cannot proc Precise Shots or anything else activated by Aimed Shot), or your next Rapid Fire to shoot twice as many shots in the same amount of time, doubling its damage and Focus generation. With Trick Shots active, the additional Aimed Shot will also cleave up to 5 additional targets.

Double Tap should be your default choice for almost all raid situations.

Barrage can be competitive for very heavy AoE, but the single-target damage loss is large and even in Fortified Mythic+ it is tough to recommend it.

Lethal Shots is not a bad talent, but it is worse than both the other options by a slim margin for almost all situations. We do not recommend its usage.

9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Marksmanship Hunter

? Calling the Shots

✔ Lock and Load

✘ Piercing Shot

• Calling the Shots causes Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot to reduce the remaining cooldown of Trueshot by 2.5 seconds. This can be a powerful talent for certain fights that benefit from short Trueshot timings. You can expect over a minute of total cooldown reduction from using this talent.
• Lock and Load gives your Auto-Shots a 5% chance to make your next Aimed Shot free and instant cast. Because of the new charge system for Aimed Shot, Lock and Load now also refunds you a charge so you can spend the proc immediately.
• Piercing Shot is an instant shot that deals moderate Physical damage to the primary target, and reduced damage to all nearby targets. It costs 35 Focus and has a 30-second cooldown.

Lock and Load is the best all-rounder talent for all conceivable scenarios at the moment and should be the default choice for any PvE content.

Piercing Shot should not be used.

Calling the Shots is a better choice than Lock and Load only if you have the Unerring Vision Azerite Trait. One rank is enough.

10. PvP Talents (War Mode)

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open world PvP, and the possibility to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

10.1. Marksmanship Hunter War Mode Talents

In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Marksmanship Hunter-specific PvE talents.

10.1.1. General PvP Talents

• Relentless is also a passive ability but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities but instead reduces the duration.
• Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.
• Adaptation is recommended, is likely your most passive choice since it will automatically remove loss of control effects over 5 seconds.

10.1.2. Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents

1. Sniper Shot is an ability that deals 20% of the target's maximum health from up to 55 yards away, and increases the range of all your other abilities by 40% for 6 seconds. It has a 10-second cooldown. This is extremely useful for pulling mobs from afar before others can get to them, and finishing them off before they can get close.
2. Trueshot Mastery refunds all your Focus when you use Trueshot, and reduces its cooldown by 20 seconds.
3. Ranger's Finesse is a good default choice as it will passively reduce the cooldown of your Aspect of the Turtle and Exhilaration abilities significantly.
4. Hunting Pack is a useful mobility option, allowing you to use Aspect of the Cheetah much more often.

Scatter Shot, Survival Tactics, Dragonscale Armor, Viper Sting, Spider Sting, Scorpid Sting, and Hi-Explosive Trap have limited use in PvE content in terms of increasing your damage in the open world, but they can be situationally useful.

11. Pet Talents

Pets do not have talent trees. Instead, different types of pet belong to one of three difference specs: Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning.

Each specialisation grants your pet a few specific abilities. Currently, there is no DPS difference between the different pet specs. The only differences are in utility.

12. Changelog