Marksmanship Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Pet Talents — Shadowlands 9.0.5

Level	Choices
15	✓ Master Marksman	✗ Serpent Sting	✗ A Murder of Crows
25	✓ Careful Aim	✗ Barrage	✓ Explosive Shot
30	? Trailblazer	✓ Natural Mending	? Camouflage
35	✓ Steady Focus	✓ Streamline	? Chimaera Shot
40	? Born To Be Wild	✓ Posthaste	? Binding Shackles
45	✗ Lethal Shots	✗ Dead Eye	✓ Double Tap
50	✗ Calling the Shots	✓ Lock and Load	✓ Volley

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

These talent recommendations are based on simulations and logs/statistics to help you pick the best choice for any situation.

This is the best Marksmanship build for purely single-target situations.

• Level 15: Master Marksman
• Level 25: Careful Aim
• Level 30: Natural Mending
• Level 35: Steady Focus
• Level 40: Posthaste
• Level 45: Double Tap
• Level 50: Lock and Load

This is our recommended Marksmanship build for all Mythic+ Dungeons, regardless of affix.

• Level 15: Master Marksman
• Level 25: Explosive Shot
• Level 30: Natural Mending
• Level 35: Streamline
• Level 40: Posthaste
• Level 45: Double Tap
• Level 50: Volley

The builds suggested above do not account for specific fights in the current raid tier. If you wish to have a boss-by-boss breakdown of talent choices, you should check out our dedicated page below.

If you want advice that is specific to Mythic+, you should check out our page below.

Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look with recommended talents on our Rotation page below.

✔ Master Marksman

✘ Serpent Sting

✘ A Murder of Crows

• Master Marksman causes your abilities' crits to make the target bleed for 15% of the initial damage over 6 seconds.
• Serpent Sting is a DoT ability that costs 10 Focus and applies a DoT for 18 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.

Master Marksman should be chosen for all situations.

Serpent Sting should not be chosen in any situation. It is very far behind in all situations.

A Murder of Crows should not be chosen in any situation. It is extremely far behind in all situations.

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

✔ Careful Aim

✘ Barrage

✔ Explosive Shot

• Careful Aim causes your Aimed Shot to deal 50% additional damage to targets above 70% health. This essentially means that 30% of the time, your Aimed Shot will do 50% additional damage, effectively giving you a 15% damage increase to Aimed Shot on average, although the benefits of the extra opening burst can be greater than this damage bonus alone.
• 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. It hits up to 8 targets.
• 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 chosen for all single-target situations.

Barrage should not be chosen for any situation. It is very far behind in single-target situations. It is a bit more acceptable for AoE situations, but still inferior to Explosive Shot for this scenario.

Explosive Shot should be chosen for AoE situations such as Mythic+, and whenever you can use it on more than 1 target in the fight. It only takes a littel bit of multi-target for this talent to be stronger than Careful Aim.

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.

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

✔ Steady Focus

✔ Streamline

? Chimaera Shot

• Steady Focus causes Steady Shot to increase your Haste by 7% when you use it twice in a row, for 15 seconds.
• Streamline increases the damage done by Rapid Fire by 15%, and also causes it to reduce your next Aimed Shot's cast time by 30%.
• Chimaera Shot is an ability that replaces Arcane Shot. It deals significantly more damage, and it can hit an additional target for half of its original damage.

Steady Focus should be used for all situations where you can reliably maintain it, even if there is lots of AoE in those situations.

Streamline should only be used for situations where you cannot maintain Steady Focus at ~60-70% uptime or above.

Chimaera Shot is a very niche choice. It is only the best talent for purely 2-target fights. As soon as you add more targets, Steady Focus and Streamline pull back ahead. On pure single-target, it is no match for Steady Focus.

Technically speaking, Steady Focus is the best talent for all situations except 2-target in simulations. The problem is that simulations assume that you are keeping the buff up at 95%+ uptime. In a real, practical AoE situation such as Mythic+, you will constantly drop the buff between packs.

In addition, when you do start attacking a new pack, you have so many other priorities to get through before you can even think about casting Steady Focus. By the time you get to cast two Steady Shots in a row, the pack will possibly be half-dead already.

If you do find yourself able to keep up Steady Focus in Mythic+, you should be using it. However, for most people in most situations, we recommend Streamline.

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

? Born To Be Wild

✔ Posthaste

? Binding Shackles

• Born To Be Wild reduces the cooldown of your Aspect of the Turtle, Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Eagle (Survival) abilities by 20%, reducing their cooldowns to 2 minutes and 24 seconds and 1 minute and 12 seconds, respectively.
• Posthaste increases your movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds after using Disengage.
• Binding Shackles causes your Binding Shot to also debuff all targets rooted by it for 8 seconds after the root ends. This debuff reduces their damage done to you by 20%.

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

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

✘ Lethal Shots

✘ Dead Eye

✔ Double Tap

• Lethal Shots gives your Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot a 30% chance to reduce the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 5 seconds.
• Dead Eye gives Kill Shot 2 charges, and causes Kill Shot to speed up Aimed Shot's recharge time by 60% (effectively causing its cooldown to tick down 60% faster).
• 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 used for all situations.

Lethal Shots is reasonably competitive, but not worth using in any situation as it has inferior burst and general output to Double Tap.

Dead Eye should not be used in any situation.

✘ Calling the Shots

✔ Lock and Load

✔ Volley

• 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 30 seconds of total cooldown reduction from using this talent.
• Lock and Load gives your Auto-Shots an 8% 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.
• Volley lets you select a location on the ground. All targets in the placed circle effect will take heavy damage over 6 seconds, and you also gain the Trick Shots effect for 6 seconds. This effect can be used to AoE anywhere, not just the targets in the circle.

Lock and Load is the best choice for single-target situations.

Volley is extremely powerful for any sort of multi-target scenario, and should be chosen if there is even a little bit of AoE potential in an encounter. Even for pure single-target scenarios, it is only 1-2% behind Lock and Load.

Calling the Shots should not be chosen in any situation.

Since Battle for Azeroth, there is the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• At least 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.

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

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.

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.