Marksmanship Hunter PvP Best Races and Racials — The War Within (11.1.5)

• Shadowmeld
• Elusiveness
• Nature Resistance
• Touch of Elune

Night Elf is the strongest Alliance race for Marksmanship Hunters as long as you get value from Shadowmeld.

You can use Shadowmeld to completely negate any projectile that has been cast on you. For example, if a warrior casts Storm Bolt and the bolt is in the air, you can Shadowmeld while it is flying, and the Storm Bolt won't hit you.

Shadowmeld can also completely negate any instant spell (eg. Kidney Shot) if your timing is absolutely perfect. This is not an easy thing to do, and unless you really know what you are doing, you will rarely be able to immune spells that are not projectiles.

Shadowmeld can also be used to drop combat to cast Camouflage when Feign Death is on cooldown.

Night Elves gain additional Critical Strike rating during the day and additional Haste rating at night through Touch of Elune. Haste is generally the better stat for Marksmanship in PvP, so if you only play during the day, you lose some value as Night Elf.

Night Elf is also a great option for Battleground Blitz specifically because Shadowmeld can be used to immediately drop combat and mount up so you can quickly move to new objectives when Feign Death is on cooldown which will allow you to respond to changing objectives faster. Wisp Spirit also makes it faster for you to resurrect at your corpse, which is situationally invaluable.

• Will to Survive
• The Human Spirit

Human is a reliably strong Alliance race for Marksmanship Hunters and is more forgiving than Night Elf because its strength does not rely on pre-emptive Shadowmeld plays.

With Will to Survive Human Hunters do not need to run a standard 2-minute cooldown PvP trinket ( Prized Gladiator's Medallion) and can instead choose to play two different trinkets.

Prized Gladiator's Insignia of Alacrity has a high chance to proc, and when combined with Prized Gladiator's Badge of Ferocity, you have a high chance of both buffs being active when the game starts and you first use cooldowns.

You can also run Prized Gladiator's Emblem to make yourself more difficult to kill while still gaining the benefits of a badge/insignia trinket.

If you do decide to wear a standard 2-minute cooldown PvP trinket ( Prized Gladiator's Medallion), using it will put Will to Survive on a 90-second cooldown (and vice versa). This effectively reduces the cooldown of your PvP trinket by 30 seconds when used to escape stuns (and reduces the cooldown by 90 seconds compared to a Human running two other PvP trinkets). Into a composition like Rogue Mage Priest where your trinket is extremely valuable, this may be preferred over the extra damage from using two throughput trinkets.

In 3v3 Arena if you are playing a composition where you are not often the likely kill target (e.g. playing Jungle Cleave) you may be better off playing with a standard 2-minute cooldown PvP trinket so you can remove crowd control effects that aren't stuns when you need to peel for your team (or make aggressive plays when being peeled).

Humans also gain The Human Spirit, a nice stat buff which automatically follows your stat priority (i.e. increases the stats you are already deliberately stacking).

• Fireblood
• Forged in Flames

Dark Iron Dwarf sometimes competes with Human and Night Elf for the best Alliance race purely because of Fireblood. When DoT specializations like Assassination Rogue or Feral Druid are very commonly played, this racial is an excellent counter to them, both defensively and offensively (as the primary stat gain from dispelling multiple effects at once is significant).

When these specializations are not commonly played, Human and Night Elf are better races.

It is important to be aware that using Fireblood places your PvP trinket on a 30-second cooldown (and vice versa) so if you use your trinket to escape a stun, you will not be able to immediately dispel bleeds or other harmful effects from yourself using Fireblood for 30 seconds.

Fireblood also triggers backlash (from effects like Unstable Affliction or Vampiric Touch), which makes it less useful into damage over time casters.

• Blood Fury
• Command
• Hardiness

Orc is the best race for Horde Marksmanship Hunters.

Hardiness is arguably the best racial ability in the game for the arena.

Most classes and comps will aim to kill you in a stun, and this reduces the duration of all stuns, making it more likely you will narrowly survive and be able to use Aspect of the Turtle or Feign Death.

Particularly into specializations like Subtlety Rogue, being an orc can make you a non-viable kill target because they will not be able to apply their second and third Cheap Shot whilst still using their damage rotation.

Blood Fury is also an automatic racial ability - macro it with Trueshot or Volley, and you will get the maximum from the racial without changing anything about your gameplay.

Command is a passive damage increase that is nice to have, although it is not what makes Orc the best race.

In this section is a list of the other races available, the active and racial abilities they have and any benefits they might give a Marksmanship Hunter.

• Stoneform
• Might of the Mountain
• Frost Resistance

This is similar to Dark Iron Dwarf, but Stoneform is less useful than Fireblood - when you use either into a bleed class, the damage reduction has little value because you've already dispelled their burst, so the agility buff is worth more than the damage reduction.

Note that Stoneform also shares a 30-second cooldown with your Prized Gladiator's Medallion

• Escape Artist
• Arcane Resistance
• Expansive Mind
• Nimble Fingers

Gnome can be good for kiting but not much else.

• Gift of the Naaru
• Heroic Presence
• Shadow Resistance

Gift of the Naaru doesn't do enough healing to justify playing Draenei over the current meta races.

• Darkflight
• Viciousness
• Aberration

Darkflight isn't needed as Hunter, although does provide a substantial speed boost that will help you kite as it now stacks with other movement speed-increasing effects. An easy way to get value from this racial is to use Darkflight when you remove slows from yourself with Disengage, whilst the posthaste buff is still active.

• Spatial Rift
• Chill of Night
• Entropic Embrace
• Preternatural Calm

Not having spell pushback on Aimed Shot is a strong benefit of Void Elf for Marksmanship Hunters.

Spatial Rift is a powerful ability to kite with. When timed well (particularly in 2v2 and on maps with a Z-axis) the teleport will make a difference to your survivability.

When using Spatial Rift defensively, you should point the rift in a different direction to where you are currently moving (and ideally towards the opposite side of a pillar so that your enemy will not be in your line of sight when you reactivate the ability to teleport).

• Light's Judgment
• Light's Reckoning
• Holy Resistance

These racial bonuses are not competitive with what other races offer.

• Haymaker
• Brush It Off
• Child of the Sea
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Haymaker can sometimes be used to finish kills.

• Hyper Organic Light Originator
• Combat Analysis
• Emergency Failsafe

Emergency Failsafe will occasionally save you.

• Quaking Palm
• Epicurean

Quaking Palm is on the same diminishing return as Freezing Trap and Scatter Shot and will rarely be useful.

• Berserking
• Da Voodoo Shuffle
• Regeneration

Berserking isn't good enough to compete with Orc's Blood Fury and Hardiness.

• War Stomp
• Brawn
• Endurance
• Nature Resistance

You can use Warstomp to set up traps, but it's awkward to use, and there are other ways you can trap already.

• Will of the Forsaken
• Cannibalize
• Touch of the Grave
• Shadow Resistance

Will of the Forsaken is occasionally good in certain matchups against fear classes, but being able to break fears isn't essential as a hunter, and getting out of stuns faster is more useful than being able to break some fears.

Note that this shares a 30-second cooldown with your Prized Gladiator's Medallion

• Arcane Torrent
• Arcane Acuity
• Arcane Resistance

Situations where Arcane Torrent has value are very rare.

• Rocket Jump
• Rocket Barrage
• Time is Money

Rocket Jump is situationally good for kiting.

• Arcane Pulse
• Ancient History
• Magical Affinity
• Arcane Resistance

Arcane Pulse is a substantial slow which is stronger than other slows available to Hunters, but it has a long cooldown and most specializations in the game will have ways to remove it, so this will rarely change the outcome of a game.

• Bull Rush
• Mountaineer
• Rugged Tenacity

These racials are not competitive with the other races.

• Ancestral Call
• Savage Blood
• Sympathetic Vigor

The pet health increase is nice, but that and the DPS gain from Ancestral Call are unlikely to win you arena games.

• Regeneratin'
• Embrace of the Loa

Note that Embrace of the Loa gives:

• Embrace of Akunda - Your healing abilities have a chance to heal their target.
• Embrace of Bwonsamdi - Your damaging abilities have a chance to deal with Shadow damage and heal you for 100% of the damage done.
• Embrace of Gonk - Increase movement speed by 5%.
• Embrace of Kimbul - Your damaging abilities have a chance to cause the target to bleed over 6s. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
• Embrace of Krag'wa - Taking damage has a chance to grant you additional Health and 66 Armor.
• Embrace of Pa'ku - Your abilities have a chance to grant you 4% critical strike for 12 seconds.

The speed from Embrace of Gonk is significant and is a nice thing to have. Embrace of Kimbul is going to be your best bet if you would prefer throughput over movement speed.

Regeneratin' is no longer canceled on periodic damage which makes it powerful when combined with Aspect of the Turtle or when you can break away from a fight. This will have the most value in 2v2 and particularly double DPS compositions as a way to recover from damage taken.

• Bag of Tricks
• Fire Resistance
• Nose For Trouble

The racials here are not very good and the only reason Vulpera is ever played competitively is because Nose For Trouble is strong into Demonology Warlocks.

• Quaking Palm
• Epicurean

Quaking Palm is on the same diminishing return as Freezing Trap and Scatter Shot and will rarely be useful.

• Titan-Wrought Frame
• Azerite Surge
• Ingest Minerals

The Azerite Surge ability is basically useless for all hunter specializations, and in most cases, using it would be a DPS loss.

The Titan-Wrought Frame effect ends up being around 2% damage reduction into physical damage specializations. This is good, although there aren't many specializations in the game where the bulk of their damage is physical, so in most cases, this racial has no effect.

The Ingest Minerals gives you a small amount of secondary stat (383), and isn't enough to make up for this race's lack of useful racials.

• Wing Buffet
• Glide
• Awakened

The active ability Wing Buffet is not as effective as High Explosive Trap and shares diminishing returns, so it is not very useful for any hunter specializations.

The Glide double-jump ability, unfortunately, limits your speed when used (which will slow you down if you have speed buffs like Aspect of the Cheetah active), and will only go in the direction your camera is facing, which makes it awkward when trying to turn midair to use abilities whilst kiting. It can occasionally allow some neat kiting on Z-axis maps, but this won't happen often and this is not considered a powerful effect for Hunters specifically.

The only reliable benefit of Dracthyr for Hunters is the passive increase to Mastery through Awakened, which is not enough to make up for the low-value active abilities.