Marksmanship Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Shadowlands / Patch 9.2.5)

The main role for a Marksmanship Hunter is simple: use your mobility to land Freezing Traps on the enemy healer and use your strong single-target cooldowns to burst your enemies down. You should not try to burst an enemy down unless the healer is on crowd control. You have multiple cooldowns that have a short cooldown and you should take advantage of this. You also want to make sure you are using your Aimed Shot charges as often as you can.

If you are playing against a team with stealth, make sure to use Flare to try to reveal them. If you are playing with someone that has a stealth, make sure to use Camouflage.

Before going into how to deal damage as a Marksmanship Hunter, it is important to know how to crowd control the enemy team. Hunter comps rely heavily on landing Freezing Trap on the enemy healer and requires some setup. Normally, you will have a Rogue or Paladin on your team that can stun before you Freezing Trap, but here are some ways you can crowd control an enemy without help from teammates:

1. Using Scatter Shot:
   • Use Scatter Shot on the enemy healer.
   • Use Freezing Trap.
   • Ideally, you want to stun someone and then use Freezing Trap. Scatter Shot and Freezing Trap are on the same DR and their durations are cut in half if used one after the other.
2. Using Binding Shot:
   • Use Binding Shot near the enemy healer and wait for them to move.
   • Use Freezing Trap once the enemy healer is rooted.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. Marksmanship Hunters have Freezing Trap, Scatter Shot, and Chimaeral Sting, which can help to this end.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Use Flare if you are playing against an enemy that can stealth.
2. Use Concussive Shot to slow your target if they have a lot of mobility.
3. Use Double Tap if you are certain that you can finish your Aimed Shot in its window.
4. Use Death Chakram if you are Necrolord.
5. Use Resonating Arrow if you are Kyrian to increase your damage against targets inside the area.
6. Use Flayed Shot if you are Venthyr.
7. Cast Trueshot.
8. Cast Aimed Shot.
   • Aimed Shot gives you the Precise Shots buff, stacking up to 2. This increases the damage of your next Arcane Shot.
   • Use Arcane Shot if you cannot cast Aimed Shot and use it when you have the Precise Shots buff.
9. Use Rapid Fire.
10. Use Aimed Shot
11. Use Aimed Shot
12. Reapply Concussive Shot if necessary.
13. Maximize your Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires while still in your cooldowns. Weave in Arcane Shots for extra damage when you are high on Focus.
14. Remember that Steady Shot also refreshes Concussive Shot and that it is better to reapply Concussive Shot with a damage-dealing ability that generates Focus, compared to simply casting it repeatedly.
15. Treat Lock and Load procs as regular Aimed Shots, casting them as soon as they become available.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage. You can use your own crowd control, such as Scatter Shot and Freezing Trap.

1. Use Death Chakram if you are Necrolord.
2. Use Resonating Arrow if you are Kyrian to increase your damage against targets inside the area.
3. Use Flayed Shot if you are Venthyr.
4. Use Double Tap.
5. Use Trueshot
6. Use Aimed Shot.
7. Use Aimed Shot.
8. Use Rapid Fire.
9. Use Aimed Shot.
10. Use Arcane Shot.
11. Use Steady Shot to generate Focus.
12. Cast Aimed Shot.
13. Cast Aimed Shot.
14. Use Rapid Fire.
15. Use Kill Shot if an enemy drops below 20% health.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Maintain Hunter's Mark on your primary target.
2. Maintain Concussive Shot on your target if they are mobile, ideally using Steady Shot to refresh it.
3. Use Aimed Shot as often as you can.
   • You never want to be capped on stacks of Aimed Shot. You should always have a charge regenerating.
4. Use Double Tap when you can free-cast Aimed Shot. If you cannot, use it in combination with Rapid Fire.
5. Use Rapid Fire for single target damage and to generate Focus at the same time.
6. Use Arcane Shot after you use Aimed Shot to increase its damage.
7. Use Resonating Arrow if you are Kyrian to increase your damage against targets inside the area.
8. Use Flayed Shot if you are Venthyr.
9. Use Death Chakram if you are Necrolord.
10. Use Steady Shot to generate Focus.
11. Use Kill Shot if an enemy drops below 20% health.

Feign Death can be your main defensive tool due to your Survival Tactics PvP Talent, your Resilience of the Hunter Conduit, and Craven Strategem Legendary Power. Use it as often as possible while you are being targeted to force the enemy to re-target you, drop DoTs, and reduce damage taken.

Aspect of the Turtle is our main defensive cooldown. Use this when the enemy team is focusing you down and your healer can not heal you through the damage or is stuck in crowd control. Although you can not attack with this cooldown active, you still have the ability to trap. Using this to ignore incoming attacks and using Freezing Trap on an enemy healer could be crucial.

Exhilaration is a very strong instant heal. Try to stagger Aspect of the Turtle and Exhilaration and you will be very hard to kill.

Roar of Sacrifice is a great utility ability for you or your teammates. This makes the teammate you use this on immune to being Critical Strikes by spells and transfers 20% of the damage they are taking to your pet. Use this when the enemy team is using their cooldowns on a teammate or yourself and not many defensive cooldowns are available.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.