Marksmanship Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Dragonflight / Patch 10.0.5)
PvP requires you to perform various actions in the course of a duel, match, or battleground: interrupting/silencing enemies, damaging them, bursting them down, defending yourself, keeping yourself alive, etc.. It is a game mode that fully utilizes your kit, especially spells that are rarely used in PvE. On this page, we go through all the spells you need to use in PvP as a Marksmanship Hunter, how you should use them, and we explain what your playstyle should be.
This page is part of our Marksmanship Hunter PvP Guide.
Playstyle for Marksmanship Hunters
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.
Before Gates Open
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.
Offensive Rotation
How to Crowd Control
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:
- 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.
- Use
- 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.
- Use
The Opener
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.
- Use
Flare if you are playing against an enemy that can stealth.
- Use
Double Tap if you are certain that you can finish your
Rapid Fire in its window.
- Use
Death Chakram
- Cast
Trueshot.
- Cast
Rapid Fire.
- Use
Aimed Shot
- Use
Aimed Shot
- Apply
Concussive Shot to slow your target if they have a lot of mobility.
- 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.
- 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.
- Treat
Lock and Load procs as regular
Aimed Shots, casting them as soon as they become available.
- If you get
Deathblow procs that allow for free
Kill Shots, use them immediately!
- Use
Burst Damage
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.
- Use
Death Chakram
- Use
Trueshot
- Use
Aimed Shot.
- Use
Rapid Fire.
- Use
Aimed Shot.
- Use
Rapid Fire.
- Use
Aimed Shot.
- Use
Kill Shot if an enemy drops below 20% health.
Sustained damage
Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.
- If you get
Deathblow procs that allow for free
Kill Shots, use them immediately!
- Maintain
Concussive Shot on your target if they are mobile, ideally using
Steady Shot to refresh it.
- Use
Aimed Shot and
Rapid Fire as often as you can.
- Use
Double Tap when you can free-cast
Rapid Fire
- Use
Arcane Shot after you use
Aimed Shot to increase its damage.
- Use
Death Chakram
- Use
Steady Shot to generate Focus. Use them in pairs for
Steady Focus
- Use
Kill Shot if an enemy drops below 20% health.
Defensive Techniques
Survival of the Fittest is not a technique as much as it is simply
a powerful defensive.
It has a moderately long cooldown, though, and you should take care to
only use it on your enemy's cooldowns.
Fortitude of the Bear is available to you even when you do not have a pet summoned.
This not only increases
your maximum health like it says, but it also heals you for this same amount so that you
are left with increased current HP after using it.
Feign Death can be your main defensive tool due to your
Survival Tactics PvP Talent. 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.
Macros
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.
Changelog
- 30 Jan. 2023: Updated the page for relevant changes in Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 22 Feb. 2022: Updated and restructured the Opener and Burst DPS Rotations and clarified Lock and Load/Concussive Shot usage. Added Death Chakram.
- 10 Nov. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 06 Jul. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.
- 18 Mar. 2021: Updated Burst and Sustained Damage rotations.
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated Rotations to include Covenant Abilities.
- 29 Nov. 2020: Removed outdated Traits and Essences.
- 11 Nov. 2020: Updated all Burst and Sustained damage rotations.
- 15 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch (9.0.1)
This guide has been written by Azortharion, a Hunter Theorycrafter and Guidewriter since 2014, and considered one of the best Hunters in the world. 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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