Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents and Builds (Shadowlands / Patch 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

While the above table provides a generally accurate overview of the viability of talents, some finer points are discussed in the sections that follow, and we recommend you read those for a deeper understanding.

Master Marksman is the best choice in this tier. This talent is an increase to your overall sustained damage output.

Careful Aim is the best choice in this tier. This is a talent that helps when swapping targets or trying to kill an enemy from full health to 0 in a crowd control chain.

Natural Mending is the best choice in this tier. This talent is crucial for reducing the cooldown of Exhilaration. This will help increase your overall survivability versus teams that will be focusing you. However, if you are playing with a partner who has a Stealth ability like Rogue or Feral, Camouflage is the better choice. This will give you team a very strong opener.

Streamline is the best choice in this tier. This talent simply increases your overall damage output and makes it easier to cast Aimed Shots.

Posthaste is the best choice in this tier. This gives you even more mobility. It will allow you to run away from enemies if they are focusing you.

Double Tap is the best choice in this tier. This provides strong on-demand burst damage and crucial for securing kills. You will want to use this once the enemy healer is in crowd control. Something to note is that this has the same cooldown as A Murder of Crows and you will often be pairing these two cooldowns together.

Lock and Load is the best choice in this tier. This gives your ranged spells a chance to cause your next Aimed Shots to be instant and cost no Focus. This is great for increasing your damage.

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has their uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful, but can be replaced with other PvP talents, depending on your team's goal.

Roar of Sacrifice instructs your pet to protect a friendly target from critical strikes, making attacks against that target unable to be critical strikes, but 20% of all damage taken by that target is also taken by the pet. It lasts 12 seconds and this is a powerful defensive cooldown that is helpful for you and your teammates. With a cooldown of only 1 minute, this is an ability that your healer can call-out to use if they are stuck in crowd control. This is a mandatory PvP talent against most teams, but maybe not used versus teams with 2 classes that have DoTs on them.

Scatter Shot is crucial for your crowd control. It is a targeted shot that incapacitates the target for 4 seconds. This is crucial for your crowd control if your teammates cannot help you setup your Freezing Trap. You can also use this to help one of your teammates stay alive if they are being focused. Something to note is that Scatter Shot shares a diminishing return with Freezing Trap, so it will only be a 3.5-second trap. This is a mandatory PvP talent.

Survival Tactics causes Feign Death to remove all harmful magical effects, and reduces damage taken by 99% for 1.5 seconds. This is a mandatory talent when playing against classes with multiple DoTs (Affliction Warlock, Shadow Priest, Balance Druid). This reduces the enemies' overall damage and helps your healer with dispelling harmful effects. You can also use this to stop incoming spells that are being cast on you.

Spider Sting stings the target with potent spider venom for 4 seconds, causing their next offensive spell cast to silence the target for 4 seconds. When playing against classes that cast most of their spells (Mages, Warlocks, Elemental Shamans), this talent can be helpful. You can use it to interrupt their burst damage or crowd control.

Dragonscale Armor reduces all magical DoT effects dealt to you by 20%. This is crucial versus teams and classes that have multiple DoTs.

Pets do not have talent trees, and instead have their own types of specialization (Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity).

Each specialization gives your pet a few abilities. Cunning provides the ability Master's Call, by far the best pet ability to have. To get the Mortal Wounds debuff from your pets, you will need one of the following pets:

• Devilsaur
• Ravager
• Scorpid
• Wasp