Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents and Builds — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Note that these builds are generic recommendations for arena and battlegrounds. There are multiple viable Marksmanship builds and tweaks that are very powerful in certain match-ups. A description of each talent point is below.

If you are looking for advice on which pets to use, there is a separate page on this guide answering that question in detail. Generally, you want a Cunning pet unless you expect the enemy team to burst you in a stun, in which case you are likely better off with a Tenacity pet.

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The War Within PvP Talent Builds for Marksmanship Hunters in Arena

Sentinel Arena Build (recommended)

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Best Sentinel Marksmanship Arena Build

With this build Volley grants you a Lock and Load proc and where possible you should hold Volley until Rapid Fire is available so you can immediately follow Volley with Rapid Fire into Aimed Shot, both benefiting from Trick Shots. It is also important, generally, to only use Rapid Fire when you know that you will be able to get the whole channel off, as getting the whole channel off will increase your Aimed Shot damage through Bulletstorm.

This build uses Windrunner Quiver to boost your Arcane Shot damage. During combat you alternate between using Aimed Shot or Rapid Fireto generate Precise Shots stacks, and casting Arcane Shot to consume them.

You should only drop Aspect of the Hydra if there is no chance that your target will ever be stacked. It is a "smart" area of effect, meaning that if an enemy is in crowd control, Aspect of the Hydra will not do damage to them. Aspect of the Hydra also triggers Trick Shots, which makes your Volley windows much more powerful when there are multiple stacked enemies. Aspect of the Hydra and Trick Shots from Volley will also help you reach maximum Bulletstorm stacks when you Rapid Fire.

Both Unerring Vision and Calling the Shots are viable, with Unerring Vision generally being preferred in short games, and Calling the Shots being preferred if are expecting a long game and don't think you will be able to get many casts off during your first Trueshot.

In games where you feel that it will be possible to avoid damage by kiting, or where you are not likely to be the kill target, you should choose the Cunning talent to boost your mobility.

If you expect to be targeted a lot, killed in stuns or unable to kite enemies, you can swap this to Tenacious for some additional durability.

Tranquilizing Shot and Kodo Tranquilizer are powerful whenever the enemy team has magic buffs that can be purged which is most of the time, but when there are not important buffs to purge, you can swap these talents in the Hunter tree as well as Precision Strikes. You can also move the point in Natural Mending whenever there is another talent that you want for a match-up.

For example you could take:

• Disruptive Rounds and Tar Trap to get an extra slow effect which is helpful when kiting.
• An extra talent point in Natural Mending to increase your survivability.
• Improved Snaring to help with kiting.
• Camouflage to ensure that the enemy cannot get a clean opener on you.

You can also drop Concussive Shot when facing melee DPS, as you will still have access to Wing Clip, which is a powerful slow combined with Improved Snaring that has a longer duration than Concussive Shot.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies and match-ups than others.

Survival Tactics is the best overall PvP Talent. It turns Feign Death into your best defensive ability by negating damage for two seconds. This talent is very powerful into burst specializations when timed correctly, especially with Improved Feign Death.

When facing match-ups where you are guaranteed not to be attacked, there are occasionally better options, but it is safer just always to play this talent.

Chimaeral Sting is a versatile ability that can be used in many ways, for example:

• To silence an enemy healer while bursting their partner (note that it does damage on application, and the silence only applies after 3 seconds, so you cannot Chimaeral Sting during or immediately after a trap)
• To silence a healer before swapping to them (particularly good against priests as they cannot use Pain Suppression when silenced, when they would have been able to if you swapped with Intimidation)
• To peel a DPS on their go (for example, use Chimaeral Sting on a Mage when they cast Dragon's Breath; they will still be able to Polymorph your healer, but will be silenced immediately afterward and not be able to capitalize on the Polymorph, or to cancel a Shaman's Lightning Lasso when you know it is coming)
• To cancel a Restoration Druid's Tranquility by casting Chimaeral Sting before they use it
• To deny a healer's trinket by casting Chimaeral Sting when they are stunned (when they trinket the stun, they are instantly silenced)
• To apply a powerful slow to a melee DPS when you have no other options

Consecutive Concussion is very useful against melee, as it keeps them at bay for longer and interrupts their damage via the stun in a slow game where you are able to cast Steady Shot a lot. This talent can also be very good into Fistweaver (melee healer) Monks. If you maintain a Concussive Shot on them while your team is kiting, the Fistweaver will be unable to heal.

An interesting thing to note is that you can use Concussive Shot into immunities (e.g. Divine Shield, Ice Block, Blessing of Freedom, Cyclone, Bladestorm) and it still applies the debuff. If the target has an active immunity, they will not be slowed whilst the immunity is active, but the debuff will be applied and will be active when the immunity ends. Whenever you are unable to hit anything because of an immunity, you should be pre-emptively applying Concussive Shot so you don't waste global cooldowns.

You can also stack up the Consecutive Concussion effect using Steady Shot whilst a player is immune. You can use this to your advantage, for example if a Paladin uses Divine Shield you can use Concussive Shot and cast Steady Shot into it three times, timing the last to land as soon as shield ends, stunning the Paladin.

Your damage relies heavily on being able to get Aimed Shot casts off (and maintaining Manhunter), and Aspect of the Fox will help with that. This is a decent talent whenever you are kiting or in a match-up where it is difficult to get those casts off. You can combine this with Hunting Pack to get the benefit more frequently.

Diamond Ice makes your Freezing Trap undispellable but reduces the duration and makes the target immune to all spells while active. This is useful:

• Against Shadow Priests, Demon Hunters, and Affliction/Destruction Warlocks that are otherwise able to dispel your Freezing Trap
• To crowd control DPS players without the healer being able to dispel the trap
• To keep a target at low health (you can trap a target at low health, then pre-cast an Aimed Shot, your target will not be able to stop your cast, and their healer will not be able to recover the target's health), this is a strategy that is particularly effective in 2v2 arena

Diamond Ice also reduces the duration of Freezing Trap by two seconds, which makes it difficult to justify taking. In Patch 11.1 Freezing Trap was adjusted to have a small damage threshold before breaking, so you can avoid taking Diamond Ice unless you know that your traps will definitely break instantly otherwise.

Ranger's Finesse theoretically can reduce the cooldown of Aspect of the Turtle significantly, but is awkward to use, and there are usually better talents available. The duration bonus to Volley is noticeable. If you play with this talent, ideally, you want to use Aspect of the Turtle early in the game to save your healer's cooldowns to get the maximum benefit.

If your team is able to lock several players in one place for a long time (for example, playing with an Unholy Death Knight with Blinding Sleet and Restoration Druid for Ursol's Vortex) Rangers Finesse combined with Volley and Salvo can lead to enormous AoE burst.

Hunting Pack is a mobility talent that vastly reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Cheetah and applies its buff to your teammates but requires your teammates to be within 15 yards. There are better talents available to you in almost all cases.

This talent is rarely useful in Arena as in most situations where you are attacking somebody from a far enough range that you are able to take advantage of the buff, they will likely line of sight your casts. If you committed your biggest cooldown Trueshot and your enemy was out of line of sight for most of the duration, you will struggle to regain momentum.

This is, however, a very powerful talent in Battleground Blitz where you can assassinate players from extreme range.