Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents and Builds — 12.1

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.

Scatter Shot is an incredibly versatile PvP talent and should always be taken in arena. It should be used either to peel enemy DPS, or to set up your Freezing Trap if you are struggling to trap a healer.

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 or Guardian Spirit when silenced, however 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 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 preemptively 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.

Sniper's Advantage 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.