INTRODUCTION
To start off, hunters are one of the classes that scale extremely well with gear. If you're just leveling one, you may notice that you're doing a fair amount of damage, even if your gear is under par. The three talent specs for hunters, Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, are all viable specs for damage in a raiding environment. Currently, Marksmanship, given the right gear, will outperform the other two specs because of how armor penetration scales.
All three specs each bring a certain amount of utility to a raid. Beast Mastery brings the 3% damage modifier through Ferocious Inspiration, Marksmanship brings 10% attack power through Trueshot Aura, and Survival brings replenishment via Hunting Party. For this guide, I'll primarily be focusing on the Marksmanship spec.
In a raiding situation, against level 83 mobs/boss encounters, you'll need a total of 8% hit rating. 32.78 Hit Rating = 1% Hit.
Hit Rating:
62.24 Hit Rating – 0/3 Focused Aim
229.46 Hit Rating – 1/3 Focused Aim
196.68 Hit Rating – 2/3 Focused Aim
163.90 Hit Rating – 3/3 Focused Aim
131.12 Hit Rating - 3/3 Focused Aim + Draenei
Ultimately, if you have 3/3 Focused Aim as well as a Draenei providing you Heroic Presence, you'll only need 4% hit in a raid.
GLYPHS
Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Serpent Sting - Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 seconds. This increases the Serpent Sting portion of your Chimera Shot.
Glyph of Kill Shot Reduces the cooldown of your Kill Shot by 6 seconds.
Glyph of Steady Shot Increases the damage of your Steady Shot by 10%. This glyph scales well when approaching higher amounts of armor penetration.
Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Feign Death - Reduces the cooldown of Feign Death by 5 seconds. Pretty self explanatory.
Glyph of Mend Pet - When your mend pet ticks, it increases your pet's happiness by 20. Saves yourself some food, and if your pet dies mid fight [highly unlikely now-a-days], you can bring his happiness back up.
Glyph of Revive Pet- Reduces the pushback of your Revive Pet spell by 100% in case your pet does die.
TALENTS
The primary raiding spec is generally a 7/57/7 build. The majority of the Icecrown gear does not have hit, so you'll probably end up putting points into Focused Aim.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Like most classes, there are a few talents that can be swapped around to fit your particular needs.
STATS
As stated before, this guide is going to be focused on Marksmanship. Because of how armor penetration scales, it's worth gemming until you're hard capped. [~1400 armor penetration]. There is no magic number that you should use to determine whether or not you're ready to swap to armor penetration, but a spreadsheet can be used to determine whether or not it will be a DPS loss/gain for your current gear. As far as spreadsheets are concerned, Shandara's spreadsheet on Elitest Jerks is one of the best. An online, web-based version of this spreadsheet can be found at Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer.
The following graph is an example of how armor penetration scales. This is not to scale.
As you can see, around 750-800 armor penetration is where the benefits really start gaining. I would personally suggest not gemming your gear with Armor Penetration until you have around 800 before trinket procs.
If you're currently using an armor penetration proc trinket, you'll want the following amount of armor pen to hit the "soft cap". After you reach the soft cap, you can gem for Agi.
~720 - Soft Cap for Needle Encrusted Scorpion
~730 - Soft Cap for Mjolnir Runestone
~780 - Soft Cap for Grim Toll
If your gear isn't the best, you may want to stick with gemming for agility.
ENCHANTS
Helmet: Arcanum of Torment - Knights of the Ebon Blade reputation.
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Axe - Sons of Hodir reputation.
Cloak: Major Agility [22 Agility] // Flexweave Underlay [23 Agility + Parachute cloak]
Chest: Powerful Stats [10 stats]
Bracers: Greater Assault [50 Attack Power]
Weapon: Massacre [110 Attack Power]
Accuracy [25 Hit + 25 Crit]
Ranged:Heartseeker Scope [40 Critical Strike]
Boots: Superior Agility/Tuskarr's Vitality/Icewalker/Cat's Swiftness/Nitro Boosts [16 Agility//15 Stamina+8% movement speed//12 Hit Rating+12 Crit Rating//6 Agility+8% movement speed//24 Crit + Rocket Boots]
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor [75 Attack Power + 22 Crit Rating]
Hands: Major Agility[20 Agility]
Precision [20 Hit]
Hyperspeed Accelerators [340 Haste/12seconds]
CONSUMABLES
Flask: Flask of Endless Rage
Food: Hearty Rhino[40 ArP] or Blackened Dragonfin [40 Agi] (Fish feasts can be used if you're cheap)
Pet: Spiced Mammoth Treats [30 Strength + 30 Stamina]
Potion: Potion of Wild Magic [200 Crit rating] or Potion of Speed [500 Haste rating]
Elixirs: Elixir of Armor Piercing [45 ArP] + Elixir of Mighty Thoughts [45 Int]
On a side note, you should keep health potions, mana potions, and bandages with you for those times where they may be needed to survive. A dead DPS does no DPS.
SHOT ROTATION
Marksmanship does not have a set rotation, but rather a priority list for your spells to maximize DPS.
What this means is that if for example Chimera Shot and Aimed Shot are both off cooldown, you'll want to prioritize Chimera. Silencing Shot is off the global cooldown, which is why it's first on the list. Kill Shot can only be used sub 20% health, but is by far the best damaging ability, given the 9 second cooldown when glyphed.
Like stated above, hunters use a priority spell list for their damage. A common rotation that fits that priority is to apply serpent sting and then:
Chimera Shot > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot x4 > Repeat
Arcane Shot can/should be used when you're moving if no other instants (Read: Silencing Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, or Aimed Shot) are on cooldown. Serpent Sting should be applied to any target and consequently refreshed using Chimera Shot. [Note: It may not be worth applying Serpent Sting to targets if it will die very quickly, such as trash mobs.]
COOLDOWNS
The usage of cooldowns is highly variable depending on certain fights. Cooldown stacking is the most efficient way to maximize DPS. For example, stacking Call of the Wild with your Rapid Fire/Heroism will benefit you more than using them individually.
NOTE: POTIONS OF SPEED ARE BETTER IF YOU ARE NO LONGER USING 2 PIECES OF TIER 9 GEAR.
Using potions before entering combat, also called Pre-Potting, is a great was to increase your DPS. This allows you to effectively use your potions two times during a fight, rather than just once. The picture above is just a rough example of cooldown stacking. Obviously you want to wait until your first Rapid Fire is over before using your second one.
A great opening rotation is to open with your initial Rapid Fire + Prepot followed by a Serpent Sting and then Chimera>Aimed>Readiness>Chimera>Aimed>Steady x4>Chimera>Aimed>Steady x4. Rinse and Repeat. The purple portion is your core rotation, obviously changing if there is movement in a fight.
Serpent Sting and Chimera compliment each other very well, and because of this, certain damage modifiers can be applied to your serpent and sting and kept 'rolling' through by refreshing via Chimera Shot. For example, you have the 2 piece tier 10 and it procs, if you refresh Serpent Sting with the 15% damage buff active, you can keep that 15% damage on your Sting for the rest of the fight by using Chimera Shot to refresh the duration.
Another example would be the 2 piece tier 9 set bonus, which grants Serpent Sting the ability to be a critical hit. If you get a trinket proc that grants +critical strike rating and then refresh your Serpent Sting, you can keep that critical chance rating on your Serpent Sting for the rest of the fight.
Note: The only things that affect the Serpent Sting rolling trick are modifiers that grant +damage % buffs such as the t10 2piece bonus and the critical strike is only available while wearing t9 2piece.
KEY BINDINGS
As a hunter, and generally any other class, it's very important to utilize good keybinds to minimize reaction time and allow you to use every global that you can, as fast as you can.
The following picture shows good keybinds to use to maximize your efficiency.
As shown in the key, the good keybinds are blue/green. Using the red ones are alright if you have larger fingers or can stretch your fingers further, but I tend to stay away from them unless they're for something less important, such as my mount, or something similar. Shift, Alt, and Ctrl combinations are very good to use because they increase the amount of keybinds that you have. In addition to using Shift, Alt, and Ctrl, I also use my mousewheel to change action bars, which opens up another 12 keys for me. Mouse Wheel up brings me to bar1 and Mouse Wheel down brings me to bar6.
Keyboard turning is bad. No one in an end-game guild, or any guild for that matter, should still be using A and D to turn around. USE YOUR MOUSE. Not only is it faster, but it also allows for quicker reaction times. I personally bound my left and right strafe to A and D respectively, and utilize Q and R as keybinds for abilities.
PLAY STYLE
Overall, your play style needs to be very smooth. You should know your keybinds without having to look at your keyboard, and be able to execute with very small reaction time. You can practice by turning off your UI [Alt+Z] and practice killing mobs, using your binds, etc. to get used to them.
In addition to playing fluid, you can use addons to assist you. A weapon/attack timer is very useful as a hunter to show autoshot timers. Again, because of how armor penetration works, Auto Shot is a large portion of hunter damage on boss fights, and because of this you're going to want to maximize the amount of auto shots that go off.
For example, if you're running, you can stop for .1 seconds to allow an autoshot to go off, and then continue running. This will increase your DPS a lot. Situational Awareness plays a huge part in raiding. If you're standing in fire, you're doing it wrong. If you know an ability is coming, position yourself so that you won't have to move later, or potentially die from it.
MACROS
To reiterate, silencing shot is off the global cooldown. You're going to want to bind it to most of your abilities so that when it's off cooldown, you'll use it.
!spellname is useful for abilities that can be cancelled, such as Auto Shot and Freezing Arrow.
Code:
#showtooltip Aimed Shot /cast !auto shot /cast Silencing Shot /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command /cast Aimed Shot
Code:
#showtooltip Chimera Shot /cast Chimera Shot /cast Silencing Shot /cast Kill Command
Code:
#showtooltip Freezing Arrow /cast !Freezing Arrow
Code:
#showtooltip Tranquilizing Shot /cast [target=focus] Tranquilizing Shot
Code:
#showtooltip Kill Shot /cast !auto shot /cast Silencing Shot /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command /cast Kill Shot
Code:
#showtooltip Multi-Shot /cast !auto shot /cast Silencing Shot /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command /cast Multi-Shot
Code:
#showtooltip Steady Shot /cast !auto shot /cast Silencing Shot /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command /cast Steady Shot
Code:
#showtooltip Master's Call /cast [target=mouseover, help][help] Master's Call; /cast [target=YOURNAMEHERE] Master's Call
Code:
#showtooltip Viper Sting /cast [target=focus] Viper Sting
PETS
As of right now, the wolf family is the best pet to have in a raiding environment. Wolves belong to the Ferocity-style pets, which are the damage-built spec. One of the main reasons to pick a wolf over another ferocity pet is the Furious Howl ability. This grants the hunter 320 attack power for 20 seconds with a 40 second cooldown, essentially a 50% uptime if used on cooldown.
A common pet spec is Hunter Pet Calculator - Wowhead. If you prefer, you could sub around a few talents, such as switching Boar's Speed with Charge for more mobility. I prefer to choose Boar's Speed over Bloodthirsty because a pet that can reach a target quicker will do more damage than a pet that is still running. On a side note, Icecrown bosses don't require much pet movement, so it boils down to a personal preference.
If you don't have a wolf already, you can find a few already at level 80 in the Storm Peaks Frostworg.
PROFESSIONS
As of right now, the two highest DPS professions are Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. This is simply because of how Armor Penetration works and how Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting both give an additional 40 and 42 ArP respectively. One of the highest priorities for end-game Marksmanship is to reach the ArP hardcap.
Again, those are the two highest DPSing professions. Here is my list of other professions and the order that I would rate them. [Read: It's my personal preference listed here. If you have a different preference, great, more power to you.] NOTE: This list is the best professions ranked AFTER Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting.
1. Engineering [Nitro-boosts + Parachute Cloak + Hyperspeed Accelerators]
2. Enchanting [2x 40AP enchants to rings]
3. Leatherworking [130 AP enchant to bracers]
4. Inscription [120 AP + 15 Crit rating to shoulders]
5. Alchemy [Additional 80 AP on flask + 100% increased duration]
6. Tailoring [Swordguard Embroidery]
7. Skinning [40 Crit rating]
8. Mining [60 Stamina]
9. Herbalism [Small HoT]
ADDONS
Overall, there are numerous amounts of addons that can assist you in your journey through the wonderful World of Warcraft. Whether you're going to be questing solo or raiding hardcore like those Paragon nerds, there will always be an addon that can assist you and enhance your game play.
Obviously with this being a PvE raiding guide, I'll specifically be focusing on the PvE raiding addons. To reiterate, numerous addons are available to do the same function and it all comes down to a personal preference based on your opinion of aesthetics and functionality. So without any further adieu, here is my list of preferable raiding addons [click the addon name to bring you to the download location].
Grid - A great, lightweight addon that every serious raider should be using. This addon allows you to track your entire raids health, mana, debuffs, buffs, etc. Overall, an extremely customizable addon.
Deus Vox Encounters - Another one of those top-notch addons. This is your basic boss fight encounter addon, similar to Deadly Boss Mods, but even better. The timers are more precise, and in my opinion, look a hell-of-a-lot nicer. Like most addons, DXE is extremely customizable to suit your every need.
Quartz - A replacement cast bar for the terrible cast bar that Blizzard gives you. Quartz is very customizable with positioning, sizes, and visibility. Quartz gives you the options for player cast bars, targets, focus, buffs, flight times, global cooldowns, an interrupt bar, latency bars, range, swing timers, and much more. This is by far my favorite cast bar addon.
AG Unit Frames - A basic, lightweight unit frame addon. Again, very customizable for your personal preferences. You're definitely doing it wrong if you're still using the Blizzard unit frames.
Prat - Lightweight chat window addon. Basically allows you to copy text, click links, and much more.
Bartender - A replacement for the Blizzard bars. You can configure hundreds of additional spaces for abilities, easily bind them, and hide the ones that you don't need to see. I personally love the ability to scale my bars down so that they're not clustering my screen.
Power Auras Classic - This addon can be used to give visual cues to pretty much everything that you'll ever need, whether it be weapon/trinket procs, aggro from a mob, talent procs, etc. One of my favorite addons by far, there's basically no limit to what you can do with this amazing adddon.
Skada - An amazing meter for damage done, DPS, threat, enemy damage done, enemy damage taken, healing, overhealing, total healing, absorbs estimated, damage taken, dispels, mana regen, debuff uptimes, failbot, and more. This addon is way better than Recount and other similar addons.
Omen Threat Meter - Your basic threat meter. This addon can be configured to show threat on multiple targets, making it very useful.
Tidy Plates - A name plate addon. The name pretty much sums it up. Again, a very customizable addon that is very aesthetically pleasing.
OmniCC - A timer addon for your spells and abilities. This addon places a nice [customizable] number over your spells on your action bars and shows the remaining cool down. OmniCC recently incorporated the abiltity to pulse the ability in the middle of your screen once the cool down has finished and shine on your action bars to give a better visual cue.
Class Timer - Again, the name pretty much sums it up. This addon allows you to track certain spells and abilities. I personally use it to track things like Rapid Fire, Serpent Sting, Hunter's Mark, and much more.
Need to Know - A very customizable addon for tracking essentially anything. I personally use it to track my trinket cooldowns/durations.
Gearscore - This addon is a must have for anyone serious about raiding. This addon assigns a number rating based upon a person's gear level. Consequently, the higher the gear score, the better that player will be. You can quickly sort out the bads with this beautiful addon and ensure that you'll never have a bad player in one of your groups. [sarcasm]
HELPFUL SITES
Information gathered from:
Elitist Jerks - Hunter Forum - This is where all the theorycrafting goes down. The math gurus put their knowledge to the test, testing every possible gear choice, talent point, and even how Enzyte will increase the length of your cock. Elitist Jerks is one of those sites that everyone should know about. The people who do the math, believe it or not, really do know their math [most of the time].
Femaledwarf - Hunter Spreadsheet - A hunter gear/talent/spec simulator to give a highly calculated DPS feedback. The math behind this spreadsheet is unbelievable. Hell, you can even import your armory and it does the work for you. A big thanks to Zeherak and Shandara for the math and coding behind this.
Kripparrian's Youtube Page - Kripparrian of Exodus [US-Ysondre] is an outstanding hunter, and to top it off, he is a sharing hunter, and we all know that sharing is caring. Seriously though, Kripparrian is one of those hunters that is out there to help other hunters through his video tutorials. If you get spare time, watch the videos, and I'll personally guarantee you that you'll learn something that you didn't know beforehand.
MY UI:
Pretty Basic UI. NeedToKnow are the timers that show the cooldowns. The unitframes are AG Unit Frames with Bartender as the bars. I basically use all the addons that I posted in the addon section.
---------- Post added at 01:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:57 AM ----------
Yes, I wrote this guide. No, I didn't steal pictures from other sites.
Nitric->Nitrix->Xirtin->Xrtn [How my name is derived]
If you feel that I should add anything else, let me know! It's still a work in progress. Right now I'm compiling data regarding the re-application of Serpent Sting when 2pcT10 procs.
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