[Guide] Hunter - Improve your DPS

[CGuru]

I am not happy with my damage output, I have never been happy with my damage and think it should be 10% to 20% more.

A couple months ago when I first came back to WoW my Hunter was in a sad state, when I hit 80 I was doing terrible DPS. Back then others thought my DPS was bad too. This post outlines what I did to try and improve my DPS.

First I went to the WoW forums and they just made me more discouraged. Then I went to Elitist Jerks and read their Hunter PvE DPS thread , I also read the Hunter mechanic threads.

Elitist Jerks helped a lot but I was beginning to think getting acceptable DPS was impossible. Why was I not in the top 10 damage dealers? I think I was even 11 in some 10 mans. :lol:

Then one day I found my salvation here is the thread. I had read about the Hunter spreadsheet but could never figure it out. I read a blog that detailed how to use the spreadsheet.

Using this spreadsheet is very important and will help you understand your Hunter better.

The spreadsheet is not a replacement for knowing your class or how to play. It is a very good tool to help you optimize your DPS though.

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This post came from Outdps.com here.


What I do is always remove the buffs (from the buff tab) before trying to work on my character.

Shandara’s DPS Spreadsheet guide updated!



Well, the original has changed enough that it’s time for a redo of my guide to the DPS spreadsheet (download link). New screenshots, new features, more awesomeness!


Opening the spreadsheet


When you start up, you might get this (or some variation of it):


Stoopid default security warnings!


If you do, you need to go into your “tools” menu, click on “macros”, and then “security”.


Menus!


Then you’ll see this. Change your security settings to medium, and click ok. This means that from now on, Excel will always ask you before executing a macro. Don’t ever say yes to this if you don’t know the file or there’s any possibility that there’s a virus in it.


Security settings!


Now close the file, and reopen it. You’ll now be greeted with something like this message asking if you want to allow the spreadsheet to run macros. The answer is “Enable macros”.


Security warning!



Using the spreadsheet


Now we go to the “overview” tab and we’re presented with this. You want to take a look at the stuff I’ve highlighted in red- specifically character name and realm, and profiles. If you want multiple profiles, you just name them all here. Also, verify your glyphs (not saved per profile), and change one (or more) of the names of the specs you plan to use.


Overview!


Next up we go to the “Gear” tab and select the profile we’ll be importing first. I picked the one named “Euripides SV”.


Gear tab profile!


Over to the right of the same tab (Gear), we’ll want to click on “import”. This should pull all your gear in from the armory. If you have gear on that Shandara has not yet put into the spreadsheet, it will not show up.


Importage!


Now you should go down the list and add stuff you are missing. In my case, I have the mats for my massacre 2-hander enchant, but I’m waiting for my guild enchanter and I to cross paths. I added it in manually. You might have gear on that doesn’t import from the armory (some caster stuff and greens, mostly). If there’s holes from the import, select “custom” and we’ll go and add the stats manually later. Once that’s done, click “save profile”


Custom and save!



Now we go to the next tab, “Talents”. Here we will start off with clicking the “read from armory” button to bring in your current talent tree. Then you go over to that little thing almost off the side of my screen and select the name you chose for you spec. I picked a boring descriptive one, but you could have named it “MM spec of impending doom!!!!” instead. Once your spec is the way you want it and your spec name has been selected, click on “save spec”. Also, note that if you want to use a different spec than the one your character currently has on, you can copy-paste a link from wowhead or the blizzard talent calculator in a little area near the bottom of the talents tab.


Talents! Or lack of them, in my case!


Next up, the Buffs tab. This is where you tell the DPS calculator which buffs you have and debuffs your target has. Again, everything here has a name that you specified in the overview tab. The default is 25 man buffs, which is basically everything. That’s not actually feasable in real life- I suggest that you run your standard raid comp through mmo-champion’s raid composition tool and see what you really get. This tab is where you specify the food and flasks you use too- if you’re using hit food to get capped, make sure you specify that or it will assume you’re using agility food.


Buffs tab!


Now we’re off to the Shot Rotation tab. Here you simply adjust it to the rotation you use. The one I picked is the highest DPS for survival (I think), but since this is not attached to a profile, you’ll have to manually switch this around to compare two profiles with different secs.


Shot rotation priority!


Now to the Pet tab! Here we pick the pet we use (a wolf is the most DPS for all but beast masters), and then enter the spec in. The default is the most DPS, but I have mine customized a little. Also, verify that the ability priority is what you want. Special before focus dump.



mmm... pets!


The next tab is where we go back to that custom gear I mentioned you’ll need if some of the gear you wear isn’t in the database. Look up the missing gear on wowhead or something and manually enter in all the stats. They will only be applied to slots you selected “custom” for in the gear tab.


Custom goodness!


Lastly, we go back to the overview tab, and click on the “CalcAttributes” button to the right. This will update the DPS value per point of all the stats we get. You see that hit is worth 1.64 DPS for me, and agility is worth 1.52 DPS. Your numbers will be different.


Calculating DPS values per point!


Now you can do things like look at best in slot lists from the gear planner. The yellow below and red in the list is what you have. Delta means how much DPS you gain or lose. The top allows you to exclude content you don’t have access to.


Best in slot gear list!


This guide is from Sheiva at tkasomething.com he posted it here.


Been out of the game due ot a long AFK from WoW? Looking to get started into the world of raiding on your hunter? This thread is the place for you. This thread is under constant construction to provide you with up to date information about Hunter raiding mechanics. This thread does NOT discuss what stats each spec focuses on. This thread is NOT go through every fight in the game and tell you how to execute it. This thread will discuss talent specs, glyphs, and shot prioritization.


Last Updated: 5/31/09

[5.31.09]: Edited lots of sections for more clarity and fixed broken links. Updated Chimera Shot Glyph, MM Talents. Added Pet Talent section, added Minor Glyph section.

[5.18.09]: Began changing / updating links and information for 3.1. Added FAQ section, updated Survival Talent Spec, Survival Shot Rotation, Beast Mastery Talent Spec, Beast Mastery Shot Rotation, Glyphs. Restructured Pet section.
[02.23.09]: Re-evaluated Marksmanship Talents and updated accordingly.
[02.17.09]: Finished researching changes from Patch 3.0.8 and updated Beast Mastery Shot Rotation, BM Cooldown Management, BM Glyph choices, Glyph of Serpent Sting, Survival Shot Rotation, Survival Talent Specs, Marksmanship Talent Specs, Marksmanship Shot Rotation, Marksmanship Cooldown Management.



First off, the ultimate fundamental rule for every DPS class. Unless you have 8% Hit (aka 263 Hit rating) you are NOT maximizing your DPS. Your Hit rating is your #1 stat before anything else. You must be HIT CAPPED!! Draenei have a passive aura that give 1% hit so if you are Alliance you *may* be able to aim for 7% hit if your guild runs with Draenei. Relying on a Draenei for hit rating can be a risky thing to do because you're not always guaranteed to be in range of them to get the benefit.

Haste Rating: Once you attain 522.7 Haste (before talents) you will have a 1.5 Second Steady Shot cast. Having more haste will not do anything to effect your yellow damage, only your white damage. Thus 522.7 Haste is the 'soft cap'. Haste rating does not effect our pets.



Pets

There are two parts of Hunter DPS; your character's DPS and your Pet's DPS. The pet can be 15 to 30% of your damage depending on what spec you are. We'll discuss which stats transfer to our pets and how they do so. Then we'll be sure we choose the right pet because it's an important first step in maximizing your damage output and performance in raid. A Hunter with the wrong pet selection will be breaking CC effects and doing low DPS, severely hindering your performance.

Pet Stats

Pet Hit Rating: The only stats that transfer to our pets are Hit and AP. To be exact, pets get 100% hit and 22% of our AP. Hit Rating is only transferred in whole percentages - having 7.0% or 7.99% hit will transfer 7.0% hit to the pet. The hit percentage's from Focused Aim transfer to our pets.


For those of you who have not been active recently, pets have had a major overhaul as of Patch 3.0. They are now separated into three families, each with their own Talent trees. Let's discuss the options for our new friend and then look at the talent specs after.
Ferocity (Old DPS family)
Tenactiy (Old Tanking Family)
Cunning (Old All-around Family)
Let's look at the options for pets:

Ferocity Pets have been deemed as the highest DPS family by Blizzard. So for this discussion we will not even discuss Cunning or Tenacity pet families with the exception of maybe one or two animals. I have also eliminated the pets that do not have damaging abilities in the Ferocity family, thus narrowing our options down to....

* Raptors
* Cats
Most guilds are running a DPS warrior in their raids. They have a talent which increases bleed effects done to the target by 30%. I suggest using a Cat or Raptor to take advantage of this which is one of the best choices for maximizing DPS at this point in time.

* Wasps
Wasps reduce the armor of your target by 1260 armor and stacks with a Warrior's Sunder Armor debuff. This pet is great for small groups that don't have a Warlock for Curse of Recklessness or a Druid's Faerie Fire. So depending on your raid composition, Wasps can an extremely viable option for a pet because it increases the entire raid's DPS which yields more damage overall than a Cat.

* Wolves
Wolves are considered to be the best DPS pet option out there right now. With Patch 3.1 pets were normalized to be roughly the same in terms of damage and stats excluding talents. They have an ability called Furious Howl which increases your attack power for 320 for 20 seconds. The best thing about it is this pet buffs you and does just about the same amount of damage as a Cat.

* Devilsaurs (Exotic)
These guys can do some pretty good DPS, better DPS than a Cat actually. Thing about this pet is that if you can tame it, you're better off getting a Spirit Beast for an exotic DPS pet because it's just better.

* Spirit Beasts (Exotic)
Spirit Beasts have recently received a buff to their special attack Spirit Strike. Blizzard has stated that this pet is now the highest DPS pet you can get. I highly suggest picking one up, only problem is the only Spirit Beast in game is a rare spawn in Sholazar Basin and that it's an exotic pet.

Some pets to mention that are found outside of the Ferocity family are....

* Wind Serpent
Unfortunately Lighting Breath is not the Focus dump it used to be, with a reduced cost of 20 Focus (down from 50). I would not advise the use of this pet for raid DPS. The synergy between this pet and high critical strike rates is no longer what it used to be due to the change in focus.

* Scorpids
The old trick of using all your CD's and then turning Scorpid Poison to autocast increases your pets spell power, which in turn increases the DoT damage of the poison. This DOT is still doing enough DPS with this technique to keep this pet on par with cats. That's right, a Tenacity pet can keep up with Ferocity pets.

NOTE:This trick has been nerfed but it something to keep in the back your mind in case Blizzard changes the coefficients for other pets.

All pets of the Ferocity Family have the same Talent tree. I would suggest speccing your pet into Call of the Wild and Rabid. Call of the Wild is only going to effect you and your pet. Rabid is the other end-talent that increases your pet's DPS, so everyone should have it. However, for Sartharion and perhaps even Sapphrion I would suggest to drop Call of the Wild to spec into Heart of the Phoenix. This talent really shines when a fight isn't pet friendly at all.


Pet Talent Specs
That's right, pets now have talent trees. Since we're talking about raid DPS, you're only going to be looking at Ferocity pets. I will suggest other pet specs for tanking / old instance farming as well.

Ferocity
The spec simply uses it's points to maximize your pets DPS. Call of the Wild is a must have since it's such a good cooldown to use with Bloodlust and whatnot.

Ferocity with Heart of the Phoenix
Again, mimicking the build above but only to include Heart of the Phoenix. Pets aren't too hard to keep alive but if you're having a lot of trouble keeping it alive then this spec may be worth looking into until you can get better with micromanaging your pet.

Tenacity for old instance tanking
The spec here has 2 unspent talent points for a reason. I would put them into Greater Resistance if I was going to be tanking something with a lot of magical damage. If not then I would put them in Grace of the Mantis to help mitigate some melee damage.

Cunning DPS spec
Personally, I really like the Cunning families of pets for leveling, but we're talking about raid DPS here. This spec helps you pump out as much DPS a Cunning pet can do while giving you some added utility from Roar of Recovery. The biggest differences between a Cunning Pet and a Ferocity Pet is that Ferocity pets have abilities that directly increase DPS, whereas Cunning pets are more of a utility or supporting pet.



Talent Specs

Now that we've chosen our pet, let's talk about our character which is the object of most people's attention (and rightfully so). This section will be broken down into three sections: Talents, Glyphs and Shot Rotations. I think we are all able to tell if an item is an upgrade or not, so I will not discuss how to compare items. That being said, I highly recommend picking up RatingBuster. This mod does away with the mental calculations for crit %, total Ranged Attack Power, etc... Really let's you get down and dirty with your item comparisons.

At this point in time, there are two main specs for DPS; Survival and Marskmanship. They both bring different raid buffs to the table while having comparable DPS. I will begin with Beast Mastery which is not what it once was in TBC, and then discuss the two main raiding specs being Survival and Marksmanship...

Beast Mastery

52/14/5

Your first choice comes at the 6th tier of talents. You can choose to go for Animal Handler to give your pet 5 Expertise. As is, your pet does it's best to be behind the target. If you melee a mob from behind they cannot block or parry, but they can still Dodge. Because of this, giving your pet a little expertise is not a bad idea. I'd go with 3/5 Frenzy and 2/2 Animal Handler to open up the next tier.

The rest of it is pretty self-explanatory. Unfortunately, as much fun as this spec can be it does terrible raid DPS. A lot of Hunter's really enjoy the build and still use it, but the raiding Hunter community is playing with either Survival or Marksmanship.

Marksmanship

Marksmanship is considered to be the pure ranged build for Hunters. With old time favorites like Trueshot Aura and Aimed Shot it's a very popular tree and is uses to support just about any Hunter talent build out there. In order to more DPS than a Survival Hunter you'll need the best gear in the game, but nobody says you can't play it if you don't have that.

7/57/7

This spec assumes you are hit capped on your gear. The spec is pretty self explanatory, but like everything else, you do have a few choices along the way. If you need more hit rating I would move the points from Imp. Steady Shot to Focused Aim. Improved Steady Shot is really only used as a filler for talent points because there's no better option for those last two points. The reason why this talent is pretty lackluster is because Marksmanship Hunters use Steady Shot very little, so you don't see to many procs due to the talent's already low proc rate.

The big choice here is if you should take Silencing Shot or Trueshot Aura [TSA]. If you're aiming for personal DPS, Silencing Shot is they way to go, assuming you don't have any mana issues at all. This is because Silencing Shot (along with all other interrupt effects) is not on the GCD, meaning you can spam it with every shot for some extra damage. Considering Marksmanship is the least mana efficient spec Hunter's have right now you may not take this talent. However, Trueshot Aura is pretty bad as well if you run with a Blood DK and / or Enhancement Shaman as they provide this buff already making your Trueshot Aura fairly useless. Because of this reason the link posted above has Silencing Shot, but if your raid needs it I'd always take the Trueshot Aura.

7/57/7 with 3/3Focused Aim


Survival

0/15/56

This is considered to be the 'cookie cutter' Survival spec. It gives you all the goodies for maximizing your personal DPS and brings your raid a Replenishment effect through Hunting Party. There are a few debates with what the 'best' Survival spec is which all have to do with your play-style and your guild's raid compositions. If you're going to be raiding in Uludar you're going to want to take a good look at Hawk Eye for the last few Keepers as well as General and Yogg himself. Most people would take points from Trap Mastery as it provides the lowest DPS and would then let you take Hawk Eye. Another debate about the spec is one of mana efficiency. With 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt and all the extra Explosive Shot crits, Survival Hunter's rarely see mana problems in 25m raids. In those cases people have been taking points out of Hunting Party and Thrill of the Hunt for Imp. Aspect of the Hawk since Hunter's are using less items with haste on them (as we now know Haste is the worst stat for Hunters to pick up on their gear). Some Hunter's even go so far to take 2/5 Imp. Hawk and then procced to go 3/3 Improved Stings instead of keeping some points in Thrill of the Hunt. Of course people are also mixing and matching all of these options based on their playstyle as well.

Here's some of those options layed out for you:

2/5 Imp. Hawk with 3/3 Imp. Stings
3/5 Imp. Hawk with 2/3 Thrill of the Hunt
0/15/56 with Hawk Eye Option
2/5 Imp. Hawk with Hawk Eye



Glyphs

With the 3.0 patch came a new profession called Inscription. Each character at level 80 can have 3 Major and 3 Minor Glyphs. This has added a new dimension and complicated DPS for Hunter's because there are so many viable options. Let's dive right in and take a look...

Glyphs for all Specs

* Major Glyph of Serpent Sting
This Glyph adds another two ticks of damage to your Serpent Sting. This effect increases the amount of damage your Chimera - Serpent does because it increases the amount of total damage Serpent Sting does. When you use Chimera Shot the attack checks to see what the total damage of the sting is going to be, find's the amount of damage in a percentage and deals that much damage, then refreshes the sting. This Glyph is a must have for any Marksmanship Hunters because it increases your strongest attack.
For other Hunter specs, this glyph is useful because it saves mana and frees Global Cooldowns for more powerful attacks. Unglyphed, 7 GCDs are required for 100% uptime every 1m45s. Glyphed, 5 GCDs are required for 100% uptime every 1m45s. Thus allowing 2 more GCDs to use on something more useful.
* Major Glyph of Kill Shot
This glyph is very dependent on your content. If you find yourself fighting a lot of bosses with large health pools then this Glyph is for you. If you find yourself fighting bosses with multiple adds that need to be focus-fired down then this glyph is for you. It's been tested through and through, this is one of the best glyphs you can get for a Hunter.
* Major Glyph of Steady Shot
Steady Shot is no longer a Hunter's primary damage dealing ability. BM Hunters still use Steady Shot more than the other specs. Using this Glyph gives you a good reason to keep refreshing Serpent Sting. At the beginning of WolK, a lot of Hunter's were asking if this glyph stacks with the T6 4-piece bonus. Since then it has been confirmed, but it is more DPS to break the 4-piece T6 once you start seeing level 80 raiding/heroic gear because of the increase in stats.
* Major Glyph of Arcane Shot
As of Patch 3.0.8 Steady Shot deals less damage, leaving BM Hunters looking for other options in their shot rotation. Arcane Shot is being used as the main priority attack for BM Hunters, so this glyph is worth taking a look at. You 'gain' 8.4 mana per second with this glyph so it's really only useful if you find yourself swapping into Aspect of the Viper just about every fight and if you actually use Arcane Shot (which is dependent on spec).

Beast Mastery

* Major Glyph of Beast Mastery
This glyph is used in conjunction with 3/3 Longevity which greatly decreases the cooldown on Beastial Wrath. Turns out that it's about 13 seconds longer than the cooldown of Kill Command. Using these two abilities in conjunction will increase you DPS.
* Major Glyph of Aspect of the Beast
Until recent testing this glyph had not even been considered as a viable option. Using this in conjunction with your mass cooldowns only increases your pets damage to it's maximum potential.
* Major Glyph of Imp. Aspect of the Hawk
This Glyph ends up equating to an average of 3% passive haste over the duration of a 5 minute fight. Because Imp. Hawk has no internal cooldown this glyph can also increase the amount of chain procs you can have thus making this Glyph a desirable option for any Hunters with Imp. Aspect of the Hawk. I did not opt to put this glyph under the Beast Mastery section despite the fact that the talent is a BM talent because most BM Hunter's use Aspect of the Beast the majority of the time.

Marksmanship

* Major Glyph of Chimera Shot
There's a lot of debate if this glyph is good or not. Some people will tell you that you need to be haste capped for it to be better than Steady Shot glyph. Others will talk about how it fits Chimera Shot into your prioritization better. This is because you will end up having situations where Chimera and Arcane on coming off cooldown at the same time. Since we want to use Steady Shot as little as possible, this glyph will prevent us from delaying us from firing Arcane Shot for 1 or 2 GCD's which is a DPS increase because we're firing less Steady Shots. The other to note it has to do with Chimera Shots CD, which is normally 10 secs. By having the glyph the cooldown is reduced to 9 seconds, meaning it will fit perfecting with the GCD (1.5s x 6 GCD's = 9s). This is important because you eliminate those .5 seconds of downtime every time you would otherwise have Chimera coming off cooldown. I find that the last two reasons are enough of a reason to use it over the Steady Shot glyph regardless if you're at the haste soft cap or not.
* Major Glyph of Trueshot Aura
This Glyph has been changed from what it used to be. Originally it was a Glyph that increased the base percentage of attack power your TSA granted. Now it gives a higher critical percentage to Aimed Shot which is useless in a pure DPS shot rotation. It's really bad for just about everything so I wouldn't even think about picking one up.
* Major Glyph of Hunter's Mark
This Glyph is commonly used by Marksmanship Hunters because they have the spare talent points to put into Improved Hunter's Mark. More AP is never a bad thing.
* Major Glyph of Rapid Fire
Though all Hunter's receive a benefit from this Glyph I included it under Marksmanship because they have access to Readiness. Poping a super fast Rapid Fire back-to-back can cause some serious DPS.

Survival
* Major Glpyh of Explosive Shot
As I've said over and over in this guide, Survival Hunter's love to crit. This glyph is a must have for any Survival Hunter.
* Major Glyph of Imp. Aspect of the Hawk
This glyph is a major factor in the Survival build because Survival spends a lot of gear itemization points on Agility. If you're not having mana issues and decided to use the 5/15/51 spec for Survival then this glyph can be an option for you.




Minor Glyphs
Along with the glyphs discusses above you can have 3 minor glyphs as well. These glyphs generally have less impact on your character's attacks than major glyphs, and are usually not spec dependent.

* Minor Glyph of Mend Pet
This glyph is great for those long fights that prevent you from feeding your pet. Keeping your pet at it's highest happiness level increases it's DPS, so this glyph is a handy thing to have for those times your pet drops down a happiness level midfight.

* Minor Glyph of Feign Death
This glyph has it's uses in PvE and PvP situations. Sometimes you just got crazy lucky with your crits, which means you're also going to be doing a lot of threat per second; having this glyph makes our threat dump more accessible to us. Feign Death can be used as a survival button for fights where adds apwn, or when tanks die nad the mob comes after you.

* Minor Glyph of Revive Pet
Nothing is worse than having your pet die, making you sit through that long, ten second rez to get it back. If you're pulling off a pet rez mid combat this glyph prevents your cast from getting even longer by not allowing random damage push your cast back.

The other options for minor glyphs are completely useless for raiding aside from the Pack glyph which increases the range on Aspect of the pack by a few yards. If you want to review them yourself, here i a complete list of Hunter Major and Minor Glyphs.



Shot Prioritizations

This section is focused on what abilities you will rotate in depending on your talent spec. This section also includes how to mange your cooldowns based on what spec you are. Please let it be known that by using all of your cooldowns at once you maximize the effect by stacking them all up. Some fights do require you to have your cooldowns saved for a specific part of the fight (ie. Hard mode Iron Council in Uludar), so saving them will allow you to beat the encounter which is far more important than your personal DPS.

Beast Mastery Priority
Quick n' Dirty
Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot

Priority
Kill Shot
Bestial Wrath
Rapid Fire
Arcane Shot
Multi-shot
Serpent Sting
Steady Shot

As you will notice Beast Mastery uses a shot prioritization more-so than a shot rotation. All Hunter's specs follow this these days. Open up with your cooldown macro (shown below) and go to town. Start off with Serpent Sting and then lay out as many shots as you can. Make sure you use Kill Command about 1 second after you've used all your cooldowns to give your pet the full effect on the Kill Command.

Beast Mastery Cooldown Management

Poor cooldown management can severely lower your DPS (250+ DPS can be lost with the slightest improper CD management). Right at the beginning of the fight you should pop a macro that looks like this...



Some people call this your Big Red Macro, others call it your IWIN Button. The name is not important as much as using it properly. As you can see it's just about every cooldown a BM Hunter has. Stacking your cooldowns all at once will maximize their effect. Make sure you are using Aspect of the Beast when you are doing this because the extra 10% pet damage is more DPS than using Aspect of the Dragonhawk while Beastial Wrath is up. After Beastial Wrath drops you should switch back to Dragonhawk.

Use this macro right as you begin your first attack (sometimes save for Bloodlust depending on the fight, such as Thaddius). The Shaman's should pop Bloodlust right at the beginning of the fight to maximize everyone's CD effects. Once you have done this it is your job to keep them on cooldown. That being said you NEED to use Kill Command with Beastial Wrath. If you do not do this your DPS can be lowered by upwards of 300 DPS. It is an easy thing to change and micromanage, but this is an example of the small differences that take you from #5 on the DPS meters to #1.


Marksmanship Priority
Quick n' Dirty
Cooldown Macro, Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Chimera Shot, Repeat


Priority
Kill Shot
Chimera Shot
Arcane Shot
Aimed Shot
Steady Shot

Start with your instant shots until you've got all your CD's active at once. Make sure you use Kill Command about 1 second after you've poped all your cooldowns to give your pet the full effect on the Kill Command. Then use Serpent Sting. Doing this will keep your Serpent Sting doing more damage for the duration of the fight. This is because when you use Chimera Shot the attack checks to see what the total damage of the sting is going to be, find's the amount of damage in a percentage and deals that much damage. Once the damage has been applied the Chimera Shot refreshes the active sting. Once you have the Serpent Sting active, keep using your shots based on the priority above. Make sure to use Chimera Shot before the Serpent Sting debuff drops. There is no reason to wait for the next Serpent Sting tick before casting Chimera Shot as explained here (many thanks to Tanakh). Now you just need to keep Chimera Shot on cooldown and keep your shot priority working, filling in with Steady Shots when the other shots are on cooldown.



Marksmanship Cooldown Management

Caleb recently posted a Marksmanship Hunter guide on the <Ensidia> blogs and suggests to use this macro:

#showtooltip rapid fire
#show rapid fire
/use 13
/cast blood fury
/cast rapid fire
/cast kill command
/cast readiness

By using this macro you can ensure that you use Readiness right after you use Rapid Fire, making sure you put it on cooldown right away.

I would suggest using this macro a few seconds into the fight. You want to pop your cooldowns early so you can use them more often during the fight, but as a Marksmanship Hunter you don't want to use it right away because you have the talent Rapid Recuperation. You'll want to make sure you use a chunk of your mana before poping Rapid Fire (which you should use with the rest of your cooldowns to maximize their effect) so you get a lot of mana back. Timing your initial Rapid Fire will really help your mana issues out as a Marksmanship Hunter. Once you've finished the duration of the first Rapid Fire, you'll want to use it right away so you can use it again later in the fight. As the fight goes on you're Rapid Fire and Readiness will come off cooldown just after the 3min 30sec mark. Repeat what you did the first time so you'll end up using FOUR Rapid Fires. Just make sure you don't use Rapid Fire at the same time you use Bloodlust / Heroism or else you'll have less time at the haste softcap and thus greatly reducing the effect of your Rapid Fire.



Survival Priority
Quick n' Dirty
Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Aimed Shot / Multi-Shot, Steady Shot Repeat. Spam Explosive Shot when Lock and Load procs

Priority
Kill Shot
Explosive Shot
Black Arrow
Serpent Sting
Aimed Shot
Steady Shot

Whenever Lock and Load procs you need to make sure you do not overlap your Explosive Shots. If you spam Explosive Shot under a Lock and Load proc then you won't deal all of the damage you could be because it would refresh the Explosive Shot debuff, losing a tick of damage in the process. In order to counter-act this, alternate between Explosive Shot and a different shot. Example: Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot. Refresh Serpent Sting and Black Arrow as soon as you can and keep Explosive Shot on cooldown, it is your main priority to do so.

Survival Cooldown Management

Just blow your DPS macro (the ones linked above) right at the start. You do this so your first string of DoT's get the added bonus for your +Attack Power cooldowns. Kill Command should just be kept on CD, it really doesn't matter too much when you use it as a Survival Hunter.


F.A.Q.
How good is haste for us?
Haste effects two attacks for Hunters; Auto-Shot and Steady Shot. Haste is generally used for Hunter's to lower their Steady Shot cast time to 1.5 seconds. When this is attained we call this the soft cap. It is a soft cap because Haste still makes us fire Auto-Shot faster bust stopped effecting Steady Shot. This is because the global cooldown prevents us from attacking any faster than every 1.5 seconds. The haste cap is 522.7, or 523 because WoW only gives items stats in whole numbers. Most Hunter's only get to around 300 Haste (which lowers Steady Shot to 1.6 seconds) and then focus on other stats. With latency 1.6s Steady Shots is almost unnoticeable when compared to being at the hate soft cap.

How good is Armor Penetration for us?
Armor Penetration is one of the non-core stats (Attack Power, Hit, Agility, Crit) that can increase our DPS. Armor Penetration only effects our physical damaging attacks and not our magical ones (Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, Arcane Shot for some examples). That being said it's still a noteworthy stat. It currently stacks above 100% Armor Penetration but is being hotfixed to get capped at 100%. My personal suggestion is that it's worth it to pick some ArP up so long as you're not giving up any of the core stats for it.

What stats effect our pets and which ones don't?
Haste, Critical Strike, and Armor Penetration do not effect our pets. The only stats that do are our base stats (Agility, Stamina, etc...), Hit Rating, and Attack Power. All pets will have Attack Power converted to Spell Power for attacks such as Lightning Breath or Scorpid Poison.


Contributors and Thanks
Thanks to my fellow guildies Anindor and Musunoki on Greymane (US). Without them this guide would never have happened. They have contributed a lot over the course of the many updates.

Thanks to the Elitist Jerks Hunter community for testing out so many different things proving that the information presented here is accurate.

Thanks to the Hunter's at TKASomething.com for putting up with me and making sure this thread is in tip top condition.

Thanks to Caleb from <Ensidia> for posting his macro to assist in Marksmanship cooldown management.
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I hope you get as much use from these posts as I have I'm never below second in total damage now in Ulduar.

Here are some addons I use for my Hunter.

Shot cooldown trackers.

Watcher - Watcher - Addons - Curse

Tell me when - TellMeWhen - Addons - Curse

Combat text.

Mik Scrolling battle text - MikScrollingBattleText - Addons - Curse

I like this since it allows you to add sounds when something comes off cooldown. I use it to remind me when to use Kill Shot.

[ChildeRoland]

+Rep just for the fact that you didn't say "I wrote this all myself, plox gief rep".
Thx for sharing.

[Ezelaap]

Epic, +rep, though I won't gonna use this, cause i'm already doing it:P

[xkennyx]

legendary post mofo, love it! gonna bowjob some allies in pvp hrhr teh noobs +Rep

[The unforgiven]

good guide,and good job for giving credit to others that deserve it instead of just yourself

[imjaspar2]

just out of curiosity what was / is your dps?

[fearedtoast]

gonna bowjob some allies

...What?

+Rep to the OP for sharing an epic guide.

[CGuru]

just out of curiosity what was / is your dps?

My DPS varies from about 4500 in 10 man VoA up to 11k in 25 man Hodir. What I focus on is total damage I am always in the top 3 total damage in any raid.

I have found the most helpful tool to be the Hunter spreadsheet and tailoring my talents to my gear/playstyle. I have had many Hunters tell me to use their cookie cutter spec but my DPS always goes down with their cookie cutter spec and goes up with my spreadsheet tailored talents. I'm not saying that the other Hunters spec is bad but that the spec someone in all BiS gear is different than the spec my gear needs.

What I am most proud of is my getting better damage output has driven others in my guild to better themselves, this has led to the whole guild progressing further than anyone thought they would.

[JamesHetfield]

That Guide is the real deal, i myself have been an "apprentice" of shandara about a year ago, and trust me. She's good.

You should try play with her, a real dps master.

[Garfield]

nice guide, covers the important things & pics is a huge plus.