Marksman 101*

With the Steady Shot nerf looming in the next patch, I thought it might be wise to put out something about expanding into the other two Hunter trees.

Although Beast Mastery has been by and large the highest dps output so far, that can potentially change. The main thing of note is that the BM/Readiness spec that is the most popular right now is getting nerfed to the ground.

And with that in mind, I'd like to talk about a heavy Marks spec for raiding.

Take this build for example.

On the first tier, we have Improved Aspect of the Hawk. Since the change to Viper in patch 3.0, any hunter worth their bow would have been switching to having Hawk all the time instead of Viper as was the norm in BC. This talent is now pretty much a prerequisite for any raiding spec now. While you don't necessarily spam Steady Shot as Marks, the haste bonus is still pretty nice and is worth spending the 5 points in.

Over in the MM tree, the top three tiers pretty much fill themselves in. Lethal Shots, Careful Aim and Mortal Shots are all extremely good talents to have for any spec. Full points in Go for the Throat and Rapid Killing are also not to be overlooked.

If you're not hitcapped, you can see about switching the 3 points from either Improved Hunter's Mark or Improved Stings into Focused Aim instead. Depending on what your hit is like, you might want to see how many points you need to spend in that talent. If you're unsure about what the hitcap is, especially in relation to this talent, here is a great guide by Drotora about it.

The rest of the tree is pretty self-explanatory, but I also took full points in Barrage due to Aimed Shot being a staple in my Marks rotation.

Over in the Surv tree, I've popped full points into Improved Tracking and Hawk Eye. Especially with the patch, they're improving the mechanics of Imp Tracking to make it better, which makes it pretty much an essential now. As for Hawk Eye, it is always nice to be out of bosses' AoEs. :D One of the comments in Wowhead noted that it is hard to go back to playing without it... and I agree. I levelled up with that talent, and I really miss having to run further toward my target just to reach it to tap it. This can be especially annoying when doing Sons of Hodir dailies... but I digress.

And finally I've also put in full points in Survival Instincts, for the same reasoning I put points into Barrage. Not only that, it also affects Steady Shot! Win-win situation.

I'd been using this spec to raid since patch 3.0 came out (with less points, of course), and have since topped or came in second for dps where before I was usually about 3rd to 5th on the charts. This was also the spec I used to level up. Before I read about how powerful BM/Readiness was, this was my raiding spec for a good two or three weeks after I hit 80. Compared with the BM hunter in the same raid with a Devilsaur, I was outputting equivalent dps with a cat. This tree is no longer to be underestimated!

My basic rotation was mainly Serpent Sting > Aimed > Arcane > Chimera and then Steady spam till the other abilities were off cooldown. Switch to Viper and pop Rapid Fire when you're oom (since Viper regens mana based on your ranged attack speed - the faster you shoot, the faster you regain mana), rinse and repeat. I usually pop Readiness after Rapid Fire so the cooldown can start counting down, but other than that, there aren't many "big" cooldowns it's useful for in the Marks tree.

Of course, this isn't the only option for MM specs. For example, instead of going down Surv to take the increased Arcane/Steady talent, one could opt going into the BM tree for Aspect Mastery, as illustrated here.

If I ever get the chance to try out a Surv spec - and I probably will after the nerf patch - I will post something about it. :D Was thinking about something like this...

*The following is based on personal experience... I don't claim to be an expert on this sort of thing. :P