Marksman 1-80 (Part 2: Detailed Marksman Talent Notes)

Continuing the Marksman 1-80 information... This time I'm going to go through the Marksman tree's talent options.

Detailed Talent Notes

Improved Concussive Shot: Dazing talents can be nice while soloing (easier kiting), but when they took the stun proc off Improved Concussive Shot, I dropped the points from the talent. The stun was its entire appeal to me. But if you don't like some of the talents I've taken, they're not terrible choices for leveling.

Focused Aim: Although you might not pick it up right away, this is worth getting especially after you pick up Steady Shot at level 50. While soloing, you're more likely to have something jabbing at you while you're trying to cast it. The 3% hit rating is good as well, especially at higher levels when you're trying to get hit capped.

Lethal Shots: 5% crit is a must. Your first talent points will probably going here.

Careful Aim: Another talent you'll want eventually (your intelligence will be a solid AP boost), even if you don't get it right away.

Improved Hunter's Mark: Depending how much you like Hunter's Mark, this will buff it and make it cost nothing. There are better places to put your talents.

Mortal Shots: Increased crit damage is good. You need this to get Aimed Shot. Marksman hunters are big on crit.

Go for the Throat: This talent will keep your pet growling (or boost its DPS), dependent partly on your crit rating for usefulness. You'll want it for soloing to help keep stuff off you and on your pet.

Improved Arcane Shot: This is a talent you'll want to pick up at some point for the DPS boost. Arcane will be part of your rotation.

Aimed Shot: A must in the Marksman world. A mortal strike debuff for PVP, an instant, still somewhat hard-hitting shot. (Admittedly, it crits at 80 for about what it did at 70 when it was still a 3-second cast. Our burst is gone, but you still want the shot.)

Rapid Killing: This talent is useful for leveling in the next-shot damage boost you get from killing something. It's useful at the higher levels for the 3-minute cooldown on Rapid Fire.

Improved Stings: Something you'll want eventually - increased Serpent damage is increased Chimera damage.

Efficiency: Efficiency is a much debated talent - soloing, you'll want it. If you end up raiding at higher levels with persistent replenishment buffs, you can probably drop it. (I still have it in my raiding spec.)

Concussive Barrage: See Improved Concussive Shot. Not bad for PVP, not bad for kiting. You can't daze much of anything in a raid environment, so it's pretty useless there.

Readiness: This used to be a Survival talent; when they took Scatter Shot from us, this is what we got instead. It is awesome. This is a spare trap, back-to-back Rapid Fires, double Kill Shots, an emergency Feign, or whatever else you suddenly find yourself needing that's on cooldown. Plus, you want Trueshot Aura, right?

Barrage: This is another much debated talent, along with its followup. Its usefulness is partially going to be determined by whether or not you're using Aimed Shot in your rotation. (You should be.)

Combat Experience: A nice, solid talent. The extra Agility and Int are always nice. If I ever freed up any points in either of my specs, this is where they would go.

Ranged Weapon Specialization: 5% more damage is 5% more damage.

Piercing Shots: The bleed is a nice damage boost, and it'll keep rogues from restealthing. ;) (It's not a magic effect - it can't be Cloaked.)

Trueshot Aura: 10% AP boost is great. Death Knights and Enhancement Shamans can proc an equivalent buff, but this is persistent, and always useful.

Improved Barrage: Like its prerequisite, a debated talent. I love it for the uninterruptible Volley, and the crit boost is solid.

Master Marksman: This used to be an AP buff; now it's 5% crit and cheaper Steady Shots. Go for it.

Rapid Recuperation: A good leveling talent in conjunction with Rapid Killing, and nice for raiding because of its Rapid Fire component. I like it.

Wild Quiver: This is a nice damage boost - nature damage, to boot, so I believe it's not affected by armor as much.

Silencing Shot: Nice for soloing and PVP, and since it's off the global cooldown, you can use it as an extra damage pop in raiding, too. Also nice for instances and such where you have a caster you want to pull closer.

Improved Steady Shot: Not a bad talent, although you'll get more of a DPS boost out of Wild Quiver. Better for raiding than soloing, where you'll be in combat long enough to both get and use the proc.

Marked for Death: A good DPS boost if you remember to use Hunter's Mark. If you don't get it for a soloing spec, you'll want it for a raiding spec.

Chimera Shot: This will be your hardest hitting shot when you get it (besides Kill Shot). This is why you want to buff Serpent Sting as much as possible - the Serpent proc will easily keep this shot doing 5-8k on crits at 80.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 1: General Talent Notes)

I'm going to do this in chunks, because I've been writing it out and it's getting long. This won't be so much of a leveling guide as a Marksman guide. Leveling is pretty general - go to zones where you can get quests and don't die immediately walking out of town, and kill mobs and do quests. Leveling as a Marksman in particular, on the other hand, means knowing what you want for talents, what your skills are useful for, and what kind of gear you should be using. So then:

Marksman 1-80

A lot of people level as Beast Mastery. It's easy - send in the pet, turn on Auto Shot, let the pet do all the work. Marksman doesn't have to be hard, though. Leveling as a Marksman hunter can help you develop some skills useful later in the game, since you can't always count on your pet or your tank to hold every mob in a pull (and sometimes you don't want them to, either). Kiting and chain trapping will always be more in the realm of Survival, just because they have talents built towards minimizing snares on the hunter and maximizing traps. These skills can, however, be learned and developed as a leveling Marksman hunter.

General Talent Notes

I run with two Marksman builds; one is geared towards a generalist playstyle - soloing, casual PVP, instances - and the other is focused on raid DPS output. The former is the one you'll want to look at for a leveling or soloing build - 7/53/11. You'd probably want to do Marksmanship talents first until around when you've got Improved Barrage filled out, then pick up probably the Survival talents to get Scatter Shot. (Or, if you're impatient, toss the 7 points into Beast Mastery for a faster pet revive.)

Soloing Spec (7/53/11)
Raiding Spec (2/62/7)

Survival talents: Scatter Shot is fantastic in solo and small group play - it's short term crowd control, which you can use either to extend locking down a mob until your trap cooldown is back up, or use it to get a mob off your healer or a clothie until you can either get it trapped, or your tank picks it back up, or you can hit it with enough damage to pull it off to kite it. It's also another spell interrupt, and lasts long enough for most of a fast pet revive. Improved Tracking (5% more damage against most mobs), Hawkeye (another 6 yards of range), and Survival Instincts (4% less damage taken and 4% more crit for Arcane and Steady Shot) are good ways to get there.

Beast Mastery talents: Improved Revive Pet is awesome. If you're mostly soloing and your pet doesn't hold aggro well (and after a while, it probably won't, if your gear keeps up), use Endurance Training (10% more pet health, 5% more health for you) to get it, instead of Improved Aspect of the Hawk (10% chance to proc a haste boost) - you'll probably be kiting too much while soloing to really take advantage of the haste proc.

Next up: A more detailed look at Marksman talents.

Raid UI

http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/vv7/duskhawk/WoWScrnShot_050709_213511.jpg

The numbers in Recount are from Archavon on Tuesday, mixed with whatever soloing I did on Wednesday, so they may not mean anything.

This is the UI that goes with the 2/62/7 build.

Addons

• oRa2
• Recount
• Omen
• DBM
• Viper Notify

Macros

• The Shot2 macro is:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/use Handgrips of the Savage Emissary
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

(The gloves being for the ROCKETS!!! Teehee.)

• The Misdirect macro is:

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, target=focus] Misdirection; [button:2] Misdirection; [button:3, target=pet] Misdirection
/p Misdirecting... hope I click the right one!

I have an Intellimouse Explorer 3, so that's left, right, and middle mouse buttons.

• Other macros, all space savers:

/cast [button:1] Aspect of the Cheetah; [button:2] Aspect of the Pack

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Freezing Trap; [button:2] Frost Trap; [button:3] Freezing Arrow

#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet(Rank 8); [button:2] Revive Pet

• And the mount macro from WoWwiki:

/run C=CallCompanion if(not IsMounted())then if(((GetZoneText()=="Dalaran")and(GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing"))or(GetZoneText()=="Wintergrasp")or not IsFlyableArea())then C("MOUNT",57)else C("MOUNT",34)end end
/dismount

This uses the green nether ray and the orange raptor.

Of spreadsheets

So, I downloaded the hunter spreadsheet off Elitist Jerks' forums this week. So far it's telling me that there was maybe 100 DPS difference between what I set up as my general use build and what I decided on for a raiding build. It's also telling me that the Chimera shot glyph really wasn't worth that 50g, because I'm probably going to switch it back to something else tonight. It also suggests that my gut instinct - to keep 2 points in Go For the Throat - was the right one - another change I'll take advantage of with the free reset tonight. I may even talk myself out of Hawkeye (one of the things I love dearly).

So... my raiding build may become even more optimized for raiding. Yay? Maybe it was worth the 1000g and the download...

It also suggests that the unbuffed DPS #'s I was seeing on the target dummy aren't totally off. Phew. Now I just need to learn to push buttons as well as Excel. >.<

Post-3.1 Spec

Ok, I haven't dual-spec'd Dusk yet. I did the priest and the warrior, but I have less than 4k gold left, and for some reason that makes me uncomfortable. And being dual-MM spec'd - not just that, dual PVE MM spec'd - well, ok, I already know I'm crazy.

So, my general spec hasn't changed too much - I bumped a couple points around to pick up Piercing Shots, and so I'm now 7/53/11. Major glyphs - Hawk, Serpent Sting, Trueshot Aura. Minor glyphs - Mend Pet, Revive Pet, Feign Death.

The second spec will be more optimized for raiding - so, cutting out things like Scatter Shot, and actually analyzing my haste rating and seeing just how many points I actually need in Improved Aspect of the Hawk... and then shoving all the extra points into things like Marked for Death (once I find out if it works with other hunters' marks) or Ranged Weapon Specialization (a talent I used to have, before they added so much fun stuff in 3.0).

I didn't actually test this spec much of at all. No, I logged out Monday night parked in Feralas, in order to begin farming Sprite Darters as soon as the server went up. Which I did, sometime around 8:45ish EST. I was all alone there until about 9:50, when another Tauren hunter showed up. The egg dropped for him after about five minutes. >.< Mine dropped at 10:00 on the dot, which was coincidentally the time I had decided I was going to stop a half hour before, so that I could go do the cooking and fishing dailies and buy the three new Horde faction mounts.

Small pets: 73; Mounts: 77.

Tonight: Gnomeregan! (For Lil' Smokey.) And then, assuming I'm not invited for Ulduar (I don't anticipate being asked to come), I'll start on the Emerald Whelpling.

Bah

Well, 3.1 is here. This means I'm going to have to accept that I'm not getting upgrades from Naxx-25, which is frustrating, because I really kinda sorta wanted the bracers off Grobbulus. Yes, of all the possible hunter drops in Naxx, for me, the bracers are what I wanted the most. The good news is that there's another similar pair of bracers in Ulduar-10. The bad news is that it's in 10, which means there won't be purchaseable bracers of iLVL 219, so I'm going to be relying on drops again.

Yeah, yeah, only four Naxx-25 Grobbulus kills in my stats. (42ish boss kills total? And nothing from them?) It's still frustrating. Maybe with the changes to Efficiency and Chimera Shot I'll be able to take the hit to mana (and the AP loss) and switch out to the Bands of Anxiety. Going to need to pick up a smidge of hit rating, though. Why do the Eaglebane Bracers have to be so all-around awesome?

Ah, leveling

Mabs hit 60 sometime in August 2005. Duskhawk hit 60 in May 2006. And since then my pre-60 leveling on hunters has been pretty sparse, the first 15 levels or so on the scattered baby hunters that were to try out a starting zone, or a server.

Now I'm leveling my baby hunter on Bronzebeard, the one that was to try out the blood elf zone and jewelcrafting. Having leveled one hunter 70-80 in Wrath already, I had gotten used to Volley. Uninterruptable Volley. Very used to it. Much of the past week has been an, "Oh, my God, when do I get Volley already?" haze. (At 40, apparently. Not that it's a huge help, with single-target pets and not having points in the uninterruptable talent yet.)

I soloed Shadowfang Keep on her last night at 40 (with the blue tallstrider from Ashenvale, heh) to clear out those quests from my log; sometime in the next couple days I'll probably hit up Razorfen Kraul, as well. (And hopefully get a group of some sort for Razorfen Downs, since I want the sword to offhand with the sword from the Scarlet Monastery quest.)

The early 'of the falcon' mail is stupidly expensive on Bronzebeard. Argh. I really don't have to make myself some Tough Scorpid leatherworking stuff. (I mean, seriously... Agility and Spirit? Who came up with that one?) Dustwallow has had unuseful quest rewards, though, so I'll probably hit up Tanaris (for the lucrative Zul'Farrak quests, at least) next.