Marksman 1-80: Level 60

Level 60

Level 60 lets you finish off the Survival talents requisite to getting Scatter Shot at 61. You can learn to ride flying mounts now at 60, at either of the starting towns in Hellfire Peninsula. If you've spurned both the Beast Mastery and Survival talents so far, level 60 is the earliest you can pick up Chimera Shot.

Skills, Level 60:

• 60: Aimed Shot (Rank 6), Arcane Shot (Rank 8), Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 7), Deterrence, Freezing Trap (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 7), Multi-Shot (Rank 5), Serpent Sting (Rank 9), Tranquilizing Shot

There are a lot of new ranks at level 60; there are only two new skills if you're waiting on Chimera Shot.

The first is Deterrence. Once upon a time, Deterrence was a Survival talent. Now it's a poor man's Evasion, buffing your Parry and give you spell deflection for 5 seconds. It's one of those things that may buy you some time to survive.

The other skill you get is Tranquilizing Shot. Once upon a time, this skill was learned from a book which dropped off Lucifron, the first boss in Molten Core. It was necessary at the time because it would remove Magmadar's Frenzy. Now it's been transformed to our Dispel, and it can remove certain enrages (Gluth's, possibly warriors' and rogues'). Very useful in PVP and for some boss fights.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 51-59

Levels 51-59

There are two ways to go with talents at this point - you can hop over to Survival to head towards Scatter Shot, or you can continue in the Marksman tree to get to Chimera faster. I've mapped out Scatter Shot first. This will also get you increased range and increased damage from having tracking on.

Skills, 51-59:

• 52: Aimed Shot (Rank 5), Arcane Shot (Rank 7), Mend Pet (Rank 6)
• 54: Explosive Trap (Rank 3), Multi-Shot (Rank 4)
• 56: Aspect of the Wild (Rank 2), Immolation Trap (Rank 5), Raptor Strike (Rank 8)
• 58: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 6), Hunter's Mark (Rank 4), Mongoose Bite (Rank 4), Serpent Sting (Rank 8), Volley (Rank 3)

In terms of skills, the 50s are even more boring than the 40s. New ranks, but nothing new. I usually do the Jintha'alor quests in the Hinterlands around level 50-52 (trinket), then head up to the Plaguelands. If you go through all Blightcaller's quests up through killing the Scarlet Oracle, you can get yourself a pretty nice bow.

And then go to Outlands and replace it in Hellfire Peninsula, but still.

Marksman 1-80: Level 50

Level 50

The talent point for level 50 isn't flashy, but it's really handy - you can finish off Improved Revive Pet for 4 second pet resuscitation. You do pick up your second minor glyph slot, and the Feign Death is probably a good second one. If we had gone purely with Marksman talents instead of getting faster pet revives, level 50 is the earliest you can get Silencing Shot.

Skills, Level 50:

• Serpent Sting (Rank 7), Steady Shot (Rank 1), Track Dragonkin, Volley (Rank 2)

Level 50 gets you a bread-and-butter hunter shot, Steady Shot. The cast time is 2 seconds, but when all your other shots are on cooldown, this gives you something to do on top of Auto Shot. At higher levels (the upper 70s to level cap), this shot is part of why you want to aim for the soft haste cap; getting your Steady Shot cast to 1.5 seconds lets you use it every Global Cooldown possible between your longer cooldown shots.

You also get Dragon tracking, which will be useful if you quest in zones with them, or if you want to farm for whelpling pets.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 41-49

Levels 41-49

Talents in the 40s give you some options. Improved Barrage is good to get for the removal of pushback on your Volley, and then you can get either Improved Aspect of the Hawk or Endurance Training over in the Beast Mastery Tree in order to pick up a reduced cast time on Revive Pet.

Skills, 41-49:

• 42: Multi-Shot (Rank 3), Serpent Sting (Rank 6)
• 44: Aimed Shot (Rank 4), Arcane Shot (Rank 6), Explosive Trap (Rank 2), Mend Pet (Rank 5), Mongoose Bite (Rank 3)
• 46: Aspect of the Wild (Rank 1), Immolation Trap (Rank 4), Scare Beast (Rank 3)
• 48: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 5), Raptor Strike (Rank 7)

The 40s, like questing in the 40s can be, aren't terribly interesting. (Welcome to Tanaris. It's a big, monotonous desert. I almost always quest it out entirely, but the scenery... eh. The other option is Feralas, with the harpies. I prefer the desert.) Lots of new skill ranks; one new skill. The new skill? Aspect of the Wild, an aspect that lets you increase nature resist for you and your party/raid. Very useful for certain bosses, but not for general play.

Marksman 1-80: Level 40

Level 40

Level 40 used to be when you get your mount; now you're just going to pick up Trueshot Aura and your epic mount if you can afford it. You also learn to wear mail armor.

Skills, Level 40:

• 40: Aspect of the Pack, Freezing Trap (Rank 2), Hunter's Mark (Rank 3), Raptor Strike (Rank 6), Track Giants, Trueshot Aura, Volley (Rank 1)

Aspect of the Pack seems dinky when you're getting your epic mount, until you realize you can use it when you're indoors. This is the "running back from the graveyard through a dungeon" Aspect, and as long as there's nothing to daze you, your party will appreciate it. Just remember to turn it back off when you get back to where you need to be.

Level 40 also gets you Giant Tracking, useful for several quests looking for wandering giants. A lot of giants in Azeroth are still roaming elites, too, so this can also be used for avoiding getting smooshed.

Trueshot Aura, your talent point, is a 10% AP boost. It is no longer a 30 minute buff, but it does still turn off when you die. It will get temperarily overwritten by Enhancement Shamans' and some Death Knights' 10% AP buff procs, making the glyph for it less useful in raids, but it's still a good buff to have overall.

Volley is your last new level 40 skill, and it is great. Even if you're leveling with a tank pet, you're probably going to be pulling aggro off it by now, but if you're careful about it, you can start doing some AoE fighting. Combine it with an Explosive Trap for extra oomph. When I was leveling my baby hunter, this is the skill I was impatient to pick up.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 31-39

Levels 31-39

Talents in the 30s are pretty flexible; I generally go with Focused Aim, Careful Aim, and Barrage. You won't have Steady Shot for a while yet, but the extra 3% to hit will help if you want to kill stuff higher level than you. As a Marksman hunter (at least till Cataclysm, when we get to learn to operate with Focus), Intellect is your friend, and more AP from it is good. Not everyone is a Barrage fan, but the damage boost on Aimed Shot is worth it.

Skills, Levels 31-39:

• 32: Flare, Raptor Strike (Rank 5), Track Demons
• 34: Explosive Trap (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 5)
• 36: Aimed Shot (Rank 3), Arcane Shot (Rank 5), Immolation Trap (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 4), Viper Sting
• 38: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 4)

New skills in the 30s aren't as flashy as some, but there some useful ones.

At level 32, you get Flare. It's been tweaked over time, in terms of both duration and cooldown, but right now it's a 20 second cooldown and a 20 second effect. It puts a flare on the ground that makes an area that will reveal stealth. Depending how a rogue or druid is specialized, it can be very useful in PVP. It's also useful for the stealthed cats and wolves you'll start running into in this level range. Oh, and those stupid stealthed infiltrators in Dustwallow... grr...

Anywho, you also pick up Track Demons at 32. Like most of the other tracking skills, the utility depends on if you're somewhere with demons. (If you run Dire Maul at level later, you can use it to keep an eye out for the patrolling Eye of Kilroggs that will summon a couple of mean Voidwalkers.)

Level 34 gets you Explosive Trap. This is an area-of-effect fire trap that will pulse for periodic damage. Now that traps are on separate cooldowns by fire/frost/nature, they're more useful, and more fun; you can drop a Frost Trap and an Explosive Trap together and have slowing plus fire.

I use a couple macros for traps to keep my bars less crowded; they're basically along the lines of:

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

I have a separate one for the ice traps.

At level 36 you'll pick up Viper Sting. This is a bit more useful than it used to be, and the mana gain from it can be beneficial. Combined with Chimera Shot at later levels, it's sometimes better to use than switching into Aspect of the Viper.

Marksman 1-80: Level 30

Level 30

Level 30 isn't as exciting as it used to be; still, you can pick up Readiness with your talent point, and a second Major glyph slot is available. I'd go with whichever of Mending or Serpent Sting you didn't take at level 15.

Skills, Level 30:

• 30: Feign Death, Mongoose Bite (Rank 2), Multi-Shot (Rank 2), Scare Beast (Rank 2)

In addition to the new skill ranks, your talent point here is probably Readiness. Readiness resets many of your hunter abilities that have cooldowns - shots, traps, Rapid Fire, Feign Death, and so forth. It's useful at the higher ends for resetting Rapid Fire for a little DPS boost, and it's useful all the time for resetting traps and Feign.

Speaking of Feign Death, you pick it up at level 30. Feign Death is what will let you sometimes get away with running through things you can't kill, or survive when the rest of your party wipes. It lets your hunter play dead. (Unfortunately, your pet will not play dead with you, so if you're trying to survive something with an area damage effect of some sort, tell your pet to go play with it while it's not by you, or otherwise send your pet somewhere else. You can always revive your pet, but you have to run back from the graveyard.)

Note that Feigning will shunt the aggro onto the next person on the aggro table, which may be your healer. Sometimes it's better for you to have the aggro if the healer can keep you up long enough to kill it. This is where knowing how to kite is more important than having Feign.

Feigning can also be resisted. Bosses in particular like to resist (or don't care if they think you're dead, they'll still hit you... one or the other). Some bosses won't reset while you're Feigning, so if you're in that situation, just stand up and die, or you'll make your party angry. (Attumen in Karazhan almost always resisted me. My best night: Feigning successfully on every Hydross attempt (about a dozen) for the three hours it took us to kill him the first time. Deaths for the night: 0 is awesome.