I agree with SpartanKillian for MM rotations.

For each new target, I start by putting up Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, and Chimera Shot for an initial big hit. Then its repeat Steady Shot until Chimera is off CD at which point it also refreshed Serpent Sting.

The reasons that we do not use other shots is not only the mana use but also maximum DPS. Also note that with TBC bosses nerfed by 30% HP and the new raid buffs that mana does not currently seem a concern (although it is bound to be different at 80).

The main idea of the rotation is to use Chimera every time it comes off of cooldown since it does the most DPS and refreshes your sting keeping it active.

So then the question is what to use while its on cooldown. The answer can vary depending on how you spec MM and whether you use talent points to buff the other shots. I chose to go the route that buffs my Steady Shot as much as possible since that seemed to theoretically provide the most DPS, especially since I would already be choosing a lot of those talents anyway for other reasons. Hence, I picked up Piercing Shots, Master Marksman (making Steady Shot even more mana efficient that it was before), Improved Steady Shot, Marked for Death, and Survival Instincts. Furthermore, as a side effect of the 3% hit from Focused Aimed, you also reduce 70% of the pushback you receive on your Steady Shot, which helps on the fights where it is hard to avoid pushback.

Adding in other shots to this rotation seems to have the double jeopardy of both decreasing DPS and time to OOM.

Some caveats to this from observations:
- Aimed Shot is still useful. It is definitely a good shot to use on pulls.
- Multishot is still good to use in AoE situations if you have plenty of mana. I do not suggest using it anymore on single targets and suggest avoiding the Barrage talents.

Hey Everyone,

I need some help/advice on where to use my talents for my hunter <MM>. This is the talent build I just made The World of Warcraft Armory but I'd like to know if my points could be better distributed elsewhere for max damage and performance.

A little more info for you.....I have equipped the Halberd of Desolation w/+35 agility enchant, and the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix w/+28 Crit scope although I do plan on picking up the badge bow within the next week or so.

My gear isn't quite as high-end as others here as I've just started doing the Mount Hyjal and Black Temple runs last month and I'm a backup raider in case they need a fill-in spot for my guild. Most of the Hunters in my guild raiding currently are BM specced and one is SV spec so I want to stay MM but get the most out of what I have and keep improving.

Aside from my current gear and immediate things to work for, can you suggest a MM build that would improve my dps and performance? I've looked at Lilyana and Whitefyst's builds and they look pretty solid and another person mentioned trying to spec Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft but I'd still like your opinions as this IS the place to go for help.

Thank you in advance...I greatly appreciate your help.

Prong

I'm considering switching to Hunter in WotLK and I have a question regarding the timing of cool downs. As I will most likely be an Orc and BM spec I will have the following cool downs: Blood Fury (2 min), Bestial Wrath (~1 min after talents and glyph), Rapid Fire (3 min), and probably a trinket. Pet related cool downs include Call of the Wild (3.5 min talented), Kill Command (1 min), and Rabid (35 sec talented).

Part of me is fairly sure I'm over thinking the timing of cool downs but I just wanted to confirm that. Should I be overly worried about lining up things to the extent that I want Rabid to have five stacks before I pop certain cool downs or is it fine to leave Rabid on auto cast (I read it was fixed in the recent build to work despite nothing attacking the pet)?

While it seems ideal to line up certain cool downs to piggy back on one another for maximum effect, I've also read that you should just pop any cool down as soon as it comes up. Is a certain timing to all of these cool downs needed?

The specc is fine, but i would do some ajustments. Hawk eye doesn't really increase your dps in any way in raids, considering you have to get to windfury totem. So would take Improved Tracking instead (just don't forget to track what you are dpsing).

As for barrage / imp barrage i guess its a choice, perhaps it might be ok when it affects aimed shot, but right now i don't believe you would use multi shot in a marksmanship rotation, mostly because you need the steady shot proc before your chimaera is off cooldown.

This is what i'm running with at the moment.

the reasons why I'm asking is because I've already re-specced 4-5 times and I still can't seem to get the most dps out of my Serpent Sting/Chimera Shot/Steady Shot shot selections....I've been near the bottom of dps raids and heroics in all but one of my runs since the new patch arrived.

I guess it might depend on what your doing, hunters who misdirect a lot might not want Wild Quiver since ive read people have had it proc at the wrong time and causing problems. (i think what happened was, they setup 3 shots and WQ would proc and eat a MD charge.. with them ending up shooting a shot or 2 with all the MD charges used up.)

Your armory gear says you have 7.93% hit. so you only need 2 in focused aim to hit the cap. That gives you 1 point to spend elsewhere.

Hawk Eye gives no damage unless you have sniper training where it can be helpful but i dont think is needed. You can move those into the tracking talent to give you a damage boost.

Barrage right now doesnt affect Aimed Shot and might not until WOTLK releases. When that comes out, everyones gonna be leveling so i dont see a point to grab it right now.

Damage wise, maybe something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft using chimera -> steady rotation.

Your left with 3 points you can put where you want. 3 Hawk Eye if you cant live without it or Aimed/Silencing/finish Efficiency or fill out Wild Quiver if you dont MD often in raids (probably the most damage out of all the choices) or even 3 in imp AOTH.

Please don't kill me for asking such a noob question, but I'm confused with all the new hunter info. My hunter will hit 70 soon, is BM still the highest dps spec for just starting pve(IE: mostly blues/greens) post 3.02?

152 pages and most of those occurring pre-3.0 so while this question may be answered somewhere else I hope you can forgive me for not reading every page.

I am playing a dwarf hunter on a pvp server and am currently lvl 45. Thus far I've leveled MM but I wish to change to BM to give it a try. I hear all the time that BM is just awesome for leveling. But the talent spec I was going to use was laughed upon by some 70 hunters I questioned in IF.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

But general chat being what it is I thought to ask here. The only talent spec I've seen mentioned for BM is Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft which seems odd to me. But then I'm sure it is more for DPS and not leveling. Leveling I think Thick Hide would be advantageous though I still wonder why 1 point in Endurance.

Should I go for GftT now for leveling? Something along the lines of
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I notice other people left improved hunter's mark out, but I find I am so out of mana most times that I often neglect to even cast HM. 1) Mobs die fast anyway and 2) I just don't have the mana. But I know that more AP = more dps = faster XP unless that is offset by downtime. Right now I dump a mana bar on 2-3 mobs then kill one pretty much with just pet and autoshoot with AotV up then go back to Hawk for another mana dump. Having Imp HM not only adds extra AP but removes the mana concerns.

Thoughts or advice?

Greatly appreciated.

The single point in endurance is a general consensus, because you cannot advance to Aspect Mastery and Unleashed fury without 10 points in Beast Mastery. Improved Hawk provides 5 of those; Revive Pet and Focused Fire provide 4 of those; you're left with 3 rather lackluster talents to choose from when you spend the 10th point. Improved Monkey simply sucks balls, because while you're leveling, your pet will generally hold aggro and you'll never have to melee anything let alone switch to dodge. And Thick Hide is even worse, because Mend Pet can simply keep the pet up by itself. Not to mention a lot of mobs are spellcasters, and the armor benefit is situational. Stamina, however, is universal.

I'd personally suggest Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for levelling, starting with the points in Marksmanship (at least Careful Aim and Lethal Shots), unless you're dead set on getting en exotic pet at 70.

A few more personal thoughts, though. I know you're not likely to use Revvie pet a whole great deal, but if you do, it's all about minimizing downtime. Sometimes it happens you bite off more than you can chew. You're going to run away, FD and leave the pet to save your skin. 4 seconds of reviving a pet is a hell of a lot shorter than a corpse run.
Everything else in BM is pretty much mandatory to move up to the next tiers.

Careful Aim is just awesome. Considering you'll get a lot 'of the Falcon' greens while you're leveling up, use those, and get double benefits. Mana pool and regen AND free AP.
Focused Aim. Well, granted, you don't really need to be hit capped while leveling, but hey, you're not going to have a lot of +hit on your gear as you level, and it's still a pretty valuable bonus.
Mortal shots. Again, not sure how much you're going to like 30% bonus on crits, but I personally like every bit of damage I can squeeze out of crits, seeing as they're a lot harder hitting than the standard attacks.

I just don't yet see the value of Improved revived pet. But them I'm 45. I theorize that raiding etc you will have a lot of times pets will die to AE's, cleaves, etc.

I'm not in a hurry to get to 51 BM, I don't even plan on getting it. Would 2/2 in GftT be recommended now? I understand 1/2 later on b/c you need the points in BM instead, but pre 70 what would you suggest? Or is 2/2 just a waste for some reason.

I guess I didn't realize that armor on pets was such a non issue. I never use Mend Pet, perhaps I should start fighting much harder stuff.

Like I said... you might not use Imp Revive pet that much; it's a raiding/arena talent, but the leveling use for it is rather minimal. I suggested one possible situation where it could come in handy. If you don't particularly like it, I guess the only viable use for those two points is in Endurance again.

2/2 GFTT is actually quite good. You could shift points into it, from either Focused Aim or Longevity, or whatever else you can think of, really. Along with Bestial Discipline, it's quite handy for massive pet output, but I've gotten around to not using it since the new talents. It most certainly isn't a waste if your pet can dump the focus fast enough.

Post-3.0 a macro is no longer necessary. Remove '/cast !Auto Shot' from the macro. Problem solved.

As another poster mentioned, the change to Auto Shot being unlinked makes any concept of 3:2 rotations obsolete. Just replace your macro keybind with Steady Shot (there are a couple other WotLK focus hunter threads that have covered this to get get more information).

The "auto targeting" deal is a known bug and apparently has something to do with the new Auto shot mechanic. Again, you can find information on this in the other threads I mentioned and/or the beta hunter forums. There really is not a consistent way to combat this bug (at least that I have been able to find yet), so just be aware that it is happening to avoid accidents. Having the option toggled in the Interface menu to stop attacking after selecting a new target (forget how it is worded in-game) doesn't seem to prevent this from happening either. http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...79/#post942067

Greetings all, first-time poster here:

Just a quick comment on why my Bestial Wrath macro does not activate all abilities simultaneously anymore. Pre-patch 3.0.2, Bestial Wrath, Intimidation, Rapid-Fire and Bloodlust Brooch all activated on 1 click, whereas now it would essentially be 4 clicks. Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments.

That's because BW and RF are currently on GCD. Ghostcrawler posted some info saying that BW shouldn't be on GCD. RF will still be on GCD (but it's own, lasting only 1sec) and devs are thinking about removing it from GCD once again.

Hi there,

I apologize for asking the question as I'm it has been asked countless times, but it's hard to track the answer within 150+ pages.

Like everybody, I used the standard macro before 3.0.2.:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/Cast !Auto Shot
/Cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/Cast Steady Shot
/Script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I inserted a line for rabid after the patch because of the bugs.

/Cast [target=pettarget,exists] Rabid

The question: are there any issues with this macro? I know you do not *have* to use, but I'm so used to spam it with my mousewheel. I cannot delete the !Auto part from it, because than it takes me 2 seconds to wait for a steady after I started attacking.

So does using this gives me any disadvantages in terms of damage?

Thanks,
Nagl

Try getting accustomed to right clicking the mob before you start scrolling your mousewheel. I right-click a mob and scroll mousewheel forward simultaneously (HM bound to frontward-scrolling). This ensures my auto fires first, puts up HM, and sends my pet after the mob all at the same time. Then I scroll backwards, which is my SS macro, where /cast !auto shot is not in the macro.

Well, is there a disadvantage in keeping the !auto line in the macro? I try to avoid clicking things...

I've been a long time follower on the hunter forums but been away a while now. With all the recent and ongoing changes to game mechanics in the last few months I'm not sure anymore what the story is with our GCD's now or if previous posts are still valid.

Simple questions:

1) Before patch all our abilities were on a 1.5s GCD... neither physical or spell haste could reduce this. Has that changed (or the base value of hunter GCD's to, say, 1.2s or 1.0s?)

2) Heroism never reduced our GCD pre-patch. That's still the case correct? I also assume that WF totem and Totem of wrath (or whatever the spell haste totem is called) similarly do not reduce GCD.

Just asking because if I understand correctly, quiver + WF totem will put your steadys at about 1.6s... making haste gear utterly useless (well... it would only improve autoshot significantly anymore).

Thanks

GCD is still the same, 1.5 seconds. GCD of aspects is 1.0 seconds as of now (is going to be changed to 0 seconds in the next build).
True.
Also true, although WF is going to be changed to not affect ranged attacks anymore.

great thanks!

It was posted before but heres from BETA Patch notes: