Playstyle & Rotation
Sentinel
Single Target Opener:
Note: Every time you proc Deathblow, you want to immediately consume your next Precise Shots with Kill Shot when talented into Headshot.
- Cast Hunter’s Mark on your main target before combat
- Cast Aimed Shot before combat
- Cast Volley (if talented)
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Arcane Shot or Kill Shot to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
Single Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (never use Volley and Trueshot without casting Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot in between)
- Cast Rapid Fire when Lunar Storm is ready
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Kill Shot to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Aimed Shot if its close to 2 charges, or Spotters Mark is up
- Cast Rapid Fire
- If talented into Precision Detonation, Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Steady Shot to generate Focus and fill downtime
Multi Target Opener:
- Cast Hunter’s Mark on your main target before combat
- Cast Steady Shot before combat
- Cast Multi-Shot
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Multi-Shot
- Cast Explosive Shot
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Multi-Shot
- Cast Volley
- Cast Aimed Shot
Multi Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (never use Volley and Trueshot without casting Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot in between)
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Multi-Shot to spend Precise Shots and activate Trick Shots
- Cast Aimed Shot if its close to 2 charges, or Spotters Mark is up with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Rapid Fire with Trick Shots active
- Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot (with Trick Shots active) outside of Trueshot
- Cast Aimed Shot with Trick Shots active
- Cast Steady Shot to generate Focus and fill downtime
Dark Ranger
Single Target Opener:
Note: Every time you proc Deathblow, you want to immediately consume your next Precise Shots with Black Arrow.
- Cast Hunter’s Mark on your main target before combat
- Cast Aimed Shot before combat
- Cast Black Arrow
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Black Arrow
Single Target Priority:
- Cast Black Arrow to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend Precise Shots
- Cast Aimed Shot if its close to 2 charges, or Spotters Mark is up
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Explosive Shot outside of Trueshot
- Cast Steady Shot to generate Focus and fill downtime
Multi Target Opener:
- Cast Hunter’s Mark on your main target before combat
- Cast Aimed Shot before combat
- Cast Black Arrow
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Black Arrow
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Multi-Shot
Multi Target Priority:
- Cast Black Arrow to spend Precise Shot and activate Trick Shots
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Multi-Shot to spend Precise Shot and activate Trick Shots
- Cast Aimed Shot if its close to 2 charges, or Spotters Mark is up with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Rapid Fire with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Aimed Shot with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Explosive Shot
- Cast Steady Shot to generate Focus and fill downtime.
Playstyle
The 3 most important things of MM rotation are:
- Keep your cooldowns rolling. Rapid Fire, Explosive Shot and sometimes Kill Shot should be used as soon as they come off cooldown. Aimed Shot should never hit 2 charges.
- Manage your Precise Shot stacks. It is very important to not overcap on them.
- Always keep casting! If you need to cancel Aimed Shot due to movement, cast an Arcane Shot or Steady Shot while moving, if your other abilities are on cooldown.
Marksmanship Hunter revolves around 3 different “stack mechanics”, that are buffed and altered by our talents.
Precise Shot, Spotter’s Mark and Streamline.
Precise Shot is buffing your “filler spells”, like Killshot, Arcane Shot and Multishot, whereas Spotter’s Mark and Streamline buff both the damage and cast time of Aimed Shots.
This loop is mixed with your other hard hitting abilities such as Rapid Fire, Explosive Shot and Kill Shot. All of those spells can be used while moving!
Cooldown Usage
Marksman is essentially capped by the cooldown of your abilities as well as Focus cost.
Trueshot gets rid of a huge portion of this cooldown, allowing for very high burst damage for the duration.
Dark Ranger and Black Arrow
While playing the Dark Ranger Hero Talents, Black Arrow turns into your Bread and Butter spell for both Single Target and AoE.
Bleak Powder lets Black Arrow deal a significant amount of our AoE damage. It also activates Trick Shots when hitting 2 targets. Keep in mind that Bleak Powder does not affect the main target, making Trick Shots trigger if we hit a Black Arrow on at least 3 targets
In every AoE scenario, make sure to replace Multi Shot with Black Arrow if it allows you to proc Trick Shots that way.
Sentinel and Lunar Storm
A big part of the Sentinel Hero Talents is Lunar Storm. It summons a damaging zone below your target for 12 seconds.
Lunar Storm is triggered every 30 seconds, when Rapid Fire is cast.
Casting Rapid Fire when Lunar Storm is ready is a very high priority, so make sure you track Lunar Storms cooldown, this resets your Rapid Fire, allowing you to trigger it as soon as Lunar Storm is ready.
Multi Target
Your main mechanic in AoE is Trick Shots. It gets applied by hitting 3 or more targets with Multi-Shot/Black Arrow(as Dark Ranger), or by pressing Volley.
Both Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot consume your Trick Shots buff to hit additional targets around your main target.
It is vital to reapply Trick Shots before every single Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot!
Volley grants you Trick Shots for 6 seconds. This iteration of Trick Shots does not get consumed, hence there is no need to reapply Trick Shots while Volley is still going.
This allows you to cast as many Rapid Fire and Aimed Shots as you can fit in quick succession for huge burst damage.
Defensives
Hunters have a really solid kit of healing effects and defensive cooldowns.
We have Survival of the Fittest on 2 charges as our main defensive. On top of that we can use Aspect of the Turtle as an immunity.
Exhilaration is our self healing skill, it comes with a neat Heal over time effect.
Hunter’s Avoidance gives us 5% passive Avoidance to reduce the damage taken from a variety of AoE effects.
In general Hunter defensives are strong with a shorter duration. Most of the time you are looking to use your defensives for single hard hitting abilities in Raid and Mythic+.