Playstyle & Rotation
Single Target Opener:
(Everytime you proc Deathblow, you want to immediately consume it with Kill Shot)
- Cast Hunter’s Mark on your main target before combat
- Cast Aimed Shot before combat
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend all remaining Precise Shot stacks
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
Single Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (if talented)
- Cast Rapid Fire when Lunar Storm is ready
- Cast Trueshot
- If talented into Precision Detonation, Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot if you have a Lock and Load proc.
- Cast Kill Shot to spend Precise Shot
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend Precise Shot
- Cast Rapid Fire (delay it by up to 7 seconds if Lunar Storm is about to be ready)
- 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 Volley instead if talented)
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Multi-Shot (Skip if Volley is active)
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Multi-Shot
Multi Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (if talented)
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Multi-Shot to spend Precise Shot and activate Trick Shots
- Cast Rapid Fire with Trick Shots active (hold it for up to 8 seconds if Lunar Storm is about to be ready)
- Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot (with Trick Shots active) if you have a Lock and Load proc.
- Cast Aimed Shot with Trick Shots active
- Cast Kill Shot if you get a Deathblow proc
- Cast Steady Shot to generate Focus and fill downtime
Single Target Opener:
(Everytime you proc Deathblow, you want to immediately consume it 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 all remaining Precise Shot stacks
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
Single Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (if talented)
- Cast Rapid Fire if Bulletstorm is not active
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Black Arrow to spend Precise Shot
- Cast Arcane Shot to spend Precise Shot
- If talented into Precision Detonation, Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot if you have a Lock and Load proc.
- 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 Volley instead if talented)
- Cast Black Arrow
- Cast Rapid Fire
- Cast Multi-Shot (Skip if Volley is active)
- Cast Explosive Shot
- Cast Trueshot alongside your combat potion and active trinkets
- Cast Aimed Shot
- Cast Multi-Shot
- Cast Black Arrow
Multi Target Priority:
- Cast Volley (if talented)
- Cast Trueshot
- Cast Multi-Shot to spend Precise Shot and activate Trick Shots
- Cast Black Arrow with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Rapid Fire with Trick Shots active.
- Cast Explosive Shot followed by Aimed Shot (with Trick Shots active) if you have a Lock and Load proc.
- Cast Aimed Shot with Trick Shots active.
- 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, as long as Trick Shots is active (without consuming Trick Shots itself). In every AoE scenario, make sure you have Trick Shots running before pressing Black Arrow.
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, and save your Rapid Fire for a bit, 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, 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! This is primarily done by spending Precise Shot stacks on Multi-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 and Fortitude of the Bear when using a Tenacity pet. When playing Marksmanship you also gain access to Fortitude of the Bear when playing without a pet as well. 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+.