Highest DPS Talents – Hunter Build For Patch 3.3
Posted on January 12th, 2010 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, Dranei, Dwarf, General Tips, Heroics, Horde, Hunter Pets, Instances, Leveling, Night Elf, Orc, PVE, Patch, Raiding, Spec, Tauren, Tips, World of Warcraft, WotLK, hunterMarksmanship Build Back At The Top In Patch 3.3
We’re not really sure why Blizz does this from time to time. Back in tBC Marksmanship hunters were all the rage, with the odd BM hunter holding on to his leveling days until they finally gave up and joined the Marks crowd at some point. At the beginning of WotLK it was the BM guys who had their Devilsaurs stomping around shaking screens in everyone’s face. Then, finally, Survival hunters have been the flavor of the last six months or so (a spec I always wanted to play in tBC – when I was still allowed to play a DPS toon).
That all changed in the last patch, and we’re back to Marksmanship as the top DPS spec again. The Wikki Simulationcraft engine lists four builds for DPS potential:
- Beast Mastery at 9725 DPS
- Survival at 10920 DPS
- Marksmanship at 10964 DPS
- Marksmanship at 11084 DPS
So BM has definitely been relegated to leveling duty once again, which may be because everyone else simply hates the BM pets in a raid. The other builds are separated by by just 164 DPS, so it certainly doesn’t man Survival is dead by any means, but if all you care about is beating everyone in a raid in DPS, you’re probably going to want that 11k DPS build giving you every possible advantage.
Remember that this build is based on the Simcraft engine, but what what we’ve been able to tell from testing in multiple classes and specs – the engine just doesn’t lie. My Shaman now hardly ever uses Chain Lightning, and my Mage pushes like 2 buttons. And it works better than just making things up as you go along. But, there will always be subtleties in every priority list that our readers will point out in the thread below the post, so ask questions if you have them and the experts will come to you. And yes, we’ll try to make sure they are nice to the nubs.
Gear
Here is the best in slot hunter gear for T9T10 in Patch 3.3; at least it’s best in slot based on current content and what someone could possibly have at this point. That doesn’t mean you could run out and get all this gear in a week, or even a month, but it should give you an idea what you should be (cough) shooting for.
Talent Build
Patch 3.3 Marksmanship Hunter Spec Build
Glyphs
Major
Minor
Priorities
- Flask = Endless Rage
- Food = Hearty Rhino
- Hunter’s Mark
- Pet (Wolf)
- Trueshot Aura
- Aspect of the Hawk
- Serpent Sting
- Rapid Fire
- Kill Command
- Aimed Shot
- (wait for Chimera Shot if Cooldown on Chimera is less than .25 sec.)
- Chimera Shot
- Kill Shot
- Readiness
- Steady Shot
That’s all there is to it. Kill command when you can, and then Aimed Shot at the top of the list. Follow Aimed with Chimera and Kill Shot when it becomes available. If not, pop readiness and then do steady shot. So it’s really just Aimed shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot – Aimed Shot (Chimera Shot if cool-down is up), Steady Shot – Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot. And you pop cooldowns for rapid fire and readiness when they are available, although you’ll want to wait on the readiness cool-down until after you’ve used both Chimera and Kill shot so they refresh for the next run through the list.
Damage Sources
Pawn Scales
This pawn scale is a little rough, since the engine didn’t spit this out and we had to build it manually, but it should be as close as you could hope for without the programming help.
( Pawn: v1: “Marksmanship”: Intellect=0.519, CritRating=0.893, Agility=1.444, HitRating=0.236, ArmorPenetration=1.116, HasteRating=0.124, Ap=2.837, GemQualityLevel=81 )
So for those of you who played Marks back in the tBC days, now is your chance to go back to your roots. For everyone else, there at least is a very viable option to Survival builds, although BM is a good 1,300 DPS behind. I was a big fan of Survival being the top spec, not that the guild will ever let me play a hunter, but it gave me a warm and squishy feeling deep down. But no matter if a hunter was your first toon, or just another in a long line, this Marksmanship spec will help you Dominate.
thanks law i just got my hunter on kal and my one on fen to 80 perfect timing and yeh great deeps but as a hunter from day one of wow it saddens me that hunters arn’t hunters anymore sigh
anibow
You are losing 55 dps with Aimed Shot glyph. Replace it with Kill Shot glyph.
Power Priority:
Rapid Fire
Kill Shot
Kill Command
Serpent Sting
Silence Shot
Chimera Shot
Aimed Shot
Readiness
Steady Shot
Hurray for MM hunters once more! The Glyph of Steady shot has the wrong link though (sorry to be a bummer). Was there a reason why the 4pc set bonus was skipped btw?
Do not follow this guide. Wrong stats on shot damages, bad rotations,
gear is mostly from 3.2
I agree. The spec is ok. You can also go 3 points in focoused aim instead of rapid killing if you can get hit under 5%. Or you can go 3 pts in hunters mark if ur hit caped. Rapid killing is a lousy spec for a few reasons. It slows your rediness by 15 seconds because you have to use rapid fire, use rediness, wait 15 sec to use next rapid fire then wait 3 min for another rapid fire then rediness again. Also if the fight is a 5 min fight you only get 1 more rapid fire which is only 3 extra auto shots. For longer fights that are 10 min or longer you can get 3 extra rapid fire and with rapid recuperation thats 9 auto shots but what might be just as nice is rapid recuperation gives u 60% mana back for 3 rapid fires.
The priority is completely wrong though. Chimera should defintitly come before aimed shot, not only does chimera do more base damage but chimera also does chimera serpent.
If your nub or ur computer is bad don’t glyph chimera shot and ur rotation is faceroll: chimera, aimed, steadyx4 (kill shot first) and you get 1s of down time
If your really good try glyph of chimera shot. Your rotaiton will be a lot harder because there’s no down time but your dps will be a bit higher.
Chimera aimed steadyx4
chimera steady aimed steady steady steady
chimera steady steady aimed steady steady
chimera steady steady steady aimed steady
chimera steady steady steady steady aimed
chimera steady steady steady steady steady
the idea is you don’t want to wait on aimed shot and put 5 shots between each chimera, that way u’ll get the perfect 6 shots every time 9s chimera cd is up(assuming u have enough haste for 1.5s/shot to match GCD with steady shot, should be 10% or more). Unless if U fell like your really good just stick to the basics.
wow i tried your rotation out and lost almost 1K dps..hmmm think i will stick with what the site is saying. it actually upped my dps
YOU ALWAYS START WITH AIMED WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE AND CANT UNDERSTAND THE FACT THAT IT GIVES YOU BONUS DMG!!!!!!ARE YOU TARDS??????
great post. I heart my surv spec though… exp. shot just so OP!
To me the difference in the numbers you posted are not enough for me to lay down my SV spec just yet. I do not raid anymore so I only have the best gear you can get with the Triumphs alone, and one piece of frost gear the back piece something onslaught cape or something like that. I am finishing heroics with 5K (pushing 6K sometimes) in most boss fights. The few raids I do go on causually for the weekly raid quests, I am still in the top 5 for DPS so why change. It is a good article though but to me the DPS difference is negligable. I play for the fun of it now because raiding every night burnt me out last year sometime. Keep up the good work.
Derisaan, 80 SV Hunter – Kirin Tor
Leemo, 80 Enhance/Resto Shaman – Kirin Tor
Chosen Few guild officer
Can you please link the SV spec you suggested. I am SV and given the small difference i see in DPS between MM and SV would prefer to stay SV however I would like to examine my SV and improve it if possible too.
Just giving the highest DPS spec is not helpful.
It is a priority list Tom, not a rotation. Since you seem to be an expert – you should enlighten instead of just /spit. Why don’t you post your rotation for everyone to learn from. Not sure what you even mean by wrong stats on shot damages – the graph is found in its entirety here http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/wiki/SampleOutputT9T10Hunter if you feel that we have misreported the facts as they have them. As for gear, best in slot for 3.3 is yet to be determined by the Sim engine or anyone else for that matter since we haven’t seen any of the heroic equipment from ICC since those modes are not available yet.
So to match you:
Tom didn’t read the post right. He didn’t fact check the post, bad grammar, poor syntax, mostly just a troll.
I personally skipped over the glyph of serpent sting and went with the chimera shot glyph cause theres no point in getting it if it get refreshed every nine seconds and the glyph reduces the damage the ticks my tests have shown an improve in dps with what I use I also prefer SV but if no other MM hunters in group than ill do it SV seems easier to maintain a steady dps with.
i like ur spec tho looks alot more man effiect than mine cause thats the only real whole ive seen with MM. Never had mana problems with SV.
srry for leavin so many comments tested ur spec its a keeper increase of at least 1k dps and 100k overall damage before running out of mana. Used chimera shot glyph instead of serpent sting but dont know how much that effects dps.
Thanks it works!! I wish i could find a macro with it – sorry i am no expert in macros
When this was 1st posted, I tried it on my allied hunter. And even with moderate gear, mostly blues and a green trinket, I was topping other peoples recount lists in dps. Can’t wait to see the improvements with better gear.
WHy Aspect of Hawk? I prefer Aspect of the Dragonhawk.
Recommend new arrows; Iceblade Arrows.
And don’t forget Spiced Mammoth Treats for your pet.
Awesome article. This is exactly what I needed as I just leveled my hunter to 80. What a huge improvement in my dps after making a few changes to my spec and glyphs. Thanks.
This guy is a genious. I’ve been following his advice for the last year. He knows what he’s talking about. His MM spec n rotation is very mana efficient w. a huge dps output. Keep rollin these posts out as patches release, plzzzz.
Since you are constantly refreshing Serpent Sting when you use Chimera Shot, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to switch your Serpent Sting glyph out for the Chimera Shot glyph?
Serpent Sting Glyph increases also the Serpent damage of the Chimera Shot.
To complete the above, what would be the talent build for the pet?
hi either I am doing something terribly wrong or dunno, but I just resspeced and stacked ARP have 651, my gear isnt’ too good but had to drop some iLevels on some pieces for ARP, now on target dummy i lose 1k dps…
I was wondering, I see a lot of hunter, maybe most hunters, using the serpent glyph, increasing the timer on serpent sting for 6 seconds. Why would that be more useful instead of Chimera Glyph(decreasing this by 1 second) since Chimera refreshes the sting even before the sting nearly comes off the target?
The longer the serpent sting the more damage you do and since chimera shot is based on 60% of the total serpent sting damage it increases your chimera shot damage
Your rotation doesn’t include arcane shot, which it really should. Testing on a targeting dummy, leaving arcane shot out of my rotation clipped my dps pretty badly.
Hi Ali, the reason is that Chimera shot causes damage based on the amount of damage that your serpent sting “would do”. This means that if it “would do” more damage if it’s timer was increased, thus making your Chimera shot hit harder.
People use the serpent sting glyph cause chimara brings all damage done over the time of the sting into damage and if your sting is up for 6 seconds longer it’s higher dps output.
Serpent sting glyph is a must for a MM hunter because Chimara Shot instanty deals 40% of the damage caused by your serpent sting. So..if you’re serpent sting ticks for six seconds longer it takes that into account and your Chimera deals that much more damage. And epidemic–I hope you got your TrueShotAura up. And if youre doin everything right your dps should be very similiar to your SV dps.
Can I please have a better rotation for this. I use (Macro-Hunter’s Mark/Kill Command)-Rapid Fire-Serpent Sting-Arcan Shot-Aimed Shot-Chimera Shot & Steady Shot.
As usual, you guys at DYS dominate, have been using this build for much success since you first recomended it. Thanks for the help and …”Tips To Dominate By”…lol..gl all…Ott
Thanks for the post ive tried it with a couple very minor changes to the spec. Just hit 80 5 days ago so my hunters gear is only about a 4200 rating atm but im still pulling 6k dps on boss fights love it. Keep up the good work.
There was someone above who was wondering about the question of “why leave out arcane shot?” in your rotation. At higher gear levels — especially in a gear set which includes a lot of armor penetration — leaving arcane out can be a dps increase (as arcane is not physical). It is the case for me. Also, once you cross that threshold, you can move points out of improved arcane into other areas, which also helps boost overall dps.
I realize that this is pre-icc gear but once u get icc gear glyph of the hawk over aimed shot pulls a little more dps. Also wats a good point to start stacking ArP I know with lower agilty, crit, and attack power it doesnt make for more dps until u get to a certain point with them. And last what are best profs for a hunter I am curently JC and engineering but i see a lot of hunters in top guilds using BS and JC.I like engineering but if its a nice jump in dps to go BS then I might.
Plz a rotation would help?
Apen is only beneficial to a MM hunter, and only if you can hit the hardcap of 1400, ya thats right, 1400 apen. But there is a softcap of 722, which requires the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, the apen proc trinket the drops from H FOS. So stack agility, unless you have the trinket and can get your gear up to 722apen. And as for a good rotation…Hunters Mark, obviously, then SpS>AimSh>Chimera>Readiness>AimedSh>Chimera>Rapidfire — and use steadyshot as your filler until Aimed or Chimera is ready. And Aimed Shot is your priority. In boss fights try and tme your readiness w/ the boss hitting 20%hp so you can hit killshot then readiness, and another kill shot, back to back kill shots=good stuff.
GL
O. And as for professions, ya the best dps profs are definately JC and BS, sik gems and extra sockets to put em in. But Id say JC is a must. You can lvl your JC high enough in to equip and make the +34 gems in a few hours w about 2k. You’ll just need to shop around on the ah. And use your “prospect ore” the you learn as a jewelcrafter, and prospect ore to get the mats you’ll need to level.
i think this would increase dps overall. I’ve been bm sv and now it looks like mm is gonna take me in. I have a pvp spec mm already (duel specced) and someone told me to switch on saurfang 25 man for the 10 % ap increase. Long story short I changed and noticed my chimera was hitting for 10000+ damage. I was pretty amazed because I was still overall high in the charts and I had no idea what I was doing. Pulling 7k with a made up (myself) pvp spec in mm pulling that much I was amazed. When I copy this spec… get my gear with more arp then agi gems (I’m full agi eh) I think this would be a very good overaall dps increase. I’m always looking on how to increase my dps and I never thought about switching specs. Thanks for the help and hopefully this increases it up. i also think its gonna be a lot funner popping killshot chimera readiness kill shot chimera. sounds like a good way to get 70000 damage fast (:
How do the rotation macros from TKAsomething work with the guidlines here. I’m pretty savvy with macros and programming but quite frankly the extent to which they are outlined at TKA seems a bit overkill. Anyone with some practical experience using them?
I use macros for my KC and other abilities, of course, but nothing as elaborate as these.
This guide is incorrect and misleading on a lot of points. Your link to the custom profile shows a Tauren Hunter that is gem’n ArP too soon. You advise getting the Aimed Shot glyph (wrong choice) but your talent build on wowhead shows you with the Kill Shot glyph. You advise the wrong flask/elixirs, food, and aspect. A lot of the comments here are incorrect as well, but I won’t go into all of that because it would take too long…
ok, if everything here is incorrect then point us / link us to a valid / correct post so we can take a look. thank you
These kinds of posts are useless. It’s like saying, “OK to be the best first you have to be the best…” It’s, appropriately, a fantasy world these guys are living in. What would be useful is a “leveling” spec once you hit 80 and a path to getting good gear not some pie in the sky dream world setup that only 4 people on a whole server might possible have.
The 7/57/7 spec is the best for progressing through low level gear. You would just move the points from Focused Aim to Improve Arcane Shot. People will say you are bad but you will beat them on charts every time. Especially if used during the 1 sec down time between steady shot and chimera shot.
Fair point:
-1st priority is to get to the hit cap of 8% If your there id consider moving points out of focused aim and into rapid recuperation.
-If you have 2t9 improved stings is lovely if not maybe consider speccing into imp arcane shot. Remember theres no point weaving arc shots into your rotation if are stacking arp and theres no point having arp if u dont reach the arp cap (cos it scales poorly). Imp hunters mark is another good option that will have phys dps loving you. General rule- Imp mark competitive with as little as 3 phys dps in the raid.
That said survival will out dps mm at lower gear levels basically because explosive shots does not scale of bow’s base dps.
Otherwise this mm spec is solid for all levels of gear just dont be bad (or have qt animal photos as dps).
A little point though it is. In my experience most Hunters were, infact, BM for DPS back in TBC. You state it as being all MMS but when I was raiding virtually every Hunter was a Beast Master, including myself. Perhaps it was different on a larger scale of servers but thats the way I remember it certainly.
Nice, but just wondering, is there a link to show what my pet should be specc’ed as? Like what points go in what talent for him?
BM was actually the best DPS spec in TBC, marksmanship was awful.
Hey im a nub at hunters (just got my first one to 80) and i dont really understand the rotation given above. i would love some help maybe a very nub-friendly explanation please. i already pull fair dps with my shit gear but i wanna dominate so please help thanks
Firminator-Lvl80 Orc Shaman
Jeseus- Lvl80 Blood Elf Paladin
Lyçån- Lvl80 Blood Elf Hunter
Hunters are an easy class to play there really aren’t that many buttons. Your rotation should be as follows: First Serpent Sting,Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, (Rapid Fire),Steady Shot, Then Readiness to do it all again. I have noticed with all the moving in ICC arcane shot has been forgotten because of the ARP for MM. If you think about that 1 sec downtime you have its a easy instant shot to let loose while readjusting to start your new rotation in a safer location out of fire or w/e. My hunter does over 10k with a 5500gs. Still rocking a 251 bow with Mirror of Truth and the Scorpion. SO, looking at the improved crit for your steady shot/arcane shot crit talent until ARP cap you can put those extra 3 points in Imp Arcane shot and see a great improvement in dps. Especially seeing how hit is never an issue on gear.
this is a really good start, later youll find other stuff to make your hunter but when i switched to this chart, i did 6k at icc and almost 12 on a mob, now my min. dps is 8k but if i didnt start here, ill still be happy when i reached 4k dps in the servival spec =D bthx for posting
Why people doesn’t use arcane shot? It hits like brick and good when other shots are on cooldown!
In your build link it shows that we can use arrows as ammo with a gun. Is this a new ability in Cataclysm?
People use the serpent sting glyph cause chimara brings all damage done over the time of the sting into damage and if your sting is up for 6 seconds longer it’s higher dps output.
was woundering is their agility cap for MM Hunter’s
Right, I have just read through this post and all it’s comments and I will attempt to use the spec at some point albeit I have only just levelled my Hunter to 80 today and as yet have not ‘geared up’ to any significant level to be able know what is going to be the business just yet. This Hunter is my third 80, having an DPS DK and Holy / Tank Pally too and what I have learned since the first day I started playing is that you need to work your spec and rotation to the gear you have. It’s all well and good talking about T9T10 gear etc but if you are a) able to spend most of your life on WoW or b) unable to raid regularly due to not being in a raiding guild, being able to pug because you dont have the ach or indeed being a class that has been overused, nerfed and since become quite unpopular (yes I am talking about the DK lol) then the liklihood is that it wont be much help to you. What I did with my DK was spend a lot of time and a lot of gold on re-speccing / re-gemming (having made mistakes along the way) to suit the gear I had. Like the poster above, I dont raid regulary and my gear is the max gear available in triumphs along with a frosty cloak and as yet, still have not got the dented hilt weapons either (I dual wield liars tongues) making my GS around 5.1k which isnt very high in t he grand scheme. With this, my spec and gem choice, I do 3k DPS which whilst I am aware that this is generally pretty low in comparison to what could be done, I know for a fact that this is the best I can do with that kit and I also know that often my DPS is higher than better geared DK’s aswell. The point of this is that you can search the net for the best specs but your DPS will always be dependant on your gear and if you dont have the best gear you wont have the best DPS in the room. However, there are some basics that are worth knowing which you can learn such as the hit cap, what gems compliment what abilities and so forth along with choosing your rotation based on cd’s and damage etc. As for levelling, I switched around a bit during my later levelling (70 – 80) from BM, to SV to MM and whilst I definitly got the best damage out of MM (without gems etc etc) when soloing it was impossible for my pet to keep the aggro unless I pulled back severly on the throttle, which kind of defeats the object of having high DPS when levelling. So my personal reccomendation for levelling would be BM with a decent tank pet (I love my Rhino) that will keep aggro and dual spec with either SV or MM (whichever floats your boat) so that when you hit 80 and will be taking duns more seriously (or should I say that people will be taking your DPS more seriously and giving you grief when you dont deliver) that you can crank up the heat that BM wont give you. I don’t mean to be a hater if thats your impression from my early comments, I have just come to dislike the class system that has appeared in the game and the arrogance that comes with it. It’s a game, enjoy it.