Marksmanship Hunter

Overview

Talents and builds

Level 60 and raid build

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Key talents

• Ranged Weapon Specialization5/5Increases the damage you deal with ranged weapons by 5%
• Barrage3/3Increases the damage done by your Multi-Shot, Aimed Shot, and Volley abilities by 10%
• Mortal Shots5/5Increases the critical strike damage bonus on all ranged abilities by 30%
• Trueshot Aura1/1Increases the Ranged Attack Power of party or raid members within 45 yds by 15
• Efficiency5/5Reduces the Mana cost of your Shots, Stings, and melee abilities by 15%
• Careful Aim5/5Increases your Attack Power by 100% of your Intellect

Reading the Marksmanship tree in priority order for a single-target shot build: Careful Aim (adds melee and ranged attack power equal to a percentage of Intellect) and Mortal Shots (bonus critical strike damage on ranged abilities) come first, since both are flat multipliers on every shot that follows. Trueshot Aura is next: in Forever it grants ranged attack power only to the party, a narrower version than 1.12’s melee-and-ranged buff per the demo notes. Barrage adds a damage bonus specifically to Multi-Shot, Aimed Shot, and Volley — all abilities this spec’s rotation already leans on. Efficiency helps sustain the mana cost of a shot-heavy rotation. Improved Stings (1/3) is there only to open the tier that holds Ranged Weapon Specialization: this rotation casts no Serpent Sting, so the point buys nothing else.

On top of that spread, this build reaches further into Beast Mastery and down to the bottom of its own tree for three more measured damage gains. Unleashed Fury (5/5) adds 15% more pet and hawk damage and Ferocity (1/5) adds 2% pet and hawk critical strike chance. Lethal Attacks (5/5) adds a flat 5% critical strike chance with all attacks, and Ranged Weapon Specialization (5/5) adds a flat 5% more damage with ranged weapons — both are the kind of unconditional multiplier that’s hard to pass up once the points are available.

Rotation and priority

This site’s own simulator plays Marksmanship as the most direct read of the shared Hunter shot rotation, with no Serpent Sting: the rotation search measured the sting as a loss in the raid-ready run, about +1.2% for dropping it, because the global and the mana are worth more to the shots (the engine’s Serpent Sting damage is held to the client’s numbers, so this is the sim’s honest verdict, and the bare character comes out about level). In Forever, Multi-Shot and Aimed Shot share one 6-second cooldown. Aimed Shot’s 2-second cast pauses the auto shot while instant Multi-Shot does not, so on the shared cooldown Multi-Shot does more over a fight, and Aimed Shot is the opener only: before the pull, Aspect of the Hawk goes up and the opening Aimed Shot begins casting so it lands close to the start of the fight. In combat, Rapid Fire is timed to land together with an incoming auto shot right as Multi-Shot is about to come off cooldown, so both benefit from the same window. Multi-Shot is then cast every time the shared cooldown comes up, and Arcane Shot, which has its own cooldown, is the last filler whenever Multi-Shot is more than 1.5 seconds from ready and mana is above a 25% reserve. Arcane Shot is instant, so it never clips an auto shot, but it’s the least mana-efficient shot the spec has, hence the reserve floor. There’s no melee or pet-management component to this priority list — the spec stays at range for the whole fight.

Stat priority

1. 1Agility
2. 2Hit
3. 3Critical strike
4. 4Ranged attack power
5. 5Attack speed

Best in slot

Enchants and consumables

Races

• Human
• Orc
• Dwarf (Recommended)
• Night Elf
• Tauren
• Troll (Recommended)
• High Order Skyborne
• Windshaper Skyborne

Dwarf is the Alliance pick: Mace Specialization. Troll is the Horde pick: Berserking.

Professions

Community convention for Hunter favors Skinning for the cheap, plentiful leather this class already collects while killing beasts to level, often paired with Leatherworking for self-crafted agility gear, or Engineering for ranged-weapon scopes and trap-adjacent gadgets.

Leveling

Outlined: points added in this level range.

Beast Mastery is generally regarded as the stronger leveling spec for Hunter overall; Marksmanship’s single-target focus doesn’t clear trash as quickly without a pet built up the same way.