The Way I do the Things I do, updated!

Updated 4/16

Here's some information on huntering.  I've got a bit more time under my belt in wotlk since I first made the post, and hunters really haven't changed much in that time.  I tweaked and added a couple of things, but in general, we're still using priorities, and MM is still doing better than survival.  Anyhow, enjoy

Spec:
There are 2 reasons why I went with Marksman over Survival.  First, on paper it provides better dps in every gear setup I've had since 80.  Second, I find the rotation to be much easier than Survival.  Survival DPS centers around Lock and Load.  Since Lock and Load does not finish the cooldown of explosive shot, I found it difficult even with a helper mod to track it.  My Lock and Load annouce would go off, but I couldn't use it.  I had to keep checking evey other second or so while in the meantime I'm diverting attention from say, pet survivability.  There are a couple of fights where surv is better, and you also may want to dual spec it for replenishment if needed.  In general though MM is king. 

With Marksman, the spec tends to center around 7/57/7 with small variations.  I know my spec is slightly off from the cookie cutter one, and I find it works well for me.  There are a couple of things that you might change around as your gear gets up there, but it still will be 7/57/7.  Feel free to check out my specs for ideas, I have one with and without improved hunters mark.  Also, Marksman gives you barrage and improved barrage.  There's a LOT of aoe fights, and having these talents helps a lot. 


Rotation/Priority
Long gone are the days of macros and clipping.  We are now back to the best method from old world WoW, the priority!   Effective priority organization is important though.  My Priority is listed below:

Serpent Sting
Rapid Fire*
Kill Shot
Silencing Shot
Chimera Shot
Aimed Shot
Readiness*
Misdirect**
Steady shot
***Arcane shot

*Put these in rotation after 2nd chimera shot to maximize target debuff/self buff
**Insert into rotation only if requested with a focus macro.  Not needed for the most part, although obviously may be an opener.
***Arcane would go after aimed if your armor penetration is low.  Otherwise keep it on the hotbar out of your rotation when you need extra instants.

Serpent sting - This is a no brainer nowadays.  It is instant, does good damage for the mana, refreshes with chimera shot, and boosts the damage of chimera.  

Rapid Fire - The sooner you use this, the sooner you boost your damage, the sooner it will cool down for use again.  4 rapid fires on a boss is good fun.

Kill Shot - The massive damage this delivers with an instant cast puts this at the upper end of the priority.

Silencing shot - The most mana inefficient shot we have for the damage.  Why so high on the list?  It is off the global cooldown, so it can sneak in between other shots.  With replenishment flying around the raid, mana really is not a problem.

Chimera shot - The bread and butter of today's MM hunter.  This is your most damaging regular use shot, especially coupled with serpent sting.  

Aimed shot - Instant cast, decent damage, and adds a MS debuff.  Mainly just filler since the priority will keep up MS anyhow so you don't need to keep it in reserve just for it.

Readiness - ZOMG Everything above this is ready to go again, score!  Go back to the top of the list!

Misdirect - Aside from an opening misdirect, any other misdirects should go here to minimize DPS impact.  Really though, our tanks should be able to generate enough threat to not need it during the fight.  Don't worry about this unless asked.

Steady shot - How the mighty hath fallen!  In TBC everything centered aroudn Steady shot, and now it is just the kludgiest most useless shot we have.  It is the only shot without a cooldown, and so it is filler for your rotation.  Now, once you get some armor penetration going, it can outperform arcane shot, at which point you drop arcane from your priority.

Arcane shot - Instant cast, tends to do less than Aimed shot, and may do less than steady shot with some armor penetration.

Note, if there are multiple mobs and you are single target DPSing instead of Volley, swap in Multi-shot instead of Aimed shot.



Run and Gun

Movement has historically been the bane of hunters.  In TBC with steady shot being predominant moving would utterly demolish our dps.  However, WotLk helped that immensely.  With 4-6 instant casts availble, your priority rotation doesn't have to stop when you get up and go.  So many fights are heavy in movement that you'll be doing a lot of shooting on the move.  Here's another point where MM beats out survival, no need to sit still for sniper training



Pet

If you aren't sure, use a wolf.  They generally provide the best DPS boost of any pet to a MM hunter for PVE.  While there are a lot of options for PVP, wolf is currently the go to for raiding.  Doing some research, there may be a couple of other pets that might be a tiny bit better than a wolf, but the difference is negligible.  It's on my radar, but it hasn't been a big enough deal to change yet.



Glyphs

These are the Glyphs that on paper show the biggest improvement for me:

Kill shot - Reduced cooldown on our most damaging shot, woo!
Chimera shot - Reduced cooldown on our most important shot, woo!
Serpent sting - The incresed duration essentially equates to increased damage from Chimera shot.  Plus, if you have to switch targets, this gives it more ticks for damage.

Mend pet - Adding happiness in the middle of combat is full of win.  Also not having to worry about the type of food you carry is handy.  I have not fed my pet *ever* because of this glyph.
Feign death - More frequent aggro dumps.  Nice to have when you need it, but like any minor glyph not game breaking.
Revive pet - If you absolutely must get your pet back in combat, pushback is one thing you don't want to deal with.  

Those are pretty much the only minor glyphs that are of any use in combat, feel free to pick others.



Gear

I base my gear around a spreadsheet found at Elitist Jerks.  It is a great help at planning things out.  I don't think Rawr is quite as good, but Rawr is probably easier to use.  You should try to use SOMETHING.  Another great resource is www.femaledwarf.com.  It's based on the spreadsheet, but is a bit more user friendly. 

Gems
AP gems will actually help slightly more than Agi based gems for Marksman due to TSA adding 10%.  Gems with +hit tend to be a waste.  Gear just tends to bring +hit on its own so I just gem up AP, Agi, or Crit.  The differences will be minimal, so don't worry about changing over Agi gems to AP or anything.

Potions
Pop a potion of speed right before a fight to get some extra haste time, and then after that, use a potion of speed for fights with no mana issues, and mana potions for those with.  You really should never have to use a health potion.  If you do, the raid is probably wiping, or you pulled aggro, or you stood in the fire.  Your potion timer is much too valuable to waste on health potions.  This has been true since my first time in Molten Core.

Rapid Fire/Readiness/Call of the Wild
I burn these right at the beginning of the fight, because there is a decent chance they'll be up again before the end of the fight.


Edited by Kuro - Apr-16-10 at 7:55am

Yeah, I forgot to add a couple of things, that was one of them Shic :D

If you have mana troubles on a boss that has a mana bar, by all means use viper sting instead of serpent sting for a few rounds of it.  You'll lose MUCH less DPS that way instead of switching over to viper aspect.

Also, if you haven't done so already, I would suggest organizing a hotbar to follow the priority.  Mine goes down the line from right to left.  That way it is easy to see if something higher priority has come up.  I just go down them in order.

Updated a bit

Good Stuff! Comin back to this thread when I hit 80.

Does anyone know of a good BM rotation for leveling?

Well yeah my current rotation is pretty much send pet in (macro'd with Hunters Mark and pet cooldowns etc) Serpant Sting and then Spam Steady Shot, with Aimed Shot thrown in whenever its up. I was just hoping that there was an option to tweak a little more dps, interactivity and fun out of it for at least instance boss fights? I mean right now there are fewer buttons to press than for Druid tanking, and that says alot!

Originally posted by Xaazier throw in rapid fire, lol

It's macro'd to trigger with aimed shot whenever the cooldown is up

A note on silencing shot - people frequently macro it to other shots, like chimera.  I don't do this since on certain fights I want to have silencing shot available on demand.  (Like getting sucked inside Frostmourne on LK).  Personal preference, but it is an option for people.

If you'd dump your macros and start hitting all the keys independently, you'd have more interactivity.