Class Talents
The Class tree Talents contains essential spells and passives that are mandatory for any situation as a MM hunter, other talents that are situational, and some others that are just not good enough to be picked.
Mandatory Talent:
- Kill Shot : core spells of the spec
- Improved Kill Shot: a talent that gives you more damage on Kill Shot's critical strikes. There's just no reason not to take it because most of the upper tree's talents don't increase DPS
- Posthaste and Pathfinding: two talents that give you movement speed, which is needed for pretty much every situation. Posthaste can also dispel you from some movement-impairing debuffs
- Counter Shot: Hunter's kick is needed for pretty much every situation
- Survival of the Fittest paired with Lone Survivor or Nature's Endurance (fight dependent), Born To Be Wild, and Hunter's Avoidance: talents that give the Hunter mandatory decent survival skills.
- Serrated Shots: more damage on bleeds and strongexecute. It can be even better if paired with Steel Trap.
- Keen Eyesigh and Death Chakram: flat critical strike chances and a strong cooldown that is good in pretty much every situation.
- Arctic Bola: This gains more value as MM than BM hunters because Aimed Shot triggers it, and we cast it a lot. A solid choice overall, even more for AoE situations.
- Master Marksman, Serpent Sting, Hydra’s Bite, and Poison Injection: This branch is pretty solid for a Marksmanship hunter. You want to pick Poison Injection for every situation except on 4-target fights, where you pick Hydra’s Bite instead.
We don’t have that much choice at the bottom of the tree, considering that we don’t play with Kill Command and a Pet at all as MM, so we can completely ignore the branch at the bottom left of the tree.
Situational Talents:
- Misdirection, Camouflage, Tar Trap, Tranquilizing Shot, and Binding Shot: most likely used in Mythic + content or, if needed, on some boss encounters. They provide you with a threat redirection, a stealth, AoE slow, offensive magic and enrage dispel, and a 3s AoE stun (Binding Shot does not root anymore).
- Steel Trap and Improved Traps: strong in ST situations, they lose a lot of value in AoE situations. It's pretty much always better to pair them together.
- Explosive Shot: this can be a good pick instead of Steel Trap in AoE or Cleave situations
- Sentinel Owl and Sentinel's Protection: fight dependent, the leech can also be good for your party members.
Bad Talents:
- Trailblazer: we already have enough move speed, and it works only after 3s after being out of combat, so kinda useless (maybe while farming old content or leveling)
- Intimidation and Wilderness Medicine: We don't use pets as MM because of the Lone Wolf passive
- Entrapment, Scare Beast, High Explosive Trap, and Improved Tranquilizing Shot are super niche talents that will probably never be used
- Barrage: Explosive Shot is better now in AoE/cleave situations
- Beast Master, Improved Kill Command, Killer Instinct, and Alpha Predator: this branch is completely useless since we don't play with a Pet and with Kill Command
Talent Builds
Single Target
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This build gives your Kill Shot more power by taking the talents, Deathblow, Razor Fragments, and Bullseye. It will allow you to cast it outside the execute window and buff the Hunter when the target is below 20% remaining health. So overall a nice build with a strong execute phase.
To the left, we will aim to take Rapid Fire, one of our core spells, and Streamline and Surging Shots, two strong talents that will buff our Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot.
We take Improved Steady Shot, which will give us more focus, so overall gameplay with a bit less downtime; Precise Shots, a talent that will significantly increase the damage of our Arcane Shots. Follow up with Lone Wolf, which will allow us to do more damage if we don't have an active pet, Careful Aim, a powerful talent that buffs Aimed Shot when the target is above 70% health (even stronger on fights where you lust on pull), Target Practice to buff our Arcane Shots; and also Focused Aim, a go-to talent that buffs our main spells. We also put 2 points into Steady Focus, a talent that gives us haste after casting Steady Shot twice in a row.
Serpentstalker's Trickery will allow us to completely ignore refreshing Serpent Sting manually, and Lock and Load will give us procs on Aimed Shot. Bullseye, as we said above, is a strong execute damage and will reach 30 stacks quickly, thanks to Rapid Fire.
To reach the Trueshot talent, we will take Tactical Reload over Volley., the new talent from patch 10.0.5 reduces the cooldown of both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Trueshot will then be reachable, our main cooldown that allows us to have a strong burst window. We will then finish the tree by taking Eagletalon's True Focus and Unerring Vision, two talents that will buff Trueshot and reduce the Focus cost of some abilities.
AoE/Cleave for Raid & Mythic+
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The difference in this build is that we remove Steady Focus, Tactical Reload, and Bullseye to get Volley, a strong cooldown that does AoE damage and gives you the Trick Shots effect during its duration; Multi-Shot, an other core spell for AoE damage, that we will link with Trick Shots, Bulletstorm and Salvo.
Because we removed Steady Focus, we need to take Deadeye to be able to reach Serpentstalker's Trickery and Lock and Load. This makes us save 1 point that we can keep in Hunter's Knowledge.
This extra point that we have in Hunter's Knowledge can also be put into Heavy Ammo or Light Ammo, depending on the number of targets. Heavy Ammo on 4-target like The Primal Council Boss, for example, Light Ammo if more than 6 targets, like in the Algeth'ar Academy dungeon. This point can also be used in Wailing Arrow if we need some CC (in M+ or on Dathea's adds, for example.
In the class tree, we drop Steel Trap and 1 point in Serrated Shots for one more point in Arctic Bola and Explosive Shot. Hydra's Bite can be used over Poison Injection on 4-targets fights only.