Marksmanship Hunter Talents Guide

C4PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwCMwwohBwMYDAAAAAAAAYGzYGmxMzYGMmmxYGz22mZmZYmZYmZZwsMYGAAAzMGAMTbMMAbD

C4PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwCMwwohBwMYDAAAAAAAAYGzYGbzYGjZwYaGjZGLbbmZmhZmhZmlxYWGmZAAAjxYAwoNwAsN

C4PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYzYgBIwwWgZBAAAAAAAAYGzYGmxMzYGMmmxA222MzMzyMzMjZmFMzygZAAAMzYmZmBIMMAbA

C4PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAbDMgJYGWCMLAAAAAAAAAzYGzYbGzYMDGTzYALbbmZGbzMzMmZWYmZZYmBAAMGjZGzAEwAsB

The only “mandatory” talents in the Hunter tree are your defensive and offensive nodes. The entirety of your utility toolkit is interchangeable depending on the situation you are in.

Notable offensive nodes are:

• Specialized Arsenal: a flat 10% damage increase to Aimed Shot.
• Combat Experience, Precision Strikes, Serrated Tips, Trigger Finger and Keen Eyesight which are passive stats.
• Unnatural Causes: Increases your damage over time effects.

Mandatory defensive nodes are:

• Hunter's Avoidance for a passive 5% avoidance.
• Rejuvenating Wind and Natural Mending to buff your Exhilaration
• Padded Armor and Lone Survivor to buff your main defensive cooldown Survival Of The Fittest
• Touch Of Grass to increase your maximum health by 10%
• Improved Aspect Of The Turtle, Shell Wall and Born To Be Wild to reduce the cooldown of Aspect Of The Turtle and make it reduce even more damage against non-deflectable damage sources
• Roar Of Sacrifice for an extra active defensive button or Guardian's Hide for 3% passive damage reduction

Apart from those mandatory nodes there are a bunch of utility options that you can freely pick, depending on your needs.

• Intimidation with Guttural Roar grants you access to an AoE stun
• Binding Shot with Horsehair Tether grants you a Vortex-like ability
• Tranquilizing Shot can be used to Soothe or Purge enemies
• Camouflage can be used to run past enemies invisible
• Emergency Salve allows your Feign Death and Aspect Of The Turtle to remove poison and disease effects

The Midnight expansion brings a lot of changes to the talents of Marksmanship, not so much in terms of gameplay changes tho.

There are a lot of passive damage nodes that buff our main abilities Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire and Arcane Shot, or our damage output in general, like Lethality granting us extra Critical Strike Damage. Therefore I will just give a brief overview of gameplay altering choices.

Trick Shots and Aspect Of The Hydra in combination with Light Ammo are our AoE nodes. In the case of Trick Shots, they let us cleave Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot on/above 3 targets with Multi-Shot, whereas when talented into Aspect Of The Hydra you just passively cleave on a secondary target with all of your spells without the need for any special setup.

Tenacious and Cunning grant us access to “pet bound” utilities like Freedom, without an active pet. You will be talented into Tenacious most of the time for the added health and damage reduction.

Kill Shot, Deathblow and Headshot / Deadeye grants us access to Kill Shot / Black Arrow and a nice stacking damage mechanic for prolonged combat and execute

The newly added Focus Fire and Unload Capstone Talents turn Rapid Fire into an insane Burst Button, that is able to fire up to 2 Arcane Shot or Kill Shot / Black Arrow during execute.

This synergises exceptionally well with Bulletstorm and Incendiary Ammunition, which is granting us a huge amount of Critical Strike damage after using Rapid Fire.

In the middle of the tree we find several talents that buff Trueshot:

• Feathered Frenzy increases the amount of Spotter's Mark
• Unerring Vision grants us a stronger Trueshot. This is a choice node with Calling The Shots which grants us more frequent Trueshot
• Tensile Bowstring reduces cast time and Focus cost of Aimed Shot
• Double Tap allows for even higher burst by doubling the first cast after casting Trueshot

Dark Ranger

Dark Ranger replaces Kill Shot with Black Arrow, a powerful single target ability that we can use above 80% and below 20% HP, or when proccing Deathblow.

We also receive a different variety of ways to reset Black Arrow. Soul Drinker grants Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire a chance to proc Deathblow, Ebon Bowstring grants Black Arrow a chance to reset itself.

Withering Fire grants us Deathblow whenever we press Trueshot, and Wailing Dead makes Trueshot “recastable” with Wailing Arrow, which also procs Deathblow.

Bleak Powder and Umbral Reach allow Black Arrow to do AoE damage and passively spreads the Black Arrow DoT to every target you hit. When hitting multiple targets, Black Arrow will grant Trick Shots, allowing you to skip a cast of Multi-Shot.

Blighted Quiver with Withering Fire also massively buffs the amount of damage Black Arrow does during Trueshot, turning the spec into an even more burst oriented variant.

The defensive trait in this Hero Tree is Smoke Screen which allows Exhilaration to be used as a third charge of Survival of the Fittest and vice versa. This is incredibly strong!

Sentinel

Sentinel replaces Spotter's Mark with a stronger version called Sentinel's Mark, which works exactly the same as Spotter's Mark. It has a chance to be applied when consuming Precise Shots with Arcane Shot or Multi-Shot. In return you receive a huge damage increase to your next cast of Aimed Shot.

The remainder of the talents revolve around giving you some passive Critical Strike damage, turning Rapid Fire damage into Arcane to bypass armour or increasing the effectiveness of Sentinel's Mark.

The important talent nodes are Can't Miss, Won't Miss, which grants us a substantial increase to our Precise Shots damage, as well as a 4 second longer Trueshot. This is especially valuable, since we have lost another talent, leaving the base duration of Trueshot at 15 seconds.

Furthermore we gain access to Moonlight Chakram, a “recastable” version of Trueshot, which does a chunk of damage and explodes after bouncing a couple of times.

Since Lunar Storm has been redesigned to be a damage proc, rather than a stationary damaging zone on a cooldown, the hero talent tree has been a lot more simple to play around.

The defensive trait in this Hero Tree is Don't Look Back, which grants you a 10% maximum health shield, every time you consume Sentinel's Mark. This shield makes surviving big hits a lot easier, while also allowing for some passive damage reduction in rotting scenarios.