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 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 stronger execute. It can be even better if paired with Steel Trap.
- Keen Eyesight 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, Single target long stun, and a 3s AoE stun (Binding Shot does not root anymore)
- Sentinel Owl and Sentinel's Protection: the latter being a “go to - choice” for most raid encounters. It provides you with a field that lets you ignore Line of Sight for several seconds, similar to the Kyrian-Covenant ability from Shadowlands. It also buffs your party’s leech for that duration. Your healers will love you for this.
- Entrapment: a niche ability, that enhances your Tar Trap, to root enemies in place. Very useful for the Spiteful affix, or keeping mobs in place in general.
- Scare Beast and Improved Tranquilizing Shot have their uses for certain Mythic+ affixes. Not necessary by any means. Still decent options to pick up in those weeks.
- 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
Bad Talents:
- Trailblazer: does not provide any combat benefit. It is a solid choice for farming world content and 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 focuses on long and strong Trueshot windows granted by Windrunner’s Guidance. It also has a strong execute phase thanks to talents like Bullseye.
To the left, we will aim to take Rapid Fire, one of our core spells, then Streamline, a talent that buffs our Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot. We will finally take Surging Shots, which increases our Rapid Fire damage and gives Aimed Shot a chance to reset the cooldown of Rapid Fire.
Follow up with Lone Wolf, which will allow us to do more damage if we don't have an active pet. Then, take 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). Also take Hunter’s Knowledge to buff our Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, and then finally Focused Aim, a go-to talent that buffs our main spells. We also want to pick up Target Practice, Deathblow and Razor Fragments to buff Kill Shot, giving it an AoE Damage over time effect.
We then take Tactical Reload, a talent that reduces the cooldown of both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, in order to reach Serpentstalker's Trickery that will allow us to completely ignore refreshing Serpent Sting manually, and Bullseye, as we said above, a strong execute damage that will reach 30 stacks quickly, thanks to Rapid Fire.
We will also put 3 points into Legacy of the Windrunners and Windrunner's Guidance, two talents that have been redesigned for patch 10.2.
To reach the Trueshot talent, we put 1 point in Volley. 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, and is giving us higher Focus regeneration.
If you don’t want to bother yourself throwing a Steel Trap at the Boss every 30 seconds, you can remove this talent point and put a second point into Arctic Bola instead. This makes the rotation way less obnoxious to play, while only losing around 0,5% damage.
AoE/Cleave for Raid & Mythic+
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The difference in this build is that we remove Target Practice, 1 point in Precise Shots, as well as the points from Deathblow and Razor Fragments. Instead we want to pick up Multi-Shot and Trick Shots, that enable our abilities to cleave on nearby targets, and finish off with Bulletstorm and Salvo.
If more than 6 targets are present during an extended period of the encounter, feel free to switch Bulletstorm for Light Ammo.
If you will only face AoE scenarios with up to 4 targets, you want to pick up Heavy Ammo instead.
In the class tree, we drop 1 point in Serrated Shots for Explosive Shot. Hydra's Bite can be used over Poison Injection on 4-targets fights only.
For Mythic + purposes we want to pick up a couple of utility talents like Tar Trap and Tranquilizing Shot. Depending on the Key you can switch around a few points, to get access to talents like Improved Tranquilizing Shot for Raging weeks, Entrapment for Spiteful weeks, Scare Beast for the Incorporeal affix, or switch the choice node on Binding Shot to Scatter Shot for an additional interrupt. Take away points from Pathfinding, or Camouflage to achieve that. Sadly you are unable to pick up Intimidation, since we are not using a pet.