How to Play a Marksmanship Hunter in World of Warcraft

The hunter class in World of Warcraft is fun to play because you get the benefits of long-ranged combat and you get to control your own pet. You have to make a decision, starting at level 10, on where you will focus your talent build. A marksmanship talent build for your hunter in World of Warcraft will give you a great array of damaging shots and some amazing abilities.

Instructions

1. Focus on your marksmanship talents. There are a few talents that you need to pay special attention to and a few you probably shouldn't worry about. Be sure to get aimed shot, as it will probably be your opening attack. Trueshot aura and silencing shot are great talents when you get to a higher level. Improved hunter's mark and the go-for-the-throat talents are ones you probably shouldn't worry about.

2. Pick up some helpful talents from the other talent trees. Monster slaying, humanoid slaying and entrapment from the survival talent tree are all useful, as are improved aspect of the hawk and endurance training from the beast mastery talent tree.

3. Equip gear that focuses on agility and intellect. Agility will increase your critical strike percentage, dodge chances and increase your armor rating. Intellect increases your total mana and the rate at which you learn weapon skills. Stamina, attack power and critical strike rating are also good things to look for in equipment.

4. Try the following sequence for combat: cast hunter's mark and start with an aimed shot, then use a concussive shot followed by your chosen sting, then use arcane shot followed by auto shot until your arcane shot cools off and repeat. You can set up a macro that sends your pet to attack when you cast your hunter's mark so your pet can keep the aggro while you shoot.

5. Learn to use melee combat. Your bread-and-butter is ranged fighting, but when you do pull aggro, you need to be able stay alive until the other guy is dead. Try not to neglect melee combat. Use the times when you are grinding mobs to build up your melee skills. If you never use it and a big mob or elite comes at you up close, you're toast.

6. Use your traps. It is easy as a hunter focusing on marksmanship to forget you even have the ability to use traps, but freezing traps and immolation traps will save your life more than once if you let them. Using freezing traps in conjunction with concussive shots will make it incredibly difficult for many enemies to get close enough to you that you cannot use your ranged attack abilities.

Tips & Warnings

• Try not to forget about your pet. Your pet needs to keep the aggro, which means that your enemy should be attacking your pet and not you. It is important to keep your pet happy and to utilize it in battle to be a successful marksmanship hunter in World of Warcraft.