Today I’m going to talk cookie cutter glyphs and specs for marksmanship hunters. That’s right, specs plural. There are a myriad of viable builds for marks, and I was rather overwhelmed when I made the switch.
Specs
First up, we’ll talk about specs. The first question you need to ask yourself is whether you are going to try to make an armor penetration build work, or whether you’ll be gemming agility like the rest of us mere mortals who have to run out of fires and void zones. If you choose to go with the standard agility based itemization, you’ll want the following talents as a base: 7/53/7. This allows you 4 points to spend as you see fit. We’ll talk about those soon.
If you are going to try for the armor pen build, you need something more like this: 7/55/7. This forgoes improved arcane shot, which you won’t be firing while you’re standing still and can fire steady shots or aimed shots. There’s one point in focused aim because it’s needed to get to the 4th tier, but you might need to use your last two points in there to remain hit capped if you’re using all your gems on armor penetration.
Now, you need to decide where to spend your remaining points. First thing you’ll notice is that rapid recuperation has some nice synergy with rapid killing. It’s a core mana effectiveness talent that allows us to get the most bang for our buck with rapid fire, and scales with fights that have adds (which is to say a lot of Ulduar). The second most likely place to look at is improved steady shot. This is both a DPS increase and a mana saver, but requires you to be standing still a lot and firing a lot of steady shots.
TLDR: Assuming you’re not in need of these points for something else, the best personal DPS can be had from this spec: 7/57/7.
I’m gonna keep going even though I just used my TLDR. What else could we possibly spend out talent points on? Well, firstly, improved hunter’s mark. Only one hunter needs it, but we all benefit from it. To the tune of 80 DPS each (for my raid at the time I made my calculations). Secondly, if you don’t run with a DK or shammie who can provide 10% AP, you can take trueshot aura.
Major Glyphs
Now that we’ve chosen our spec, we need glyphs. The only non-optional glyph we have is the glyph of serpent sting. It’s not optional because it adds so much DPS. The reason it works is that by increasing the duration of the serpent sting DoT, it increases the “total damage” done by serpent sting, which is a factor in the damage we do with chimera shot.
The last two majors you can choose from:
- Glyph of kill shot- good for progression fights near the enrage timer, trash, adds. My personal favorite.
- Glyph of chimera shot- shows lower DPS than it should on the DPS spreadsheet because the latency defaults to 150. Change this to 100 and you’ll see it more accurately. Changes your shot rotation, less steady shots.
- Glyph of steady shot- more than either of the first, but this is not a shot you can cast while moving. **Note- this is currently bugged, and you get the effect of this glyph if you take marked for death. This bug will be fixed on the next patch, it seems.
- Glyph of aimed shot- this reduces your cooldown on aimed shot and allows for a much smoother rotation, however it’s hard to model how much of an increase that gives you. It’s an option.
- Glyph of the hawk- last on my list because I’m haste capped and haste only affects auto-shots for me now, but it’s close to the first three either way.
- Glyph of hunter’s mark- if you picked the short straw and are talenting hunter’s mark, take this too. For one person DPS numbers, it’s low, but considering other hunters, it’s more than worth it.
Honestly, there is no right answer. Choose the ones you feel would benefit your play-style most. More importantly, aside from the obviously bad ones, here’s a list of glyphs to not take:
These are all much much worse than they sound.
Minor Glyphs
Feign death and mend pet. You pick the last one, but these two are the only ones that actually affect our fights.
That’s marks in a nutshell. Go ahead and remind me what I’ve forgotten in the comments. Extra points for arms warrior jokes.
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
I will have to disagree with you on the aimed shot glyph.
I’m currently using glyphs of SerpSting, Aimed, Chimera with an AGI MM Build with Improved Arcane Shot. Why aimed? Because of the reduced cooldown of 2 seconds.
Now if you actually try this rotation of SerpSting->Chimera->Aimed->Arcane->SS->SS->Chimera->Aimed->Arcane…etc. You will notice how smooth the rotation is without interrupts. You won’t have to make that split second decision on whether to cast a chimera shot or an aimed shot etc.
Chimera shot = 10 sec – 1 sec = 9 sec
Aimed shot – 10 sec – 2 sec = 8 sec
Arcane shot = 6 sec
You can see how my rotation works based on the shot cooldowns.
I didn’t say it doesn’t increase DPS, but does this rotation change justify the loss of the other ones? The spreadsheet doesn’t think so, but I’m open to other data.
Good article!
For what it’s worth
Serpent
Chimera
Kill
Show as the best 3 combination for me from the website DPS numbers. I do currently run with Aimed instead of Chimera….but that’s because I can’t find the glyph on our server :(
the only issue with your aimed and chimera glyphs is the GCD is on a 1.5 second timer, which also puts chimera and aimed shot at a conflict, hence the very low latency required to be able to use it, if you are even a 10th of a second late, under 150ms, it’s not even worth your time to get it.
steady shot, serpent sting, imp aspect <3
though i am ArP marks.
I would think that the Aimed Shot glyph would also increase in value with an ArP build, although I don’t have anywhere near enough ArP to find out for myself.
that would probably be true, but aimed shots only do a little more damage than steady shot, which is what you’d be firing when aimed is on cooldown. The steady shot glyph is a must have for ArP builds, and whether the aimed shot glyph or glyph of the hawk is more DPS would be the question.
oh boy is this going to be a bit of a reach but im going to go out on a limb and ask. how big of a role is arcane shot in a marks hunters rotation. obviously its magic damage so it wont benefit from armor pen and such, and eventually it gets neglected all together by armor pen builds. The heart of my question stems from lock and load effecting arcane shot. Now don’t laugh yet..well maybe a little, but if on fights like auriaya were you stand at min range. couldnt you drop a immolation/explosive trap proc a LnL and burst 3 instant arcanes. I would think with points in Imp. Arcane Shot like you suggest that this wouldnt be a horrible idea since all you need to ditch is focus fire, imp aspect of the hawk, and silencing shot. I just was messing around with the talent calculator and thought it might be an interesting idea
To get L&L, you have to forgo chimera, afaik. As for generally how arcane and marks get along, take a look at this.
Since Steady Shot is our weakest shot, and the Chimera Glyph is said to change the rotation (fewer Steady Shots), does it make any sense to spec the Improved Steady Shot talent?
If not, where might those points be better spent?
Those points are certainly not the most DPS, but they’re more than arcane shot, and not having arcane shot in your rotation will actually boost their DPS to the point where it might be worth it. Assuming you have no mana issues, I honestly can’t think of anywhere else to dump them. Unless you’ve drawn the short straw and are speccing improved mark.
I’m just curious about u’re choise to spend a talent point in silencing shoot and not in trueshot aura, since from my experience, silencing shot isn’t that resoursefull in raids or instances, while trueshot aura boosts u’re attack power
Trueshot aura does not stack with the DK or Shammie 10% AP bonus, while silencing shot does damage to the boss. I just macro silencing shot into all my other shots so it goes off automatically (unless it’s needed)
After loading my character into Femaledwarf.com, I found that Glyph of the Hawk, and Glyph of Trueshot Aura come in 2nd and 3rd for dps. (at least for my gear and spec) Tested it out on the Raid Dummy and got mixed results from previously being glyphed in Steady shot and Hunters Mark, but the majority of the time, TSA and Hawk was higher.
Make sure you have an accurate depiction of your raid buffs and debuffs loaded into femaledwarf.com- if you run with a DK or shammie that provides a 10% buff, then you might find different results. Also, be aware that raid dummies are not a representative of your real DPS- things scale differently when you’re unbuffed.
Respectfully disagree about aimed shot glyph being listed as one of the ones not to take. this glyph smoothes out the MM rotation with its 20% reduction on the CD. It also allows for more instant shots while running for your life, which is pretty much the norm on boss fights since Ulduar. Perhaps not a clear choice for third, but should be listed among the viable choices. Also, glyph of the hawk is trash and haste capped MM hunters don’t seem to get it. You get 4 steady shots with almost no haste as chim comes off cd, or you can cap your haste, get 4 steady shots and stand there waiting half a second for chim to come off cd, effectively wasting nearly 400 points of gear itemization that would better serve you as crit, arpen or attack power. Great website and appreciate the hard work gone into it.
I agree- I wrote that part a while ago before someone had figured out how to make the aimed shot glyph work. I’ll go edit the post.
Nah, seriously when raiding your crit chance is guna be more than probably over 60% no need to have more crit.
You guys all know the steady shot glyph doesn’t work if you spec marked for death, right? just wanna clear that up for anyone that doesn’t know.
I would reccomend you downloading Shandara’s spreadsheet and play around with differnt specs before you assume and test on target dummies wich spec is better.It takes everything into consideration about your Hunter wich should not lead you to a poor mistake if following properly.
might be a stupid question …
but why we need glyph of serpent sting to make the duration longer if our chimera shot can keep refreshing the sting ?
Because the increased length of the serpent sting increases the serpent damage of chimera shot.
What do you get when you cross an Arms warrior with multiple mobs?
A dead Arms warrior.
I loled :)
Serpent Sting, Steady Shot & Trueshot Aura is currently the best glyph combination for me according to femaledwarf calculations.
Right now, chimera beats TSA for me, but I’m nowhere near where most marks hunters are on ArP.