“OK, I got aimed shot… What next?”
Hi guys, today we’re going to talk about speccing a hunter for arenas. I will concern myself mostly with 3v3 and 5v5, I will deal with both marks and surv but not beast mastery, and I will address pet talent trees at the end.
Survival
My spec no longer varies for 3v3 and 5v5, but it used to. I’ll go over my talent spread for both brackets when I’m playing survival (which is most of the time now), and in the process you’ll learn a little bit about pvp philosophy. These days I prioritize dps over everything. Anyone who has checked my armory knows I abuse the hell out of pve gear, and I’m not ashamed. Hunters got a raw deal when the “burst damage” cards were dealt, and I do everything I can to compensate for this, including maxing talents like improved hunter’s mark and improved tracking. You don’t have to max these, but I would recommend always putting at least 4 talent points in improved tracking. You may have noticed I don’t max hawk eye. I find 41 yds unnecessary in arenas as the area in which most fights actually take place on most maps is pretty tiny. I do occasionally have a hard time getting in range of healers to scatter them, however, so you can definitely make a case for maxing this talent.
If you do a lot of 5v5 and not much 3v3, you can afford to put just 1 in survival tactics or skip it completely (as long as you’re glyphing disengage), you should absolutely spec point of no escape, you should avoid deflection at all costs (I rarely get disarmed in 5s), and I would try to find room in your spec for master tactician, because there’s always time to stand and nuke. No matter what your bracket is, I would always get trap mastery and resourcefulness (max them both) and avoid surefooted, savage strikes, noxious stings, and sniper training at all costs. There are better places to put your points, period.
For those who 3v3 the most, I would suggest that you always have survival tactics maxed (and keep glyphing disengage), and don’t be so hung up on master tactician. It’s a good talent for dps, but 3v3 can be frustrating from a dps standpoint. The games often end in 30 seconds, it’s hard to pretend you’re getting your money’s worth. Consider deflection (and even counterattack, if you think you’ll remember to use it) if you love using a 2-hander, but I rock my 1-handers and a weapon chain for 3s. Using 1-handers also lets you eke out a little more resil, which is key in 3s. Things get dispelled more often in 3v3 relative to 5v5, so you can afford to drop improved hunter’s mark (likewise, if you do 2s I wouldn’t bother with this talent), and in 3v3 I would opt out of point of no escape unless you play with a melee partner. That said, there aren’t many other places to put these points if you’ve already maxed imp tracking and hawk eye and whatever else, and point of no escape is only 2 points. Trap mastery, T.N.T., and lock and load are all must-haves no matter what, and if you love to 2v2, I would always get counterattack. That pretty much sums up my advice for speccing survival. On to marks!
Marksmanship
There are two general ways you can go with your MM spec, based on how much you use hunter’s mark. If you believe hunter’s mark is your bread and butter, as I do, then I would spec something like this. There’s a lot of options in the MM tree, but so many of them are random number generator based talents that are meant to boost pve dps, like piercing shots, improved steady shot, and wild quiver. If you like them, you can take points out of concussive barrage, trap mastery, or efficiency to get them. I would hold on to the efficiency talents, however, because MM is more mana intensive than ever now that we can drop 3 traps at once. Trap Mastery really isn’t that crucial for MM hunters, but I would probably spec into it since hunters are always dropping frost and nature traps these days. I don’t feel comfortable saying it’s better for 3v3 than it is for 5v5 or vice versa, because it’s only as good as your trap spells are. Because traps can be situational, this talent too is situational. I don’t really like piercing shots that much, but I could see a use for it if you run comps that rarely ends games in the first 30 seconds. Improved barrage, it should be noted, has a lot of synergy with piercing shots, so don’t be afraid to put a point or two in it along the way.
If you never use hunter’s mark, you could skip improved hunter’s mark and even neglect marked for death (I’m not sure how anyone can justify skipping MfD, but I know some people do), and end up with something like this. This gets you a lot of the RNG talents, which some people (who are surely in the minority of pvp hunters) prefer, and it saves you from wasting talents on an ability that you aren’t using anyway. As an aside: If you look closely at marked for death, you’ll see it grants you a bonus to crit damage whether or not hunter’s mark is active on the target. Even people who don’t use HM would do well to spec this talent.
As with survival, if you are 5v5ing mostly, you can skip survival tactics and just dump the points into efficiency, which is never a waste for MM hunters. You can also dump all those extra points into focused aim and ditch some hit gear. I’m not good at math so I can’t tell you whether the damage increase is worth not using hunter’s mark much, but skipping improved hunter’s mark (and/or MfD) definitely gives you lots of options.
Depending on how much you’re getting focused, you might want to ditch points in improved tracking and put them in survivalist instead. MM hunters generally keep themselves alive through use of cooldowns rather than reliance on passive defenses like HP and resilience, but stam never hurts.
Pet
That does it for speccing yourself, now how about speccing your pet? That’s quite easy if you love tenacity pets like I do. The spec doesn’t vary much and you have enough points to get just about everything you could possibly want for pvp. This is the spec I prefer for my gorilla and you’d be hard pressed to convince me to change it. For my crab, however, I do spec into charge, for the obvious synergy it shares with pin.
Ferocity pets are as simple to spec and I’m not going to waste time giving advice about them. Anyone who uses one of these in arenas obviously doesn’t care much what abilities his pet has, he just wants to see big numbers.
Cunning pets are tricky. On the one hand they have a lot of situational talents that can turn them into dps machines when the stars align, but they also have a lot of defensive talents that you need to spec into if you want to keep them alive. This is what I would spec for situations where your pet is getting focused relentlessly. As you can see, it’s not possible to really get all the bread and butter cunning pet moves like roar of sacrifice, bullheaded, and roar of recovery at the same time. This is the main reason I don’t use cunning pets.
In case you didn’t know, cornered reduces the damage your pet takes by 60%+ when it’s below 35%, not just its chance to be crit by attacks. This makes it a very nice talent. Now if only mages and locks couldn’t bring it from 50 to 0 in a second… If I wasn’t worried at all that my pet was going to die, I would do this with it. This way you get some damage and utility, and if you’re lucky, it’ll catch some heals. Until heart of the phoenix (or blood of the rhino), is available to all pets, I will stick with my gorilla and my crab.
-Jurgwena
Good write up. I both pvp and raid as MM. I have played around with a couple different MM PVP specs including using LnL with Arcane Shot. Fun for BG’s. I have been wanting to change my pvp spec around and drop LnL for upcoming new arena season. When you said “Hunters got a raw deal when the “burst damage” cards were dealt, and I do everything I can to compensate for this, including maxing talents…” I could not agree with you more. I took your MM build and tweaked(some you pointed out) it a little to give a little less survival with more PewPew. 0/55/16 Compared to your build I loose 2 points in Efficiency, Surv Tac and Survivalist. I gain Combat Experience, Piercing Shot and Wild Quiver. Combat Experience is a must have in any MM build IMO. The other 2 are RNG for sure but worth it if you have a moment to stand and nuke in a burst moment.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunter=000000000000000000000000000053350310322132331050310515200332010000000000000000000&glyph=010709000000&version=10192
I’m gonna have to disagree with you heartily on Combat Experience. Efficiency will give you much more bang for your buck. I’d probably even put those pts in imp barrage before speccing combat experience. It just isn’t a very good talent for pvp. Wild quiver also is pretty weak, and you could get more of a steady dmg increase by putting those pts in imp hunter’s mark (or focused aim and losing some hit gear) imo.
edit: you already have imp hunter’s mark, so I would consider maxing survival tactics or putting the rest in efficiency.
I’m at work so i cant see if Wild Quiver is the steady shot talent, if it is why do you take it? I VERY VERY rarely get to use steady in areans? Maybe its cause i do mostly 2′ and some 3′s.
Wild quiver is a random attack that procs off auto attack.
Ohh, ok cool. Sorry about that, the government doesnt feel as if WoWhead is an important site to visit during work hours… if they only knew.
Out of curiousity (I’m a terribad PvP-er), why dismiss BM out-of-hand? Is it because of how reliant it is on keeping the pet alive, or just because the dps is too low? I would think that high-uptime CC immunity and an interrupt/stun (Intimidate) would be powerful tools in PvP.
BM has its place in pvp, but only in the 2k-2200 bracket. I don’t spec it, not so much because I’m never playing in those brackets (I am, sometimes) but because respeccing and reglyphing for it is a hassle, and I’m not serious about any team that I play on at that rating. You can make BM work, but you don’t need advice on how to do it. Its merits are obvious even to a “terribad pvper” :P
Cheers
If you guys want I can include a little bit about the kind of comps I would consider BM for. It’s definitely useful in zerging games to 1850 :P
Can I ask why you dont use a tutle for pvp? Shell Shield looks like it would be useful if they started going sick on the pet.
It’s a great pet, I just don’t have the patience to level one, and a spider is survivable enough that it’s not necessary
I did not see what to take of glyphs in the MM section. What makes me kill stuff wile surviving^^?
disengage, aimed shot, and serpent sting
sorry about that!
Now as of 3.3 should we spec for Culling the Herd? What I currently believe is that only Ferocity pets should be specced into it, as other pets can’t probably crit at all in PvP, can they?
that’s right John. I wouldn’t max it even with a ferocity pet unless u really had nowhere else to put the points. I’ve been itching for blizzard to free up those 3 pts for hunters for a long time now, so 3.3 was a pretty good patch for us as far as wotlk goes.
I followed your guide and tried to make a good MM PvP build for myself. I ended up with this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZzeAcohdhhsgzVof0hwsb
However, I have some questions. Should I rather use a weapon chain and free those three points in Deflection? What about one point in Go for the Throat – is it useless in PvP? Is Improved Barrage worth it? I didn’t see mana that big problem in my case, so I didn’t take Efficiency at all, but took 2/2 Rapid Recuperation. However, I guess I could have better use for even those points, as I’m playing a setup in low ratings with a shaman where our primary “tactic” is at the moment to just burst down very fast.
I guess Survivalist is a better talent than Endurance training, isn’t it? If I’d take a weapon chain I ended up in a build like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZzeAcohdGhsgzVof0hiob . Is Combat Experience worth it, and if not, where should I spend those points?
Thanks in advance for tips.
Yes you should use 2 1hers w/ a weapon chain if you’re MM. Sometimes I use a 2h, but i never spec deflection unless I’m SV
GftT is horrible for pvp, never put anything in it. Imp barrage isn’t worth it, but efficiency certainly is (you don’t have to max it). combat experience is decent…there are other places you could put those points, but I can’ give you a specific suggestion. Endurance training is indeed terrible, but I don’t even spec survivalist as MM. Too many other places that need the pts in the MM tree. if you’re super low on points you can always go 2/3 hawk eye
I didn’t open up ur specs, if there’s a particular spec you want comments on let me know
Thanks for the tips, I think I have a quite good MM build for myself now.
Would you say your Surv PvP build is good for BGs? I just recently started PvPing more than usual….got tired of raiding all the time…and I have to admit I have found a new liking to the game. I have been messing around with different specs, but I haven’t been able to find the right one for me. I am currently below hit cap so I had to throw 3 points in FA (sucks I know). I’m curious to try your spec in BGS. I noticed you didn’t have any points in Master Tactician but in your description you say to get it.
Any advice would greatly be appreciated….here is the link to my current wowarmory.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&cn=Brothanoumsy
I’ve been following your posts for quite some time and these posts are extremely helpful. Thank you for posting all this useful information!
Yeah survival can be fun in BGs, but I don’t think anything beats a good MM pvp spec for BGs, because you can just go from killing blow to killing blow with rapid killing and rapid recup without worrying too much about mana (and MM has higher burst, overall). You have a decent weapon which is necessary for MM but surv is fine too. Survival doesn’t have much in the way of defensive talents, but for mindlessly spamming 1 button to get kills, it’s hard to beat explosive shot. Let me know if you want any more specific advice
Thanks for the response. Quick on that…lol. I did have some questions about your Surv PvP spec:
I noticed you didn’t have any points in Master Tactician but in your description you say to get it. How much of an impact is it in general without Master Tactician, that you have noticed?
As far as trinkets, what would you suggest to get? I keep hearing people say the Battlemaster’s Trinkets, but since I am below hit cap and I’m wasting points in FA, I’ve had people suggest Mark of Supremacy (128 hit on it).
Thanks!
yeha u need to be hitcapped, there’s plenty of pvp hit gear to get but mark of supremacy is an easy shorterm solution
how about a rhino for eye of the storm with charge and horn toss one hit wonder off the edge
lol i have no doubt that that would be fun as hell