There’s no doubt about it, right now, the best hunter DPS in the game is done by marks hunters. Marksmanship is the end game raiding spec, if you have the gear.
There are presently two styles of marks hunters: agility and armor penetration.
ArP Marks Hunters
If you have the gear to make this work, you’ll be among the hunters doing the most DPS in the game. The damage you do will have shifted to be largely bleeds and physical damage, since while ArP increases your auto, steady, and aimed shot DPS (and crit size), it does nothing for your chimera shot and serpent sting.
The character I found this public parse for, Aerodynamic, currently has the highest hunter DPS parse for heroic 25 man festergut. He is, by definition, doing it right. He is just about hard capped on armor pen, and has managed to keep hit capped. [Edit: this was done with a bugged lich king weapon, so is not representative of actual in game mechanics. Also, and possibly because, Aerodynamic got way more tricks of the trade procs than most hunters get :P]
Unless you can hard cap armor penetration without sacrificing too much of everything else, you don’t have the gear to pull this off. The point where this becomes more DPS will depend on too many factors to give you a rule of thumb, but if you run your character through the DPS calculator, you will be able to see whether going for the armor pen hard cap is worth it.
Case in point: Darkbrew wrote an excellent article about trying this before you are ready.
That said, this type of build is the goal. When looking at potential upgrades, you should always focus on the ones that have armor penetration. Especially rare and valuable are ones with ArP and hit. Most ArP gear actually doesn’t have hit, however, and assuming you get as much of your gear as possible with armor pen on it, you’ll find yourself well under the hit cap. Luckily, Marks hunters have at least one point in their build they can use in focused aim, and another two points they can pull from some fairly low DPS talents (like rapid recuperation, improved steady shot, and trueshot aura).
You will see the most DPS from build like this (or one close to it), with the glyphs of serpent sting, steady shot, and kill shot. More on glyphing kill shot versus chimera shot later. The shot priority list is:
- Kill shot
- Chimera shot [Edit: unless you're ArP hard capped and improved steady has procced. Thanks Lem!]
- Aimed shot
- Steady shot
You should open the fight with a serpent sting, and as soon as your 2t10 procs, reapply the sting and keep it refreshed with Chimera shot. If you are ever moving, can’t stop, and are out of instants, you should fire an arcane shot. Since silencing shot is off the global cooldown, you should either macro it to everything so it goes automatically, or you should keybind it and manually cast it when you need interrupts.
One last warning: switching to a target without a bleed and armor debuff will cost you more DPS than other hunters. Still, since you start off with so much more DPS than them, you can afford it ;)
Also, not being able to move without clipping auto-shots will seriously hamper your DPS. Learn to stutter step and plan your movement ahead of time so you can go while you have instant shots available.
Agility Marks Hunters
Agility marks is far more common, because you don’t need to have nearly as specific gear to make it work. For this build, keeping the 2t9 bonus is almost a requirement. That set bonus is just too powerful in the hands of a marks hunter who gems agility to be passed up in favor of the 4t10 bonus. The damage done by agility marks hunters is a little more evenly split between physical and magic damage.
At very low gear levels, starting off in MM, you will probably keep arcane shot in your rotation. Of course, generally, at this level of gear, survival will be more DPS.
If you’re dead set on running as marks, even when SV is more DPS, here’s the build you’ll want when you’re still firing arcane shots. As for glyphs, you will probably see the most DPS out of serpent, steady, and kill shot again.
Your shot priority list is:
- Kill shot
- Chimera shot
- Aimed shot
- Arcane shot
- Steady shot
Once you hit the point where the calculators tell you you can take arcane shot out of your rotation, it goes back to what you saw above for the ArP hunters. Your build, however, gets a little more complicated.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be running low on hit, you won’t want to take one of your arcane shot talent points and dump it into focused aim. You still need a point somewhere on the fifth tier or below in order to keep a valid build. Efficiency is usually a waste, unless you’re running without mana buffs. This leaves us with a choice: leaving a point in improved arcane shot, putting a point in hunter’s mark, or putting one into focused aim. If you’re hit capped, already benefiting from the hunter’s mark, and good enough at moving that you rarely fire arcane shots, you’re not going to like this choice.
My personal suggestion is that if you are an agility marks hunter, it’s probably best to volunteer to be the hunter’s mark wench. In a 25 man with a paladin judging wisdom and plenty of replenishment going around, you can easily spare 3 points for improving hunter’s mark by taking 2 from rapid recuperation. If you’re lucky enough to have a heavy hitting ArP hunter in the same group, they’ll thank you for this, as they really need these points for hit rating. No other type of hunter has 3 throwaway points. In fact, unless there’s already someone providing this buff, putting 3 points into hunters mark is a personal DPS increase. Here‘s what that build would look like.
Glyphs
Let’s talk about glyphs for a moment. All marks hunters should make their number one glyph the glyph of serpent sting. This is because the increased length of the sting increases the damage of the chimera shot serpent portion. Second on this list is the glyph of steady shot. You will fire a lot of these, and this damage boost is clearly the front-runner for your second major glyph.
The third glyph, however, you have a bit of choice. Kill shot is my preference, however you might see more DPS with the glyph of chimera shot, depending on your latency. The best way to know for sure whether you have the latency required is to go to a target dummy, put up viper, buy a few stacks of cheap ammo, and fire your rotation at the dummy for 10 minutes with and without chimera shot glyph. If you get the same number of chimera shots per minute on average, you should use the kill shot glyph instead. This is very likely going to be the case if your latency is over 100ms. Another factor will be your buffed steady shot cast time- if your unbuffed cast time is over 1.5 seconds, for testing purposes, see if you have any old haste gear in the bank that you could swap out.
The glyph of chimera shot will reduce your cooldown by one second, which should in theory remove a steady shot from your rotation. In practice, however, this doesn’t usually work out. Try it out before raiding with it.
Conclusion
I wrote this over two days, strung out with a visio headache (which is like an ice-cream headache, except it lasts longer). If I’m missing anything or you have any corrections, let me know in the comments.
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
Shadowstreak
Ok,
I have been an hard headed SV hunter resisting the change. Now, that being said, I am starting to drop out of the #1 spot more often and looking for another way to boost that. So I have a few questions…
1. What is the final determination between 2pc T9 / 2pc To and 4pc T10 with 3.3.3?
2. What are the offical arm pen caps…before gemming, after gemming, procs/trinkets…
3. What trinket combo is normally used, as I have heard slow proc rates with the Scopion.
4. What is the Arm Pen BIS armor (non-ICC heroic) vs what I already have.
4. Someone Please take a look at my armory (Jonker — Zul’jin) and give me some suggestions. I want to Ninja switch specs in the raid and let it rock for those who have been “letting me know” that they beat me.
Thank you in advance for your help!
Jonker (the future MM)
(email: Jonker1991@yahoo.com)
Hi Jonker!
1-Assuming you’re going agility marks (which can be more DPS than SV), you absolutely want to keep 2t9, unless it’s the 10 man version.
2-The armor pen cap is 1400, and if you have a ArP trinket, you subtract the ArP proc from that to see your soft cap.
3-The needle encrusted scorpion is a piece of garbage- it mirror of truth is usually more DPS.
4-I’m working on a gearlist for ArP hunters
the second 4-I’m going to let the rest of the commenters here make suggestions :)
Thanks! Actually I have a lot of disposable cash, so i was gonna go all out and go Arm pen…re-gem everything at once…! might as well do it right, if I am gonna do it! =)
Read Darkbrew’s post before you do. Until ArP is producing more than agility, you might lose DPS by doing this.
“3-The needle encrusted scorpion is a piece of garbage- it mirror of truth is usually more DPS.”
It’s not THAT bad a trinket, and given how rare trinket drops are, it’s not a terrible option and certainly better than the Herkuml War Token for Marks.
According to the spreadsheets, trading my NES out for my old MoT would give me a significant 127 DPS loss.
Calling the NES garbage isn’t exactly encouraging for Hunters who have experienced rotten drop luck or have not been fortunate enough to have DBW or WFS handed to them in ICC.
I may have been a little more forceful than appropriate. The reality is, however, that this thing has a very low uptime, and is much more random than other procs which makes it much harder to stack with haste cooldowns. The greatness card is definitely better.
“The reality is, however, that this thing has a very low uptime, and is much more random than other procs…”
I agree. After reading this I tested it outby autoshooting a target dummy for the length of a Hunter’s Mark and there was a variance of up to 100dps between tests.
I have a question. Why should i take out arcane shot when im stacking agi? whats the point of taking an instant shot out that does a decent amount of damage out of a rotation? i mean i could understand if it was like a 2 or 3 second cast but still. would just like to hear the reasoning on that =]
Excellent post BTW!
Our top hunter, one of our best DPS, has always been Survival but recently (last week?) switched to Marks.
I noticed a nice upswing in his DPS and keep complimenting him on it, although he says he needs a lot more arpen to really make it work to its full potential.
I keep mentioning to him that “my favorite hunter blogger plays on our server.” :D Drenden for the win!
Awww, favorite? Thanks :)
And I think survival has a lot more kick in it than people realize. I wrote about that a week ago- MM catapults past SV once you get a sizable amount of ArP from gear, allowing you to hard cap with gems. Until that point, SV is often more DPS.
Ok, did a little research as the article Ginni (sp) pig…My current GS in MM is 5816, but if I bring out some T9.5 and my Battered Hilt weapon out fo the bank and regem, I will be at 815 arp, rocking a Whispering Fanged / Greatness trinket combo….
God willing, I will win the Deathbringer’s Will to replace greatness, at which point I will have a 940Arm pen. Shoud that be enough? before and/or after the DBW?
I would wait till u have a base of 850 arp until u regem. I did it when I had a base of 850 and am still not capped.
I am a big fan of the site and also wanted an opinion.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal%27Ganis&cn=Hfire
I am basically at the arp cap..i am hoping on getting oathbinder from LK when my guild downs him. My question is after i reach the cap what should i aim to develop agility, crit, or both.
Looking at spreadsheets i would have to say agility but I may be missing something.
Your gear is fine, just shoot for heroic versions of what you have :). The 10man heroic sind neck,princes polearm, and blood queen gun are particularly nice.
Just a side note, Aerodynamic did that parse on Tuesday, while Falinrush (his xbow) was bugged as a 496 dps weapon. He also got Tricks of the Trade 20 times during that fight.
Don’t expect many hunters to match this parse – my guess it will take someone in full 277 to beat it.
Fair enough- I’ll edit that in.
Also, you should check out Glyph of the Hawk as your 3rd glyph. When I put “Time below 20% HP” down to like 10-15% (Which is probably more accurate), I see Glyph of the Hawk pull out ahead of glyph of kill shot
Noticed that Aerodynamic’s armory profile, Aerodynamic, is showing up with the bugged 496.0 dps Fal’inrush crossbow. Just wondering if the log shown above was taken with that bugged weapon damage.
Not only did I word that badly, but someone beat me to it ;)
Just a small comment on the priority list, atleast the last time i checked aimed shot actually does more damage than chimera shot with Improved Steady Shot procs when you’re close to the ARP cap. So if you’re a Armor penetration hunter you should be firing off Aimed shots before your chimera shots.
A few points. I find rapid killing to be a very good place to pull out points for a few reasons. Rapid killing only gives you 1 more rapid fire for 5 min fights (pop first 1 then 1 after 1st expires with rediness) then wait 3 min to pop another rediness. In longer fights and theoretical infinit fights it slows your rediness by 15s and only gives you 3 effective auto shots (2 auto shots per second normally over 15s is 7.5 shots, 40% of that is 3). The Mana regen from rapid recuperation is actually a bigger benefit for 20% mana but if you sack that rapid killing isn’t all that hot, keep in mind your rediness is held back 15s.
Another point is for glyph of chimera shots you actually do the same number of shots per rotation only it’s now 9s instead of 10s and you never wait on steady shot. This takes a lot of skill because normally chimera shot is 10s and GCD is 1.5s so you would do 6 shots per rotation with 1s down time. If your really good agility hunter chimera should be better than kill as a glyph but now you have no down time so you have to be really on your game. The rotation changes from a simple chimera, steady, steadyx4 wait 1s to
(serpent, pop all cd’s that don’t share gcd, chimera, aimed, rediness, silence)-off the bat start
standard rotation after that
chimera aimed steady steady steady steady
chimera steady aimed steady steady steady
chimera steady steady aimed steady steady
chimera steady steady steady aimed steady
chimera steady steady steady steady aimed
chimer steady x5
I wish I had the luxury of going back to a pure-ArPen build, but I’m frequently on add/kiting duty. I wish I could stand there and DPS away on one target :(
I don’t think MM is the best dps when you factor in all the movement that most ICC fights require. If your guild is going to be on normal modes for most raids for the foreseeable future and you alrdy have a DBW, then yeah MM is probably worth it because normal mode encounters are a lot more forgiving, but I find SV gives you the freedom to move around without feeling like you’re dps is going to shit. I outgear the other hunter (he’s MM) in my guild by a little now but I only lose to him on festergut and saurfang, and sometimes not even festergut.
your*
Bravo Rip, a truly well done article.
As Rip’s already mentioned, it canNOT be stressed enough that you need quite a bit of passive armor pen before you will see a major upswing in deeps from your standard SV/agi builds.
Regarding drops from 25s, a 900 passive can be acquired (imho, fairly easily) just off the Lower Spire, as well as, Rot & Fester. I’m including the craftable boots in this as well.
As for add switching…YES, you WILL lose DPS on a switch versus SV.
semicolon-however-comma
From my own personal (key word) point-of-view on add switching. The adds go down so quickly, therefore time on switching is so minimal, that (imho) that dps loss is not substantial.
Perhaps a follow-up article on how you (Rip) monitor multiple sting uptime? As in Lady D, we have a kill order on adds. I’ll pop the add that will go down last with a sting before dpsing the primary target. This way I can immediately unload a Chimera on it when we’ve moved to it.
Thanks for a fantastic article, finally highlighting the pros of MM/ArP.
p.s. You may also mention to these guys that TSA (generally speaking) is no longer needed as both Abom. Might and Unleashed Rage are now 100 yard passive auras. Food for thought.
As a Hunter at the ArPen hard cap, I have to say your damage will be MUCH higher if your raid leader knows how to use you properly. Letting you stay full-time on a boss if there are enough ranged in the raid for adds is a huge boost to damage.
Granted, my RL is not one of those types. :( Even if we have 2 mages, a moonkin, a SV hunter, a shadow priest, and a lock.. I’m always told to kill adds. Always on Kinetic Orbs on the Blood Princes, when I would do more dps to the boss than other ranged.
I like to tell myself I’m given those jobs because he trusts I can get them done. Deep down, I’m sure he just doesn’t want to be outdps’d. :P
Good guide, btw.
ok ya im dumb and hit reply instead….sry…anyway
I have a question. Why should i take out arcane shot when im stacking agi? whats the point of taking an instant shot out that does a decent amount of damage out of a rotation? i mean i could understand if it was like a 2 or 3 second cast but still. would just like to hear the reasoning on that =]
and also, at what value of ArP should i start stacking ArP at? somebody told me 800 without a trinket proc but that seems like a lot to me
Arcane shot doesn’t proc bleeds like other shots. As soon as you have enough weapon damage and armor pen, it will fall behind. Use http://www.femaledwarf.com to see if this is the case for you.
I chose to pass on armor pen and went for straight agility. I passed on the bonus set for best in slot set. I run MM. I am first in dps in 25 icc most of the time. We are currently on 8th boss and have downed all in 10 man icc.
[...] OutDPS blog explores two styles of top raid level DPS for Marksmanship Hunters: agility and armor pen. They provide links to talent builds, glyphs and rotations for both styles along with warnings [...]
Hello,
Im kinda new to the hunter world and would like to ask some gear questions. I like to pursue the agi marks build to have more flexibility in case i want to play sur again.
Reading posts from this blog suggests keeping the 2pc T9 25 man version in my build but based on the spreadsheets the 4T10 all frost with the expection of glove which is sanctified and my pants which is northern lights it gave out more dps over the 2pcs T9 25man combo.
Is there a specific tier piece that i should use so that the 2pcs T9 combo will come out on top ?
Last question do agi marks build loose so much dps as compared to armor pen marks build assuming same gear level / quality or they are just the same in terms of dps output?
Thank you for your time and sorry for the long post.
Make sure your spreadsheet is configured properly with all the buffs and debuffs. Ideally, if you could link a public femaledwarf.com profile here so I could see what you mean, I’d have a better idea :)
Typically, the 2t9 bonus is better for anything but the highest ArP gearsets. If that’s not what you’re seeing, I’d be very interested to know how you have it set up.
Hello,
Thanks for the reply. I don’t know how to link the results for the femaledwarf i don’t see any profile aswell.
Since i don’t plan on getting sanctified T10s or it would take a really really long time before that happens.
Even getting a ilvl 245 T9 would still take a long time bec i lack badges and trophies are still hard to come by on our server.
What would be the best possible combinations of tier gears ?.
thanks
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rivendare&cn=Sithrogue
Got Deathbringers will last night – regemmed and here is what i got – want to make sure I am gemmed and configured for maximum DPS – i was survival prior throwing aroudn 7.5-8.5k in ICC. also need a good shot rotation – please check me out and give honest feedback – need to get up there with the big boys…
So just switched to marks and I took a major major dps loss of almost 1k dps I’m agi gemmed I’m not quite geared with enough ArP gear to go that route yet any suggestions I still have my surv spec should I just stick to surv until I can go full ArP? Any suggestions would be great I’m thinking stay with surv but my raid leader is an elitist and told me to go marks…. Even though I do more dps in surv… I’m torn what do I do?
You might be experiencing a less than optimal debuff spectrum. Marks relies on several critical debuffs in order to perform the way the spreadsheet claims it will. I’ve found that in all but the most balanced 10 mans, my SV outperforms my MM build, and my marks spec can do 12000 DPS on a fully debuffed rotface (pre 20% buff).
Hi, Im wondering.. I read all about ArP… gemming for ArP is a good way to go?
Im an SV hunter now but considering switching to MM
Now that we got patch 4.01, I went from MM stacking Arm Pen to pure weakness…. Can you give us a new breakdown of what we can do now to improve our performance?
As soon as I figure it out, I will :)