Improved Hunter’s Mark is an easily reachable talent in the marksmanship tree that everyone’s min/max calculations assume you have. The default “best buffs” button on the DPS calculator has it set to 3/3 talents and glyphed too.
Who should take IHM? How should this be decided? Ideally, the person who is giving up the least for it. Let’s take a look at all the popular builds and see where they can afford to spend points on it:
Marksmanship
ArP and Agility builds look something like this, once arcane shot has been taken out of the stand still rotation. The very first thing I’d like to draw your attention to is that in order to progress down to the 6th rank in this tree, you need to spend a point somewhere in the first 5 ranks, and most MM hunters go for focused aim. Ideally you’ll be stacking so much ArP that your hit is beginning to suffer. If, however, you’re not at the point where you need focused aim, your choices are improved mark, arcane shot, or efficiency.
Also, once you’ve picked a place for that point, you’ve still got two points in rapid recuperation you can drop without affecting your DPS (assuming you have judgment of wisdom). Lastly, I only went up to 56 points in MM because the last point is a true floater- you can put it anywhere you want.
Marks hunters who do not need points in FA to remain hit capped can make excellent hunter’s mark candidates. Here’s what that could look like: 7/57/7. If you need a point in FA for your hit, you will lose less DPS in a fully debuffed raid by taking the last point out of rapid recuperation than you will by taking it out of hunter’s mark. Especially if there’s more than one hunter.
Marks hunters who absolutely need 3 points in FA can take one from rapid recuperation and two from improved steady shot to lose the least DPS. That would like like this: 7/57/7
Don’t forget- if you don’t have it from someone else, the improved mark can be a personal DPS increase.
As for the glyphs, for marks, there is only one non-required glyph. The glyph of steady shot and serpent sting are simply too valuable for marks hunters to lose, however that last glyph (usually kill or chimera shot) can be swapped out for the glyph of hunter’s mark. Unlike the points in the talent tree, this is pretty much always going to cost you personal DPS. Kill shot glyph is worth in the realm of 135 spreadsheet DPS to an ArP marks hunter, and the replacement HM glyph will be worth in the realm of 75 per hunter. If you’re in good company and have some other hunters with which to share the wealth, go for it. If you’re the only one, stick with your personal DPS choice.
Survival
There are two main flavors of SV hunters. Those with the 2t9 bonus and those without it. Those with it typically spec into a build like 0/18/53, and you’ll notice that there’s literally no point in this build where we can take throwaway points and put them into IHM. MM has mana regen and weak DPS builders they can sacrifice. This flavor of SV has nothing to spare, having already sacrificed the traditional weak points in the SV tree for 3 points in improved stings.
The more popular SV build is 0/15/56, and does not delve deeper into marks to capitalize on stings. From this build, you can take 1 point out of expose weakness (assuming your raid buffed crit can keep that buff active), 1 out of resourcefulness, and 1 one of hunting party for the minimum DPS impact. It’s still more than Marks, but it’s the least harmful way of getting the three points in IHM.
As for the glyph, take a look into the DPS calculator above to see which one will cost you the least DPS to remove. My bet is that if you run with the glyph of explosive shot, that it will be the least DPS. Because this spec is so flexible on glyphs, however, you should choose based on your own projected numbers.
Long story short
Agility marks hunters, and to a lesser extent, ArP hunters are best suited as hunter’s mark wenches. They have the extra points in their build so that, assuming the boss is properly debuffed, they lose the least DPS.
Parting tips
- When one person goes out of their way to get the improved mark, be a good hunter and don’t overwrite it. While Blizzard won’t allow a lesser debuff to overwrite an improved debuff for most every other class, we have to manage this manually.
- Arrange ahead of time who will be marking what. Have the improved marks on the important target, and use regular marks on any secondary targets.
- If 100% of DPS has to switch (like on Putricide’s adds) and the mark will be up for long enough that it’s worth the two GCDs it costs to apply and reapply to the boss, consider switching the improved mark to the new primary target each time.
“Who should take it?” = Any min/max’er who forced another hunter to go SV in BC for the EW buff :D
/troll
Sorry. Couldn’t resist :D
But what about BM hunters…?
Seriously, I play BM and I have it glyphed and spec’d. My main gripe about it is that hunters who don’t pay attention to me when I say so can overwrite my awesome Hunter’s Mark with their crappy Hunter’s Mark.
grrr.
Reach through the monitor and strangle them. That’s what I do.
I honestly don’t know enough about the BM build to say where they could take their points from to get this. If I remember correctly, though, they have very little in the way of “throw away” points. It’s probably best to let a marks hunter take care of it, because it costs them so little.
All the talent links are busted for me.
They work for me- try them on another computer. Also, try going to wowhead.com directly and see if they’re blocked.
I disagree with the assertion that it will cost Marksman Hunters “so little” to be the designated provider of a maxed Mark.
Putting 1 point in IHM is feasible, but taking 2 out of Rapid Recuperation is not as easy as you make it sound. In 25s it can be possible to not have mana issues, but in 10s, mana often disappears very quickly, and without RR that is going to be a huge DPS hit.
Ultimately, taking a maxed-out HM is going to mean a DPS cost to the Hunter who takes it. So to me, the real question is, can the raid afford that? Will the increased DPS to the other Hunters outweigh what the IHM Hunter will lose? You could propose the the lowest DPS Hunter be required to be the HM wench, but on that note, do you a) want to basically tell that player that because they do low DPS they’re now going to be forced to do even less to make the others do better b) feel that one Hunter is basically being carried?
To me, taking IHM with the glyph should be voluntary. If a Hunter offers to do this, great, but if not, I do not believe one should be forced into doing so.
Unless you want to make the argument that 10 main raiding isn’t “real” raiding and therefore calculations should not be made with 10s in mind, making the suggestion to pull from RR is a potential significant DPS loss and therefore costs more than a little.
In 25 mans, assuming you have replenishment and judgment of wisdom, you won’t run out of mana. In 10s, you might be missing one of those buffs, so yes, when there’s no easy way for you to cheat and viper sting an add, you will lose DPS. Still, there are situations where despite the lost DPS due to lower mana regen, taking IHM can be a personal gain. You can test this by using the “use mine” setting in the debuffs tab on femaledwarf.com.
I disagree with your idea that the lowest DPS hunter should take IHM. The best answer for the raid is to take the hunter who would lose the least, regardless of where they are on the charts. By definition, that maximizes raid DPS. That said, if taking IHM is a personal DPS gain and there are multiple hunters, the only reason it would have to be made mandatory is if the hunters are so competitive that they refuse to take talents that help themselves if they help another hunter as well.
This is really only tangentially connected to the topic of this post, but I’d like to test out a PvE Survival build in addition to my current MM one. I’ve got 3 points in Focused Aim in MM, and I don’t want to have to regem if I switch specs. I’ve got 2t9, and I have no idea where I should take points out of the spec you recommend above for SV 2t9. Any suggestions?
When To Take Improved Hunter’s Mark!
When you have a min of 3 hunters in the raid and 1 of you can afford the points to take it.. otherwise not really worth it imo.
Like I said, though- assuming you have mana to spare, taking points in IHM can be a personal DPS increase.
Yes going by femaledwarf it tells me that i would gain 33.39% dps increase but i still would not take it due to man issues considering on some fights the amount of target switching involved on fights such as prof/lk etc.
I guess it depends on your raid set up, fights, and if your doing 10/25 man content.
So long as your new target gets judged with wisdom, I’d not worry about mana. Also, you can arrange your mana regen to reduce your DPS by much less if you’re good at timing- like before the stun in putricide.
Anyways, nobody has to follow any advice here- but when I see more personal DPS from taking IHM over mana regen talents, it’s an easy decision for me.
The problem with IHM is that it’s so dependent on what the rest of your raid does.
“So long as your new target gets judged with wisdom”, “So long as your Hunter’s Mark isn’t overwritten by another Hunter’s non-improved Mark”, “So long as you have enough mana regen in your raid” and so on and so forth.
Yes, IHM *can* be a personal DPS increase, if everything works right.
Personally, I don’t like having to rely on the rest of my raid for my own abilities to work properly.
I do :)
One of the things that drew me to the Hunter class was a sense of self-reliance. In questing, we can handle a lot on our own, in raiding we contribute large chunks of DPS, and can very nicely manage our threat. We provide utility via traps and kiting. The Hunter class is pretty self-contained barring heals and that self-sufficiency continues to draw me to the class. Relying on other raiders for my own abilities to work is contrary to the class, in my opinion.
“From this build, you can take 2 points out of expose weakness”
Is this a typo? It currently is 2/3 Expose weakness, so taking 2 out would make it 0/3
I think he meant 2 out of 3/3 = 1/3 EW.
Actually, I brain-farted and meant going from 2/3 to 1/2, but I edited the post to mention where that last point came from: 2/3 hunting party to 1/3.
yeah, thanks. Typo :)
Other options, to max out IHM as a hit capped MM hunter is 2 points from improved steady (3/3 to 1/3) with the floating point from 1/2 in Go for the Throat.
I’ll probably swap my KS glyph for steady. It looks like Steady is actually a DPS boost for me as opposed to KS.
This has been such a confusing spell. IHM and glyph == >700 AP buff on the target. But the tooltip for it on the target only says the basse 500. the spellbook says it buffs the AP and then another tooltip says it just buffs the RAP so melee don’t get it.
I just skip it and put points elsewhere until there’s some definite answer if it’s a huntard buff or not.
tooltips are always wrong. Use http://www.femaledwarf.com for real answers :)
I was so excited to see this article since I’m in the middle of respeccing to IHM (literally, I’m in SW at the trainer, lol). With 3 hunters in our 25m ICCs all specced for TSA, I thought I’d go IHM. But…the link is broken for me too (saw the other comment up there). It goes directly to the http://www.wowhead.com/talent page and asks to choose a talent. HELP! Can you please check the link out on another computer to see if it’s broken for you too? Oh and thank you for putting so much time into this site. You rock! TG
They all work for me- just tested them from my wife’s computer. Try enabling javascript maybe- also wowhead has been intermittently flaky for me lately. Could just be a temporary outage. If all else fails, take a look at my MM spec on the armory (search for Euripides on Drenden US). I put 2 points into FA and one into IHM.