Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Marksmanship Hunters in The War Within 11.1

All sections for Marksmanship Hunter PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, macros, and pets. This will help you have a good understanding of Marksmanship Hunters in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Sentinel
Hero Talents: Dark Ranger
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Sentinel and Dark Ranger. As of now we notice a tremendous shift towards Sentinel as opposed to Dark Ranger in the current meta.

Now, let’s delve deeper and learn how to best allocate our Hero talents for both Hero builds.

Hero Talents: Sentinel

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Starting off we have our Sentinel build, which revolves around Sentinel. We can naturally apply this ability on our target from our basic damage rotation. The more Sentinel stacks we apply on our target, the more damage we can deal once they explode. The explosion can occasionally occur after generating a Sentinel stack with at least 3 stacks currently active, which will naturally happen as you play and doesn’t require much optimization in terms of its damage profile.

Down below are new talents we receive that require a bit more understanding in order to optimize your gameplay.

Catch Out gives you a short lasting root on targets that attack you, and is on a one minute cooldown. This does not trigger the Diminishing Returns effect for roots, making it highly useful for annoying the enemy team.
Overwatch treats your current Sentinel stacks as an execute, and will proc all at once as the target reaches below 20% health.
Lunar Storm now launches an arrow in a radial cone to consistently spray direct damage on your target, as long as they remain in its radius. This also gives a solid damage modifier to any Sentinel marked target inside, and is only activated by Rapid Fire. It’s important to note that this can break Crowd Control, so precise decision-making may either make or break the game.

Hero Talents: Dark Ranger

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For our default talent build, we have Dark Ranger. This replaces Kill Shot with Black Arrow, and upon its use it applies a periodic DoT on the affected target. Instead of receiving more uptime on Aimed Shot, we now receive talents that make it way more efficient to naturally proc Black Arrow for more direct damage.

Down below are new talents we receive that require a bit more understanding in order to optimize your gameplay.

Black Arrow replaces Kill Shot, initially dealing some heavy direct damage. However, this still acts as a DoT after using it for some added damage built in our rotation. Not to mention, we can occasionally proc Shadow Hounds from Black Arrow after each tick, supplementing you with even more single-target damage.
Smoke Screen makes Exhilaration and Survival of the Fittest go hand in hand with each other, giving us both effects but at reduced effectiveness.
Bleak Powder makes it important to use Volley before pressing Black Arrow if you want additional cleave damage.
Withering Fire has changed in 11.1, now granting us a Deathblow proc every 4 seconds during our Trueshot windows. Additionally, this will enhance our cleave coming out of Black Arrow while our primary offensive is up.

Hunter Class Talents

In the Hunter Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy talents represented in The War Within are:

Survival of the Fittest is now one of your most potent defensive cooldowns, especially when paired with Padded Armor for an additional charge. This provides a 30% damage reduction on your character for a short duration, and has been reduced to a 90 second cooldown. You can activate this either right before taking a lot of damage or while enduring it.
Roar of Sacrifice as our most iconic source of team utility, allowing us to immune any incoming Critical Strike damage effect while active on you or an ally.

There are also some adaptations worth considering in our class talent tree, as this requires us to swap out Keen Eyesight or Trigger Finger, depending on which Hero tree you play as, before making any talent build changes.

Emergency Salve provides a nice survivability boost into Rogues, Death Knights, and Shadow Priests, as this talent removes both Poison and Disease effects after activating Feign Death and Aspect of the Turtle.
Binding Shackles against classes with heavy frontloaded burst, especially against Warriors and Death Knights with how powerful they currently are.
Scrappy if you prefer more cooldown reduction on your primary stun effects, and is best for setup comps or if you are the only player on your team with stuns.

Marksmanship Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Trueshot is your primary offensive cooldown, as this reduces the cooldown reduction and cast time on both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. With our Streamline talent reducing our cast time on Aimed Shot even further after using Rapid Fire, burst damage will be at its highest while this cooldown is active.
Kill Zone provides you with a solid damage buff to players inside your Volley. Additionally, it allows your spells to ignore Line of Sight. This effect is only active if the player remains within the Volley‘s radius. You will be selecting Ranger’s Finesse as one of your PvP talents if you play with this talent, as the radius of your Volley is increased by 50%.
Double Tap, readded back in 11.1, makes damage coming out of Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot way more explosive after using Volley or Trueshot.

Now for our optional talents, we have some worth considering depending on the matchup at hand.

Both Hero tree builds can swap out of Cunning for Tenacious in its respective choice node. This is best into matchups that are comprised with setup burst windows. The best example for this talent would be a composition involving a Subtlety Rogue.

As for our Sentinel build, you can opt for Kill Zone instead of Incendiary Ammunition if you want more uptime on your spells. You can also select Salvo instead of Kill Zone in its respective choice node if you want more cleave pressure. This may be a potential pick into melee cleaves that constantly stack up or in Battleground Blitz.

Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents

With the removal of Trueshot Mastery and many other PvP talents, we have a slight shift to our default PvP talent loadout than in 11.0.7.

In the current meta, your default Marksmanship PvP talent loadout will typically include Survival Tactics, Aspect of the Fox, and Chimaeral Sting.

Survival Tactics is our hard-locked PvP talent, granting a extremely high damage reduction for a short duration after using Feign Death. This helps negate a huge chunk of damage when needed.
Chimaeral Sting cycles through a powerful snare, a short silence, and ends with a short damage and healing reduction on the affected target, making this super effective, during the snare effect, for landing traps.
Aspect of the Fox makes your mobility spell more effective as it now allows you with move while casting Aimed Shot when Aspect of the Cheetah is active. This also increases our Aspect of the Cheetah duration. Since our Mortal Strike effect is tied to Aimed Shot, this becomes a great quality of life improvement to our rotation.

For your last PvP talent slot, Chimaeral Sting or Aspect of the Fox will be swapped around with additional PvP talents depending on your matchup and current composition played. You’ll be swapping Chimaeral Sting out when facing Shamans, Paladins, Monks, and Druids who can dispel the Poison effect from their healer.

Ranger’s Finesse increases the radius of your Volley dramatically, adding more benefit to our Kill Zone talent if picked up. Additionally, upon using its effect we receive some cooldown reduction on Aspect of the Turtle.
Diamond Ice is a great option in Solo Shuffle, but now has been moved to one of our flexible picks. This is mainly due to Freezing Trap being less likely to break now. Be mindful that this talent makes your Freezing Trap last two seconds less.
Consecutive Concussion provides us with another way to stun our opponent while also enhancing our Concussive Shot snare.