Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Marksmanship Hunters in The War Within 11.0

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: Dark Ranger
Hero Talents: Sentinel
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. Out of the two Hero trees, both Hero builds are solid choices, but Dark Ranger tends to have a slightly higher representation since it provides guaranteed cleave coming out of Black Arrow and a variety of other Hero talents.

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

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 greatly strengthens your burst windows while Trueshot is active, immediately applying Black Arrow to your current target, and two additional targets at reduced effectiveness, the moment you proc Deathblow.

Hero Talents: Sentinel

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Next up we have our Sentinel build, which revolves around Sentinel which we can naturally apply 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 summons an owl to consistently spray direct damage on your target, as long as the player remains 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.

Alternatively, you could opt for Eyes Closed instead of Sentinel Watch if you want more direct Sentinel damage once you use Trueshot, and is entirely based on preference.

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.
Kodo Tranquilizer giving us a solid quality of life enhancement to our Tranquilizing Shot, as it now removes one additional magic effect off your target, and removes one magic effect on two nearby targets.
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. This is castable from the Hunter while in Crowd Control, but requires your pet to be out of Crowd Control and in Line of Sight of the target in order to use.

There are also some adaptations worth considering in our class talent tree, as this requires us to swap out Binding Shackles, 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.
Territorial Instincts in cases where you plan to play Lone Wolf, giving you access to Intimidation without having to use a pet. You can also swap out for this talent you can want more uptime on your Crowd Control.
Blackrock Munitions if you would rather increase your burst coming out of Explosive Shot.
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, a newly added talent in The War Within, 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%.
Wailing Arrow replaces Aimed Shot after summoning 20 Wind Arrows from the Legacy of the Windrunners node directly above. Wailing Arrow not only deals some hefty single-target damage, but also applies minor splash damage to nearby targets.
Readiness makes Wailing Arrow even stronger, as this grants us Wailing Arrow every time we use Trueshot, resets the cooldown on Rapid Fire and all Aimed Shot charges after using Wailing Arrow, and makes Legacy of the Windrunners stronger while Trueshot is active as its effects summon more Wind Arrows.

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

You can remove one talent point from Focused Aim if you are playing as Dark Ranger, or Readiness as Sentinel for Kill Zone. Not only does this passively buff your damage to all spells and abilities, but is great against casters that are constantly trying to minimize your Line of Sight.

In cases where you are guaranteed not to be the kill target in a particular matchup, you can remove one talent point from Hydra’s Bite into Improved Steady Shot or Steady Focus, based on your own preference. Choosing one of these talents makes Steady Shot more streamlined into your rotation, especially in situations where you might want to use it more frequently.

If you choose to play Battleground Blitz or Rated Battlegrounds, looks to drop Hydra’s Bite in our default loadout for Lone Wolf to make our cleave damage more impactful.

Marksmanship Hunter PvP Talents

In the current meta, your default Marksmanship PvP talent loadout will typically include Survival Tactics, Trueshot Mastery, 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.
Trueshot Mastery adds some nice cooldown reduction for Trueshot while fully replenishing your focus bar, giving you more opportunities to cast on-demand burst.
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.

For your last PvP talent slot, Chimaeral Sting will be swapped around with additional PvP talents depending on your matchup and current composition played. You’ll be swapping this talent 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.
Diamond Ice can be a solid option in Solo Shuffle, especially when paired with Unholy Death Knights or Demon Hunters, or in matchups where landing Crowd Control is vital. Be mindful that this talent makes your Freezing Trap last one second less.