MoP Hunter Guide

[Rogerbrown]

• General Changes
• Races
• Talents
• Glyphs
• Stats
• Gear
• Reforge and Enchants
• Professions and Consumables
• Interface
• Rotation
• Macros
• Useful Links

General Changes

1) No more melee weapon slot! 2) Expertise! We need 7.5% expertise, and also our hit cap is lowered to 7.5% down from 8%. 3) Cobra Shots and Steady Shots generate 14 focus per shot, instead of 9. 4) Readiness is baseline ability now (all specs have it). 5) All Specializations provide the passive buff called Trueshot Aura. 6) Trap Launcher is now a toggle on/off ability. So that means you pretty much turn it on and just shoot all your traps forever. A good quality of life change. 7) Deadzone. It's gone. \o/ 8) No more Aspect of the Wild... about time if you ask me. 9) No more Aspect of the Fox... which aspect is next? Note: RED means 5.1 Updated!

If Alliance go Panda.

If Horde Panda, Troll and Orc are quite close to each other and the order changes depending on spec. Orc is overall a safe choice for all specs, with Panda being very close. The difference is quite small regardless though, so you won't be handicapping yourself much picking any of the 3 races. Remember that Orc and Troll have cooldowns to use which might prove useful on certain fights where you need to nuke the boss fast.
Overall: Orc>Panda>Troll

I personally like this new system, I think if they work a bit more on it, it does give some nice choices and there will be cases where one talent will be better than another on specific fights. Let's take each tier of talents separately:

Tier 1: Movement Tier (Disengage Tier) - Importance of Tier 6/10 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera


Posthaste: Posthaste will be good on some fights where you need fast movement from point A to point B, if it happens every 25seconds or more. So far I haven't used it at any fight.

Narrow Escape: It is mainly a PvP talent. It could be usable is some extreme situations where you want to root some adds in place (assuming they are rootable). I have used this for Tsulong during the day phase, so it could have some use for future bosses too.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera: The clear choice for the majority of pve content. Gives you a lot of freedom with 15sec cooldown on Disengage, and also increases your survivability by a lot with 1min cooldown on Deterrence, especially coupled with the Deterrence glyph (50% reduced damage taken).

Tier 2: CC Tier - Importance of Tier 2/10 - Silencing Shot


Silencing Shot: Good old Silencing shot, now available for all specs! Should be the talent that most people will be getting. It is a good all-round choice.

Wyvern Sting: Should only choose Wyvern Sting if you need some extra CC for your 5man dungeoning, where I still think Binding Shot is better. Otherwise pretty useless PvE wise.

Binding Shot: A very interesting 100% new talent! Can have some unexpected uses at some bosses with stunnable adds. I would suggest experimenting with Binding Shot and see if you can come up with creative ways of use. I have found big use of this talent, especially if you use it after a death knight mass grip. I have used this for the following bosses in tier 14: Feng, Will of the Emperor, Empress, Tsulong, Lei Shi. It is an awesome stun because you can do it from range, and its 5 seconds, which is one of the longest stuns in the game.

Tier 3: Survivability Tier - Importance of Tier 7/10 - Aspect of the Iron Hawk


Exhilaration: This is currently really bad for multiple reasons. First of all, has a long cooldown (should be 1min), second of all it only heals you for 30% (should be 50%), and lastly... its another keybind that you need whereas the other choices are better and are also passive. I could only see this being used at PvP if they make it a bit better.

Aspect of the Iron Hawk: This is by far the best talent of this tier for raiding. The amount of damage you will mitigate from this will make the other 2 talents seem nonexistent. It is also something that hunters always needed. In previous tiers you would check the damage taken charts and hunters would top it because we had no passive mitigation. Now we finally do!

Spirit Bond: More of a leveling talent, it used to be good, but they nerfed it a lot some patches ago. Not really viable for raiding. The only boss where I figured that it is superior to Aspect of the Iron Hawk is Will of the Emperor Heroic. That is because it has consistent damage throughout the fight, which means that you are never 100% health, but the damage is not high enough to make 15% reduction of it, better than the heal from spirit bond.

Tier 4: Focus Regen Tier - Importance of Tier 8/10 - Dire Beast


Fervor: A very nice talent, but still not the easiest to make full use of since we are not focus starving anymore with the cobra/steady shot change. That causes us to sometimes have too much focus and no need to cast cobra shots which results in your serpent sting almost falling off. And if it so happens that your fervor comes off cooldown at that time, you need to either let serpent sting fall, or overcap yourself with focus. It is a good talent for burst aoeing, and I use it for Wind Lord.

Dire Beast: Currently the best of the three. It is the most consistent focus regen talent, and the biggest dps increase overall since the pet does some dps as well. Check the stats section for an update on this talent and how it interacts with haste.

Thrill of the Hunt: Since it is a passive talent, it means that it is probably the best choice for inexperienced players. Not a terrible choice overall, but you definitely want to try getting used to either fervor or dire beast since they will almost always give you both a smoother rotation, and bigger dps results.

Tier 5: Pet Dps Tier - Importance of Tier 9/10 - A Murder of Crows


A Murder of Crows: Best choice according to simulations. There are some disadvantages though which can be very annoying. If there is only 1 target at a boss fight, you can't make good use of your readiness, since you need to wait for the ability to wear off before reapplying it. Also it requires a lot of focus (60 focus) while the other 2 talents are focus-free. And lastly you need to keep track of when the boss will hit 20% and wait until then to use it. Also it is not usable for thrash or any adds that die faster than 30 seconds. I have been using this for most fights nowdays, after the change to Lynx Rush. It is kind of the 'lesser of two evils' :D

Blink Strike: A decent talent if you want to do fast switches on adds for some fights. Since it has a short cooldown, and also teleports your pet to the target from up to 40 yards away. Doesn't lack too much on the dps department either. Solid choice depending on fight requirements of dps bursts.

Lynx Rush: After 5.1, this talent has changed into becoming a dot. This means that this talent has some problems now:
It is completely garbage for aoeing, since the dot will not stack, but it will be spread around to multiple targets. It is especially bad for bosses like Protectors, where dps is completely wasted on secondary targets.
You can't get the same burst at the opener with Readiness using this, since you need to wait for the first dot to almost be over (<2sec duration left) before refreshing it with the second one, which means that your potion and cooldowns will be over in the middle of your second lynx rush.
It still has the benefits of costing no focus, and it is still good enough for you to use it for single target fights, but I prefer to stay away from it after the changes.

Tier 6: Dps Tier - Importance of Tier 9/10 - Glaive Toss


Glaive Toss: The best dps talent of this tier, its instant, it has low focus cost and it can be really good if you know how to position yourself hitting many targets. It works similarly with the axes that Beastmaster throws at the well known MOBA games. I have experienced some trouble with glaive toss lately, seeing it not hit the target if it is moving, bugging out etc. That is why I have been using Barrage more instead.

Powershot: This has potential to become a viable option for this tier when we reach higher haste ratings or if they buff it shortly.

Barrage: My opinion on this ability changed completely since the start of MoP. It now is the talent I use for most fights, since it is really easy to use now that you can cast it while moving. There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind with this talent:
Even though when you press the button it makes your character turn to the target, you can then move your camera using your mouse's right click and it will actually CHANGE the cone at which you shoot, while keeping your main target getting hit regardless (assuming you don't have it on your back).
Also, if your initial target is killed while channeling, you can just pick a new target and it will register it as your new main target.
Lastly, due to the nature of this talent, you should try to use this during Stormlash totems, since you will get many stormlash procs. Especially if you are playing Survival, because of your mastery.

Major glyphs

Forget pretty much everything you knew about the old glyphs, we have new ones which actually don't have much impact on our dps. I will only list the somewhat important ones for PvE raids.

1) Glyph of Animal Bond: Another passive 10% survivability bonus. This together with Aspect of the Iron Hawk makes us pretty solid healing wise. A guaranteed choice for every hunter.

2) Glyph of Marked For Death: Most useful glyph dps wise, no need to waste a global each time you swap dps, just to see that the other 2 hunters in your raid overlap Hunter's Mark which means 3 globals total wasted. A very good addition! Thanks Blizzard. All hunters should be using this, unless its a single boss fight with no adds, or if 2/3 hunters in the raid use this, its enough. Not like there are many other amazing glyphs though to swap to. This will basically be replaced at 5.2, since it becomes passive, with the new glyph that they are implementing Glyph of Liberation. This new glyph will make you disengage more than you used to because of the extra healing, but you should NOT risk taking any damage just to get the heal off. And you should NOT get out of aoe healing just for this glyph.

3) Glyph of Deterrence: This brings us to a total of 50% damage reduction when you pop Deterrence... we finally got ourselves a shield wall! And to think that this ability actually started as a +25% dodge and +25% parry chance back in vanilla. A good 3rd choice for your glyphs if the fight requires you to use Deterrence to avoid massive damages (goes very well with the Tier 1 talent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera).

4) Glyph of Disengage: If the fight requires a lot of movement you should consider using this instead of glyph 2) or 3)

5) Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot: Sounds good, but won't make a drastic increase in your dps long-term. Still if there is an encounter which requires either a dispel of an enrage effect (and you don't have a druid to do it), or if you need to do a lot of dispels fast on a single target, then you should consider this instead of 2) or 3)

Minor glyphs

Just use whatever you like. I would probably go for these 3 though:

1) Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah
2) Glyph of Revive Pet
3) Glyph of Direction

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you are switching between BM and SV specs in a raid, you need to keep in mind the following about Stampede:

If you are SV and use stampede without the glyph, the exotic pets will NOT appear! So either glyph it, or remember to switch your pets in the stables so you have 5 non exotic ones!

Also, if you are indeed using the stampede glyph, your summoned pets will most likely NOT use Rabid because of it being on cd from your main pet, so I will advice to NOT use the Stampede Glyph.

Also keep in mind that you will need to summon each and every pet to spec them ferocity and put their abilities to autocaston/off (keep dash off), and do that for both of your specs, since it doesn't save your autocastson/off universally.

Agility Agility is our primary stat and it increases the damage of each shot and the chance for it to crit. It has a huge difference in scaling compared to our secondary stats (around 3-4 times better than Crit/Haste/Mastery) Hit (340 rating for 1%) Increases the chance your shot will be hit. You need 7.5% hit to cap against a raid boss, that's 2550 rating. (6.5% - 2210 rating if draenei) Expertise (340 rating for 1%) Ranged attacks can now be dodged, which expertise helps to counter. You need 7.5% dodge reduction to cap against a raid boss, that's 2550 rating. (6.5% - 2210 rating if troll/dwarf) Crit (600 rating for 1%) Increases the chance your shot will do double damage. Has almost always been our best secondary stat regardless of spec throughout the game. Mastery (600 rating for 1%) Survival: Increases your magic damage done. In Cataclysm this meant all of your attacks except for pet damage and auto shot which ended up being a significant majority. This is still mostly the case, but we have more pet damage from Dire Beast, Lynx Rush, Murder of Crows, and Blink Strike, and a bit more physical damage from Powershot, Barrage, or Glaive Toss. BM: Increases your pet damage. Haste (425 rating for 1%) Increases your focus regen (which has a base rate of 4 per second) and the speed of your non-instant attacks. This includes Cobra Shot, Auto Shot, Powershot, and Barrage. NOTE: After some personal testing, and then doing some online research on the subject, it looks like there aren't any haste plateus for Dire Beast. You just increase your chances to get more attacks. If you want to you can read a whole blog post here: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/2012/10/h...g-explanation/

General stat priority is:

Agility > Hit/Expertise > Crit > Mastery > Haste

Here are some simulations for the stats using t14 normal gear since that is the gear most of us will be using when trying to defeat the heroics so that is what really matters atm. Later on I will update this using t14 Heroic gear. I have SV and BM spec since these are the two specs that people will be using this tier.

Updated with t14 Heroic gear!

BiS Gear List Slot Name Drops from Head: Neck: Shoulders: Back: Chest: Wrists: Hands: Waist: Legs: Feet: Finger1: Finger2: Trinket1: Trinket2: Weapon: Yaungol Slayer's Headguard Choker of the Unleashed Storm Waterborne Shoulderguards Legbreaker Greatcloak Yaungol Slayer's Tunic Stonemaw Armguards Yaungol Slayer's Gloves Ranger's Chain of Unending Summer Yaungol Slayer's Legguards Monstrous Stompers Regails Band of the Endless Painful Thorned Ring Terror in the Mists Bottle of Infinite Stars Taoren, the Soul Burner Sha of Fear Blade Lord Ta'yak Protectors of the Endless (Kaolan) Garalon Grand Empress Shek'zeer The Stone Guard Wind Lord Mel'jarak Tsulong Amber-Shaper Un'sok Amber-Shaper Un'sok Protectors of the Endless (Kaolan) Wind Lord Mel'jarak Lei Shi Elegon Lei Shi Pre raiding Gear List Slot Name Drops from Head: Neck: Shoulders: Back: Chest: Wrists: Hands: Waist: Legs: Feet: Finger1: Finger2: Trinket1: Trinket2: Weapon: Swarmcall Helm Scorched Scarlet Key Shadowspine Shoulderguards Aerial Bombardment Cloak Azure Serpent Chestguard Bladed Smoke Bracers Hopecrusher Gauntlets Impaler's Girdle Legguards of the Crimson Magus Treads of Fixation Signet of Dancing Jade Seal of Hateful Meditation Flashing Steel Talisman Relic of Xuen Klatith, Fangs of the Swarm Gate of the Setting Sun Scarlet Halls Shado-Pan Monastery Niuzao Temple Shado-Pan Monastery Shado-Pan Monastery Niuzao Temple Gate Of The Setting Sun Scarlet Monastery Gate Of The Setting Sun Temple of the Jade Serpent Shado-Pan Monastery Scarlet Monastery Darkmoon Tiger Deck Gate Of The Setting Sun

Reforging

After capping hit and expertise (2550 rating each), you should go for Crit > Mastery > Haste for the rest of the gear for both BM and SV. Even though for the Survival spec Simulationcraft says that Haste is better than Mastery, I believe, especially in a multi-target fight, that Mastery is better than Haste for Survival.

I use this addon which helps me immensely and saves a lot of time: ReforgeLite
You can set it up to reach certain ratings and it does the calculations instantly, so put these amounts in and then put the scaling accordingly so it prioritizes Crit:

Hit: 2550 rating (2210 if draenei)
Expertise: 2550 rating (2210 if troll/dwarf)
Crit > Mastery > Haste

Here is a picture of how my ReforgeLite looks like:




Enchanting

Shoulders: Back: Chest: Wrists: Hands: Waist: Legs: Feet: Weapon:

Greater Tiger Claw Inscription Accuracy or Superior Critical Strike Glorious Stats Greater agility or Fur Lining - Agility if LWer Superior Expertise or Superior Mastery if overcapped with expertise Living Steel Belt Buckle Shadowleather Leg Armor or Primal Leg Reinforcements if LWer Blurred Speed Lord Blastington's Scope of Doom

Gemming

Now that secondary stats are doubled you will need to think more about what gems you want to use. Use the stat weights to check if it is worth it going for the bonuses or not.

Metagem: Agile Primal Diamond
Red: Delicate Primordial Ruby
Yellow: Deadly Vermilion Onyx
Blue: Glinting Imperial Amethyst

The best profession used to be Leatherworking. But it seems like they changed the wrist enchant from 170 agility to 180 agility. So the benefit from LW is 320 agility (500-180), which means that it provides the same bonus as any other profession.

Basically just pick any of the 320 agility professions and you are fine. Blizzard has pretty much balanced them all out in Pandaria.

*LWing still gives you cheap leg enchant

1. Leatherworking ( 320 agility ) 2. Engineering ( ~320 agility on average - 1920 Agility for 10seconds every 60seconds) 3. Blacksmithing ( 320 agility - 2 extra sockets) 4. Jewelcrafting ( 320 agility - 2 gems with 320 Agility instead of 160 Agility) 5. Alchemy ( 320 agility - 1320 Agility instead of 1000 Agility from flask) 6. Inscription ( 320 agility - 520 Agility shoulder enchant instead of 200 Agility enchant) 7. Enchanting ( 320 agility - 2 enchants on rings for 160 Agility each) 6. Tailoring ( 1090,91 AP on average - 180 Hit ) 7. Herbalism/Skinning ( 320 haste/crit ) 8. Mining ( 480 stamina ) Consumables are pretty straight forward: Food: Sea Mist Rice Noodles - 300 Agility. Flask: Flask of Spring Blossoms - 1000 Agility. Potion: Virmen's Bite - 4000 Agility for 25 seconds.

I am a person who believes that a good UI is 50% of your maximization, so you need to have a working UI that shows everything you might need to know, without making it impossible for you to see anything else going on during the fight. Here are some addons that I think are a MUST have and I wouldn't be able to play without them:

Stay Focused! - Shows your focus bar in the middle of your screen.
TellMeWhen - Tracks every single buff/debuff on any target you want (yourself, your target, your focus target, etc).
NeedToKnow - Tracks internal cooldowns of your trinkets.
Dominos - Moves your bars wherever you want. I use this mainly to hide most of my abilities that I don't need to see, and to put the important ones for my rotation in the middle of my screen.
OmniCC - Cooldown display on your bars.
Skada - Damage meter which helps me improve my dps in fights by checking how much damage each ability did in a fight and adjusting accordingly.
Threat Plates - Nameplate addon which helps with targeting and knowing when it is Kill Shot time.
Shadowed Unit Frames - Unitframe addon which you can customize to show buffs/debuffs.

Here is a screenshot of how my UI looks (Updated!):

Rogerbrown's UI

You can Download my UI using the instructions in this thread.

The hunter rotation became a bit more complicated in MoP with the addition of the 3 tier of talents (tier 4,5,6) and the fact that Readiness is now for all specs, making the openers a bit harder to pull off perfectly.


Suvival

(Fervor + A Murder of Crows + Barrage)

SV opener:

-02: Misdirect
-01: Hunter's Mark
+00: Potion + Black Arrow
+01: Serpent Sting
+02: Explosive Shot
+03: Stampede
+04: Rapid Fire + Blood Fury (+ engineering gloves if you have) + Barrage
+05: Fervor + AMoC
+06: Explosive Shot (x3 if LnL has proced which usually it does if you have 4p)
+07: Explosive Shot
+08: Explosive Shot
+09: Readiness + Barrage
+10: Cobra Shot
+11: Explosive Shot
...
+18-19: Black Arrow (you can send it when your previous BA has 2-0 sec duration left on the target, since with the new dot system you new BA will have a ~21sec duration and you won't lose any ticks)
+20: Rapid Fire

Then follow the priority list below

SV priority list:

Black Arrow
Serpent Sting
Kill Shot
Explosive Shot
AMoC
Barrage
Readiness
Stampede
Arcane Shot
Cobra Shot

WoL ranks acquired with these openers/priorities:

Blade Lord
Grand Empress Shek'zeer
Feng the Accursed
Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
The Spirit Kings

Beast Master

(Dire Beast + A Murder of Crows + Glaive Toss)

BM Opener:

-02: Misdirect
-01: Hunter's Mark
+00: Potion + Serpent Sting
+01: Rapid Fire + Stampede
+02: Bestial Wrath + Blood Fury (+ engineering gloves if you have) + Kill Command
+03: AMoC
+04: Dire Beast
+05: Glaive Toss
+06: Arcane Shot
+07: Arcane Shot
+08: Kill Command
+09: Readiness + Kill Command
+10: Glaive Toss
+11: Arcane Shot
+12: Arcane Shot
...
+13: Dire Beast (when Bestial Wrath falls off, if you have 4p delay this 6 seconds and just do Kill Command when it is off cooldown)
+14: Arcane Shot
+15: Bestial Wrath + Rapid Fire + Kill Command

*Make sure you use your 2nd AMoC during the second Bestial Wrath, even if your first is not over yet, since it is on a 2 minute cooldown and your BW is 1 minute cooldown, and you want that to be synced up.

Then follow the priority list below

BM priority list:

Serpent Sting
Bestial Wrath
AMoC (only in Bestial Wraths)
Kill Shot
Kill Command
Dire Beast
Glaive Toss
Focus Fire
Readiness
Stampede
Arcane Shot
Cobra Shot


Aoe
For aoe use the usual multi-shot + explosive trap combo, with the addition of Barrage! Try to position yourself so that you hit the maximum amount of targets with your Barrage (check the talent section for explanation).

I am using a lot of macros but here are the ones that are mostly useful for hunter:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Cobra Shot

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Deterrence

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Feign Death

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Disengage

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/use Healthstone

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

/cast Heart of the Phoenix
/cast Revive Pet

#showtooltip
/cast Cower

/petautocastoff Growl
/petautocastoff Cower
/petautocastoff Dash
/petautocaston Bite
/petautocaston Claw
/petautocaston Rabid
/petautocaston Cackling Howl
/petautocaston Furious Howl
/petautocaston Roar of Courage

/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Misdirection
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Levitate
/cancelaura Slow Fall
/cancelaura Goblin Glider

Useful Links

wowhuntershall
warcrafthuntersunion
simulation craft
Elitist Jerks

[Ailove]

A very nice talent, but still not the easiest to make full use of since we are not focus starving anymore with the cobra/steady shot change. That causes us to sometimes have too much focus and no need to cast cobra shots which results in your serpent sting almost falling off. And if it so happens that your fervor comes off cooldown at that time, you need to either let serpent sting fall, or overcap yourself with focus.

[themasti19]

Nice thread, ty very much, but u made a mistake with the "Bladed Smoke Bracers" They dont drop in "Mogu'shan palace", but in "Shado-pan Monastery" ^^

[Rogerbrown]

thanks themasti, fixed!

[Makkan]

Hey Roger and thanks for probobly the best Hunter guide there is atm :) But will you be posting a new version of your Dragon soul Hunter guide but in the mop raids?
Like tips and tricks but also what specc and where. Since I noticed BM and SV is very close when it comes to dps. Feels like there is some aspects of the speccs that makes it superior than the other on some fights. Just would be cool to see how you think around this.

[Rogerbrown]

will most likely do that after we have killed all the bosses of this tier in heroic mode, so it will have to be in about 1month from now

[silverflame]

you mentioned one of the best choices for hunters is panda, why is that?

[Rogerbrown]

because u get 2xfood buff bonus, so that is 300agility assuming you use the best food. That is quite close to the racials that the other races have (orc or troll). But ofc it also means that if u die in a fight you lose all of the benefit! Having said that I think Orc is the safest choice overall!

[Qaii]

Roger, could u tell me what ratings i need to enter @ reforgelite for Crit and mastery ?

[silverflame]

because u get 2xfood buff bonus, so that is 300 agility assuming you use the best food. That is quite close to the racials that the other races have (orc or troll). But ofc it also means that if u die in a fight you lose all of the benefit! Having said that I think Orc is the safest choice overall!

Actually the food bonus, bouncy and rest bonus are useless on arena, so you'd end up with +600 agi bonus for world pvp or rated bgs only. The only all around perk of the panda is the quake palm.
Orc is the best for horde, but for ally I'd choose worgen for the improved dmg and elemental resist, or dwarf (same as worgen but must only use guns).

edit: the above is for pvp or all-around, for pve's specific content panda's bonuses are good : ]