Marksmanship Hunter Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — 12.0.5

Marksmanship Hunter is defined by its front-loaded damage and solid AoE capability. It excels the most in dungeons, but can also be a decent questing leveler, based around killing enemies before they can reach you, usually with a strong Aimed Shot into Rapid Fire into Kill Shot combo.

Grab a Ferocity (ideally a Scalehide) pet to use with Misdirection and Scale Shield. Activate them before tagging as many mobs as possible, usually with Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot, and watch the mobs flock to your pet. Make use of the pet damage reduction from Scale Shield and use Marksmanship's strong burst damage to kill the mobs before they kill your pet.

Here is a neat macro you can use for your Misdirection. You can make a macro by typing '/m' in your chat box. Make a Macro, call it "MD", and put this in it:

• #showtooltip
• /use Misdirection
• /use Scale Shield

If you are using another pet with a defensive ability than a Scale Shield, just replace 'Scale Shield' with the appropriate ability name.

Leveling Information

Beginner Leveling Guides

If this is your first character, or want to know more about the leveling process in Midnight, we've got you covered with these two guides!

Basic LevelingMidnight Leveling

When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but two secondary stats on it instead of one.

When using Heirloom items, we recommend using those with Critical Strike and Haste, as they will slightly improve the gameplay flow while leveling.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

Learn how to use Heirloom gear to level your characters as fast as possible!

Heirlooms Guide

When Leveling up from 80-90 in the Midnight Expansion in particular, there are a lot of consumables that can help ease the process, aside from the "regular" PvE consumables mentioned further below.

• Gunshoes — Massive movement speed boost that works when Mounts do not, and much faster than ground mounts.
• Goblin Glider Kit — Lets you glide off of ledges and cover vast distances quickly.
• Light-Step Hoofplates — Do not forget this Mount Equipment to make your mounts faster on the ground.
• Fried Bonefish — An incredible amount of movement speed from a Food.

If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.

To keep things simple while leveling and learning the spec, use the slider to select your level, and watch as the leveling rotation grows with each level!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

1. Use Misdirection liberally to transfer all the threat you generate to your Pet.
2. Use Moonlight Chakram after your very first Aimed Shot inside each Trueshot window. This button appears in place of your Trueshot button once it is activated.
3. Use Volley when available. Place it on the ground on top of as many enemies as possible!
4. Use Trueshot for large pulls or difficult elite mobs.
5. Use Mend Pet for large pulls to keep your pet healthy.
6. Use Rapid Fire when available.
7. Use Aimed Shot when available. Make sure to spend your Precise Shots stacks on Arcane Shot/ Multi-Shot first!
8. Spam Arcane Shot. Use Multi-Shot instead if there are 4 or more targets!
9. Use Steady Shot as a filler, and to generate Focus.

All pets do the same damage, but they vary in their utility and special abilities. For Marksmanship Hunters, pets are quite weak, and we mostly use them as an "anchor" to gather mobs onto instead of ourselves. The best pet for this purpose is a Scalehide. They have a 1-minute damage reduction ability, Scale Shield, that you should macro into your Misdirection.

Ferocity pets also come with Primal Rage which is a Bloodlust effect. This should be used as often as possible when you are fighting for over thirty seconds.

Class Guides

Hunter Class Guides

Finished leveling your character? Check out our max level guides!

All Hunter Guides

Azortharion

Guide Author

Follow Azortharion

This guide has been written by Azortharion, a full-timer Hunter Guidewriter, Theorycrafter, Content Creator, and top player since 2014 who is widely considered one of the best PvE Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with hundreds of top parses across all Hunter specs. He is the Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the official Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own, personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!