In this in-depth look at the World of Warcraft Hunter Talents (Marksmanship & Survival) for Wrath of the Lich King we’ll be looking at the changes to the talent tree published by Blizzard on its official site. We’ll see how they’ll affect your class and the game overall and point out where the major changes are and try to shed some light on just what the new skills should do and their usefulness.

As of writing this the talents are in no way finalized so things may (and probably will) change as Blizzard continues the balance the game before launch.

Marksmanship

The first new talent in Marksmanship is a 70% chance (3 ranks of 23%) to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting Aimed Shot and Steady Shot. This seems to be an interesting talent but its usefulness may be hindered by other more excellent talents. For a starting talent it’s pretty good but the 5% critical strike chance is without a doubt the better talent.

Careful Aim has been moved to a 5 point talent. Which is interesting since Mortal Shots will always really fill up this area. Not that you couldn’t backtrack to get a few points of it since Piercing Shots is probably going to be high on the list of talents to get. Ignoring 3% of target’s armor is pretty handy to get your DPS really high on highly armored targets like Warriors.

Let’s move on down the three. A new talent called Rapid Recuperation reduces the mana cost of shots and abilities by up to 60% while under the effect of Rapid Fire and Rapid Killing. To me it seems useful but hard to really get the most out of it. Rapid Killing procs whenever you kill something worth honor or experience and lasts for 20 seconds. However, it ends as soon as auto shoot is fired meaning that one ability would get the 60% reduction. While rapid fire is enabled it would be really handy and could add up to a good bit of mana savings. Really it seems situational and a pretty decent talent all around.

Wild Quiver gives you a 4/8/12% chance to shoot an additional shot when you do damage with auot shot capped at 60% damage. That can be a lot of damage for a Marksmanship Hunter due to how much their auto shot damage can be. It’s going to be a pretty awesome talent. Improved Steady Shot seems kind of interesting. It reads as ,”Your Steady Shot hits have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage done by your next Aim Shot, Arcane Shot or Kill Shot by 15%, and reduce the mana cost of your next Aim Shot, Arcane Shot or Kill Shot by 40%.” That’s pretty nifty and makes Steady Shot actually viably useable to the Marksmanship Hunter who currently gets more DPS out of an Arcane Shot rotation.

Marked for Death is a 46 point talent that Increases the damage done by your shots to marked tagets by 1/2/3/4/5% and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Aim Shot, Steady Shot and Kill Shot by 2/4/6/8/10%. Who can argue with additional damage whenever you’re attacking a marked target? Truly an excellent talent.

Chimera Shot is a pretty amazing ability. Let’s look at what it does:

You deal 30% weapon damage, consuming the current Sting on your target and triggering an effect:

Serpent Sting – Instantly deals 40% of the damage done by your Serpent Sting.

Viper Sting – Instantly burns 30% of the amount of mana drained on your Viper Sting, restoring 100% back to you.

Scorpid Sting – Reduces damage done by the target’s next three attacks by 60%. The damage reduction is diminished by 20% following each attack. Lasts 10 sec.

Well that’s a pretty awesome 51 point talent. Consuming Serpent Sting seems to be a pretty good way to get a little bit more damage out of it before it expires. Consuming Viper Sting is a good way to regain mana and instantly take a good chunk out of theirs and consuming Scorpid Sting will probably be one of the better ways to lower some of the bosses powerful punches down by a good bit.

Overall the changes to the Marksmanship Tree is not very major. You’ve got a few good new abilities and a few talents moved about. It’s going to play a little bit differently with Steady Shot being viable and Chimera Shot being something that’ll have to be timed really well to get the most out of it. Overall though it still stands for one thing: raw damage with a heavy focus on PvP.

Survival

The first thing you’ll notice is that Humanoid and Monster Slaying have been turned into Improved Tracking where you’ll gain 1% per rank (5 ranks) additional damage against the target you’re currently tracking. That’s up to 5%! additional damage against a variety of different targets. That includes Humanoids, Dragons, Demons, Undead, etc. That’s a pretty powerful talent and can at least bring a little bit more damage to the low damage talent line.

Wyvern Sting now opens up Potent Venom which increases damage done by Wyvern Sting/Serpant Sting by 1%/2%/3% and reduces the mana cost of Serpent Sting by 10%/20%/30%. Pretty nifty. Readiness is now joined by Point of No Escape which increases the critical strike chance of all attacks on targets affected by your Frost, Freezing and Bear Trap by 2/4/6%. 6% critical strike chance is pretty high. That’s the only comment for that.

Hunting Party finally makes survival viable for raiding. It gives you up to 60% (we’re going to have to assume you’re going to rank 5 in this) to restore 2% mana, 4 rage, 10 energy or 10 runic power to everyone in your party (with an 8 second cooldown before it triggers again). Shoving a Survival Hunter into a group of casters is going to really help them keep their mana up.

Finally Explosive Shot has been added as the 51 point talent. You fire an explosive charge into the target dealing 450~ damage every second for 2 seconds all enemies within 5 yards of the target. I’m not sure if this is going to have additional ranks (for more damage) but looks to be pretty neat.

Overall the survival tree is still the same. It’s kind of that niche tree that Hunters can go into to pull out a few neat talents like the Improved Tracking or Hawk’s Eye or for PvP Hunters to go into to become really tough to kill and really useful to their group. It’s a lot like Marksmanship in that it’s not going to redefine the talent tree but just beef it up and help shore up the parts the tree was missing.

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