I’m sure this is asked quite a lot though what is the best Spec nowadays for hunters?
I used to play Marksman but for me it got nerfed badly ( or is it just me ) and now im stuck as to what to do for spec?
I love both PvE and PVP so would like something that will work for both though having said that, If i need to use two specs i would be also willing to do this.
On a side note: I havent done PvP in a long time and was wondering where do you get the PvP gear from if PvP vendors have been removed? ( so I read )
I’ll say this now, unless you push very high Keys/mythic raids they are all perfectly viable.
Now to answer you:
As a matter of fact BM is miles ahead of everything else in Pve, it’s not that great for pvp tho.
Survival is the best pvp spec, it has more utility and damage then the other two. Still decent for Pve but worse then BM.
Marksmanship is sadly in not that great of a spec right now, it has less damage then BM in pve and less mobility. It’s decent against some comps in pvp but suffers from low cc and low reliable damage. Very good in random Bgs if you can outrange the enemies.
If you want to push high key/arena my advice is to go Bm for Pve and survival for Pvp, I’ll warn you tho you’ll have to find a good weapon for both and have two sets of azerite, it’s a big pain IMO but doable.
As for gear from Pvp: if you open the dungeon finder page, under the pvp tab, you’ll find at the top of the window a bar that if you fill will give you a quest that if completed will then give you the piece of gear.
The Item level of said piece grows with your arena rating if i remember correctly.
To fill the bar you’ll need to get “conquest” this is either acquired from the daily assaults in zandalar/kul’tiras or by doing Pvp (remember that non rated Pvp will give less/no conquest after you get it once, resets daily)
If you have more questions feel free to ask, I’ll answer them if i can :D.
For PvE – BM, hands down. Utility from pets, good damage, instant ranged casts, mobility. Though MM and SV can sometimes shine in raids, BM is more optimal and easy to play in every aspect of PvE – M+, raids, visions, soloing. It’s just easy and simple.
For PvP, SV is great for openworld skirmishes, arenas and duels, and MM is awesome for BGs. BM is okay too, but SV is better pick for PvP because of wide PvP utility.
My suggestion is: switch to BM for now, learn how everything works now, and switch to PvP SV when you’ll farm enough gear with good traits.
MM is very gear-reliant, something I’m given to understand BM isn’t. Marksmen can be quite useful against bosses due to the insane single-target damage once you get to the right stage, but MM quickly breaks down during trash fights.
Try BM if that’s what most people are saying, but don’t be afraid to toy with MM again.
MM plays weaker “overall” than BM, but that is largely due to the fact that BM is less gear reliant (get your Azerite traits and you’re good to go, gear just improves it) and very mobile, which means that it has reliable damage that isn’t easily interferred with. It’s also very straightforward to play which means you can dedicate more attention to “what’s going on” than getting stuck in your rotation headspace. MM needs to pay careful attention to when their core skills come off CD, ensure stuff is being used in a very precise order (especially when cleaving) and this can take your eye off the ball regarding environment.
I wouldn’t say MM is balls at AOE. It depends what aoe you’re talking. If you’re talking packs of 10+, then yes it suffers compared to the other two. If you’re talking regular packs of 4-5, MM is actually incredibly strong at cleave, especially if you have access to Trueshot during it. I’m not at optimal gear or traits myself and on a 5 pack i’ll hit between 110-120k dps without corruptions proccing, if they do proc i’ve had it jump up to the 200k territory for brief periods.
ST though MM is very decent if you are aware of mobility cues, so for example don’t clip your aimed shots. It’s engage and execute damage is very respectable indeed. It is however much clunkier to play than BM, which means BM will often outpace it due to MM suffering interruptions or pauses to their damage briefly.
Survival is quite gear reliant (haste), but when you get high haste it performs extremely well in PvE. Survival’s main issue is it cannot spec and azerite trait for both ST and AOE at the same time, which in arenas such as Mythic+ means you’re always performing sub-optimally for part of the content. It also requires quite strict traits to “spec” for its AOE or ST build, for example when going ST you really ideally need multiples of Blur of Talons to be competitive. But if you get them, with the haste, then your damage will be extremely decent so long as you handle your rotation correctly.
Problem is that BM has even better cleave at 3+ targets being pulled because azerite trait reset aspect of the wild.
Sadly MM is just not doing so well the whole expansion wish it was better.
BM scales with gear far better than MM, so not really.
Again not really true.
MM is probably the easiest to play spec in the game, even more so than BM. Hitting things off cooldown should not be classed as difficult.
Even in a perfect MM scenario with 0 movement (Although movement barely has an effect on MM, I’m not sure why people see this as a ‘weakness’ of MM considering about 70% of it’s time spent is fully mobile’) it will get beaten heavily by a BM with similar gear/skill. MM isn’t awful, but it gets absolutely outclassed in every single way significantly by BM.
