Kitty Cleave (Hpally/Warr/Feral) – Kitty cleave, is known as one of the strongest comps in arena today. Its amazing because of the synergy between the three classes, the cc, and just pure damage output

PHDK (Hpally/Dk/Hunter) – This comp. will be a lot more powerful come 4.0.6 patch with hunter buffs. This comp. is very strong for the fact that it can pump out so much damage on multiple targets. With spread diseases and the ability for hunters to swap so easy, it makes this comp one of the best swapping target comps out there.

WLP (Hpally/Warr/Lock) – This comp is similar to WMP, but in this case the lock can/needs to over extend to gain an advantage on the opposing team. This comp is great for warlocks, because it allows them to play extremely offensive and to control the other team. Its also very good for swap kills. Whenever the lock can fully dot an “off target”, its good for the warrior to swap and assist burst on this target.

WMP (Hpally/Warr/Mage) – This comp involves a lot of coordination and needs perfect positioning to be successful. The mage and warr cannot over extend to put the pally in a spot where he can get cc’ed or swapped too. This comp can create tons of situations to get kills through swaps and mage cc. Swap a lot when playing this comp.

Shadow Cleave (Hpally/Lock/Dk) – This is one of the strongest comps out there right now. Dk damage and survivability is through the roof, and seems to be getting better. Dk and lock have unreal synergy, and coupled with strong pally heals, this comp can almost seem unbeatable.

RLP (Hpally/Rogue/Lock) – This comp is also very similar to RMPally. The biggest difference with the lock vs. mage is, the fact that its now more about rush down kills, than playing defensive. With lock dots, and the ability for rogues to swap combo points, makes this comp very viable and potent. This comp. is great for shutting down cleave teams; such as TSG.

RMPally (Hpally/Rogue/Mage) – This comp requires a lot of coordination and can be compared to RMPriest. The main difference having the pally over the priest, is you can save your offensive cool downs a little while longer. With the priest version, its pretty much blow all your cd’s at the same time, and usually at the start of the game, to get a kill. With a pally, you can hang tight and survive through more damage, and set up a kill. This comp has tons of survivability but will require a lot of synergy between your mage and rogue.

TSG (Hpally/Warr/Dk) – One of the most popular comps in arena. It is known as one of the best rush down team. The pally’s job in this comp. is to basically keep the warrior and dk free at all times. The zergy style of this comp. allows for a lot of enjoyment and fun times. Although the comp. has some weakness, mainly to heavy CC teams, its one of the best comps to grind out rating.

Private Lessons!

So, I’ve been getting a ton of mail about private lessons, and what we do on them. Basically how we do things, is we schedule a date that we can both meet on, you stream on x-fire, and we hop on vent/skype, and go from there. Most people choose to do live arena games, and I critique/fix your game play. Some people choose to just go over the basics, and get a firm grasp on gems/enchants to bindings/mods. It’s basically, whatever your game needs, we will work on.

Lately, people have been throwing the idea around, that if we cant find a time for you and your partners to meet and play arena while you stream, you could instead, fraps your arena games that you have played at a prior time, and I will watch with you, and go over them in great detail. This might be a very interesting and successful way to improve, watching your own game play and noticing your flaws has been known as one of the greatest teaching methods out there for everything (Ex: NFL teams watching footage of prior games, to fix positioning/etc).

It is an hour long session, that usually goes about 15 – 20 mins over to make up for time we may have lost (sitting in queues). It’s $20 for first lesson, and then $15 if you schedule another lesson within 3 weeks of your last. Everyone that has done a lesson with me so far has been very pleased, and if you get a chance to talk with any that have, you should.

Specing

Right now I feel Survival will be the best spec for arena.  This is based off what I got from beta, but will be testing all three specs to see what I like best.  Of course I will keep all of you posted on what exactly I find out and prefer.  I will show how I would spec for each of the trees and why I take what I do.

Survival (without Black Arrow): http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cMhbZcZIrGfMG0Ro

I feel Black Arrow is not that good in arena right now, but this is something I will need to test.  The reason I do not like Black Arrow is because it can be dispelled, the damage is low and the Lock and Load procs from using Black Arrow are RNGd.  Since I do not use Black Arrow I do not get the talent T.N.T..  The upside to Black Arrow is having the potential of procing more Lock and Loads.  This will mean a lot more burst damage.

You do have some freedom in a couple of points.  You can move two points out of Improved Serpent Sting and put them into Toxicology.  The main thing to watch during your play to see what one of these talents you would prefer is how often your Serpent Sting is being dispelled.  If it is being dispelled often Improved Serpent Sting will be better, if not Toxicology wins.  Another thing is you can put one point out and into Counter Attack.  I do not like Counter Attack because you can only use this spell after you parry, this requirement makes it too unreliable for me.  In the Beast Master tree you can move one point out of Bestial Discipline and into One with Nature.  The reason I do not do this is because One with Nature is no longer as strong as it use to be.  Aspect of the Fox no longer has a passive focus regen, it now only gives more focus when you are struck by a melee attack.  One more point into One with Nature would only give one more focus pet attack.  This is a extremely low amount compared to your pets regen increase by ten percent.

Survival (with Black Arrow): http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cMhbZcZIMrcMGrRoz

This will be what I use when I test out Black Arrow.  There is three points I need to remove from my last spec to get Black Arrow and T.N.T..    I take two out of Point of no Escape because I mainly used this as a filler talent to get 31 points in Survival to move out of the tree.  I see it not being so good because your target has to be in your Frost Trap for it to work and sometimes you wont be using Frost Trap.  This makes the talent’s use very low.  I chose to take the last point out of Trap Master.  Trap Mastery will once again really only go into affect when using Frost Trap.  If you would like to keep Trap Mastery I would take a point out of Hunter vs. Wild.   Unlike before I do think Toxicology will always be better since you are now using Black Arrow.

Marksmanship: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cZfMRRhRRuroIMM

There really is only one point I see you have freedom to move and that is Hunter vs. Wild or Pathing.  The places you could move this point would either be Trap Mastery, Bestial Discipline or Resistance is Futile.  I just see the one point increase a lot more.  Three percent of Stamina is pretty big.  The talent also gets better as gear does too.  Same goes for one percent haste, which affects your focus regen, auto shot time and Cobra/Steady Shot casting time.

I do not recommend using Steady Shot over Cobra Shot when playing Marksmanship.  Though some talents require you to use Steady Shot for them to work, the damage lost is not worth the talents.  The only time I will ever use Steady Shot over Cobra Shot is if a spell such as Anti Magic Shield is used that decreases spell damage enough to make Cobra Shot hit less then Steady Shot.

Beast Master: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cdhfckGdRRofMZc

The changes you could make is moving two points out of Sic ‘Em’ and two out of Go for the Throat to get two points into Hunter vs. Wild and Survival Tactics.  The point of this would be to get a lower Disengage cooldown.  I would not do this though because the other four points will help your pet do damage and that’s huge for Beast Master.  Also, the talent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera should keep your Disengage up fine.  Besides this I would not change anything else.

Glyphs

I will talk about Glyphs I would use for all three specs.  First my minor glyphs are always the same.  I use Feign Death, Scare Beast and Mend Pet.  The other two glyphs are Aspect of the Pack which is not used in arena and Revive Pet.  There is no longer the talent Improved Revive Pet and always takes ten seconds to cast.  It is very unlikely you will get a ten second cast off in arena.

Survival

Prime glyphs: Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Kill Shot

Arcane Shot and Explosive Shot are the best glyphs for survival.  Its only Kill Shot glyph that should be changed if you want.  I like Kill Shot glyph because you can get back to back Kill Shots off on a target.  Kill Shot as no focus cost, this becomes to free damage attacks you get when close to finishing off a target.  Rapid Fire could also be a choice, but will most likely only gain benefit once in a match.  This is because Rapid Fire is on a five minute cooldown.  The other that could be used is Serpent Sting.  I would use Serpent Sting over Rapid Fire.  Serpent Sting as Survival should be kept up since you gain ten percent more damage on any target with Serpent Sting up.  This only improves Serpent Stings crit chance by six percent.  I would only take this if you pair the glyph with the talent Toxicology and even then I prefer Kill Shot to help kill a low health target.

Major Glyphs:  Disengage, Master’s Call and Raptor Strike

Disengage and Master’s Call should not be changed.  These help with your mobility and that is everything to a hunter.  Nothing would be better then these two glyphs.  I really like Raptor Strike because you can keep a twenty percent damage reduction up pretty well.  I will post a macro I use for Raptor Strike on the bottom of this article.  The alternatives to this glyph are Wyvern Sting, Trap Launcher, Deterrence or Concussive Shot.  The Wyvern Sting glyph is only a six second reduction on the cooldown.  Bring the spell down from one minute to 54 seconds.  It would take ten minutes and using Wyvern Sting on cooldown to get another one.  This is too long and would rarely be a benefit.  Trap Launcher is nice because of less focus cost, but isn’t used a whole lot.  I would only consider this if you notice your self using Trap Launcher a ton in your play.  Deterrence being lowered by ten seconds is nice but still see you having more survivability using Raptor Strike glyph.  Some people really like the Concussive Shot glyph.  The spell is great, cost no focus and snares the target.  Adding two seconds to the duration makes it really nice.  This would be the only glyph I would use over Raptor Strike.  The two seconds more doesn’t compare to the damage reduction you can have in my eyes though.

Marksmanship

Prime Glyphs: Arcane Shot, Chimera  Shot and Kill Shot

Same reasons as Survival.

Major Glyphs: Major Glyphs:  Disengage, Master’s Call and Raptor Strike

Same reasons as Survival.

Beast Master

Prime Glyphs: Arcane Shot, Kill Command and Kill Shot

Same reasons as Survival.

Major Glyphs: Major Glyphs:  Disengage, Master’s Call and Bestial Wrath

Only glyph here I would change is Bestial Wrath.  I would only change this out with Raptor Strike.  Reducing Bestial Wrath cooldown by twenty seconds is pretty big.  This spell is also one of the most important cooldowns as Beast Master.  You can use it for more damage or as a second PvP trinket.  Because of this I see it being a lot more important then Raptor Strike.

Pets

None Exotic:

Monkey

Bad Manner:  Hurls a handful of something special at the target, blinding them for 4 sec. Rude.  One minute cooldown, .5 second cast time and twenty yard range.

Currently this is the best pet.  The way Bad Manner is working right now is that it stuns the target and not blinds.  This is unknown if working properly.  Since this is a four second stun it makes the move amazing.  Can be used for crowd control, peels or offensively keeping a target in place.  Doesn’t DR with Scatter Shot but does DR with other stuns like Hammer of Justice.  Unless you are Beast Master this is the current spec you should use.

Winder Serpent(lightning)/Dragonhawk(fire)

Lightning or Fire Breath: Breaths Lightning or Fire on the target, increasing magic damage taken by 8% for 45 sec.  Thirty second cooldown and forty yard range.

This is great since the most of our damage is magic now.  The main non magic attacks are Kill Command(rarely used out side of Beast Master), Steady Shot(shouldn’t be used over Cobra Shot) and Auto Shot.  Also will help out your team mates magic damage too.  If you play with a Death Knight or Warlock this pet is worthless.  They can put up the same debuff and they do not stack.  The down side is the debuff can be dispelled and the cooldown is long.  The monkey still is a lot better with the stun.

Spider

Web: Encases the target in sticky webs, preventing movement for 5 sec.  Forty second cooldown and thirty yard range.

Very good for kitting but can be dispelled.  This compares nothing to a stun though.  Gaining one more second then Bad Manner does not give it any where near close to being better.  Unless Bad Manner is changed there will be no reason to use a Spider over a Monkey.

Exotic:

Corehound

Lava Breath: Your pet breathes a double gout of molten lava at the target, reducing the target’s casting speed by 25% for 10 sec.  Eight second cooldown and forty yard range.

Ancient Hysteria(same as Bloodlust or Heroism): Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 30% for all party and raid members. Lasts 40 sec. Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust or Time Warp again for 10 min.

I would say the best pet as Beast Master to use if you are not paired with a class that can provide the same buff as Bloodlust.  Having Ancient Hysteria for your team is amazing and no other pet move can beat this.  Lava Breath is also very strong, specially now casting speed isn’t as fast.  Making it even lower then it got down to will make LOSing very easy.

Spirit Beast

Spirit Mend: The Spirit Beast heals the currently friendly target for (1237 + ((RAP * 0.35) * 0.5)) plus an additional (475 + ((RAP * 0.35) * 0.335)) over 10 sec.  Forty-five second. cooldown.

Roar of Courage: The beast lets out a roar of courage, increasing the Strength and Agility of all party and raid members by 139 within 100 yards.   Forty-five second.

A good option if you have a class that provides Bloodlust.  Having the a extra defensive cooldown is great.  Can be used on any team member so this makes it even better.  Can be used if too much damage is coming in for your healer to handle or used when your healer is CCd to stay a live longer.  Roar of Courage is a nice buff that provides us with our main stat.

Devilsaurs

Monstrous Bite: Your devilsaur ferociously bites the enemy, reducing the effectiveness of any healing received by 10% for 8 sec.  Melee range and eight second cooldown.

Terrifying Roar: The devilsaur lets out a terrifying roar, increasing the critical strike chance of all party and raid members by 5%.  Forty-five second cooldown.

If the extra defensive cooldown isn’t needed for your team and you have Bloodlust already I would go with the Devilsaurs.  Having your pet keep up your MS is great and right now a lot of hunters do not use their own MS(Widow Venom).  I’m undecided on using our MS or not right now, most likely will.  Because of all this, having your pet keep it up is nice.  Makes us not have to use our focus on Widow Venom.  Terrifying Roar is great too, nothing wrong with you and your team having more crit.

Gearing

I’ll mainly be talking about what stats I prefer over the other.  As far as what gear to get I would mainly use PvP gear with some high end PvE gear mixed in if possible.  I do not know how much resil I prefer to have on yet so I can not talk about that yet.  Getting the blue PvP set from honor first will be your best option and then replace those pieces with the epic set later.  In PvP you always want five percent to hit.  When you fight a even level anything, you have five percent to miss and this will cover that.  Five percent hit is 600 hit rating.  This is a must to get.  For you guys that aren’t aware how mastery works exactly, so much mastery rating will make a full mastery point.  You only gain benefit from a full point, so 15 mastery is the same as 15.9 mastery.  You want to make that number as even as possible.  The following will be how I feel currently for each stat.

Survival: 5% hit>agility>crit>mastery>haste

Agility is our main stat and will give us the most benefit always.  I like crit over mastery as Survival because the mastery only increases elemental damage by one percent.  This does sound good but takes a lot of mastery to reach one point and crit increases with every rating.  When I tested as much haste on beta as I could get with keeping hit cap and a even mastery I did not notice much difference in focus regen.  Also it barely lowered my casting time.

Marksmanship: 5% hit>agility>crit>mastery>haste

Same as Survival.

Beast Master: 5% hit>agility>mastery>crit>haste

I prefer mastery over crit here because it increases our pet damage.  Pet damage is so huge for this talent tree that anything we can do to make it higher we probably should.

Preparing

Right now we should be working on getting honor cap till we can buy the new honor set on Tuesday(December 14).  When you can buy the set should work towards getting that as much as you can.  Also should be running heroics to gain rep and gear as well.  Therazane rep provides us with our shoulder enchant.  At honored you can buy a blue enchant and at exalted you can buy a epic enchant.  You will want to get exalted with them at some point, they do have dailys you can do.  Ramkahen provides us our head enchant at revered.  There is only one daily for them.  Guardinas of Hyjal provides epic boots at exalted and the Eathen Ring has a epic ring at exalted.  Those will be good to get while you are still getting your epic PvP set.  Level up your professions as well.  I currently have no decided on what I think are the best two.  Jewlcrafting will be one but the second I have not decided on.  Make sure to level up your new pets, very easy to do in heroics.

I hope this helps you all with Cata currently.  I will update my thoughts on all of this on the forums and in more articles in the future.  You all can expect a lot of content from me in the future.  Please leave any feedback you have on what you liked and didn’t like in this article.  Also want to what you would want to see in the future.  Any questions feel free to ask by posting a comment, on the forums or message me privately.

Please leave some feedback and I’ll try my best to change my content to suit you best.

Any Comps you guys wanna see vs. Disc Priest Hunter ask for it and I will post it.

Focus macros are very important for all classes. They allow you to use one of your abilities to the target you select as your focus without dropping your current target. This is very helpful to keep attacking your current target and CC(crowd control) your focus target smoothly.

First this macro is how I select my focus:

/focus [target=arena3,modifier:ctrl]; [target=arena2,modifier:shift]; [target=arena1]

When I press my key it will set my focus to the first arena frame on either Gladius or the default WOW arena frames. This is a great macro to use because it allows me to change my focus in the middle of the match. This is a more advance technique though. A lot of players, even top players, right click the player frame on their Gladius mod. I recommend right clicking at first.

Focus macros are very simple to make, here is an example

/cast [target=focus] SPELLNAME

I almost always have my spell on a key and if I want to use focus with that key too, I make the focus move with Shift same key(IE: R scatter shots my current target, Shift R Scatter Shots my focus target). Here are the focus macros I use with shift in them:

(As MM)
#showtooltip Silencing Shot
/cast [target=focus,modifier:shift] Silencing Shot; Silencing Shot

#showtooltip Scatter Shot
/cast [target=focus,modifier:shift] Scatter Shot; Scatter Shot

(As SV)
#showtooltip Wyvern Sting
/cast [target=focus,modifier:shift] Wyvern Sting; Wyvern Sting

#showtooltip Viper Sting
/cast [target=focus,modifier:shift] Viper Sting; Viper Sting

#showtooltip Scare Beast
/cast [target=focus,modifier:shift] Scare Beast; Scare Beast

These next macros are so you can change from Aspect of the Dragon Hawk to Aspect of the Viper, they will change to whatever one you don’t have up. Also will have the same macro so you can change from Track Humanoids to Track Hidden. Also if the macro shows Aspect of the Dragon Hawk on your bars and you have that Aspect currently active, it will not change it at first. You will have to press it once and it will keep same Aspect or Track on till it changes on your bar.

/castsequence !Aspect of the Dragonhawk, !Aspect of the Viper

/castsequence !Track Humanoids, !Track Hidden

I do not use these next macros, but they are still very good. This allows you not to worry about manually changing your Trackings from Humanoid to Hidden. When you cast flare will put you in Track Hidden and when you use a shot will put you in Track Humanoid.

#showtooltip Flare
/cast Track Hidden
/cast !Flare

#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast Track Humanoid
/cast Chimera Shot

This macro is if you are using a Serpent pet. What it does is cast the pets move Poison Spit on your current target, but will keep your pet by your side if he is not currently attacking anyone and will keep attacking if he currently is attacking.

#showtooltip Poison Spit(Rank 6)
/cast Poison Spit(Rank 6)
/petfollow [target=pettarget,noexists]
/petattack [target=pettarget,exists] pettarget

Killing shaman totems is very important and since they got rid of target totems through macros you have to do it manually. The best way of doing this is with a macro that has your pet attack the totem you mouseover. So you can simply mouse over a totem press the button and your pet will go kill the totem for you. The way I feel is best, easiest and how I do it is macroing in pet attack mouseover with your shots. This lets you to keep your shot rotation going and being able to mouse over a totem and your pet will go kill that totem. Here is my shot/pet mouseover macros:

#showtooltip Aimed Shot
/cast Aimed Shot
/petattack mouseover

(As MM)
#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast Chimera Shot
/petattack mouseover

#showtooltip Arcane Shot
/cast Arcane Shot
/petattack mouseover

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Steady Shot
/petattack mouseover

(As SV)
#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/cast Explosive Shot
/petattack mouseover

There will be times when you cast deterrence or if you have a paladin partner will cast Hand of Protection on you and you need to take it off. Reason why you might want to take it off before full duration is because these moves do not allow you to attack while they are active on you. You might cast deterrence, get healed to full before your move ends and want to join the fight sooner. I macro this into my Kill Shot, so if I need to remove one of those spells I press Kill Shot and it takes it off.

#showtooltip Kill Shot
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cast kill Shot

Adding growl to your Freezing Arrow and Freezing Trap is a great way to stop a Grounding Totem from eating your trap. If you try to trap someone with a Grounding Totem down it will hit the totem instead. Pet Growl counts as a spell that can affect Grounding Totem. Pressing this macro will be the same as just using your trap normally but will have your pet cast growl on your current target at same time to try and stop Grounding Totem.

#showtooltip Freezing Arrow
/cast !Freezing Arrow
/cast growl

#showtooltip Freezing Trap
/cast Freezing Trap
/cast growl

All these next macros do is if you press your flare or volley key more then once, will keep the circle on your screen and not undo it. If you press your flare key the green circle will pop up on your screen to place where you want it, if you press the same key again it will toggle it off. This just keeps it up for you if you hit the same key.

#showtooltip Flare
/cast !Flare

#showtooltip Volley
/cast !Volley

I have a lot of keybinds and binding some of your melee moves like Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite seems pointless. I do not even use Mongoose Bite in arena at all. What I do to use Raptor Strike with out needing a new keybind is put it in same macro as Wing Clip. Pressing this macro will Wing Clip your target as well as use Raptor Strike.

#showtooltip Wing Clip
/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Wing Clip

This macro is a all in one pet macro. If your pet is alive but not called out to your side, will call it. If your pet is out, it will cast mend pet. If your pet is dead and you can target his Body with revive the pet. The down side to the macro is, if you cast Revive Pet and it doesn’t work the pets body will disappear and you can’t cast it again.

#showtooltip mend pet
/cast [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; [nopet] Call Pet
/cast [target=pet,nodead] mend pet

Using Feign Death to stop a spell from being casted on you is a big deal. This macro will stop what you are doing to make sure your Feign Death goes off.

#showtooltip Feign Death
/stopcasting
/cast Feign Death

My final macros I want to show are for pet abilities(Master’s Call, Roar of Sacrifice and Intervene{If you are using a tenacity pet}). You can do these either two ways, the best being individually macro targeting for you and your partners or you can use a mousover macro which is nice. The down side to the first approach is it takes two more keybinds per move. The mouseover version will help free up binds. I use individual in 2v2 and 3v3, and use mouseover in 5v5. Change the part that says “PARTNERSNAME” to what partner you want as that modifier and “YOURNAME” to your name. I prefer healer as my shift modifier and DPS partner as my control.

Individual:
#showtooltip Master’s Call
/cast [target=PARTNERSNAME,modifier:ctrl] Master’s Call; [target=PARTNERSNAME,,modifier:shift] Master’s Call; [target=YOURNAME] Master’s Call

Mouseover:
#showtooltip Master’s Call
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help]Master’s Call;
/cast [target=Cupzs] Master’s Call

Individual:
#showtooltip Roar of Sacrifice
/cast [target=PARTNERSNAME,modifier:ctrl] Roar of Sacrifice; [target=PARTNERSNAME,,modifier:shift] Roar of Sacrifice; [target=YOURNAME] Roar of Sacrifice

Mouseover:
#showtooltip Roar of Sacrifice
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help]Master’s Roar of Sacrifice;
/cast [target=Cupzs] Roar of Sacrifice

Individual:
#showtooltip Intervene
/cast [target=PARTNERSNAME,modifier:ctrl] Intervene; [target=PARTNERSNAME,,modifier:shift] Intervene; [target=YOURNAME] Intervene

Mouseover:
#showtooltip Intervene
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help]Intervene;
/cast [target=Cupzs] Intervene

So far i have covered beginner guides to SV and MM spec hunters and as my last installment I will be covering BM hunters. The main points to BM hunters that I will focus on include, organizing and utilizing your stable, what stats to look for in gear, shot rotations and comps to run as BM.

Organizing Stables:

Organizing and having a stable with multiple options is important for all 3 hunter specs, but no spec is more dependent on the pet then BM. Making it even more important to understand all the possible options you have with pets. The 3 different pet specs are, cunning, tenacity, and ferocity. Surprisingly all 3 have uses in PvP, my ideal setup for a hunters stable is Corehound (most commonly used), Worm, Chimeara, Wasp. That should cover all different specs and all different abilities you will need to be successful with your pet.

How to Gear:

Focus on stacking as much AP as possible (since pet will also do more dmg from this) Haste is a decent stat when gearing up (only for BM)Armor Pen has uses when you are stacking it with Worm or Wasp (this is recommended for bg’s with heave cleaves lineups being popular)900-1k resil is plenty (you can have a little less while you are gearing but this is optimal)

Look for PvE off pieces like necks and capes that have agility on them 

Shot Rotation for BM

(check out my BM PvP rotation video): http://www.arenapwnage.com/2010/02/05/video-lesson-hunter-arena-dps-rotation/
Aim Shot>Arcane Shot>(if they are running serpent sting)>Steady Spam until you can aim shot or arcane shot again and repeat.

Don’t forget to stop the rotation when a Auto Shot is about to go off as BM since Steady Shot and Auto shot are the 2 highest damaging shots as this spec.

Comps to Run as Beast Master in tier (from best to worst) order:

Hunter/Enhance Shaman/ Holy PallyHunter/DK/ Holy PallyHunter/Lock/Resto Shaman (or Holy pally)Hunter/Spriest/Resto ShamanHunter/Feral Druid/Holy Pally Out of the 3 Specs BM is lacking in almost every category as to what you bring to the team. So really the only way to make it work is running something BM hunters have synergy with which is why i only recommend trying out BM if you are running one
of these comps (MM is better for most of these comps also) but if you like BM you can make it work. Main thing you need to remember before you try any of these comps is to gear out with AP  and fix up the stable to accommodate any situation that may occur.

A quick overview of the talents in the Marksmanship tree you will quickly reveal that you gain alot of raw Attack Power (AP) and critical rating. The 2 keys of this spec is the 41 point talent silencing shot and 51 point talent Chimera Shot.

How to Gem:

1. You will want to get at least 75 spell pen with your blue slots
2. Pure Agi in red slots
3. Agi/Crit gems for yellow slots

Keys to gearing:

 
Anywhere from 750-1k resil will do (1k is a little much). You will want to maximize for Agi and Crit over everything else. Look to get PvE off pieces as they usually provide extra agility compared to the pvp ones. Try to get at least 44% crit rating. Once you have the gear for Marksmanship you will need to decide which way you want to spec. As there are many viable specs and options out there to choose from depending on your comp, arena bracket, and play style. With that being said i will give you a basic spec and let you play around from there to fit your play style.

Spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZ0eVooGdGIsguVoe0hbob:0fkMzV

The thing you can change off of that spec if you feel that you need more stamina and Health Points is to  maybe drop some points off Imp tracking (sacrificing some dps) and move them over to survivalist for more health. Plenty of other things you can move around too depending on if you need the bleed from piercing shots or rather not play with it at all.  

Rotation and Priority:

Aim Shot (is always the priority if it isnt up) but putting that aside

Aim Shot->Serpent sting->Chimera->Arcane->Aim Shot- (if serpent sting is still up go straight to chim if not re-apply) ->Chimer Shot->Arcane->Aim Shot

Scatter/Trap/Silence Keys:
Use them offensively if you have pressure. Use them defensively if you don’t. These can be
used to stop a cast or for full duration as a CC.

 
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT MARKSMANSHIP HUNTERS: READINESS.

The reason readiness is the most important talent is because it resets all your key hunter abilities from scatter shot, aim shot, rapid fire, chimera shot, silence shot, master’s call, deterrence, ect… You can use this ability for ALMOST anything, but marksman Hunters are the most deadly when you can use this ability to really go for the KILL. When you finish dumping your damage rotation into someone and you notice they are almost in that Kill Shot range i would recommend using readiness if your scatter/silence are on cd. So you can silence/scatter and have everything instantly backup to go for the kill with a kill shot. It’s also sometimes a good idea to use readiness just to get the extra deterrence back up to live. There are so many possibilities with this ability its going to take some time and practice to determine when is the right time to use it. In the future i will hopefully be able to have a video showcasing the right times and openings to use this ability as this is the make and break ability of the entire tree.

Since there are articles and videos explaining the basics of arenas that you can already acsess on the site, I’ll use these first few entries to explain the Hunter’s place in arena and the three different hunter tree’s along with key talents and abilities.

Hunters are a very unique class, easily the most unique out of any of the other character class choices in the game. They are ranged, but deal physical damage and don’t cast spells. Hunters main role in arenas are to deal damage, with Wrath of the Lich King out damage has become one of the most important tools any class can bring into arenas. Hunters have 3 specs to choose from there is Survival which can arguably be the weakest of the 3 at the moment in the game (patch 3.3), then there is Marksmanship and Beastmastery both which have streangths and weaknesses that they bring with them into arenas.

I’ll begin with survival, this spec saw its glory days at the end of season 5. Whatis left of SV (Survival) is a spec that has some decent damage out put and some decent crowd control nothing to amazing one way or the other.

This is the basic survial spec with variations on points to Focused aim and Hunting Party depending on your hit rating and gear.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZ0eV0oZf0IiofIhedAMok:0NkMVz

Your main damage rotations will be Kill Shot, Hunter’s Mark, Explosive Shot Aim Shot, Black Arrow, Serpent Sting, Steady Shot. Even though your priority will be getting Aim Shot (MS) on your kill target the most to make sure the healing debuff stays up. As long as you have a gcd (global cooldown) to spare before it falls and explosive shot is up you should almost always use explosive shot first.

Hunter’s Mark + pet attack -> Aimed Shot -> Black Arrow-> Serpent Sting->Explosive Shot->Steady Shot->Aimed Shot

A good addon to help you maximize your shot rotation and dps is shotandawe which you helps you visualize weaving your shots together.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/shotandawe.aspx

Some key talents that make this spec work include Wyvern Sting, scatter shot + trap mastery, and Lock and Load. Wyvern Sting is your main peel or extra intterupt CC you get for specing into Survival with a 41 yard range because of Hawk eye. This ability can be used in many ways to stop someone from casting on you or a teamate, or to try and get a melee class off of you or a teamate, or to even intterupt a heal while you are on the healer. It has a lengthy cooldown so most of the time you will want to be somewhat careful when you use it. Scatter shot followed by freezing arrow shot should be used when your CC target is within 18 yards. Scatter + trap can be applied every 30 seconds.

Using wyvern or scatter shot agressivly even though you know
it may only stop

1 cast before it is taken off can sometimes be huge and even end the game. So just pick the right time where you know it would make a difference and let it fly its a very versatile ability… That brings us to the other talent in the tree Lock and Load. This talent is where all of SV’s burst damage comes from. It is triggered 100% when you trap a target and around 6% chance from your black arrow ticks. Make sure to get the buff up as often as possible and let your teamates know when its up because that is when you will want to coordinate burst. A good addon to alert you of LnL is a chime or visual alert. Pick one of these and see which one you like:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/SearchResults.aspx?q=lock%20and%20load

 Also always make sure you are using explosive shot and not arcane shot as they share the same cooldown this also applies for usage of lock and load. When LnL procs, you need to weave your explosive shots so they all each tick for the full damage amount.

So lets say you scatter then frost arrow trap your oppenent’s healer. LnL will proc. The dps rotation will be:

Aim shot -> Explosive Shot -> Steady shot -> Explosive Shot-> Steady Shot -> Explosive Shot and LnL will end you can then go back to yourregular dps rotation or if the target is very low and you are specced engineering launch your pyro rockets and try to get a kill shot.

Comps to run as SV:

SV/Prot War/Paladin

SV/Protret Pally/Resto Shaman

SV/Lock/Healer

SV/DK/Pally

Role in those comps as SV: to keep constant pressure up with
MS while coordinating

burst with your teamates when you have lock and load up. As i said before look to CC or even just to cancel 1 cast with wyv/scatter/trap.

The next article will cover everything you need to know about MM hunters as well as the defensive abilities and play aspects of the hunter.