Hi,
First of all I want to tell you that these things are in no way the only way to do things and it is just the way I've been playing hunter and found it quite suitable for arenas. Please do note, I am extremely hungover as I am writing this guide so I apologize for the mistakes that might appear in the following few sentences. I've been playing hunter for 6-9 months on AT Cata server.
Table of Content:
1. Talents and Glyphs
2. Stat Priority - Gear, Gems and Enchants
3. Macros
4. Pets
5. Addons - UI
6. Arena Compositions
1. Talents and Glyphs
As an marksmanship hunter there are basicly two different specs that don't vary too much from eachother but I will post them both.
Spec number one:
Spec number two:
As you can see the only difference is changing two points from Survival Tactics to One With the Nature
For a less experienced hunter I would recommend spec number two as Survival Tactics provides you more survivability, having that 4 seconds cut off of your disengage CD can make a big difference. As you play more and learn to manage your CD's better I'd rather go with spec number one, having One With the Nature will give you the extra damage - and who doesn't like extra damage?
Glyphs are the same for the both specs
Prime glyphs: Glyph of Arcane Shot, Glyph of Kill Shot, Glyph of Steady Shot.
Major glyphs: Glyph of Disengage, Glyph of Silencing Shot, Glyph of Master's Call
Minor glyphs: Glyph of Feign Death, Glyph of Scare Beast, Glyph of Revive Pet
Some people might want to replace Glyph of Silencing shot with Glyph of Trap launcher maybe, it is not that gamebreaking and at the current state of Cata private servers, having Glyph of Silencing Shot bugged it will provide you much more focus.
2. Stat Priority - Gear, Gems and Enchants
Stat priority: Hit Cap, Spell Pene Cap, Agility, Crit, Haste
5% Hit cap is obvious then you can move to getting spell pene cap which you can pretty much cover with cloak enchant and two blue spell penetration gems, after that all you are shooting for is agility and crit ratio.
Meta gems: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 Agility and 3% Increased Critical Effect) and Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond ( +54 Critical Strike Rating and 1% Spell Reflect)
Red gems: Delicate Queen's Garnet (+50 Agility)
Orange gems: Deadly Lava Coral (+25 Agility and +25 Critical Strike Rating) or Lucent Lava Coral (+25 Agility and +25 Resilience rating) - Depending how much pve gear you're running you might want to get some resilience instead of crit rating.
Blue gems: Stormy Deepholm Iolite (+63 Spell Penetration)
Enchants:
Helm: Arcanum of Vicious Agility (+60 Agility and 35 Resilience)
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Vicious Agility (+50 Agility and 25 Resilience)
Cape: Enchant Cloak - Greater Spell Piercing (+70 Spell Penetration)
Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats (+20 All stats) or Enchant Chest - Mighty Resilience (+40 Resilience) Again in here it's your own pick and depending on how much PvE are you running but I prefer to go with Peerless Stats for more damage.
Bracer: Enchant Bracer - Agility (+50 Agility)
Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Major Agility (+20 Agility)
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle (Extra socket for belt)
Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor (+190 Attack Power and 55 Critical Strike Rating) or Charscale Leg Armor (+145 Stamina and 55 Agility), Again your own preference and depends on how much PvE you're running. I prefer to go with Dragonscale armor for more damage.
Boots: Enchant Boots - Assassin's Step (+25 Agility and Increases movement speed slightly)
Weapon: Pyrium Weapon Chain (-60% Disarm Duration and +40 Hit Rating)
Bow: Flintlocke's Woodchucker (Chance to proc +300 Agility for 10seconds)
Possible PvE Gear: Always aim for heroic parts but if they are not available the normal parts will do.
Polearm: Kiril, Fury of the Beasts
Bow: Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth
PvE Set pieces : Wyrmstalker's Legguards
Wyrmstalker's Spaulders
These are the PvE item's I would suggest you having. Depending on what comp you run you might want to have a little bit less of PvE.
3. Macros
Now we arrive to pain of hunter's existence, the crazy amount of macros you need.
It would be way too many macros to copy paste in here so I will just leave a pastebin of my macros. It includes some tooltip macros aswell so dont get confused, I will be posting a screenshot of my UI into later part of this guide, so you can see how they all come down together.
http://pastebin.com/rwzky2W8
Even though this amount macros might look like sheer pain to deal with, I hope you bare to use them.
4. Pets
Marksmanship hunter and pets. Basicly without your lovely monkey you are useless. Pets, and mainly your Monkeys, provide you most important abilities in terms of surviving and CC'ing.
Hunters have 5 pet slots and the way I'd recommend you use them is having 4 Monkeys and a Cat/Lion or a Wolf for buffing.
Monkey spec :
The most important abilities are: Dash, Roar of Recovery, Bullheaded and Roar of Sacrifice.
Roar of Sacrifice - this is what your pet is mainly for. Having 4 pets allows you to rotate them to have Roar of Sacrifice on at all times someone is being attacked, especially if enemy is using cooldowns. Having 4monkeys will provide you a steady uptime of RoS with cooldown being 1 minute and RoS lasting 12 seconds. 4x 12 seconds means you have 48 Second / 60 Second uptime on RoS.
Roar of Recovery - Between swapping pets its good to use this ability for some extra focus providing u more damage, I also have it on my burst macro.
Dash - Pet sprint, I would recommend having this on focus Bad Manner macro and on your P1 & 2 RoS macros to RoS them faster. (Atm its useless in molten because pet won't run to your target if it is out of range. But now with new Warsong server coming with AT fixes it will become useful.
5. Addons - UI
First of I want to say that my UI is made for arena play as the main focus. Keeping in mind not having too many addons to make stuff laggy and buggy while still being able to keep up with the game.
(Keybindings are hidden in the first image, I will post a link under it to a screenshot with binds visible.)
http://i.imgur.com/b9ugirE.png
List of addons: Addons are just a personal preference but sharing what I do use. I'd recommend atleast using SafeQueue, even though it has been "preprogrammed" on some servers.
6. Arena Compositions
Hunter is pretty flexible class considering all the compositions you can run, and works best often when paired with a melee DPS.
2v2
Thug Cleave (Rogue + Hunter)
Death Knight + Hunter
Retribution Paladin + Hunter
"Jungle" (Feral + Hunter)
I'd say these are the most valid comps for 2s currently as a hunter with thug cleave being the absolute strongest of all if you know how to run it properly.
3v3
PHDK (Paladin + Hunter + DK)
Jungle Cleave (Hunter + Feral Druid + Healer [most preferably a shaman or a disc priest])
KFC (Warrior + Hunter + Healer)
Triple DPS comps, I'd say strongest would be Ret Pala + Rogue + Hunter
Thug Cleave (Rogue + Hunter + Healer)
PHP (Ret Paladin + Hunter + Priest)
My favourite ones to play would be thug cleave in 2s considering how strong it is in terms of damage and PHDK or Jungle Cleave in 3s. In the current state of Warmane (28.3.2015) Jungle is being unplayable due to feral bleeds doing zero damage.
This has just been a basic guide for 4.3.4 MM PvP hunters as I couldn't really find one here and I hope you find it useful. I will be adding more to the thread once I don't feel this godawful hangover. Please do post questions, tips and tell me if I have missed something. Later on I will be adding a section of Crowd Control and maybe some useful videos.
EDIT 24.3.2015 -> Will start adding duel tactics out of request. Maybe with videos against some of the better people i know in each class.
EDIT 28.3.2015 -> Added information about arena compositions, basicly including the most common compositions and what they consist of.
Http://twitch.tv/kebazzz
http://youtube.com/khebazzz
Kebagodx / Damghunt – Gods @ WoWCircle Fun 4.3.4
Kebagodx / Partaposki - clap it for me girl @ Warsong - soon to be seen :)