In the spirit of Fae's post, I thought I'd write a guide of my own, especially considering how many hunters we're raiding with now. I answer most of these questions on a daily basis, both for in-guild and out-of-guild hunters, so having this guide will save me some playtime. This guide consists of almost everything I know about playing a marksman hunter, which I have played since early Ulduar. I haven’t played survival since back then, so I don’t intend to write a guide for that spec—I’ll leave it in more able hands.

I) Why choose marksman?

Beast Master spec is currently a joke for raiding, although it is great for leveling, soloing, and small-scale PvP (2v2 and to a lesser extent 3v3 and WSG). There are also a few fights in which BM shines, such as Yogg-Saron while in the portal team and Rotface if you are the assigned kiter, but these are rare and highly situational.

The difference between survival and marksman hunters in average progression gear (ilevels 226-264) is quite small, generally within 5% either way. For lower gear levels, survival is much better (i.e., just dinged 80). Which spec you chose also depends on personal preference, latency, and gear.

Marksman has the potential to have the easier rotation of the two specs, depending on armor penetration rating (more on this later). However, because of its “spammy” rotation, it is not very friendly to high (300+) latency players, who should go survival instead. The main reason to go marksman is to take advantage of the current mathematical quirk in armor penetration, so if you lack much gear with armor penetration or an armor penetration trinket, survival may be better for you.

The final consideration is raid size and composition. Marksman scales better with stats and buffs than survival due to the recent nerfs to steady and explosive shot and the high mana cost of chimera and aimed shots combined with the lack of replenishment. Marksman will surpass survival on targets with melee debuffs—the most important being armor debuffs and bleed damage multipliers—and mana regeneration buffs—generally blessing and judgment of wisdom and replenishment. Other buffs, including blessing of might/battle shout, blessing of kings, mark of the wild, and so on, generally improve marksman dps more than they improve survival. Since you generally only find all of these things in a 25-man raid, survival is the better spec if you plan on doing only heroics and 10-man raids.

Thus, marksman spec is for lazy players who want an easy rotation, or low-latency, well-geared hunters who aim for high performance in 25-man raids (I am both).

II) Important Statistics, Including Armor Penetration and Gemming

While gearing a marksman hunter, there are three distinct stages in progression. The reason for this is that almost all dps statistics scale linearly, often with a cap. For example, going from 100 to 110 hit rating gives the same dps increase as going from 110 to 120 hit rating, everything else being equal. Pre-capped haste, critical strike, attack power, and agility work the same way. (If you change more than one statistic at a time, however, the picture becomes much more complex.)

However, armor penetration does NOT scale linearly, because armor is on diminishing returns: the more armor you get, the less it decreases physical damage. This move on Blizzard's part was to prevent tanks from stacking nothing but armor. However, this means armor penetration is on INCREASING returns: going from 600 to 610 armor penetration rating is a lot more of a dps increase than going from 400 to 410 rating. The more armor pen you stack, the better it is.

The hard cap for armor penetration rating is 1400, which is 100% armor reduction. This is actually attainable, but only in mostly best-in-slot Icecrown 25 Heroic gear. Instead of trying to reach this number, most hunters opt to reach a "soft-cap." This leads to the three stages of armor penetration stacking:

Stage 1 is when you have less than 400-450 armor penetration rating and lack a trinket that procs armor penetration (the exact cutoff depends on critical strike percent and attack power as well). At this point, arcane shot should be included in rotation and talents, since it is a significant dps increase. Agility is the main gem here.

Stage 2, which is the most common, is marked by 400-800 armor penetration rating, you can achieve the "soft cap" with a trinket that procs armor penetration rating, giving you 100% armor reduction whenever the proc occurs. The soft cap is 718, 735, or 788, depending on which trinket you have. This is when you should ignore arcane shot except on fights with large amounts of movement. Gem armor penetration until the soft cap and then gem agility for the rest.

Stage 3 occurs for very geared marksmen who can achieve 1050-1100 or more armor penetration rating. Generally this requires full ilevel 258+ gear. At this point you use trinkets which do not proc armor penetration rating because then the hardcap would be far exceeded, wasting much of the proc. Instead, you enjoy a constant (85%+) armor reduction. Gemming armor penetration everywhere is the only way to go in this stage.

The only metagem any hunter should use is the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. It requires one gem of each color, which is easily satisfied with a Nightmare Tear in a blue socket with the highest associated socket bonus.

The general priority for gearing a marksman hunter is, from most important to last,
1) Hit until cap. The hit rating caps are
*263 = 8%
*230 = 7%
*197 = 6%
*164 = 5%
*132 = 4%
Why so many different caps? First of all, you may always be able to count on having a Draenei in your party (not raid, but party), in which case you receive the aura Heroic Presence which gives 1% to hit. Also marksman have the talent Focused Aim in the very first tier of the marksman tree, which is both a great talent in terms of dps per point and unlocking later tiers. With no talents or aura, 8% is required for a raidboss, 6% for a heroic boss, or 5% for PvP.
2) Armor penetration rating until soft-cap or hard-cap
3) Agility
4) Critical Strike rating
5) Intellect
6) Haste

The general strategy for stage 2 and 3 hunters is to avoid hit, since gems in yellow sockets are the best way to get it—you get "free" stats from socket bonuses—followed by talenting it. Stage 1 hunters, on the other hand, will likely have to pick gear with hit rating to reach the cap. One way to think of it is that, out of the 263 required hit rating, 99 can be acquired from talents, and up to 20 from each yellow socket (of which most sets have 3-6), leaving very little needed from gear—only 44-104, depending on the number of yellow sockets, which is only one or two pieces of gear with hit at current item levels.

After hit-capping, the armor penetration cap is next. Generally as much armor penetration as possible is good, even for second-phase hunters. If you exceed the soft cap with a new piece of gear, you can simply switch a corresponding number of armor penetration gems to agility gems, thus making armor penetration and agility equivalent for second-phase hunters. If you have no more armor pen gems to switch to agility with this new piece of gear, you are probably approaching stage 3.

Most pieces of hunter gear have one "exceptional stat"—higher than most other pieces of the same item level. The three choices are, in order of preference, agility, attack power, and lastly stamina. This is the most important consideration when looking at most armor.

The second most important consideration is which 3 (non-attribute) statistics are on the piece of armor. Attack power is always present, and the other two are chosen from armor penetration, critical strike, haste, hit, and expertise. Expertise only affects melee attacks, so avoid it unless the item is otherwise a huge upgrade. Haste is the next worst stat—even intellect is better for most marksmen builds. The hit discussion is above. Thus the "best" item usually has attack power, armor penetration, and critical strike as its three added statistics, with one or two pieces that have attack power, armor penetration rating, and hit. A piece which has attack power, critical strike, and hit is usually not bad either.

The final consideration when looking at a piece of gear is sockets, which are generally "under-budget." Every piece of gear has a set number of "budget points" to distribute among the various statistics. The price of a socket is less than the price of 20 agility or 20 armor penetration or 20 hit rating or any combination, making sockets superior to extra statistics, even without considering the socket bonus, which is just extra gravy. Furthermore, being able to choose the statistic which gives you the most dps is a powerful bonus.

To be explicit about socket bonuses, meet only the best blue socket bonus (with a Nightmare Tear), as many yellow socket bonuses as possible (with either +hit or +hit/+agi gems--there is not a +hit/+armor penetration rating gem) without going over the hit cap, and then put either agility or armor penetration gems in all the other sockets, regardless of the socket bonus.

III) Talents, Glyphs, and Pets
The generic build for marksmen is here:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cxbZ0eVbRhzGIsxuVox00b:fiZMz

Everything listed on this talent tree is required for maximum dps except for 2/2 points in Go for the Throat in the third tier. If you have over about 40% critical strike chance, you can easily change this to 1/2 points. The only reason I included it in this build is that you need one extra point in a talent from tier 1 to 5 to get further down the tree--the "tier-5 hurdle."

There are 5 extra points in this tree (6 if you count the above), which should be placed in the following priority:
1) For stage 1 marksmen (under 400-450 armor penetration rating), 3 points in Improved Arcane Shot in the third tier is required. Otherwise ignore it.
2) Focused Aim, up to 3 points in the first tier, depending on gear. Using this talent to go over the hit cap is a waste, but keep it in mind while gearing and gemming. Often I will respec after getting a new piece of gear just to switch points in to or out of this talent.
3) Rapid Recuperation, 2 points in the eight tier. This talent is great when soloing, or doing heroics or 10-mans. You regenerate about 500 mana every time you deal the killing blow on an enemy, and you get about 3-5k mana every time you pop your main dps cooldown Rapid Fire, which generally occurs 2-4 times per boss fight. If you only do 25-man raids or always run with a paladin that judges wisdom, it isn't strictly necessary. However, because it is so deep in the tree, it won't help you at the 5th-tier hurdle.
4)Improved Hunters Mark, 3 points in the second tier. This talent is good for the raid if you always run with at least one other hunter, although your personal dps will be helped more by
5) Improved Steady Shot, 3 points in the 9th tier. This is arguably the worst talent, giving very little dps per point and being too far down the tree to help with the 5th-tier hurdle. This is basically the "filler" talent where you put points when you have nowhere else to put them.

There are alternative builds that put some of these optional points into the Beast Master tree to pick up Aspect Mastery, some which use them to go deeper into Survival to pick up Lock and Load, and some which omit Trueshot Aura because it is always provided by their raids. Most of the time, these choices are lower dps than the above priority list.

The choice of pet is easy. Pick a wolf: they are by far and away the best pet at the moment. If you are at stage 1, feel free to choose a cat or a raptor for aesthetic reasons because the dps difference is small, but if you’re raiding at the progression level you’d better have a level 80 wolf. There are some in northeast storm peaks if you don’t feel like leveling a prettier one.

In terms of minor glyphs, only feign death’s is mildly useful. The other two you can pick at random and no one will make fun of you. I like the glyph of mend pet because I have to feed the wolf less often. For major glyphs, serpent sting is absolutely required. I strongly recommend the glyph of steady shot for the second glyph, unless you are at the stage 1 in which case it is tied with the options for the third spot. There recently was a long-lasting bug (3.0 to 3.3) in which the effects of the glyph of steady shot were included in the talent marked for death (accidentally), but this has been fixed. The options for the third spot are glyphs of improved aspect of the hawk, kill shot, trueshot aura, hunter’s mark, chimera shot, and aimed shot. The differences among these are small and you can use a dps calculator to find out which is absolutely best for you, although it’s mostly a matter of preference.

The glyphs of chimera and aimed shots can screw up a nice rotation unless you get both of them, so this combination is usually best for stage 1 marksmen. The glyph of trueshot aura is best for stage 3 marksmen because aimed shot hits very hard at that level of armor penetration. The glyph of hunter’s mark is for those who have taken 3/3 of the talent improved hunter’s mark, to give the raid even more of a boost. The glyph of improved aspect of the hawk ensures you are at the haste cap and can get the fourth steady shot whenever it is up (see the rotation section), but it is better for stand-still-and-dps fights of which there are increasingly few, and for those with low enough latency to get the 4th steady shot. Finally, you can never go wrong will the glyph of kill shot: getting those huge crits more often at the end of a fight is a lot of fun (and useful on many fights, like the first phase of yogg).

VI) Rotation

All marksmen use a priority queue rotation, which means you always want to use an ability higher in the queue unless it is on cooldown or unavailable. Every (good) marksman does a hunter's mark on the boss and misdirection on the main tank before the pull. Then hunters of all stages share the beginning of the priority queue:

1) Serpent sting is special. Always use it as the first shot in the fight, and after that forget it (because chimera shot refreshes it) UNLESS:
*You move for too long and it falls off. The number one reason for bad marksman dps is letting serpent sting fall off. You should NEVER fire a chimera shot on a target without a serpent sting on it. You can see on damage meters how good you are at this by comparing the number of Chimera shots to the number of "Chimera-serpent" shots. Ideally the ratio of the second to the first should be 95% or higher.
*You receive a buff which increases damage by a percentage. This includes the charge buff on Thaddius, the spark buff on Malygos, blue circles on Iron Council, standing in the puddles on Vezax, Empowered Light/Darkness on Twin Valkyrs, in terms of individual fights, and in terms of buffs Culling the Herd (only 3%) and 2t10 set bouns proc (a more substantial 15%). Note that serpent sting automatically adjusts its damage if your attack power or critical strike increases during a fight, but does NOT adjust if you get a flat damage buff. Thus you should REAPPLY (not refresh with chimera) your serpent sting whenever you get any of these buffs, and then do NOT overwrite it with another application of serpent sting later. This way you can keep the buffed serpent sting rolling on your target for the entire rest of the fight, even after the buff has disappeared on yourself.

2) Silencing shot is off the global cooldown and thus can be macroed into all your shots to guarantee it is used whenever it is up, unless it is needed to interrupt something. Having an alternate bar which is identical to your main bar EXCEPT not having silencing shot macroed into your other shots is a good idea.

3) Kill shot is now on the global cooldown and you should stop everything and start spamming it if a target will be in under 20% in the next few seconds.

4) Volley if there are 3 or more targets close together and you are not required to burn one of them for strategic reasons. For 2 targets, single-target dps on one of them is superior to either volley or splitting your shots among them (except for an occasional serpent sting on the off-target).

Now the priority queue changes depending on which stage marksman you are.

For stage 1 marksmen (low armor pen):
5) Chimera shot
6) Aimed shot
7) Arcane shot
8) Steady shot

For stage 2 marksmen (soft-capped armor pen):
5) Chimera shot
6) Aimed shot
7) Steady shot

For stage 3 marksmen (approaching the hard-cap):
5) Aimed shot
6) Chimera shot
7) Steady shot

A) Going Out of Mana (OOM)
Marksmen hunters, with expensive shots and no source of replenishment, are particularly vulnerable to going OOM. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” so keep the following in mind:
1) Keep leather gear to a minimum. There are many good leather pieces for hunters (since intellect, one of our worst dps stats, is not included in the budget). In fact, many leather pieces are best-in-slot for us. However, using leather in one of the “big” spots (helm, chest, and legs) will make your mana pool particularly vulnerable.
2) Apply misdirection and hunters mark as early as possible, so you can regenerate more mana pre-pull.
3) Switch to aspect of the viper while not fighting—either between pulls or when you cannot attack the boss, such as just before Icehowl’s massive crash, between waves on add fights, when the worms are underground, and so on.
4) If you have the choice, attack the target with judgment of wisdom on it. Paladin tanks will often judge wisdom on their target if there is at least one holy paladin judging light on it, and retribution paladins almost always judge wisdom.
5) Make sure you have kings and intellect buffs. On some fights, you may even have to use drums and scrolls.
If you do happen to go OOM, the tactic is to save enough mana for your “big” shots (kill, chimera, and aimed—possibly arcane) and then switch to aspect of the viper for your “little shots” (steady shots). The typical hunter rotation is 10 seconds long (the cooldown of unglyphed chimera and aimed shots), and is highly asymmetric, with up to 50% of its damage occurring in the first 2 seconds. So to maximize dps, try to switch back and forth between aspects of the hawk and viper depending on where in the rotation you are until your mana is at a more comfortable level. (I usually start aspect-switching at 1k-1.5k mana and stop at around 40-50% mana).

B) When to pop Rapid Fire, Readiness, and Call of the Wild

This is the hardest part of marksman dps to master and is the only part that requires experience. Generally, the order of events of a rapid fire use should be
1. Chimera,
2. Aimed (or reversed if at stage 3),
3. Rapid fire (which is off the gcd, so immediately followed by)
4. Readiness,
and then continue the normal rotation, from the beginning, hitting the second rapid fire as soon as the first expires. The reason for this is that rapid fire helps steady and auto shots, but not chimera and aimed. If you pop rapid fire before chimera, you may not have 2 full rotations with an extra steady shot (see below). However, there are three aspects to consider:

1) Your haste rating and latency. The typical mid-fight rotation of shots on the gcd is chimera, aimed, steady, steady, steady, (steady), and repeat from the beginning (one of these steadies will be replaced by arcane if you’re at stage 1—which one is random since the cooldown of arcane shot is asynchronous with the cooldowns of chimera and aimed shots). The last steady shot is in parentheses because you can only finish casting it before the chimera cooldown is up if you have high haste and low latency. Note that if you cannot finish casting the ENTIRE shot before the chimera cooldown expires, your dps will be better if you delay your next global cooldown. That is, it is better to preserve a 10-second rotation cycle than to squeeze an extra steady shot onto the end and potentially lengthen it. However, you CAN cast this last steady shot without delaying your chimera shot if you are haste capped, which happens whenever you have rapid fire, heroism, or improved aspect of the hawk up (or are really unlucky with gear and stacked 400+ haste accidentally). Thus, you should probably NOT use rapid fire whenever you have heroism, since if you don’t you will get extra steady shots outside of the heroism window.

This point is actually still under hot debate: others have argued that, since haste buffs are multiplicative, you get a greater dps benefit of stacking rapid fire with heroism than if you used them separately. It is my opinion that getting 2-4 extra steady shots per 3 minutes of fight time is superior to the multiplicative synergy on auto shots. Also, it may be difficult to predict when (or if) your raid will get heroism: will it be more or less than three minutes from now? I will update this discussion after the number-crunchers on elitistjerks forums finish duking it out (possibly never).

Similarly, it may not be a good idea to use rapid fire when you have improved aspect of the hawk up, but this is less of a consideration since you have no control over that proc and it is up a good 50% of the fight. Also, improved aspect of the hawk may NOT haste cap you, depending whether you have it glyphed, your latency, and how much haste you have on your gear (it is only 15% haste, and hunters need slightly less than 25% to be haste capped). Because of these considerations, I will ignore this proc for the rest of the discussion.

2) Fight time. If the fight will last less than 3 minutes, you will only get one rapid fire + readiness combo. You want to save (at least) readiness for when the boss is under 20% since hitting it will get you an extra kill shot, unless this will waste too much of the second rapid fire (that is, the boss will die less than 15 seconds after reaching 20%, like most heroic bosses). The first rapid fire you can hit whenever you like, preferably on a trinket or set bonus proc (or both). If the fight will last more than 3 minutes, it is better to use your first rapid fire + readiness combo relatively early—possibly immediately—to ensure they will both be up again by the end of the fight.

3) Buffs and procs. If the fight will last more than 5 minutes, it’s best to use call of the wild with your first rapid fire + readiness combo, so it will be up again for your kill shots. If it will last fewer than 5 minutes, I usually save call of the wild for heroism since this is often when the raid desires more dps for a strategic reason. However, note that call of the wild actually benefits you more during rapid fire (40% haste) than heroism (30% haste), at least as far as auto shots are concerned. So those trying for absolutely maximum dps should always hit call of the wild before the chimera shot on the rotation in which rapid fire will be used. So the rotation for this would be
1. Call of the wild (off global cooldown, so immediately followed by)
2. Chimera shot,
3. Aimed shot (again, possibly reversed),
4. Rapid fire (immediately followed by)
5. Readiness,
and then back to the normal rotation from the beginning. The reason for this is that you can get 3 pairs of chimera and aimed shots buffed by call of the wild, which are our strongest shots. By the way, only huntards leave call of the wild (and growl!) on autocast—it is fine to leave everything else autocasted, however. Finally, it doesn’t take much to figure out you don’t want to hit rapid fire + readiness if your trinket and set bonus procs are on internal cooldown.

Thus the general heuristic is that you want to use a call of the wild + rapid fire + readiness rotation (see above) as soon as possible UNLESS
1) The fight has less than 3 (or 5, for call of the wild) minutes left, in which case you can save at least readiness and the second rapid fire for sub-20% (possibly the first rapid fire as well, if the boss will spend more than 30 seconds under 20%),
2) using rapid fire + readiness now will cause a collision with heroism either now or 3 minutes down the road, or
3) your trinket(s), set bonus(es), or your wolf’s Furious Howl went on internal cooldown recently

C) Movement

Like any dps class, hunters hate to do anything but cycle their rotation. There are ways to minimize movement’s effect on your dps, however. First of all, if you need to use another hunter ability—feign death, misdirect, trap, deterrence, pop a potion or a flask or drums (if you died) or health stone, and so on—the best time to do it in your rotation is in place of a steady shot (if it is on the global cooldown) or between steady shots (if it is not). Don’t be afraid to do all this stuff as well: your dps is zero if you’re dead or half if you’re OOM (as a marksman hunter you will grow to love mana pots, often preferred to haste pots except for in well-composed 25-man groups).

Movement hurts dps even more than using a quick utility ability. The absolute best way to move is to use disengage. Some tricks here: firstly, you always disengage in the opposite direction that you are facing, so you may need a quick spin before you hit this ability in order to go the best direction. Secondly, the tooltip lists disengage at 15 yards, but it is less if you are going uphill and more if you are going down. Also, disengage often fails miserably on uneven ground (such as in Vezax’s room). Always plan ahead and try to estimate where disengage will put you before hitting it. Look before you leap. You know you’re getting really good at disengage when you can do it to plant yourself in the middle of an iron council circle or a Hodir snow mound within a global cooldown.

If disengage won’t do the trick, the best time in your rotation to move is during the chimera and aimed shots, since they are instants. Moving for more than 3 seconds requires you to skip some steady shots. If you don’t have to GTFO ASAP, consider "stutter stepping:" move for 2 seconds, stop for an auto shot, then repeat. Not only does moving prevent steady shots, it also prevents auto shots. If you stutter step, you can get the auto shots back. Finally, consider a runspeed boot enchant: the engineer ones are obviously the best, but even the +agi one is decent compared to icewalker, especially considering how little hit rating marksmen need.

VII) Macros

There are at least two abilities you should macro into every shot (serpent sting, chimera shot, aimed shot, arcane shot, and steady shot): silencing shot and kill command. They are both off the global cooldown and worth using whenever they are up. As mentioned earlier, it is good to have another bar identical to your usual that does NOT have silencing shot macroed into it. If you have on-use trinkets, the best place to macro them is into a cooldown macro that does both the trinket(s) and call of the wild. It is also possible to macro call of the wild and/or trinkets into rapid fire or readiness, but not advised (see the discussion in the rotation section).

The generic macro for all my shots is

#showtooltip (Insert shot name here)
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/use 10
/cast (Insert shot name here)
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrosFrame: Clear()

where, of course, you replace (Insert shot name here) with either Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, or Steady Shot. The /use 10 is for rocket gloves (I am an engineer), so you may safely omit it. The #showtooltip line makes it easier to monitor both the cooldown and current damage on your shots. Whenever you spam an ability, you get a random “whirring” noise that annoys me, which is what the /console lines are for: they turn the sound effects off for about a tenth of a second. For some people, the (almost unnoticeable) break in combat sounds is more annoying, so they omit these lines. Finally, the error frame also annoys me (“Ability not ready yet”), so I clear that at the end of the macro as well.

You no longer need a macro to change tracking type, as tracking any of the types gives you the bonus damage to ALL of them. I usually just track undead, sometimes dragonkin. However, remember to take your tracking off of fish if you do that sort of thing.

VIII) Gear

All the following gear is ranked roughly in order of quality. The symbol * indicates that the item has hit rating and deserves special consideration: you need 2 to 3 of these. The symbol + indicates there is a heroic version available. The ranking given is for the heroic version—usually the regular version is 2-3 spots lower. No horde-side weapons are listed, only alliance-side.

Obviously, you rolled a hunter because you like shooting stuff. It should not be surprising that the most important piece of gear is your ranged weapon. Recently, Blizzard decided hunters were lacking in dps and raised the damage on ranged weapons—but only those above ilevel 226. Thus, you will see a huge gap in performance between sub-226 and above-226 ranged weapons. The stats on ranged weapons, which are small, are generally not important, although sockets are always a bonus. Generally, marksmen benefit more from slow weapons due to chimera shot being based off weapon damage and not dps, but the effect is small, since speed only varies from 2.8 to 3.0 on all progression-level weapons

Dwarves prefer guns because of their extra 1% critical strike chance with them, which in essence raises the item level by 6. The following are available:

+Stakethrower from Blood-Queen Lanathel in 10 ICC
BRK-1000 from 25 ToC tribute chest
Rifled Blastershot Launcher from 25 Onyxia
*+The Diplomat from Twin Valkyrs in 10 ToC
Giant’s Bane from Kologarn in 25 Ulduar
*Magnetized Projectile Emitter from XT-002 Deconstructor hardmode in 10 Ulduar
Snub-Nosed Blastersot Launcer from 10 Onyxia
True-Aim Long Rifle from Heroic ToC 5

Choices from bows and crossbows include
+Zod’s Repeating Longbow from Lady Deathwhisper in 25 ICC
*+Njordnar Bone Bow from Lady Deathwhisper in 10 ICC
+Talonstrike from Lord Jaraxxus in 25 ToC
+Bealgun’s Heavy Crossbow from Anub’arak in 10 ToC
Skyforge Crossbow from Algalon or Thorim hardmode in 25 Ulduar
*Felglacier Bolter from Ick in Heroic Pit of Saron

After picking up a decent ranged weapon, the next most important item is an armor penetration trinket, since it separates stage 1 marksmen from stage 2 and gives you 10 seconds of godlike dps every minute or even more often. There are only three choices:

Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, from the Devourer of Souls in Heroic Forge of Souls has the highest armor pen proc (678) which gives the lowest soft cap from armor penetration rating (712). It gives static critical strike rating, which is great. However, it only procs on critical strikes (which could be bad for lower levels of gear) and has an internal cooldown of 50 seconds. This makes it very slightly inferior to

Mjolnir Runestone from Thorim’s hardmode in 10 Ulduar. This trinket has slightly less critical strike rating than the above (102 vs. 114) and procs for slightly less armor penetration rating (665, giving a soft cap of 735). This latter isn’t as bad as it seems: a higher soft cap can be good, because a soft-capped hunter runs with more static armor penetration, leading to higher non-proc dps. Also, this trinket has an internal cooldown of 45 seconds and procs off any attack, leading to a higher uptime.

*Grim Toll can drop from Gothik, Grobbulus, Heigan, or Maexxna in 25 Naxxaamas and has the lowest amount of armor penetration rating (612, giving a soft cap of 788). Again, this is not necessarily a disadvantage. The uptime is identical to Mjolnir Runestone’s. This trinket has a large amount of hit rating (83) instead of the crit rating of the previous 2, which is great at lower levels of gear but becomes a handicap at higher levels.

While talking about armor penetration rating, two trinkets provide a static amount:

+Deathbringer’s Will, from Deathbringer Saurfang in 25 ICC, gives 155 armor penetration rating (167 on the heroic version) and yet another godlike proc: for 30 seconds and on a 105 second internal cooldown, you gain randomly either 600 agility, 600 critical strike rating, or 1200 attack power (700/1400 for the heroic version). This is the best trinket available for marksmen and is a key component to advancing to stage 3.

Banner of Victory, from the Argent Confessor in (regular!) ToC 5 is a poor man’s version of the above, with 84 armor penetration rating and a chance to proc 1008 attack power on a 50 second internal cooldown. This is a great trinket for marksmen at all stages to boost their armor penetration rating and is quite farmable.

Other trinkets of interest, in order of usefulness, include
+Whispering Fanged Skull from Lady Deathwhisper in 10 ICC
+Death’s Verdict from Twin Valkyrs in 25 ToC
Darkmoon Card: Greatness (agility version) from the auction house remains competitive
Herkuml War Token from frost badges, but honestly your badges are better spent elsewhere because of its static haste rating
Wrathstone from Kologarn in 25 Ulduar has static critical strike rating and on-use attack power, which makes it actually quite useful, similar to
*Mark of Supremacy from triumph badges, which is a good starter trinket that also has on-use attack power but massive hit rating (128), as does
*Pyrite Infuser, from Flame Leviathan in 10 Ulduar with procced attack power
Mirror of Truth deserves note as it’s the easiest way to get of quest blues when dinging 80.

Note that item level means very little when looking at trinkets: there are two ilevel 200 trinkets competitive at progression-level raiding (Darkmoon Card: Greatness and Banner of Victory), while one of the trinkets with a very high item level (Harkuml War Token) is actually quite mediocre for marksmen. Also, the ilevel 226 armor penetration trinket is just slightly better than the ilevel 232 version because of the slightly higher uptime, depending on critical strike chance.

After your ranged weapon and trinkets, the next focus should be on a melee weapon. Although hunters do not use a weapon’s dps, it has the highest budget for statistics of any piece of gear, making it the third most important acquisition. For PvE, two-handed weapons are almost always preferred over one-handed weapons both for convenience and for dps, but this is no means a general rule. The big exception here is at the highest levels of gear: there is currently only one two-handed weapon in ICC with armor penetration rating.

+Hersir’s Greatspear off of Prince Valanar in 10 ICC is the reluctant holder of “best-in-slot” title, as it has hit rating instead of the preferred critical strike rating.
+Archon Glaive from Anub’arak in 25 ToC remains strong, being nearly perfect in statistics.
+Bloodfall from Blood Queen Lana’thel in 25 ICC and
+Distant Land from Festergut in 25 ICC both have haste instead of armor penetration.
Quel’Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned has the same stat distribution as Archon Glaive and just slightly edges out its regular version, making the battered hilt an excellent purchase for a marksman hunter.
+Lupine Longstaff from Twin Valkyrs in 25 ToC has haste instead of the preferred crit,
Decimation from the tribute chest in 25 ToC has hit instead of the preferred armor penetration
+Reckoning from Twin Valkyrs in 10 ToC also has haste instead of the preferred crit
*Fordragon Blades from Anub’arak in 10 ToC has haste instead of crit and too much stamina
+Paragon’s Breadth from the tribute chest in 10 ToC has has haste instead of crit and is slightly under budget for its item level by some sort of oversight at Blizzard
Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned from General Vezax in 25 Ulduar was the old best-in-slot, with very little of its budget spent on stamina
Dreambinder from Freya’s hardmode in 25 Ulduar has haste instead of crit
Marrowstrike from the Argent Confessor in 5 Heroic ToC is the perfect starter weapon for new level 80 marksmen, with all the right stats, low stamina, and a socket to boot
Orca-Hunter’s Harpoon from Marwyn in 5 Heroic HoR is an alternative for starting hunters, but it sacrifices armor penetration for hit.

As you can see, the primary consideration is which stats the weapon has on it, followed by its item level. Having the wrong stats “demotes” a weapon anywhere from 6-13 item levels in terms of ranking by dps gained.

I spent a lot of time discussing these three pieces of gear because they are the most important. Instead of discussing other pieces slot-by-slot, let me do an overview of the tier pieces.

Both set bonuses on tier 10 are amazing, and 4 pieces should definitely be acquired if possible. In decreasing order of desirability are the head, shoulders, chest (which has armor penetration instead of the traditional hit on hunter tier pieces, possibly causing problems), hands (which have hit instead of armor penetration, possibly compensating for the above), and legs (which have haste instead of armor penetration).

The 2-set bonus on tier 9 is excellent, while the 4-set is not worth picking up. Here, the legs and head are the best, followed by the chest and shoulders (which both have hit instead of armor penetration), with the hands bringing up the rear (haste instead of armor penetration). The triumph badge shoulders are preferred to the tier shoulders, since they have the correct stats.

The 2-set bonus on tier 8 is decent, but does not merit down-converting badges to attain it. This is because only the head and chest are available, which are two of the better pieces in tier 9. Tier 7 is garbage.

For the rest of your gear, just remember that you need 2-3 pieces with hit rating, after which armor penetration and critical strike ratings are the best. When considering upgrades, a good rule of thumb is that lacking armor penetration is about a 7-8 item level downgrade, while lacking critical strike is a 5-6 item level downgrade. Watch for items which are overbudgeted on agility or stamina—the best and worst, respectively—which can change an effective item level by as much as 9 or 10.

IX) Professions

Jewelcrafting and blacksmithing are the absolute best professions for hunters, as you can get armor penetration rating from the gems. Leatherworking, alchemy, and enchanting give you a comparable amount of attack power, which isn’t bad, but isn’t as good as agility or armor penetration rating. Engineering and skinning, in the next tier down, provide similar dps to one another, with engineering giving you many utility-type abilities and leatherworking letting you gather for money. Tailoring, herbalism, and mining are bad for a hunter and should be avoided.

X) Addons and other tools

Obviously, get deadly boss mods or some other raid-helper. After that, hunters are all about damage, so damage and threat meters are both good (with a heavily front-loaded rotation, marksmen can pull off of an unsuspecting tank in seconds.) Skada damage meter is lightweight and does both jobs. Unit frames aren’t necessary for a hunter, nor is an addon like clique. One very useful addon, however, is power auras classic, which makes it very obvious when you have a proc or a buff, helping you keep track of such things for your cooldowns.

Finally, if you want all the numerical nitty-gritty, an excellent tool for comparing dps upgrades among specs, gear, enchants, glyph, food, buffs, gear, and gems is Shandara’s spreadsheet at the elitistjerks forums: http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t30710-wotlk_dps_spreadsheet/. MS Excel is required to use it.