Pimp My Profile: Marksmanship hunter Fizzlebow

Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help!

Thank you for writing to Pimp My Profile Fizzlebow! You appear to be both deeply insightful as well as uncommonly good looking -- which is especially remarkable in your case since you don't have the rugged dwarven good looks to boost you. Marksman is indeed an excellent build to use in heroics, and I do believe if we roll up our sleeves we can jump your heroic DPS up considerably. We'd like to see you consistently doing over 3,000 DPS in any given heroic.

Best of all with higher DPS your runs will be faster than ever and I daresay your wife will be looking at you with new eyes and suggesting ways to spend that extra time!

Talents

Your talent build is pretty good overall, however I would suggest a handful of changes. Concussive Barrage isn't really doing anything for you, and you're way over the hit cap with all those points in Focused Aim. The Hawk Eye talent is not worthwhile -- you can always just stand 6 yards closer and spend those talent points where they'll increase your DPS. Improved Arcane Shot, which you passed by, is a very good talent for heroics. In general, I'd recommend a talent build a little something more like this: MM Hunter Heroic Build.

This is a bit different from a standard MM hunter build. We aren't worried much with shortening the Rapid Fire cooldowns or anything to conserve mana (that's what Viper Sting is for in heroics). We took out all of your points in Focused Aim. The hit cap for a heroic boss is only 6%, which requires 197 hit rating, and you've already got that from your gear and gems. If you decide to go after raid bosses, you'll need another 2% hit.

Glyphs

As Grandpappy Frostheim back in Khaz Modan would say, "We didn't have glyphs back in my day, and from the looks of it, you don't got 'em now!"

Your Glyph of Wyvern Sting is not going to help you at all, since you don't have the Wyvern Sting talent. Furthermore, Glyph of Rapid Fire and Glyph of Hunter's Mark are both going give you very little benefit in heroics. Try this out:
Dave

I'm assuming that your wolf Dave is your main DPS pet, since wolves are the best DPS pet and Dave sounds like the name of a heroic-running wolf. It does look as though you're a little over-protective of Dave, however. You have lots of his talents spent to protect him, heal him, and bring him back to life. Have a little faith in Dave. Particularly now with the new Cower ability, pets should very rarely die.

And honestly, if Dave does die, it's not a big deal. Just finish off the mobs you're on and rez him between pulls. I'd recommend a pet talent structure for Dave that looks like this: MM Wolf Talent Build

Gems

Your gems aren't bad, but they aren't optimal. Generally you should use agility gems instead of attack power gems. It's not a big enough difference to be worth your while to change them now, but as you replace your gear you'll want to convert over. However, you really want to use a

• Glyph of Serpent Sting: the single greatest glyph for MM hunters, because it increases the Serpent Sting portion of your Chimera Shot damage. While you may not even need to put Serpent Sting on mobs that die so fast in heroics, you'll certainly be using it on the bosses and the beefier mobs.

• Glyph of Volley: Volley will make up the largest percentage of your damage done in heroics, and it will be the biggest drain on your mana pool. For heroics this glyph is a good call.

• Glyph of Chimera Shot: you should be able to make good use out of having your most damaging shot available more often!

Relentless Earthsiege Diamond for your meta socket. You only need one blue gem (or purple, or a Nightmare Tear) to satisfy your meta gem requirement. After that we're better off putting pure agility gems in blue sockets and ignoring the socket bonuses.

A Few Words on Rotation

While it's not profile-related, I'm going to say just a bit about your heroic rotation. In general AOE is your friend in heroics. Use Multi-Shot whenever you can. If there are three or more mobs, go ahead and just Volley them down. Don't bother putting up Hunter's Mark or Serpent Sting on things that you know are going to die very fast -- it's not worth it if it won't be around for a while. For full information on optimizing heroic DPS, you can see our guide on Hunting Heroics and PUGs.

Keep Us Posted

I hope this steers you toward higher DPS, shorter runs, and more time to admire your seething good looks in the mirror. Drop us a line and let us know how it works out for you!

You want to be a Hunter, eh? Well then you came to the right place. You start with science, then you add some Dwarven Stout, and round it off some elf bashing. The end result is massive dps. Scattered Shots is the WoW.com column dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a Hunter. Each week Scattered Shots will cover topics to help you Fix Your DPS, Choosing the Right Spec, Gear Selection, Macros and Pet Selection, Pet Specs and Management.