The Hunter Pew Pew

* Up to date as of 3.3.3.*


Hey guys, this post will be about the Marksmanship spec and how it works with armor pen.

As an armor pen (ARP from now on) marks hunter, their are a few things that change, for example, once you hit a certain point of ARP you want to take arcane shot out of your rotation(you should still use it if you are moving, and you don't have any other instant cast shot off of CD).
The reason for taking out arcane shot, is because ARP only affects physical shots, and arcane shot, well....does arcane damage.

Here are a couple thing you need to be aware of:


-You need to be aware of the hard caps, with and without a proc trinket.

-You need to be more aware of your auto shots, which will be doing more damage then if you weren't using ARP. Making sure you time your auto shots so that you aren't missing any is a must.


The ARP hard cap(where ARP no longer helps you) is 1400, if you have an ARP proc trinket such as the needle-encrusted scorpion, subtract the ARP you get from the proc and that is what you call the ARP soft cap(soft cap meaning, that if you have any more then the soft cap, that ARP is wasted when your trinket procs).


Here are the proc trinket's and their soft caps


-Needle-Encrusted: Scorpion 722 ARP to the soft cap

-Mjolnir Runestone: 735 ARP to the soft cap

-Grim Toll: 788 ARP to the soft cap


*these numbers below are very general, and won't be the same for everyone, it depends on the gear you have.*


-350-400 ARP take arcane shot out of your rotation, as well as talents in improved arcane shot(you can put them into improved steady shot).

-850ish you can start gemming ARP and you should be able to see a DPS increase.



As I said, these numbers very from hunter to hunter, use Zeherah's Spread Sheet to figure out what the exact magic number is for you.


The most common problems I see hunters have with ARP is that they either gem ARP way too early and lose DPS or they just aren't spec'd right.

Check out these links to other ARP guides for more info:

Euripides' guide

Frostheim's guide


I hope this post helped you, let me know in the comments what you think :D.


till next time.

I'm Wowsa and don't forget to pop your flask.