Quote:My hunter is going almost pure marksmanship, with bits of survival thrown in for some PvP functionality, what with my being on a pvp server and all.
I agree with most of what you say, and really like the marksmanship talents for the most part -- but just a couple of disagreements :) (for straight PvE).
Quote:Improved Conussive Shot: No. I see no purpose for concussive shot in pve, and, I have found, there are better ways of stunning/getting away from an enemy in pvp.
Concussive shot is great in PvE, but not as means of escape. It's one of my bread-and-butter attacks, along with auto-shoot, serpent sting, arcane shot, and multi-shot.
Especially in any longer fight, I fire concussive shot right at the start (maybe after a normal attack and a sting), and refire it whenever it bccomes available again. It doesn't seem to attract more aggro than a normal shot. Any time the stun goes off it protects your pet (particularly useful if there are adds) and lets you do basically free damage for a few seconds. Taking a monster out of the battle is a huge plus.
Its other big use is to stop runners, and one can time the concussive shots to hit monsters that flee right before their health drops to the level that they run. The stun chance from the talent isn't high enough for you to rely on it in a consistent way, but it is still really useful IMHO.
Quote:Improved Arcane Shot: More Arcane Shot is more damage. Not hard to understand, here.Â
I haven't picked this one up -- maybe I should. But I also find that I have plenty to do as it is while waiting for arcane to recharge. Multi-shot is on a separate timer, so it often substitutes for a second arcane shot, and other times you actually want to reduce your da output. So I'm still not sure about this one...How have you found it? The place I could see using it is in instances on occasions when multi-shot risks breaking sheeped/sapped mobs.
Quote:Barrage: Haven't used Multi-shot much, and I don't have Volley yet. Heavy damage to one target is the most effective style of play that I've found so far, so I'd be wasting half the talent in most situations anyway.
Try multi-shot some more then and see what you think! One of it's best uses is exactly to deal heavy damage to a single target. If there's only one target, all three missiles hit that target (Edit: checking it again, I'm not so sure that this is what really happens, but MS does deal out a lot of damage against a single target, whatever the mechanism). It does more damage than arcane shot (maybe you have to its lvl up a bit, I'm not sure), and it's on a completely separate timer. IMO Multi-shot is one of the very best ranged attacks a hunter has. Volley, on the other hand, is pretty useless.