Marksman 1-80: Levels 31-39

Levels 31-39

Talents in the 30s are pretty flexible; I generally go with Focused Aim, Careful Aim, and Barrage. You won't have Steady Shot for a while yet, but the extra 3% to hit will help if you want to kill stuff higher level than you. As a Marksman hunter (at least till Cataclysm, when we get to learn to operate with Focus), Intellect is your friend, and more AP from it is good. Not everyone is a Barrage fan, but the damage boost on Aimed Shot is worth it.

Skills, Levels 31-39:

• 32: Flare, Raptor Strike (Rank 5), Track Demons
• 34: Explosive Trap (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 5)
• 36: Aimed Shot (Rank 3), Arcane Shot (Rank 5), Immolation Trap (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 4), Viper Sting
• 38: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 4)

New skills in the 30s aren't as flashy as some, but there some useful ones.

At level 32, you get Flare. It's been tweaked over time, in terms of both duration and cooldown, but right now it's a 20 second cooldown and a 20 second effect. It puts a flare on the ground that makes an area that will reveal stealth. Depending how a rogue or druid is specialized, it can be very useful in PVP. It's also useful for the stealthed cats and wolves you'll start running into in this level range. Oh, and those stupid stealthed infiltrators in Dustwallow... grr...

Anywho, you also pick up Track Demons at 32. Like most of the other tracking skills, the utility depends on if you're somewhere with demons. (If you run Dire Maul at level later, you can use it to keep an eye out for the patrolling Eye of Kilroggs that will summon a couple of mean Voidwalkers.)

Level 34 gets you Explosive Trap. This is an area-of-effect fire trap that will pulse for periodic damage. Now that traps are on separate cooldowns by fire/frost/nature, they're more useful, and more fun; you can drop a Frost Trap and an Explosive Trap together and have slowing plus fire.

I use a couple macros for traps to keep my bars less crowded; they're basically along the lines of:

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap

I have a separate one for the ice traps.

At level 36 you'll pick up Viper Sting. This is a bit more useful than it used to be, and the mana gain from it can be beneficial. Combined with Chimera Shot at later levels, it's sometimes better to use than switching into Aspect of the Viper.