Marksmanship

From WoWWiki

"At close quarters, an archer is an unarmed man."
-Sun Tzu

Marksmanship is a Hunter talent tree. Marks used to be the dominant Hunter spec before the release of the Burning Crusade expansion. Patch 2.1, with its improvements to Survival, as well as The Burning Crusade's review of Beast Mastery, has knocked Marksmanship off its throne a bit, but 20 points in Marks (down to and including Mortal Shots) is still largely considered mandatory for Hunters, irrespective of whatever other tree the Hunter chooses to invest the rest of their points in. Additionally, the tree is still enormously viable in many scenarios, particularly PvP, due to the high burst damage provided not only by Lethal/Mortal Shots, but also by the attack power enhancement talents deeper in the tree.

The tree's main purpose is to deal major amounts of ranged damage. It does so by several talents that increase the overall damage of the hunter—such as the Ranged Weapon specialization, Lethal Shots and Mortal Shots talents, and bonuses to specific damage skills—such as Barrage and Improved Stings and also offers an additional high-yield skill, the Aimed Shot.

The pinnacle of this talent tree used to be Trueshot Aura, which at the highest level grants 125 additional attack power to all members of the group the Hunter is in, making the hunter very useful in groups of other hunters, rogues, and warriors. The current 41 point Marksmanship talent is Silencing Shot, which prevents a target from casting spells for 3 seconds. This is effective against casting player characters (warlocks or shamans) in PvP as well as its excellent application for PvE crowd control (pulling casters into the hunters freezing trap in instances and raids.)

For detailed info, see Marksmanship section of Hunter talents.