Survival: it’s great! It’s rubbish! It’s great again! It’s sort of OK! Survival’s been up and down like a Cataclysm healer’s mana (well, OK, that’s mostly down) -what will Patch 4.3 bring for your DPS? Read on for a guide to your updated rotation, best talent spec and glyphs, and how to reforge and gem in the new patch.
Updated 6th March 2012 for Patch 4.3
Survival Hunter changes in Patch 4.3
Survival Hunters have only seen one change in Patch 4.3 – a 15% buff to the damage from Explosive Shot. This is a very nice buff indeed, but as Explosive Shot is already our top priority, doesn’t change our shot rotation. It does make it more important than ever to get Lock and Load right, though!
You may hear that we also have a buff to the chance of Lock and Load – that doesn’t appear to have made it into the live realms, sadly.
Our two-and four-piece set bonuses for this tier are nice, but we don’t have solid info on how, if at all, they change our rotation yet.
Survival hunter rotation / Priorities
Survival Hunters use a priority system – use the ability that’s highest on the list and off cooldown at any given time.
Make sure you have Aspect of the Hawk up.
- Before the pull: Put Hunter’s Mark on the target and use Misdirect on the tank. Please, please remember Misdirect. Hunter aggro makes tanks cry.
- Top Priority: Apply Serpent Sting if it’s not on the target. Use Explosive Shot unless you’re in Lock and Load (see below).
- Second Priority: Use Kill Shot if possible, followed by Black Arrow if it’s off cooldown.
- Third Priority: Use Arcane Shot if you have plenty of Focus available, and Cobra Shot if you’re below 50 or so.
Lock and Load
When Lock and Load procs, we get 3 Explosive Shots in a row. However, since Explosive Shot is a DOT, we want to alternate using our Explosive Shots and another shot. Cobra Shot is, most of the time, the only sensible choice.
So, when you get Lock and Load, go into a rotation: Explosive Shot, Cobra Shot, Explosive Shot, Cobra Shot, Explosive Shot, then go back to your priorities.
If you’re very high on Focus (above 90) when Lock and Load procs, you can also use Arcane Shot after the first Explosive Shot.
Rapid Fire: Rapid Fire only really affects Cobra Shot and Auto Shot for Survival hunters. Hence, the best time to use Rapid Fire is when you’ve used up all your Focus. Other than that, use it as soon as it cools down. If you have other buffs (notably Potion of the Tol’Vir), use them at the same time.
Survival Hunter AOE Rotation
Put an Explosive Trap where the tank takes the mobs at the start of the pull, using Trap Launcher.
MAKE SURE TO USE MISDIRECT TOO, unless you want your tank to hate you.
Then simply spam Multi-shot until you run out of focus, then Cobra Shot, then Multi-shot again, until everything’s dead and your DPS resembles the national debt figures.
Note: You don’t need to use Serpent Sting in AOE – your Serpent Spread talent applies it automagically.
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Survival talent spec:
Standard talent build for level 85 Survival hunter
Stats, reforging and gems as a Survival Hunter
Stats order: Agility > Hit (until hit capped at 961 or 841 if you’re a Draenai) > Critical Strike Rating > Haste > Mastery
- Reforge Mastery and Haste to Hit, then excess Hit and any remaining Mastery to Crit.
- Gem Agility. Always. Ignore socket bonuses unless they’re HUGE, then use an AGI/Hit or AGI/Haste gem.
Haste is a complicated stat for Hunters – these guides will work well for you, but if you want to tweak some more, see the Warcraft Hunter’s Union guide to Haste Plateaus.
Survival Enchants
Check to see if your profession supplies more appropriate enchants before putting these on! Inscription and Engineering in particular may have better options.
| Head | Arcanum of the Ramkahen |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Major Agility |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Agility |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Dragonscale Leg Armor |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Major Agility or Enchant Boots – Assassin’s Step if you want run speed. |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Mighty Agility |
| Ranged Weapon | Flintlocke’s Woodchucker |
Glyphs
Primes: Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Kill Shot.
Major: The only important one is Glyph of Disengage.
Minor: Feign Death is the only important Minor Glyph for Survival.
Links
- Warcraft Hunter’s Union – the best resource for Hunters on the ‘net, IMO. Has 4.3 guides already
- WoW Insider’s hunter column – very informative, if wordy.
- Elitist Jerks’ Hunter guide – not yet updated for 4.3
- MMO Champion Survival guide – well-explained and worth reading, although the Lock and Load recommendations are odd.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Due to the way Dot clipping works there is a different way to approach Lock and load ticks. Since the global cooldown is long enough for the first tick to go off and you can always refresh before the last tick of a dot without clipping it you can effectively explosive shot twice in a row without loosing any dps. The shot after the two free ones will have to be a filler though as the new explosive shot will last between 2 and 3 seconds.
Apologies, I didn’t state why this was a better way of approaching this than yours. With your lock and load rotation 1s explosive 1.5 ish second cobra depending on your lag/reaction time you can miss an explosive shot as you only have 0.5 seconds to account for lag/latency and how far along your current cobra shot is.
This rotation gives you an extra .5 seconds to not miss out on the next LnL proc
so 22agy is bettter then 60crit on the cloak ?
@ç§�ã�¯ã��ã��ã��ã��ã�§ã�� – Current recommendations from the EJ crowd are “yes”, although if you want to get the absolute maximum out of your gear you should run Simulationcraft to get exact stat weights for your character.
What about applying serpent sting before spamming multi shot in aoe dps?
*Checks* Whoops, that’s not in there, is it? Yes, you should definitely apply Serpent Sting – updating.
You should not apply Serpent Sting before spamming multishot because of your Serpent Spread talent of which you should have one point in.
You’re right, and I’m an idiot. Reverting the guide to remove that suggestion.
You want to seriously reconsider not adding Arcane Shot into your rotation. It does more damage than Cobra Shot unglyphed, which should put it at a higher priority when you have focus to burn. Glyphed arcane shot is possibly better than the serpent sting glyph too with this new (better) rotation.
My bad, didn’t notice you mentioned it. I guess what I meant to say was NO KILL COMMAND! EVER! Arcane shot is far more beneficial than kill command to use as a filler during Lock n Load. I assume you just forgot to change it since you did mention it in the rotation as I now see, but nevertheless it should be changed.
Thanks for picking up on that – yes, that was an oversight last time I updated the guide. It’s now fixed.
Help!!! I’m a Survival Hunter and I am currently using Kiril, Fury of the Beasts, with all that agility I thought it would be perfect. However my guildies, who have been playing much longer than I have think I should be using Spire of Coagulated Globules or even dual wielding some of the DS daggers. But all of these have Mastery on them, something I don’t use as a Survival Hunter. So which is it, and please don’t tell me it’s my preference. Thanks
I’m liking some of the information posted here. But as for mastery being a low priority stat, it seems a little off since a bulk of our dps is derived from magic damage: Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, Black Arrow, and even Cobra Shot drops magic damage. We have 2 shots that don’t count as magic damage, AutoShot and Kill Shot. At the same time, we pull the bulk of our haste from the talent Hunting Party.
I know, it seems wierd, but the math, when examined in detail, supports reforging in this order.
Haste is, as we mention, a complicated stat, but there are points when it’s enormously beneficial – I really do recommend reading up on haste caps. Meanwhile, Crit affects all of our damage, including Auto-Shot (which counts for a significant percentage).
Mastery does indeed boost our magic damage, and is far from useless, but turns out to not be quite as good, in many circumstances, as the other available statistics.
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