Warning: This is an outdated Wrath guide. For current information, see the level 85 Cataclysm version of the guide Here.
Patch 4.0.1 as gone live, bringing the massive 4.0.1 hunter changes from focus to the new talent trees to mastery and specializations. We’re going to go over the key survival hunter 4.0.1 changes here, including the best SV hunter talent spec, rotations, and best SV hunter glyphs for patch 4.0.1.
Patch 4.0.1 is still relatively new, and these guides are being updated as fast as we can discover new hunter data.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Talent Spec
As always, we’re focusing on boss fight dps with our talents. Note that in particular we skipped our 2nd rank of Serpent Spread, which will increase your AoE dps — but we skipped it ’cause we don’t care about trash, we care about bosses. I went for Go for the Throat because for the brief period between 4.0.1 and Cataclysm we will have crazy, ridiculously high crit chances — the highest crit chances we will every have again, in fact.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Rotation
All hunter rotations are priority-based in patch 4.0.1. You never want to be sitting at 100 focus — when you are that means that any focus you gain is lost, rather than converted into better dps.
- Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
- Refresh Serpent Sting when needed.
- Always hit Explosive Shot when it’s available if you can — this means you’ll need to try to have the focus saved up for it.
- Fire Black Arrow when it’s available.
- Use Arcane Shot to bleed of excess focus. This probably won’t happen often.
- Use Steady Shot to regen focus.
SV is in an interesting situation in the patch 4.0.1 build. We don’t yet have Cobra Shot to refresh our Serpent Sting, which blows. We have to waste focus to refresh our Serpent Sting, which can leave us focus starved.
At level 80, you’re likely to experience chaotic swings from being focus starved, to having too much focus, but mostly you’ll be focus starved.
Note that serpent sting actually does more damage total than explosive shot (because of imp serpent sting) thus it’s better to delay explosive to fire serpent sting.
During Lock & Load Procs you’ll want to weave shots in between your explosive shot. Hunters now have a 1 second global cooldown, meaning we have a lot more time to work extra shots in between our Explosive Shots during Lock & Load procs. You can use Steady Shot in here, but this is also a fantastic time to refresh your Serpent Sting, even if it has some time left on it. If you’re full on focus, you can use Kill Command to bleed some off in between Explosive Shots.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Glyphs
SV Prime Glyphs
The prime glyphs are our heavy-hitters. These are the ones that are actually going to impact our dps. Currently it’s looking like the following are going to be the best choices:
Note that you won’t want the Serpent Sting glyph once you have access to Cobra Shot — but at level 80 it’s a huge focus-saver.
SV Major Glyphs
Most of the major glyphs are not going to have a direct impact on your dps. They are oriented around pvp, quality of life, or leveling (Glyph of Misdirection is phenomenal for soloing). Personally I’m a huge proponent of using Disengage to minimize time wasted on movement, thus I think that the Disengage glyph is potentially a dps-increasing glyph. Everything else is really up to you.
- Glyph of Disengage
- …whatever else you’d like
SV Minor Glyphs
Similar to major glyphs, the minor glyphs aren’t going to increase our dps. However there are few enough choices that I do think the following three are the best choices.
Thanks Frost. Few questions on the build.
: I’d assume that extra stamina no longer gives us benefits like it used to? Therefore no Hunter Vs Wild.
: why Survival tactics? FD and Disengage seem more for pvp.
: only one rank in Serpent Spread for now; will that be changing closer to 85?
Survival tactics because your only other choice is entrapment and point of no escape. Survival Tactics is a nice quality of life improvement over those two.
Keep in mind that aggro is going to be a bigger concern post-patch 4.0.1. Tank threat generation isn’t as braindead, and your MD threat will vanish after 30 seconds.
Disengage is a key bit of movement enhancement for raiding — via jump-disengage. It gets you where you need to go faster so that you waste less time running, and maximize your dps time.
Wouldn’t Hunter vs. Wild be a viable alternative? It’s going to be a tough choice.
And to be clear, Survival gets no longer gets a bonus to DPS from Stamina?
Well I for one find Disengage very useful against the Sindy fight and also popping aspect of the pack. So there for I dont think Disengage is all that bad for pve when used properly.
Yeah I did just figure that out, but alternatively you could toss the points into the extra stam. I also wonder if imp serpent sting will remain worthwhile once we get cobra shot to keep extending our sting.
Wasn’t the Serpent Sting glyph recently changed to increase periodic crit chance by 6% instead of the duration? I’m not liking the glyph at all tbh.
Also while on the PTR I was getting much better results using arcane shot as my main skill and only using explosive during LnL.
I haven’t seen that change to Serpent Sting — it’s not in the beta and not on wowhead.
I’m assuming that by the time they go live they’ll have Explosive Shot working a bit better. At last build it was still better DPS than arcane, but worse FPS — making the difference between all arcane vs explosive SV rotations very small (smaller than the margin of error for any but the largest tests). I’m very much hoping they make Explosive not only worth using, but obviously worth using.
RE:
“I’m assuming that by the time they go live they’ll have Explosive Shot working a bit better. At last build it was still better DPS than arcane, but worse FPS — making the difference between all arcane vs explosive SV rotations very small (smaller than the margin of error for any but the largest tests). I’m very much hoping they make Explosive not only worth using, but obviously worth using.”
I think this is a big assumption to make, especially with arcane being so much faster. Has this been tested?
Frost, MMO-Champ has the change to Serpent Sting as 6% crit chance, not duration, as Juraviel states. Here’s a link with just the glyph there for some quick access for ya:
http://wowtal.com/#k=ffR.a5o.hunter.KFmr
On that note, I highly suggest picking up the Major Glyph for the Trap Launcher or Concussive Shot. Trap Launcher in particular makes for some mean added AoE, as Multi-shot has a minimum range. Besides, it makes the cost of launching an Explosive Trap a mere 10 focus. That’s awesome.
(And, you said “highest crit chances we will every have again.” Gotta love Typos.><)
Hmm, the beta currently has it as increased duration. We’ll wait to see it on live then — for the time being I’m considering active beta info better than MMO-C.
Good stuff Frost. I’m going to start-out with One With Nature as opposed to Go for the Throat. Maybe it won’t be an issue, but improving Aspect of the Fox sounds like a good way to get used to the focus system. Time to fire-off my last Volley..
Um… it only improves Fox if you’re being physically hit (that’s the only time fox increases your focus regen, after all)
Good call. That’s what I get for not going on the PTR:)
Question, Frost.
Since we require Lock n Load to get to T.N.T, is it worth taking Point Of No Escape and using the trap launcher to fire off frost traps at the boss to get a guaranteed LnL proc, and also then increase crit by 6%?
@Sway, as we don’t get Fox until level 83 I don’t think it should be to much of a concern right now.
@Storm, I tried that on the PTR and the damage that BA does outweighes the 6% increase in crit. I was trying to drop the talent completely but it was just too much of a DPS loss.
Frost I’ve been wondering.. As a SV hunter, should I still be stacking Agility? Or is it going to be an upgrade to gem Haste/Agility or just only agility?
With the focus regen and all :p
Agility because of Hunting party talent – it increases your AGI by 10%. Also mastery increases your Agility by 15%
Agility will always be your primary choice of gem, haste is not as strong a stat as it should be, but is not as poor as it once was. You would have to weigh up the bonus for the socket to truly make the right choice.
what about the pets talent for SV? The pets talents are going to change in 4.0.1 or only in cataclysm?
Frost, SV focus regen is not affected by crit% in 4.0.1. Thrill of the hunt now has 15% chance to proc of ANY arcane, Explosive or Black Arrow hit. Probably exactly because of those crazy high crit chances.
Serpent Sting glyph is indeed +6% crit chance and Arcane glyph +12% damage (Serpent sting no longer required). Steady glyph is +10% damage (also Serpent not required).
Which glyph you take depends on if you are going to use ES in your rotation or not. With ES in rotation AS is dealing only bit more than 5% of hunter damage so Kill, Explosive and Steady are the glyphs of choice. With ES only during LnL, and Arcane as main attack, it would be Kill, Arcane, Steady.
AS for ES vs AS comparison. Currently damage/focus speaks better for Arcane. However, it is not just that. It is rather ES+SS vs. AS+AS. In this case ES+SS wins – which shows on my tests where I permanently do more DPS with ES (even though the “rotation” is scattered and I am often out of focus) then I can do without ES (even though the “rotation” feels really nice). Thrill of the Hunt doesnt proc from ticks but from ability cast as far as I know so it doesnt come to play.
Also probably your best bet for ability during LnL at lvl80 is Serpent Sting because of ImpSpS talent.
And oh yeah, dont let SpS fall off, 10% damage loss is huge. SpS has highest priority for me when it is about to fall off.
I was reading the forum on elitist jerks where someone was looking at trap launcher glyphed and using explosive trap in place of black arrow since it offers more ticks for potential lock and load procs. Not sure it’s possible to keep up a decent rotation with this.
Umm.. maybe the tooltip on One with Nature is different. I read it as the following:
“One with Nature Increases the attack power bonus of your Aspect of the Hawk by 10% and increases the amount of focus retored by your Aspect of the Fox by 1″
With the removal of AsB and Viper, given we wont even have Fox yet.. doesn’t that mean we’ll just be in Hawk now? So why not take that 10% to our attack power? Maybe I’m missing something.
This is the build I’m going for. http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/794/sv80build.jpg
I think Efficiency is a waste now that it doesn’t give us hit chance. I mean lowering the cost of shots when we want to use the focus doesn’t make sense to me all that much. I could be wrong, but on beta its not helping at all and I’m ending up focused capped too much at level 80. At 85, I can see it helping a little, but at 80 I think the 10% to AP is better.
I would imagine the purpose of taking ‘Efficiency’ over ‘One with Nature’ is so you can then go on to pick up ‘Improved Steady Shots’ and ‘Careful Aim’.
Adding talents in the BM tree wouldn’t allow you to progress onto more dps talents.
Really curious about this as well. Does the lower focus cost on ES and AS really outweigh an extra 10% AP to Hawk? After all, Hawk is up all the time and now that Viper is gone the benefit is even greater.. Surely it deserves at least 1 point out of Efficiency?
@Stokes: should be the case once Cata hits, but until then I hope we’re free to spend talent points in both remaining trees
With da caveat that I haven’t played this patch in ptr or beta, nor have I read much about it. And I certainly much appreciate your posts Frost….and I know I MUST be missing something “critical”
I jumped in and loaded the survival talents and glyphs you suggested. I reforged some extra hit on my PvE gear for mastery.
That said I have NO idea what you are talking about when you speak of suddenly crazy crit levels. My base PvE crit was about 59.9%. …. now about a percentage point lower. But I haven’t really tested my PvE gear and build yet in combat or the test dummy at all…
I did test my PvP gear. Three quick shots and I am out of focus for awhile. All I can do is try and fill in the blanks with concussives and scatter shots and laying traps etc. And I am dying in a big hurry, but not killing any faster…actually slower because I am mostly out of focus most of the time. And in PvP I sure will almost NEVER have time to sit there and fire a steady shot.
Through thw dim light of my ignorance…on PvP anyway…I would say this sucks. But again, surely I am missing something…hope so
PS the rest of my late nights’ bg play bore out my initital impressions.
One brief incident about dying quickly. In warsong gulch I was riding trying to catch up with their flag carrier. Got hit and in a very few moments was dead.(though my resilience is 1117) While waiting to res I checked the combat log. I had been hit by an arcane barrage for about 8k damage then an arcane blast for 25k damage…lol
In the meantime, though my ranged weapon is OK (Zods) I’m lucky to do a 3 k crit with an explosive shot in PvP….and I could not get off all 3 explosive shots with the rare lock n loads. Each one takes 44 focus and not enough time to squeeze in a steady between em
You arent alone here. My hunter is full wrathful t2 weaps and played at a 2700 MMR.
i used to have a very aggressive play style in bgs and wsg for example i’d average w/o a healbot and w/o grave camping , around 25-40kbs and 0-2 deaths a game. sometimes i’d break one loose and go 50+ kbs and 0 deaths. Now.. its around 10kbs with 7-10 deaths…
world pvp i would easily 3 v 1 pve players and camp them solo. yesterday i was getting owned or barley living 1 v 1 by the same skill lvl pve players i was 3 v1ing before, out in stv and hellfire.
I was both Surv and MM in both circumstances.
Any suggestions for pet specs going forward? Wolf still the only pet for raiding?
Wolf is probably still best for most raiding situations, with the 5% crit chance buff. But cats are good now too (+155 strength or agility). Really, though, pets are situational now due the variety of new ways they buff and debuff. Best thing to do is train a variety of pets with different abilities, and choose which 4 or 5 you will take with you based on which abilities you’ll need. Right now, I’m traveling with a wolf, a cat, a spider for snaring in the Saurfang and Lich King fights, and a ravager or raptor.
What about re-geming and enchants, after all attackpower is gone. I cried this morning when my dps drop from 4K to 2. Pls let us know more tweaks.. this has helped me alot and feel better about my hunter getting nerfed
Attack Power isn’t gone, Armor Penetration is. But besides that, I’m also quite curious about how to tweak my spec for a bit of dps boost. I assume we hunters can go back to speccing Surv, and stacking Agi again? And how should we treat that new reforging possibilty? What’s best to use for tweaking: enchants, gems, or reforging maybe?
I guess Trap Launcher must be the new secret weapon for hunters, because almost every time it launches the Lock & Load Procs. This is awesome.
I agree on this. I ran HoR yesterday and noticed a ton of procs frim trap launcher. Much more so than from BA. I’m going to be using it a lot more from now on.
Before patch i done 6.6k on dummy with MM talents with soft Arp 660, mine GS is 5.8, now i try MM, BM, and SV, on dummy. Mine dps is increased to 8.5k in SV, i changed crit gems to AG, 10 ag and 10 crit, and 10 ag and 10 haste. Mine Crit is 62.16%, hit 8.58%, and haste is 16.90%, i reforged hit to haste on two items.AG is 2576, AP is 569. I use talent build 2/3/31, i put 2 talent point’s in “One with nature” in BM talent tree and 3 talent points to “Efficiency”. And mine SV tree is like Frost’s
Scrappy can you link your armoury? I can’t for the life of me see how you’ve done that. I have a 5.7k GS and similar stats and I’m only pushing 5k on the dummies. It’s driving me crazy.
Sure m8 http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Xavius&cn=Iluvataar
But i was no allone on dummy. When i was allone i push to 8k
One tip that i figured out is new updated recount for patch 4.0.1not merge pet dps with hunter dps, maybe some bug or something.
just wonder if it will be better when i replece the two pitonts at [Go for the Throat] from MM tree to put it at [One with Nature] in BM tree for more attack power,
since SV most of his dps come from himself not from his pet and that AP will scal with his pet too
and if Kill Command usless for SV when have free focus or not
Glad to know I am not alone, Pence. Your hunter PvP resume is mighty impressive. If you ran a hunter academy, I would apply. : – )
One patch change I am mighty fond of, as I suspect all hunters will be. Revived pet returning with full health. That’s nice.
Frost.. Now that we will be taking Cunning pets with us at times the raid needs their buff. Could you suggest a nice build for both BM and MM/SVR.
Thanks for all your hard work testing and crunching the numbers.
I too was hoping to see a Cunning pet talent spec…..
This patch has been so much unfun for my hunter main.
My raid leader sent me to this site after I threatened to quit raiding last week. These posts are so much help to me. I’m now 4th dps in our 10 man instead of flirting with a DK for 1st, but at least I’m still a viable member of our team.
I thought the whole patch was garbage until I played my Holy-specced priest and loved it. I considered dropping my hunter altogether, but this site is helping me stick it out.
Thanks for what you do.
Hi. First time I comment here.
I have a pet question.
I see a very odd thing happening every time I “teleport” – either by portals or HS. When I arrive at my destination, my pet always have only 10% health left. Very odd. Is it only me having this bug, or…?
Beeing a wow-noob (only played for a year or so) and until 4 months ago a genuine huntard, I really like this site, and have helped me top dps-meters in raids.
I still cant figure out to high dps in new path – I just think I have to peactise
Hungh
Hi all! I’m new too.
For Hungh: this is a bug that I experienced also prior 4.0.1 but only with the BM spec, maybe due to the stamina talent buff. Now seems to affect every spec. Hope in a correction ’cause it’s really annoying. Soloing some old HCs my pet died several time because I didn’t see the health low bug in time… -_-
I have also a question concernig haste in SV: we got 3% from PATHING, and we have 10% attack speed with HUNTING PARTY. Well, this speed bus is not haste right? It increase the “white” shots per minutes not the haste, right? So we still need 17% haste to reach the 20% needed for 1.5 sec Cobra Shot (lol, ok for now it’s Steady, but I love Cobra so much.
I read in a wowhead thread that some hunter’s shots such as chimera, cobra, explosive are going to get a boost in damage, do you hear something about?
Thank you!
So im trying out survival, and i want you guy’s opinion on AoE whether or not im doing this right, so im following this build, and i find this shot rotation to do a lot of dps for aoe:
Explosive trap
mult shot till empty focus
steady shot till 40
multishot
and when i get lock and load i use a free explosive shot betwee multshots,
with that rotation, (priority, you could say) am i doing it right? or am i missing something? (remember, this is for AoE more than 2-3 enemies im asking about)
I am fairly new to 80, but I have found a similar rotation that works really well for me:
Multi-Shot to get the Serpent Sting on all targets
Trap Launcher/Explosive trap (keybinds make it a snap to launch)
Steady Shot (once the cooldown for SS drops, the serpent stings drop (6 sec version)
Multi-Shot for sting refresh
Steady Shot (usually by this time the Lock n Load procs)
Explosive Shot if proc, otherwise another steady
Multi-Shot for sting refresh
Etc.
This rotation for AoE is outdpsing MM for me by a long shot. Single Target is still the same as always. Hope this helps, and anyone please let me know if I have something wrong in my rotation or ways to tweak! Thanks!
Any ideas for only 2 points in Efficency, 0 in Go for the troat. But put 3 in One with the Nature.
I think that would be a option to.
Hello everyone, I’m new to this site and I’m hoping I won’t make a fool out of myself by asking this: What do we need to reforge into what?
Some say haste -> mastery, and others say not? Could someone help me out please?
Greetings to everyone!
have hit rating at least 7%, then haste, then crit
Sorry I don’t think I fully understand:
1) Don’t I need like 8% hit rating?
2) You say first haste then crit? Do you mean: reforge every item, when hit capped reforge haste in mastery and if the item only has crit and hit, reforge crit to mastery?!
Not fully clear, please respond I would love to understand!
Grtz
What’s your opinion on the importance of mastery to a SV hunter. I have it at about 13% right now and it definitely helps out my DPS a lot.
Mastery is a pretty bad stat for SV right now — depending on buffs, possibly the worst stat. This will change when SV gets to 85 and has Cobra Shot; however, I do think mastery was overnerfed for SV — I think SV should get around 1.2% elemental damage/mastery, as it is it seems likely crit will always be better.
as a SV hunter I noticed that taking 3 points out of efficiency and putting it into bestial discipline is putting out bigger numbers for me..lots bigger. I’m getting really good at focus management(still have issues,not often, but I do) so the reduced focus cost talent loss doesn’t seem to be bothering me. I’m toying with the arcane glyph over kill shot *gasp* since I mostly do heroics now and rarely in my group can I get a good kill shot off cause the baddie is dead soo fast. I think the 3/2/31 setup is nice for anyone who can get a somewhat handle on their focus. I have had nothing to do with mastery..too awful for us to even think about atm. I need to find that program that records the combat event so I can share my findings and not just posting recount for people to see. Well ty for all your very helpful info all the time Frosty and friends, Ill try to post more regularly:)
been a couple days since last commented, but hopefully this post still gets some attention as SV guides are hard to come by. I’m a hunter returning from an 8 month WOW hiatus, so the world I have returned to is drastically changed. I loved SV before I left and would love to stay in this spec if possible. here’s my talent question based on above comments/posts:
if trap launcher is good and can be macro’d with a specific trap (haven’t tried either but would love it worked), could we, in the 2nd tier, put 2 in “Point of No Escape”, 1 in “Trap Mastery”, and 2 in “Survival Tactics”? Wouldn’t the combination result in more crits since we can now launch our traps into mobs? Then take the Trap Launcher glyph to reduce it’s cost?