Survival Huntering...

[Vicario]

I'm aiming to create a Survival spec for my Hunter, but no source seems to have a straight answer. I know that the spec depends on your gear, but I don't know what would affect what, nor do i know any Survival Hunters to use as an example.

Any Survival experts around to offer assistance?

[Kalliope]

Your spec also depends on what you're using it for (PvE raiding, PvE soloing, PvP battlegrounds, PvP arenas, etc.)

[Saturo]

My only suggestion is ElitistJerks.

I love that place.

[Karathyriel]

To be fairly honest with you, I am a survival specced hunter.
To be fairly honest with you, I just grabbed one of the guys from the most successful PvE-guild on my realm, asked him who was the no. 1 hunter in their guild, then looked him up in the armory.
To be fairly honest, I was lucky that he is not only a good hunter player but a nice guy as well, so when I asked him about his specc and his way of playing, he took some time to explain it to me.
To be fairly honest, I didn't understand all of it but, as it seems, enough that I can play my role in a group or raid, except for 2 things:
a) I always drop dead when Heigan asks us to come out and dance
b) I never got the hang of kiting

It's a pretty good way to get a first toss in the right direction and, when you want to take further steps, it's a good base from where to jump headfirst into the matter of max DPSing.

[Vicario]

Your spec also depends on what you're using it for (PvE raiding, PvE soloing, PvP battlegrounds, PvP arenas, etc.)

I'd be using it for PVE, nothing beyond 5-man yet.

[Wassa]

Here is a basic survival spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZ0eVoZx ... hsd:ANfzM0 I left one point left over to go into either aimed shot, Imp AotH, finish Hunting Party, or Focused Aim if you need the hit.

Common problems I see with survival specs:
1) 3/3 expose weakness - With the high crit in survival, 2/3 EW is pretty much 100% uptime.
2) No points in Noxious Stings - It's a confusing worded talent, but when you have serpent sting on your talent, you do 3% more damage with ALL attacks. I must have.
3) Trap Mastery - People read the trap part of this talent and may miss the part on increasing black arrow's damage. Another must have.
4) Resourcefulness - I've seen people skip this talent or not fill it out completely. A reduced cooldown on your black arrow = more uptime on black arrow = more lock and load procs.
5) 2/2 Go for the Throat - Like with EW, with high crit only one point is needed.
6) Hunting Party - One of our less dps increasing talents. It's ok to take points out of this if you don't need the mana regen. The talent spec I linked only has two points in it.

[Vicario]

Thank you. This should help keep me from unusing my talent points.

[Kalliope]

a) I always drop dead when Heigan asks us to come out and dance

Since the original question of the thread's already been answered, I'll just hijack it slightly...

The best way to beat Heigan's dance is to just run in a straight line across the room, ignoring the room shape.

Fantastic video reference

The vid is from the 40m days, as you can tell from the guy's UI, but the dance hasn't actually changed since then. The key is to not follow anyone due to screen lag issues. That's the easiest way to get yourself killed. Everyone needs to get through it on their own.

[Karathyriel]

Fantastic video reference

Unfortnately, youtube takes care of copyright issues now.

This video contains property of Sony Music Entertainment. It is not available in your country.

I've watched videos so many times who told me how to do it but meh... It's always one step to far or one step to slow.

[Kalliope]

Oh, that SUCKS! It's still visible here.

LAME!



Okay, that's an outdated pic from the 40m days, but the blue line is close enough. Just ignore everything else and look at that. You CAN go from 1 to 4 in a straight line and be fine. ^_^

[Suicune]

Spec actually depends on the raid difficulty as well, it varies between 10 man raids and 25 mans, one having mana regen, the other none. My spec is geared toward 10 mans and such, and I tweaked it a little. It really depends on playstyle, but analyzing other players in the good guilds, as well as reading the hunter forums (while putting blinders on to avoid the idiocy of most of the posters), and Elitistjerks will help greatly in giving you an idea of how to build your spec. Both of my specs have a few points swapped from the cookie cutter builds. I have to re-analyze them to see if they are still fine (since I have had a decent amount of playtime in them), or if I should place the points to the exact posted ones found online. While cookie cutter specs are the ones tested by min-maxers on top of the line systems, with great internet, and had their hunters since '04... not all of us have that luxury. Each player will have different results with a spec. What works great for one person might be terrible for another- possibly due to something seemingly harmless, such as sightly more lag than another player. Wireless keyboards and mice supposedly are slower in reaction than wired... so even that could impact a build. So my rule of thumb- get a bunch of tested specs and tweak it to fit your personal playstyle. If you wanted a bit more stamina than the posted builds give, who is to say you are a bad player for the extra point in that talent? Good luck!

[Kalliope]

Spec actually depends on the raid difficulty as well, it varies between 10 man raids and 25 mans, one having mana regen, the other none.

Blizz changed that talent a while ago to make it appealing to all survival hunter specs. ^_^