Survival Hunters are all about ingenuity, with the ability to set up a slew of traps before charging into battle and firing a barrage of magical arrows. Unlike other Hunter specialities, they do not rely on cooldowns to do damage; instead, they are ready to engage the combat at any time.

Survival Hunters go from a mostly support-oriented spec in TBC to a DPS powerhouse in WotLK — in fact, they were regarded as the best Hunter specialization for raiding at the start of the expansion. This may or may not be true now, since they have suffered significant nerfs since their peak days in early WotLK, but some of their strong characteristics remain: they can operate very well with lower gear from earlier stages, and will always stay near to other specs in terms of damage. Our Marksmanship competitors, on the other hand, have superior scaling.

The Survival Hunter specializes on passive AoE / cleave damage. We’re also one of the stronger specifications for situations where you have to shift targets often, because our primary shot, Explosive Shot, doesn’t rely on debuffs to inflict its full damage. Survival Hunters are one of the best AoE classes in WotLK.

This tutorial will teach you how to play Survival Hunter in PvE content, mostly raiding but also dungeons, as dungeons are where Survival AoE shines the brightest. provided you have the proper tools! We’ll go through skills, equipment, glyphs, macros, and everything else you’ll need to become an accomplished Survival Hunter.

Survival Hunter Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

Very effective early game damage
Survival Hunters do not require outstanding equipment to deliver significant harm. This means you’ll shine early on and won’t have to rely on uncommon goods for damage.

There is little loot competition.
The only loot competition you’ll face is from other Hunters, and a lot of your stuff isn’t very contested. This makes equipping your Survival Hunter a breeze, and it also helps your guild’s treasure distribution.

Simple but enjoyable to play
While some players may regard simplicity as a bad adjective, this should not be the case. Survival Hunters don’t need 150-page essays to do effectively – in fact, this guide is all you’ll need to deliver massive harm! Furthermore, the priority structure used by Survival Hunters with their different procs is incredibly intriguing – you’re never performing the same thing twice. You may even utilize your traps while other Hunters cannot!

Excellent mana efficiency
Survival Hunters do not deplete their mana pool as quickly as BM and, in particular, Marksmanship Hunters. This gives them a very powerful spec for some of the first lengthier engagements.

Weaknesses

Damage cooldowns are absent.
Survival Hunters do not reliant on cooldowns like other Hunter specs, which allows them to deal more constant damage. On the other hand, this means you don’t have a lot of powerful cooldowns to employ when you need to swiftly burst a target down.

Scaling is rather poor.
Survival Hunters, it’s no secret, don’t scale as well as other Hunter specialties. Our scaling isn’t bad, but our major DPS ability, Explosive Shot, doesn’t have the fantastic weapon damage scaling like other specs’ main nukes have.

No interruptions
This isn’t a big disadvantage, but Survival Hunters don’t have an interrupt – that benefit is only available to Marksmanship Hunters. As a result, you are unable to assist when something has to be interrupted fast.

Survival Hunter Utility

Survival Hunters provide the following raid benefits and debuffs to a raid, in addition to their damage:

Misdirection
Our threat misdirection has returned in WotLK, and it is still fantastic! It has been significantly tweaked since TBC, allowing you a 4-second window of threat redirection after your initial shot, which is fantastic. Because of Explosive Shot, the game’s hardest-hitting shot, Survival is perhaps the strongest specialty at employing Misdirection. You may be certain that your tank will not lose aggro on the boss with a Survival Hunter utilizing Misdirection on the primary tank!

Replenishment (does not stack with shadow priest or ret pala replenishment) – This boost is provided by the Hunting Party.
Survival is one of several specializations in the game that can provide the necessary Replenishment mana regeneration bonus. You won’t usually need to be the one to deliver this boost because some of the more popular specs (such as Shadow Priest and Retribution Paladin) already do it, but it’s still useful to have, and you could end up being the one to supply it in 10-man raids.

Scorpid Sting – 3 percent reduction in physical hit probability (does not stack)
This often-overlooked debuff improves tank survival by making the boss to miss more frequently. Your Balance Druids may also offer it with Insect Swarm, which is part of their DPS rotation, although it seldom has a 100% uptime. This implies that if required, you can step forward and debuff the boss, therefore assisting your group.

Sting (Wasp Pet Ability) – 5% armor decrease (does not stack)
Hunters of all specs now have access to the same 5 percent armor debuff that Druids may use with Faerie Fire and Warlocks can use with Curse of Weakness. Druids will almost always apply it in 25-man raids, thus you won’t need to bring a Wasp pet for this debuff. However, in 10-man raids and dungeons, you can bring in the Wasp to assist out your raid’s damage a little.

Conclusion

We hope this article has helped you determine whether Survival Hunter is the class/spec for you. Check out our other areas for more information on how to increase your performance as a Survival Hunter in WotLK, such as skills, gear, and gems!