Maximizing your hunter dps: Survival 4.0.3

Tigertom · **Posted:** Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:04 am

Superb video guide from kripparrian

Kripp's Survival Hunter Guide

Now that we have gotten our self to 85 and starting to get decent gear its time to start look at how we can get the most benefit out of it.

Spec:

1/9/31 Is the highest single target spec. the 2 points in Entrapment will help u in slowing adds, but you can also put these 2 points in Point of no Escape for abit more aoe dmg when dpsing slowed adds.

3/7/31 Gives you abit more aoe dmg, so this is the spec most hunters use after the 4.0.6 patch as they use there surv spec in aoe heavy fights and mm in single target friendly fights. With this spec you also want to change your pet spec abit as he will have less focus for Wind hunt

Glyphs:

Prime:

Glyph of Explosive Shot
Glyph of Serpent Sting
Glyph of Kill Shot

Major:

Glyph of Disengage
Glyph of Raptor Strike
Glyph of Trap Launcher

None of the major glyphs increases your dps, but I find these 3 the most beneficial, but again its up to you

Minor:

Glyph of Feign Death
Glyph of Revive Pet
Glyph of Mend Pet

Same as allways

Stats:

Agility is the best stat by far, its even better than hit now. After agi and hit rating, crit is the best stat, but after that it becomes tricky and the spreadsheets cant help you anymore. But the case seems to be that we should stack haste up to a haste plateau (see rotations) and after that stack mastery, so to sum it up from best to worst:

Agility
Hit rating (up to 8%)
Crit
Haste (up to XXX, see rotations)
Mastery

Attack power is up there with crit but we dont see this on lots of gear these days, but its something to keep in mind

Rotation:

The survival rotation is pretty easy; Start the fight by putting up Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting, your shot priority then becomes:

Explosive Shot
Kill Shot (if rdy)
Black Arrow
Arcane Shot
Cobra Shot

You wont be shooting a lot of arcane shots unless you are under some major haste buffs like heroism, but u will fire some to dump your focus but remember to keep enough for the upcoming explosive shot and back arrow.

For aoe situations (4 or more mobs) u want to use explosive trap instead of black arrow and fire multishot to dump focus and cobra shot to regen focus.

Haste Plateaus:

3 Cobra Shots and 1 Explosive Shot. (1.66 sec cast time on Cobra Shot)
Without T11 4pc: 758 haste (5.914%)
With T11 4pc: Nothing

4 Cobra Shots and 1 Explosive Shot. (1.25 sec cast time on Cobra Shot)
Without T11 4pc: 5279 haste (41.218%)
With T11 4pc: 3470 haste (27.096%)

ofc if you are close to reaching the 2nd haste plateau you want to push back explosive shot abit to fit in a 4th Cobra Shot.

Lock and Load procs:

There is just 1 thing tricky about the survival rotation and that is the lock and load proc. In cataclysm hunters have a 1 sec gcd, so we definitely just dont want to wait for the first explosive shot DoT to fall off before we fire the next, so what we want to do is weave in cobra shots in between of our explosive shots unless you are at 100% focus then you want to use kill command. So to recap:

Explosive Shot
Cobra Shot (or Kill Command if you are full on focus)
Explosive Shot
Cobra Shot (or Arcane Shot if you are nearly full on focus)
Explosive Shot

Tigertom · **Posted:** Thu Dec 23, 2010 6:42 am

Quote:

Hunters hold about one third of all the top dps benchmarks in currently available raids (32% when I checked), more than any other class, and of course they’re all survival hunters. Hunters and warlocks combine to own over half of all of the top dps results in raids. Add in DKs and that’s over 75% of all the parses — the other seven classes get to split up the remaining 25%.

OMG! this wont last. lets hope they dont nerf sv hunters into the ground, like they did with bm in wrath.

Verill · **Posted:** Thu Dec 23, 2010 12:01 pm

hunters and warlocks wont get nerfed too much. It is DKs that will get hit badly from the nerfbat.

Tigertom · **Posted:** Tue Dec 28, 2010 9:03 pm

Quote:

We’re happy with damage overall. We have very few traditional tank and spank fights (even Argaloth likes to parry melee) so it’s hard to get consistent numbers without very large data sets. Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low. Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them. We aren’t seeing a lot of Subtlety rogues in PvE yet, so that sample size is still small. On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high. Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.

…

We’ll make a pass to make stats that aren’t attractive (but are supposed to be) more attractive. For example, we don’t want Assassination rogues to dismiss crit or Feral tanks to dismiss haste. We are considering making some physical attacks such as Lacerate, Steady Shot, and Slam scale with haste.

…

As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.

…

“GC, is this the final list of changes? Does this mean I can expect no changes for my class? Does this mean you don’t care about me?”

No. This is some stuff we are looking at so that you’ll have some context if you see changes on a future PTR. The final list of class patch notes for the next patch will doubtless be much longer.

Verill · **Posted:** Tue Dec 28, 2010 9:10 pm

TO THE GROUND !!!!!!

Was going to catch you in-game and have a laugh , but ... no wow for me today....

just lots of work work work

Tigertom · **Posted:** Tue Dec 28, 2010 10:54 pm

btw guys, after reading the hunter posts on elitistjerks I fould out that the Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets is acually better than any other pair atm for surv hunters, cuz it reduces the cooldown on black arrow by 4sec, with this equiped the rotation becomes even smoother and u basicly never have to fire any arcane shots to dump focus unless u are under the effect of heroism or rapid fire. It only cost 1250 honor, so do a few bg's and they are yours

oh and dont use the epic version of these gloves, as they are bugged and will not reduce the cooldown for BA.

Tigertom · **Posted:** Mon Feb 07, 2011 10:23 pm

Superb video guide from kripparrian

Kripp's Survival Hunter Guide

Dothuh · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 11:03 am

idd ver superb...

turqoise · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 11:04 pm

I want to be like him..... :-P

Tigertom · **Posted:** Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:32 pm

also check out LumiyaTheHunter's Youtube channel its got lots of upto date video guides for hunters in cataclysm and updated nearly daily

Tigertom · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:26 pm

Updated.

Maximizing your hunter dps: Survival 4.0.3

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