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The Gotwarcraft Survival Hunter Guide
for Cataclysm

 

Important Update:

  1. For more up to date guides see the followng pages:
  • Survival for PvE
  • Hunter Leveling
  • You will find links to all of our hunter pages on those two pages.
  • This page has been updated for Cata 4.3, but will not be updated further. If you have links to this page please update them to the new pages. The builds on this page will be obsolete in M of P.

Everything below this line is out of date.
It is left here just for legacy sake.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled guide:

Contents

Survival Hunter Guide

Other Hunter Guides

 

The Survival Hunter

Survival hunters serve a unique role of contributing DPS not only for themselves, but for all other classes in the entire raid via Hunting Party. Originally (waaaayyy back when) this tree was intended to be primarly melee oriented, but was then changed to ranged DPS. These days the Survival Hunter is tops in DPS, at least until the next nerf...


The Buff/Nerf Situation

Level Fast and much more with Dugi's in-game guides! One day, Survival Hunter Joe was a god. He and his pet, a giant miniature space hamster, destroyed everything. The next week the Bliz team uploaded a patch/hotfix which just happened to target the exploits that Hunter Joe was using to rack up his awesome numbers. It also happened to tweak a few talents, made small adjustments to some abilitites, and even made a subtle color change to Joe's beard.

So Joe ragequit and went back to playing Ultima Online. Other hunters LoLed and rode with the changes, knowing that in a few days, or a couple of weeks, more changes would be coming. And they did, and Survival Hunters were back where they were supposed to be.

Until the next set of fixes...

The point is that the "flavor of the month" sometimes changes and we're not going to play that game on this page. What you'll find here are solid Survival builds and info that looks like it will be solid for more than a few days.

 

 

Tradeskills for the Survival Hunter

My recommendation for tradeskills/professions is to pick any two of skinning, herbalism, or mining, allowing you to make decent amounts of cash.

If you want to have a crafting profession, then Leatherworking and Skinning can be a good combo. You'll be able to make some pretty nice gear and not spend too much gold. Some leatherworking items can also be sold for nice amounts of change.

  • Leatherworking - for the gear, and maybe to sell gear for a profit, but it's expensive to level otherwise.
  • Skinning - to make money and support your leatherworking skill. Skinning also adds to your crit rating.
  • Mining and Herbalism are great cash grinding skills. Mining will add to your Stamina and Herbalism will give you a small heal and a haste buff.
  • Inscription used to be a great skill to make money, but has too much competition now, on most servers. You can still make some money with it, but it takes some work. If you just want your glyphs then, on most servers, it's way cheaper to buy them than to level this profession.
  • First aid is essential. Keep it maxed at all times.
  • Cooking is useful as many of the foods you create will have interesting buffs, as well as allowing you to regain health and mana.

For those who have the cash, and/or want to level a prof while leveling, each of the professions has at least one interesting item. Leatherworking is clearly the best for Hunters, and jewelcrafting or inscription might be next. Note that your Into the Wilderness ability increases the Agility from the following skills, making them that much more valuable than enchants which don't provide Agility.

For the min-maxxers:

  • Leatherworking provides an improved bracer enchant for 130 Agility. This lets you replace an enchant that would otherwise be haste or crit with pure agility.
  • Jewelcrafting can provide three self-only gems that are +67 Agility, as opposed to the +40 that everyone else gets.
  • Blacksmithing can provide self-only gem slots, one each to bracers and gloves, to hold those nice +67 agility gems that you can make JC
  • Engineering has a number of engie toys that are also useful. Synapse Springs provides a nice Ag boost and stacks with your other glove enchnat.
  • Alchemy allows you to receive greater benefit from your own potions than the other guys' potions.
  • Enchanting provides two 40 Ag enchants to your own rings for a potential 80 Ag gain.
  • Inscription: A self-only shoulder enchant for an 80 Agi gain over anything found from the rep vendors.
  • Tailoring: swordguard embroidery cloak enchant procs for 400 AP for 15 sec
  • Herbalism: The lifeblood heal, mentioned above, has a 2 minute cooldown and gives you 240 haste rating for 20 sec.
  • Skinning provides 80 crit rating at max skill
  • Mining: 120 stamina at max skill

 

Race Choice for Survival Hunters

The racials aren't all that important, your skill is what's really important. Use this list if you're undecided, otherwise just go with the race that you like the best. Let's face it, there's just something about Undead Hunters, right?

Alliance

Draenei

  • Gift of the Naaru, while not a big heal it's the only one you got. Helps to reduce downtime and takes a bit of the load off youir healers.
  • +1% hit racial, self-only, doesn't sound like much, but that's about 180 rating points at 85.
  • Increased Jewelcrafting skill.
  • Your initial pet is a Moth.

Night Elves

  • The Nelf Shadowmeld racial coming in handy for ambushing unsuspecting players in both world PvP, Battlegrounds, and Arena.  Additionally it can be used for hiding from higher levels/gank squads while leveling.
  • 1% dodge chance increase, another bonus to stack with Aspect of the Monkey when forced into melee. More often times this’ll happen in PvP, as opposed to PvE.
  • Your initial pet is a Nightsaber.

Dwarves

  • Gun specialization, increasing the chance to critically strike with all guns by 1%.
  • Stone form washes away bleeds and such and also decreases damage by 10% for its duration.
  • The other racials are to yawn at.
  • Your initial pet is a Bear.

Human

  • Their escpae ability is very handy for PvP and some other times.
  • Their diplomacy skill is nice for faction grinding.
  • Your initial pet is a Wolf.

Worgen

  • 1% increased chance to crit, which is always useful
  • They can "periodically move more quickly," which definitely has it's uses.
  • Their increased skinning skill and speed is a nice convenience. Skinning & Leatherworking is a nice combo for Hunters.
  • Your initial pet is a Mastiff. No, not that one, this one.

 

Horde Races

Blood Elves

  • Arcane Torrent, an AoE silence/interruption is great for Rogues and Warriors, nbot so Hot for Hunters.

Tauren

  • Big and fuzzy, they can always couinted on for a warm hug.
  • 5% bonus to health
  • Warstomp, an AoE stun that may allow you to gain range from melee classes, unlike Arcane Torrent this is a stun, which allows youi to get some distance from the opposition.

Trolls

One of the better races for Hunters.

  • Berserking is a solid DPS increase
  • Bow Specialization is a 1% increase to critical chance with all bows
  • +5% damage to beasts is nice while leveling and sometimes in PvE.
  • Reduced duration from movement reducing effects has its uses.

Orcs

  • Orcs, on the other hand gain, are also a contender for "best Hunter race."
  • Blood Fury is another great DPS increaser
  • 5% more pet damage, via Command, is more generally useful than the Troll ability.
  • 15% resistance to all stuns with Hardiness, useful in PvP situations due to the prevalence of stuns.

Undead

  • Naturally the Undead start with a giant spider as a pet.
  • Will of the Forsaken can wipe off sleeps, charms, etc., a nice abilitiy to have, especially in PvP.

Goblin (Cataclysm)

  • Rocket Jump has definite uses at times, much like a cheap "Blink," especially as a "gain range" ability in PvP.
  • An increase to Haste is generaly useful
  • increase in Alchemy skill, along with a greater effect from your own healing potions, is also nice.

 

 

 

Survival Talents

At level 10 you get to pick your spec. After you have spend 31 points in that spec you will be able to pick points from the other specs, but not until then. Mastery is trainable at level 80.

The special abilities you receive from Survival are:

  • Explosive Shot - Your primary "nuke." You will use it often. It also adds a very short term Damage of Time (DoT) effect.
  • Into the Wilderness - Increases your Agility, which increases the value of all of your Agility items and enchants.
  • Mastery: Essence of the Viper - Increases your elemental (EG: Fire) damage. Increasing Mastery increases this amount of damage done.

 

Cataclysm Level 85 Survival Hunter DPS Build (0/9/32)

(view this build)

While this build is a pretty solid DPS build it will also depend on your playstyle, your group, etc. Adjust to your particular situation.

Survival (32 Points)

Pathing - Rank 3/3 - Increases ranged haste by 3%.

Improved Serpent Sting - Rank 2/2 - Your Serpent Sting also does instant damage equal to 30% of its total periodic effect.
Also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Serpent Sting by 10%.

Survival Tactics - Rank 2/2 - Reduces the chance that your trap spells will be resisted by 4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 4 sec.

Trap Mastery - Rank 3/3

  • Ice Trap and Freezing Trap - Increases the duration by 30%.
  • Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow - Increases the periodic damage done by 30%.
  • Snake Trap - Increases the number of snakes summoned by 6.

Thrill of the Hunt - Rank 3/3 - You have a 15% chance when you use Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot or Black Arrow to instantly regain 40% of the base focus cost of the shot.

Lock and Load - Rank 2/2 - You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap or Ice Trap to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot abilities to cost no focus and trigger no cooldown.

Resourcefulness - Rank 3/3 - Reduces the cooldown of all traps and Black Arrow by 6 sec.

T.N.T. - Rank 2/2 - When you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap or Black Arrow you have a 12% chance to trigger Lock and Load.

Toxicology - Rank 2/2 - Increases the periodic critical damage of your Serpent Sting and Black Arrow by 100%.

Wyvern Sting - Rank 1/1 - A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 2736 Nature damage over 6 sec. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.

Noxious Stings - Rank 2/2 - Increases your damage done on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 10%. If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining.

Hunting Party - Rank 1/1 - Increases your total Agility by an additional 2%, and increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Speed of all party and raid members by 10%.

Sniper Training - Rank 3/3 - Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%, and after remaining stationary for 6 sec, your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot deal 6% more damage for 15 sec.

Serpent Spread - Rank 2/2 - Targets hit by your Multi-Shot are also afflicted by your Serpent Sting equal to 9 sec of its total duration.

Black Arrow - Rank 1/1 - Fires a Black Arrow at the target, dealing 2035 Shadow damage over 15 sec. Black Arrow shares a cooldown with other Fire Trap spells.

Beast Mastery (0 Points)

None
Marksmanship (9 Points)
Go for the Throat - Rank 2/2 - Your ranged auto-shot critical hits cause your pet to generate 10 Focus.

Efficiency - Rank 3/3 - Reduces the focus cost of your Arcane Shot by 3, and your Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot by 6.

Sic 'Em! - Rank 2/2 - When you critically hit with your Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot or Explosive Shot the focus cost of your Pet's next basic attack is reduced by 100% for 12 sec.

Careful Aim - Rank 2/2 - Increases the critical strike chance of your Steady Shot, Cobra Shot and Aimed Shot by 60% on targets who are above 80% health.

Glyphs

Glyph of Explosive Shot (Prime Glyph) - Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 6%.

Glyph of Kill Shot (Prime Glyph) - If the damage from your Kill Shot fails to kill a target at or below 20% health, your Kill Shot's cooldown is instantly reset. This effect has a 6 sec cooldown.

Glyph of Serpent Sting (Prime Glyph) - Increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Serpent Sting by 6%.

Glyph of Misdirection (Major Glyph) - When you use Misdirection on your pet, the cooldown on your Misdirection is reset.

Glyph of Trap Launcher (Major Glyph) - Reduces the focus cost of Trap Launcher by 10.

Glyph of Wyvern Sting (Major Glyph) - Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 6 sec.

Glyph of Feign Death (Minor Glyph) - Reduces the cooldown of your Feign Death spell by 5 sec.

Glyph of Mend Pet (Minor Glyph) - Your Mend Pet spell increases your pet's happiness slightly.

Glyph of Revive Pet (Minor Glyph) -

Comments:

  • Hunter Vs Wild increases your stamina. If you're pulling aggro or doing PvP with this build, and getting hurt then this is a good talent to take. If you have a hot tank and you'e careful not to pull aggro then the points are better spent elsewhere.
  • Bestial Discipline provides for faster pet focus regen. and might be worth a point, depending on your focus management.

 

 

Cataclysm Level 85 Survival Hunter PVP Builds

Build #1

Just use the above DPS build as it works quite well for various tasks. Various talents can, of course, be changed depending on your game. You'll give up some DPS to do so, but the increased survivability and/or control might be well worth it.

Notes:

  • Hunter Vs Wild (survival, tier 1) increases your Stamina by up to 10%. That's a fair chumk of HP at 85.
  • Entrapment prevents targets from moving for 4 seconds.
  • Mirrored Blades reflects spells while in Deterrence.
  • Counterattack - you probably don't want to go toe to toe with a melee class, so this talent probably isn't worth your time.

The build below takes the first three of the above talents and drops some DPS: Survival Tactics, Serpent Spread, Careful Aim, and 1 point in Sic 'em.

 

 

Level 85 Survival Hunter PVP Build #2

Survival (35 Points)

  1. Hunter vs. Wild - Rank 3/3 - Increases your total Stamina by 10%.
  2. Pathing - Rank 3/3 - Increases ranged haste by 3%.
  3. Improved Serpent Sting - Rank 2/2 - Your Serpent Sting also does instant damage equal to 30% of its total periodic effect. Also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Serpent Sting by 10%.

  4. Trap Mastery - Rank 3/3 -
    1. Ice Trap and Freezing Trap - Increases the duration by 30%.
    2. Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow - Increases the periodic damage done by 30%.
    3. Snake Trap - Increases the number of snakes summoned by 6.
  5. Entrapment - Rank 2/2 - When your Ice Trap or Snake Trap are triggered you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 4 sec.

  6. Thrill of the Hunt - Rank 3/3 - You have a 15% chance when you use Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot or Black Arrow to instantly regain 40% of the base focus cost of the shot.
  7. Lock and Load - Rank 2/2 - You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap or Ice Trap to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot abilities to cost no focus and trigger no cooldown.

  8. Resourcefulness - Rank 3/3 - Reduces the cooldown of all traps and Black Arrow by 6 sec.
  9. Mirrored Blades - Rank 2/2 - When attacked by a spell while in Deterrence, you have a 100% chance to reflect it back at the attacker.
  10. T.N.T. - Rank 2/2 - When you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap or Black Arrow you have a 12% chance to trigger Lock and Load.

  11. Toxicology - Rank 2/2 - Increases the periodic critical damage of your Serpent Sting and Black Arrow by 100%.
  12. Wyvern Sting - Rank 1/1 - A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 2736 Nature damage over 6 sec. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.
  13. Noxious Stings - Rank 2/2 - Increases your damage done on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 10%. If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining
  14. Hunting Party - Rank 1/1 - Increases your total Agility by an additional 2%, and increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Speed of all party and raid members by 10%.

  15. Sniper Training - Rank 3/3 - Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%, and after remaining stationary for 6 sec, your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot deal 6% more damage for 15 sec.
  16. Black Arrow - Rank 1/1 - Fires a Black Arrow at the target, dealing 2395 Shadow damage over 15 sec. Black Arrow shares a cooldown with other Fire Trap spells.
Beast Mastery (0 Points)
None
Marksmanship (6 Points)
  1. Go for the Throat - Rank 2/2 - Your ranged auto-shot critical hits cause your pet to generate 10 Focus.
  2. Efficiency - Rank 3/3 - Reduces the focus cost of your Arcane Shot by 3, and your Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot by 6.

  3. Sic 'Em! - Rank 1/2 - When you critically hit with your Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot or Explosive Shot the focus cost of your Pet's next basic attack is reduced by 50% for 12 sec.
Glyphs - same as above, except for the majors.
  1. Glyph of Serpent Sting (Prime Glyph) - Increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Serpent Sting by 6%.
  2. Glyph of Kill Shot (Prime Glyph) - If the damage from your Kill Shot fails to kill a target at or below 20% health, your Kill Shot's cooldown is instantly reset. This effect has a 6 sec cooldown.
  3. Glyph of Explosive Shot (Prime Glyph) - Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 6%.

  4. Glyph of Snake Trap (Major Glyph) - Snakes from your Snake Trap take 90% reduced damage from area of effect spells.
  5. Glyph of Mending (Major Glyph) - Increases the total amount of healing done by your Mend Pet ability by 60%.
  6. Glyph of Raptor Strike (Major Glyph) - Reduces damage taken by 20% for 5 sec after using Raptor Strike.

  7. Glyph of Revive Pet (Minor Glyph) - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Revive Pet by 100%.
  8. Glyph of Mend Pet (Minor Glyph) - Your Mend Pet spell increases your pet's happiness slightly.
  9. Glyph of Feign Death (Minor Glyph) - Reduces the cooldown of your Feign Death spell by 5 sec.

 

 

Pets

Pets are devided into three classes (Ferocity, Tenacity and Cunning) and each class has a number of pet families. Each family has severa members, all with common abilities and special attacks. Click the links below for a list of available pet families, their food requirements, and their specials.

  • Ferocity is for DPS pets. Cats and dogs and raptors and wolves, and so on. They can tank a couple of mobs just fine, but their main job is damage. Generally, in raids, your pet will be Ferocity. Past level 60 or so they don't hold aggro as well as they do at earlier levels.

  • Tenacity is the build that your tanking pets (bears, rhinos, turtles, etc.) will have. These pets will keep the attentions of several mobs, and survive, while you burn them down. Some Hunters even tank dungeons with these pets and then make the boss into a pet, such as with King Dred. Generally, the Tenacity pets don't bring enough in damage or buffs to make them interesting for raids, but that depends on your exact group and duffs/debuffs that will be available.

    If you do use your Tenacity pet in a dungeon or raid, and you're not the tank, make sure you have all of its threat generating abilities turned off.

  • Cunning pets have certain special abilities that are useful in particular situations, such as the Monkey's Bad Manners ability for PvP. Some cunning pets may have specials that are particularly useful in certain raids or encounters.

  • For PvP - Interesting specials are the webs that Spiders cast, the Monkey's "Bad Manners," the Owl's "Disarm," and so on. Crowd control abilities have more PvP utility than straight up damage.

Pet notes:

  • Pets inherit 100% of the your hit, haste, and crit, and scale up from your Attack Power. All three pet types inherit the same AP scaling, so differences in DPS come from the pet's basic abilities and their talents.
  • Pets inherit nothing from your Strength
  • Pet consumables are no longer available.
  • If you're Draenei your pet will inherit your hit racial and it will also inherit the appropriat abilities from the other races.

Survival Hunter Video

Skills and Stats

Agility is tops and Hit (to 8%) is second, but the relative value of the other stats will depend on you exact gear level and a few other factors.

Agility - Your best stat, by far, with the possible exception of hit. One agility provides two AP and a small amount of critical strike percent, before scaling. Various abilities make Ag even more valuable: Your Into the Wilderness boosts Ag by 15%, then you get another 5% from wearing all mail, perhaps another 5% from raid buffs, and 2% from Hunting Party.
Hit - Gearing for the hit cap is generally a good idea, for any class. Ranged attacks have a 8% chance to miss against boss level mobs.
Crit - Almost all abilities crit for 200% damage, but exceptions include Explosive Trap which uses spell crit damage (and crit chance) - 150%, or immolation trap which cannot crit.
Haste - Haste affects both the speed of your shots (cobra and auto) and your rate of focus regeneration.
Mastery - All of your "spell" (non-physical) damage is affected by this stat. This is almost all of our abilities except for auto shot and multi shot.

Resilience - Essential for PvP, useless outside of PvP.
Stamina - If your tank is doing his job and you're staying out of the fire then you don't need much stam.

At level 85:

  • Agility gives 2 Attack Power per point. You will need about 325 Ag to get 1% crit
  • About 120 points of Hit Rating gives you 1% hit, so you need 961 hit to reach the 8% hit cap (or 841 for Draenei.)
  • About 179 Crit rating gives 1% crit. Most of your abilities get 200% effect from crits, so this is a fairly valuable stat.
  • You need about 128 haste rating to get 1% haste
  • At level 85, 179.28 mastery (same as crit) gives 1% damage.

 

Gems and enchants

As a Survival Hunter you get more effective Agility from any of the Agility enchants or gems listed below, which make Ag just that much more interesting to you.

Less expensive enchants are also included.

Gems

Snacks and Consumables

 

 

 

1-85 Hunter Leveling Guide

For years Joana's Horde Guide and Brian's Alliance guide were the standards for Hunter leveling, simply because Hunters were the class of choice for both those guides. Other classes had to make due as best they could.

Once upon a time you had to look up quest details on site such as Thottbot. Now you have a guide like Zygor's which sits in-game, in a small window, and shows you step-by-step where to go, what to do, and a number of details to make it even easier. Not to mention an arrow which allways shows youi just where to go next. WoW's in-game quest helper is great for showing where the quests are, but it doesn't show you the best order in which to do them and it doesn't show you which ones are best and which should be skipped. Zygor's does.

Want to get a level, or several levels, in the dungeons or in PvP? No problem. Zygor's will remember where you left off and then its Smart Injection System will figure ouit where you should be at your new leveland pick up from there.

You don't even have to level as Beast Mastery. Zygor's Guide has a nice Talent Advisor which will let you level as Survival or Marksman, or even Beast Master, if you want. Heck, it'll even spend the points for you, if you don't want to bother.

100% Cataclysm ready Zygor's is ready to get you leveled quickly and easily. Check it out and grab a copy now.

 

 

 

 

 



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