We all know that Beast Mastery is the king of DPS right now but there is a definite desire for Survival hunters since many of us are taking the sacrificial route for the benefit of our raid's overall DPS, (or a change of pace), or simply are interested in knowing if they should make the switch to this spec for raiding at all.
From testing Survival post 2.1 I've come to some conclusions from a few raids in SSC and TK.
WWS Logs for Hydross 2.1 kill:
Totals:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070522-Hydross2.1/
Breakdown:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070522.../howitzer.html
971 DPS sustained over a 10 minute period with an average 40% crit rate, (lotp was present for 1/2 the fight roughly). While I do agree that BM is probably the higher DPS on a single target if the pet can remain alive and attacking for the duration, the MM spec does not seem to have the umph that it used to after this patch. According to the logs, Survival gave me (Mana) 6,750 returned from Thrill of the Hunt in that Hydross fight which is the equivalent of 2 fel mana potions for free, not to mention the 200~ AP buff to the entire raid from Expose weakness being up almost 100% of the time.
My personal issue is spec as I can't warrant getting master tactician in its current form. I believe its not worth it over the benefit of improved aspect of the hawk, (maybe this is ignorance). My question is for the survival hunters here or those that are more prone to theorycrafting as to which talent can provide higher dps output, (has anyone crunched the numbers comparing the two talents)? I believe there is a crit threshold once you hit roughly 33% unbuffed where more isn't necessarily better. The only thing I really see as the most valuable aspect of this tree is EW and ToTH. My experiences with Readiness have been somewhat lackluster.