This is the thread for Survival hunter discussion for Cataclysm. For an explanation of acronyms used, see here.

 

Contents

1Tool of Choice 2Abilities and Cooldowns 3Aspects 4Talents and Rotation 4.1Talents 4.1.1Level 15 4.1.2Level 30 4.1.3Level 45 4.1.4Level 60 4.1.5Level 75 4.1.6Level 90 4.2Rotation 5Glyphs 6Lock and Load 7Pets 8Area of Effect (AoE) 9Stat Priority 10Enchants 11Gems

[top]Tool of Choice

Throughout this article I will refer to using your preferred tool of choice to get the most accurate answer. Classically, we would just say "check the spreadsheet" but there are a lot more tools available these days. Here are a few:

• Hunter DPS Analyzer
• Simulationcraft
• Esoth's Hunter Spreadsheet

[top]Abilities and Cooldowns

This should look very similar to the Cataclysm SV guide but with some notes on important changes.

• Explosive Shot - Our primary nuke ability. You want to use this as often as possible. New in MoP: This costs significantly less focus now. More on this in the Rotation and Lock and Load sections.
• Black Arrow - Shadow damage over time with a long cooldown. It has low DPS but a very high DPCT (damage per casting time), so you will want to use it on targets that will be alive long enough to get the full effect. This also has a chance to proc Lock and Load on ticks.
• Serpent Sting - Since Cobra Shot refreshes this, you will only have to apply it once per target in most cases. Like Black Arrow, it also has low DPS but a very high DPCT (theoretically infinite, with cobra shot refreshing it). New in MoP: Noxious Stings is no more so we do not get a direct damage increase on targets that have this. Viper Venom does make it so that we want to have this on at least one target to achieve the most focus regeneration.
• Arcane Shot - This is our focus dump ability. No cooldown, 20 focus. New in MoP: The reduced focus cost of this and especially Explosive Shot means we will use this much more.
• Cobra Shot - Generates 14 focus and refreshes Serpent Sting. NEW in MoP: The focus generation is increased. Also, steady shot isn't even an option (it was almost never worthwhile anyway).
• Hunter's Mark - Damage Bonus ability. Applied manually or with the Glyph of Marked for Death. New in MoP: Access to this glyph (formerly a MM talent) makes target switching less detrimental. HM is also now a straight damage modifier instead of an AP modifier.
• Multi Shot - A very strong AoE ability for Survival. See the AoE section for more detail.
• Explosive Trap - Shares a cooldown with Black Arrow, but does more damage on multi mob situations in which they stay in the affected area for the duration (20 seconds)
• Kill Shot - 420% weapon damage execute ability. New in MoP: This ability is significantly stronger than last expansion which increases its relative value as well as the percentage of our damage to come from execute range (sub 20%). Keep this in mind when planning things like potion usage. We also no longer need a glyph for double kill shots - this is now default behavior.
• Rapid Fire - Increases attack speed and focus generation by 40% (this is more powerful than Bloodlust while it is up). New in MoP: The cooldown is now 3 minutes for all specializations.
• Readiness - New in MoP. This was previously for Marksmanship only but is now included for all specializations. It works for every ability with a cooldown except for Stampede.
• Dire Beast/Fervor - New in MoP: Discussed in the talent section
• A Muder of Crows/Lynx Rush/Blink Strike - New in MoP: Discussed in the talent section
• Powershot/Glaive Toss/Barrage - New in MoP: Discussed in the talent section

[top]Aspects

The biggest change to aspects in Mists of Pandaria is that they are now on the global cooldown (GCD). Previously you could theoretically cast every instant ability with Hawk and every cast-time ability with Fox and have no downtime in between. The GCD strongly disincentivizes frequent Aspect switching due to the 1s wait it incurs, which means we will only be switching for more long term needs. Keep in mind that the reduction in Explosive Shot focus cost (and to a lesser extent arcane), addition of new instant cast talents, and superior focus generation in MoP mean that we will be casting a larger percentage of instant-cast abilities than in Cataclysm. This makes it easier to limit movement times to when you can cast instant shots and thus never need to be in Fox. For very short movement windows (3s or less) at the least it is not worth switching to Fox, even if you cannot shoot any instant cast abilities, because for a ~1.5s cobra shot it will require a total of 3.5s of total time to do so. Please note that the damage discrepancy between Fox and Hawk is now potentially much larger due to gear scaling. Instead of a static amount of AP, Hawk now increases your AP by 10%.
It looks like the above change has been reverted, so aspect priority remains the same as in Cataclysm. Instant shots should always be cast with Aspect of the Hawk (or Aspect of the Iron Hawk). Cobra Shot should ideally be cast with Hawk as well, unless movement is required, in which case casting it with Fox is superior to waiting. If possible, focus and movement should be managed so that you only move during periods where you are using instant cast abilities.

Cheetah and Pack maintain their situational utility with the noted change that Cheetah can be glyphed to prevent dazes but put all aspects on a cooldown.

[top]Talents and Rotation

Sample build with recommended talents

[top]Talents

[top]Level 15

These talents have no direct DPS value and should be taken for their situational utility.

[top]Level 30

These talents have no direct DPS value and should be taken for their situational utility.

[top]Level 45

These talents have no direct DPS value and should be taken for their situational utility.

[top]Level 60

Dire Beast currently models higher than the other two choices for SV. Use your tool of choice to verify with your gear. Fervor is somewhat different than the Cataclysm BM talent in that it has a shorter cooldown and a periodic component in addition to the immediate focus gain. It is not as potent as it might have been in Cataclysm since the specialization as a whole is dramatically less focus starved. In fact, during execute range, you might be flooded with more focus than you need just from Dire Beast which returns much less focus. Thrill of the Hunt is very different from the old SV talent in that it allows three arcane shots to be fired at no focus cost. Again, focus is of less concern than it used to be so this talent is not as strong as it might first appear. Importantly, it does nothing to negate the time cost of casting arcane shot so considering them "free" shots would be misguided. Dire Beast is the strongest this tier in no small part due to the damage component it has while the other talents merely generate focus.

[top]Level 75

Murder of Crows currently models higher than the other two choices for SV. There are some situations in which the other two talents due have an advantage and may be used when conditions allow it. Murder of Crows does less immediate damage and has a longer duration so Lynx Rush will be preferable during times that require high burst damage or where the target will die or become immune to damage before all of the crows have finished their work. Blink Strike has the shortest cooldown so is a bit more granular and has the benefit of helping your pet traverse distances more quickly but otherwise is a bit behind.

[top]Level 90

Glaive Toss and Power Shot are fairly close in terms of damage so you should use your tool of choice to determine which is best in your gear. Glaive Toss is instant which can be an advantage but also means that it is the only one of the three that does not scale with haste. Barrage will do more damage in a 1 minute window than Power Shot but will cost three times the focus and two times the GCDs and thus lags a bit behind.

[top]Rotation

The basic shot priority will be something like the following but subject to minor changes in priority. As always, use your tool of choice to verify.

1. Explosive Shot. (regardless of Lock and Load state - see that section)
2. If the mob is below 20% health, Kill shot
3. Black Arrow
4. Serpent Sting (note that this has dropped in significance slightly because we no longer have Noxious Stings)
5. Arcane shot, if you have enough focus to use other abilities when they come off of cooldown
6. Cobra Shot

Stampede, Rapid Fire, Dire Beast, the level 75 talents, and the level 90 talents will mostly be used on cooldown with the caveat that you may want to delay them a few seconds for the sake of having them benefit from a proc. Readiness should be used after these cooldowns are exhausted. Cooldown collision priority appears to be a relatively minor concern as long as you are not capping focus (Murder of Crows is a very big focus dump and can be handy to use early or during focus saturation from your level 60 talent) or exhausting focus. Couple this with the uncertainty of Lock and Load proc times (and Thrill of the Hunt, if you are using that) and it would be inappropriate to try to highlight a "typical" opening sequence.

With that said, a suggested priority sequence with recommended talents would be:

1. Stampede
2. Rapid Fire
3. Explosive Shot
4. Kill Shot
5. Black Arrow
6. A Murder of Crows
7. Glaive Toss
8. Dire Beast
9. Readiness
10. Arcane Shot
11. Cobra Shot

[top]Glyphs

All prime glyphs have been removed and with them the DPS component of glyphs. We are left with major glyphs which are mostly utility and minor glyphs which are mostly decorative. There are a few major glyphs with utility that looks particularly beneficial to a typical raid environment and are thus recommended choices. Everything else is much more situational.
Recommended:

• Glyph of Marked For Death - the former MM talent, now available to all specializations. You should still mark a target before battle when possible but this greatly alleviates target switching costs
• Glyph of Animal Bold - extra healing received for you and your pet

There are two minor glyphs with potential use in raids:

• Glyph of the Cheetah - this has a potential downside as well. If you get hit you neither gain the speed boost nor can you get the AP modifier of Aspect of the Hawk so you may be better off taking the daze (or not using Cheetah) in some cases
• Glyph of Aspect of the Pack - there have not been many raids where Aspect of the Pack is useful but there have been some, and this is an obvious choice for those times.

[top]Lock and Load

This section is a bit of a legacy because our behavior when we get this proc should be very straightforward - spam three Explosive Shots. Past behavior, however, was significantly more complicated so it is worth mentioning what has changed and weird behavior you might notice. In Cataclysm, Lock and Load was changed so that it could only be consumed by Explosive Shot and not arcane shot. This allowed us to weave in arcane shots between Explosive Shots, but we were still concerned about Explosive Shots overwriting each other and causes us to lose one tick. An overall change to damage over time mechanics enabled us to shoot the first two Explosive Shots back to back and not lose a tick unless we shot the third Explosive Shot. If we instead fired three consecutive Explosive Shots we would only get 8 ticks. In Mists of Pandaria, the Explosive Shot DoT now functions under a revamped Piercing Shots/Ignite mechanic. It will still only do 8 ticks but the damage of one tick will get rolled into another, doing the same amount of damage as if we had 9 ticks neatly spread across time. This means that all we need to do to optimize Lock and Load procs is: Explosive Shot -> Explosive Shot -> Explosive Shot.

[top]Pets

Pets of any non-exotic variety can now be given one of three specializations: Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity. Ferocity has a clear DPS advantage over the others. Pet family should be chosen primarily based on what buffs or debuffs your raid needs and secondarily based on whatever you think looks prettiest.

[top]Area of Effect (AoE)

Survival appears to still be the top AoE specialization thanks to Serpent Spread and Improved Serpent Sting. Explosive Trap should also be used on AoE packs, at the expense of Black Arrow. Trap Launcher is now a toggle-able ability making the launching of it even easier.

[top]Stat Priority

Stat Overview:

• Agility - increases damage of each shot and the chance for it to do double damage (critical strike)
• Hit - increases the chance your shot will be hit. You need 7.5% hit to cap against a raid boss.
• Expertise - ranged attacks can now be dodged, which expertise helps to counter. You need 7.5% dodge reduction to cap against a raid boss.
• Crit - increases the chance your shot will do double damage (critical strike)
• Haste - increases your focus regen (which has a base rate of 4 per second) and the speed of your non-instant attacks. This includes Cobra Shot, Auto Shot, Powershot, and Barrage.
• Mastery - increases your magic damage done. Traditionally this meant all of your attacks except for pet damage and auto shot which ended up being a significant majority. This is still mostly the case, but we have more pet damage from Dire Beast, Lynx Rush, Murder of Crows, and Blink Strike, and a bit more physical damage from Powershot, Barrage, or Glaive Toss.

As far as priority, allow me to quote from Rivkah:
The secondary stats for SV should be determined by your tool of choice but in most cases will be: agi > hit > exp > crit > haste > mastery with haste varying a bit more wildly than other stats due to the reasons Rivkah explained above.

[top]Enchants

• Ranged - [Lord Blastington's Scope of Doom]
• Shoulder - [Greater Tiger Claw Inscription]
• Cloak - Accuracy or Superior Critical Strike
• Chest - Glorious Stats
• Wrist - Greater Agility or [item]Fur Lining - Agility (Leatherworker)
• Hands - Superior Expertise unless swimming in expertise. Substitutes: Superior Mastery, Greater Haste
• Legs - Primal Leg Reinforcements
• Feet - Blurred Speed
• Rings - Greater Agility (Enchanter)

[top]Gems

Use [Delicate Primordial Ruby] for red and [Agile Primal Diamond] for meta sockets. As Revkah noted in the quote above, Yellow and Blue sockets are now more attractive. Use your tool of choice to determine if it is better to grab the socket bonus or just gem for agility. If you do end up matching those sockets, the gem choice will be [Deadly Vermilion Onyx] (substitute [Deft Vermilion Onyx] if haste is preferred) for yellow and [Glinting Imperial Amethyst] for purple.

A few notes to consider:

- Snake trap may be worth including in the rotation, especially for SV which gets extra snakes, until they nerf it. Currently it scales pretty well at 90 (haven't tested 85) since it now scales with RAP, haste and crit

- In my sims I was noticing that if you have a burst of high focus where you actually have to choose between prioritizing cobra shot to keep your sting from falling off, or just manually reapplying it later, it looks like it's actually more beneficial to just reapply later. This is a combination of the fact that improved serpent sting is not bad damage and the fact that we have a lot more focus flow than we used to so spending 25 focus to reapply it isn't as big a problem

- Lynx rush and murder of crows are giving different results depending on the sim. This is partly due the timing of rabid lining up with lynx rush (especially if you time readiness where you can get 2 lynx rush off during rabid). Murder is likely to be a more reliable and less timing sensitive talent, but simc actually puts lynx rush above murder

- Since barrage suppresses your autoshot (powershot no longer does) it doesn't scale as well with haste as powershot

Thanks for this!

I see from a couple of tests on dummy's that [Cataclysm] - Survival Hunter still applies.
You still get 8 ticks (5 dots, 3 normal hits) from Explosive Shot after getting Lock and Load. An "interleaving" shot, as it's called in the link I posted, still isn't necessary anymore.

I thought I'd mention it since you do point towards the Lock and Load section but you seem to have missed it while writing this

I did miss writing that and will do so now, thank you for pointing that out. You are correct that it only does 8 ticks, but as mentioned here the damage on one or more ticks compensates for it. No damage is lost - it just does the total damage over 8 ticks instead of 9.

Since I don't see it anywhere mentioned, concerning the opening I believe casting a Black Arrow and after the Readiness Explosive trap (if bosses actually activate it) would give the maximum chance for LnL since you can't have double Black Arrow.

I mentioned it on Marksmanship thread as well, apart from the damage differences between A Murder of Crows and Lynx Rush it's worth noting that you can use the second Lynx Rush with Readiness 4second after the first one which is not only inside Rabid timer but also in side the first Agility potion timer. Whereas with Murder of Crows you have to wait full 30 seconds from the first to use the second after Readiness. I don't know how much of a damage difference that is and how much the time range of fight kill affects it, but it's one more factor to consider.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that it's actually worth doing. Some things to note:
- Unless you've just cast BA you may be pushing back your next BA (even if the BA DoT is close to full duration, you will push it back a bit as the duration is shorter than the CD)
- Explosive trap does roughly half as much damage as black arrow per tick in good gear
- Although you will increase your LnL proc rate slightly, there is still a 10 sec ICD on LnL, so there's a limit on how much you gain from this
- The usual hassles associated with trap placement such as fiddling with position, target moving, etc.

Question on Thrill of the Hunt for Survival.

I was practicing some rotations with TotH and noticed that I'd frequently get a streak of Lock and Load and Thrill of the Hunt triggering one after the other. Occasionally this would happen when I was already at a decently high level of focus. In this case, I'd try to fire off as many of the shots as possible (preferring explosive shot over arcane shot), but would spend so much time firing free shots that Serpent Sting would fall off. (And unfortunately it's not like BM's Bestial Wrath where you can fire a Cobra shot first to prevent you from needing to refresh until right at the end)

Ideally, you want a few things to be the case:
1) With Thrill of the Hunt, you want to get the Arcane Shots fired off ASAP so that you don't trigger it while it's already active, thus wasting one of the free Arcane Shots.
2) You don't want to let Serpent Sting drop off;
3) You don't want to fire a Cobra Shot when you're close to capping focus.

I kept running into a conflict though and am not sure what the best way to handle it though:
I figure if focus isn't high, a Cobra Shot is easily interleaved because it doesn't cost focus, so won't trigger a new Thrill of the Hunt. But if focus is high, Explosive Shot is on cooldown, and Thrill of the Hunt is active, we don't really have a very good focus dump to prevent us from capping except perhaps for a manual application of Serpent Sting.

So where's the approximate breakpoint for focus capping and using a cobra shot to keep Serpent Sting up versus letting serpent sting fall off and applying it after you've burned through all of your Thrill of the Hunt procs? (Or is there something else I'm missing entirely)

Lilbitters previous post has the best answer since it better uses the focus, "extends SrS", and does good damage.

However, I do want to point out that you should not overly be concerned with overcapping focus. So many people seem to think that it is a sin to ever cap focus, and that is not true. It is only unideal to cap focus due to poor shot selection (which is indeed the majority of the cases where people cap focus). However, it is never unideal to overcap focus when you are performing the best possible shot selection that you can under the current situation.

So if you are overcapping focus a lot, the first thing to ask is if there is any changes you make where you can better utilize that focus for increased DPS. If there is, then make the adjustments to better utilize the focus. However, if there are no adjustments to make and you are confident that you are performing the maximum DPS shot selection, then do not worry about the overcapping.

Does that mean it's ideal to pull with multi-shot instead of serpent sting?

with all of our new CDS, what's the ideal survival hunter opening rotation?

1-multi-shot
2-stampede
3-crow
4-db
5-rf
6-readiness
7-stampede
8-db
9-explosive shot
10-black arrow

that means our first black arrow would be so late though

I have been doing a bit of testing with my opening rotation and have discovered a few things that might not be easily apparent, although they do make sense when you think about it.

An example is delaying Stampede to be almost the lowest priority ability just above Cobra Shot and Arcane Shot. Although it's our highest damage per execution time ability, because of it being such a long cooldown and not being reset by Readiness, there isn't an immediate need to cast it early, as long as it still benefits from haste effects and the pre-pot. Obviously encounter length would determine the merit of this, but as long as the encounter doesn't end between 5:20 and 5:30 or between 10:20 and 10:30, then delaying Stampede initially by 10 seconds wouldn't reduce the overall number of times it can be cast and used for full duration.

Trying various priority rotations in FemaleDwarf led me to the settle with the following opening (which is partially troll specific, Berserking allows for enough focus regen for an additional Arcane Shot to replace a Cobra Shot at the 15th GCD). Also for Survival, there is a large period of just using Explosive/Arcane Shots, but the actual timing of them may be different due to Lock and Load proc timing, this just assumes the best case scenario of it being within the first 5 ticks of the initial Black Arrow cast. Note that the due to stacking Rapid Fire with Heroism/Bloodlust on the pull, the openings listed below are possible with 0 haste from gear, making Cobra Shot a 0.999 second cast time. Also a second Virmen's Bite is listed, but I haven't actually calculated whether it's more beneficial to save it for the Kill Shot phase and lined up with later cooldowns (although Heroism/Bloodlust wouldn't be available again unless the encounter is over 10 minutes) and it may be more beneficial to save it for a more crucial DPS check phase, so that can be omitted.

The following are the first 25 GCDs that I've been using in live Beta testing and how I had to adjust the settings to make FemaleDwarf model it relatively accurately:
Survival Opening:
-03: Hunter's Mark
-02: Misdirection
-01: Virmen's Bite (Pre-potion)
+00: Black Arrow, Petattack (Heroism/Bloodlust activated)
+01: Rabid, A Murder of Crows
+02: Rapid Fire, Berserking, Dire Beast
+03: Glaive Toss
+04: Explosive Shot (needs 0.19 delay for non-Troll)
+05: Readiness
+06: Dire Beast
+07: Glaive Toss
+08: Explosive Shot
+09: Stampede
+10: Multi-Shot
+11: Explosive Shot (LNL)
+12: Explosive Shot (LNL)
+13: Explosive Shot
+14: Arcane Shot (Cobra Shot for non-Troll)
+15: Arcane Shot
+16: Arcane Shot
+17: Arcane Shot
+18: Black Arrow
+19: Explosive Shot
+20: Rapid Fire, Cobra Shot
+21: Cobra Shot
+22: Glaive Toss
+23: Arcane Shot
+24: Virmen's Bite, Arcane Shot

-Priority: BA,aMoC,RF,DB,KS,GT,ES,Ready,Stamp,Multi,AS,CoS
-Arcane at min focus:60
-Uncheck don't save for Serp
-Check don't save for aMoC


I used the same approach for coming up with a Beast Mastery opening which is below.
Beast Mastery Opening:
-03: Hunter's Mark
-02: Misdirection
-01: Virmen's Bite (Pre-potion)
+00: Serpent Sting, Petattack (Heroism/Bloodlust activated)
+01: Bestial Wrath, Rabid, A Murder of Crows
+02: Kill Command
+03: Dire Beast
+04: Glaive Toss
+05: Rapid Fire, Berserking, Readiness
+06: Kill Command
+07: Dire Beast
+08: Glaive Toss
+09: Stampede
+10: Arcane Shot
+11: Arcane Shot
+12: Kill Command
+13: Cobra Shot
+14: Arcane Shot
+15: Arcane Shot
+16: Arcane Shot
+17: Arcane Shot
+18: Bestial Wrath, Kill Command
+19: Cobra Shot
+20: Rapid Fire, Arcane Shot
+21: Arcane Shot
+22: Arcane Shot
+23: Glaive Toss
+24: Virmen's Bite, Kill Command

-Priority: SrS,BW,aMoC,KS,KC,DB,GT,FF,RF,Ready,Stamp,AS,CoS
-Arcane at min focus:60
-Uncheck don't save for SrS
-Check don't save for aMoC


Haven't had the chance to analyze the Marksmanship opening, but I'm sure Whitefyst already has recommendations.

Edit: I was going from the results from FemaleDwarfs simulated shot breakdown, however I came to realize that FD is using a GCD for Readiness, when in fact it does not use a GCD. This may require a shift in shot selection during the opening, but the priority should remain the similar.

On that note I was wondering if during your testing you noticed if Dire Beast's haste changed dynamically with haste changes from the hunter.

For example,

1. Use Dire Beast
2. Haste increase or decreases

Do Dire Beast attacks increase, decrease or remain static?