Survival Hunter 8.3

[Azortharion 60]

Blood Elves also have their racial ability that generates Focus, that's what pushes them ahead. 

[Guest Jbreezy]

My PVE rant - I have found a whole lot of success with mongoose bite in the prepatch. When combined with alpha predator and birds of prey I have been able to get up to 4 consecutive fully stacked (+75% damage) mongoose bites in one window and have been able to build up to 3-4 stacks in the next window before BoP times out. For long single target fights I can't really see tip of the spear beating out mongoose bite + birds of prey. This might only be due to my current haste (35%), but for now I am typically averaging 3-4% higher overall single target damage with mongoose bite + alpha predator + birds of prey. For AoE scenarios I have seen fairly similar numbers between wildfire infusion + butchery, and birds of prey + butchery, but this is highly dependent on effecient use of coordinated assault, but the buff you get in single target damage from birds of prey is too strong to pass up IMO for mythic+ and raiding scenarios. 

My PVP rant - Survival is busted in both arena and BGs. You can literally choose any talents and as long as you play with them effectively it's qq for your opponents. Tip of the spear is pretty fun in both arena and BGs - get your stacks and harpoon in and pray for a crit on that freshly nether-ray  purged disc priest. But again I'm taking mongoose bite. I've found that while fighting any melee it's best just to squab with em, make em pop cooldowns, throw your sticky tar down (with pvp talent) and watch them hilariously swing at you at 1swing per minute as you just sit em up and build 2-3 stacks of mongoose. Then it's time to stop playing around. Pop AotE and coordinated assault (when at full focus), disengage if necessary (with posthaste) and just start spamming fat boy eagles at them. I have a 218 ilvl and I got my eagles critting for 6k+ if used at full potential. With heroism + my base haste it is literally near impossible for anyone to live through the burst, unless you cant get a crit, but that still shouldn't matter. I played monk - DH - DK - Rogue - and enhance in legion, nothing has made me feel nearly as OP or broken as the survival hunter feels right now. That is without mentioning survivals defensives/utility which I will leave for another post. To wrap it up though I think blizzard did something right for once with the new survival spec, and I hope it doesn't get nerfed into the ground - almost any build can work and actually changes your playstyle in a meaningful way which is awesome - my only complaint is how bad carve is baseline. It either needs to be buffed, maybe to be just one charge of butchery that attacks only in front of you or something, because the other two talents in the butchery row are awesome and super fun to use, but completely subordinate to butchery in any consistent AoE scenario. 

 

Im open to comments/rebuttles on mongoose bite - when I started 8.0 I thought it was hot garbage, till I started utilizing its potential when combined with other talents - it might not win in a sim but in actually gameplay I think it trumps tip of the spear in all single target fights over 2minutes. Let me know what you think. Oh and

PS: probably never playing BM or MM again - survival is too fun - someone Petition blizzard about giving survival the ability to use the waterstrider pet - cmon now it's just waterwalking don't make me switch specs to run across a lake. Oh and if your not using a purge pet in BGs your missing out bigtime - disc priests and resto druids are absolutely broken they need to be deleted from the game and the only way to kill them is through purges, CC and 7,000 teammates popping every cooldown in their arsenal.

thanks  

[Azortharion 60]

Tip of the Spear beats out Mongoose Bite if you wear the T21 4p. Even if you don't, it is very close. There is currently no prepatch situation where Alpha Predator is preferable to Viper's Venom, that's not a matter of preference (neither is Tip vs MB), that's as close to an objective fact we can get. This is true whether you have 20% Haste or 35% Haste.

A sim and actual gameplay are not opposites. A sim models real-life play (just as real-life play can model a sim). Therefore there is no distinction. Tip is more competitive in sims and in real life, keeping the T21 4p caveat in mind. Unless someone can present a way to play Mongoose Bite that has not been explored in simulations that would push it further ahead (very, extremely unlikely, given the quality of the current simulationcraft module, but not outside the realm of possibility).

If you post some logs (even a dummy one) where you do Tip vs MB on roughly the same fight length, I can show you in a very concrete way how your play matches up to SimulationCraft, and indeed show you that Tip is the better option. This is all assuming you have the T21 4p, which is very often the case.

I know next to nothing about PvP so I can't comment on that part!

[Guest Playing WoW]

Hello,

I am playing wow for the first time with friends. They have been playing for years, so they dragged me into it. Right now I chose for the Hunter, survival. Great Guide! But I can’t decide What to do with my race. Can you help me?

[Azortharion 60]

56 minutes ago, Guest Playing WoW said:

Hello,

I am playing wow for the first time with friends. They have been playing for years, so they dragged me into it. Right now I chose for the Hunter, survival. Great Guide! But I can’t decide What to do with my race. Can you help me?

My suggestion is to play the race you think looks best/sounds best, honestly. The actual DPS difference between racials is very, very small, and not really worthy of consideration for 99.9% of people, certainly not first-time players (welcome btw!).

And of course, that's a personal decision, I can't tell you what looks best as that is your call. I think Tauren/Highmountain Tauren personally fit the Survival vibe pretty well.

[Raeyn 0]

Question regarding Tip's effect on rotation - The guide cautions against casting KC more than 3x with this talent, which is easy enough, but is it ever worth holding onto a Raptor Strike until 3 stacks while at full focus or is it better to burn a 1-2 stack RS once focus capped and start building fresh Tip stacks. While some (most probably) of this is due to poor timing or not burning enough focus prior to KC while getting used to rotation, I've run across times where due to poor KC reset proc's, I'll hit max focus with under 3 stacks, Wildfire on cd, plenty or time on SS and 3+ sec left on KC. Left between the choice of a sub max stack RS or nothing, I'll burn the RS but worry if might be better to hold off to max out Tip. 

Also, as T21 4pc is really only a factor for the next 7 days, once we're all at 120 are Tip and Mongoose still competitive or will be shifting to Mongoose?

Thanks

[Azortharion 60]

10 hours ago, Raeyn said:

Question regarding Tip's effect on rotation - The guide cautions against casting KC more than 3x with this talent, which is easy enough, but is it ever worth holding onto a Raptor Strike until 3 stacks while at full focus or is it better to burn a 1-2 stack RS once focus capped and start building fresh Tip stacks. While some (most probably) of this is due to poor timing or not burning enough focus prior to KC while getting used to rotation, I've run across times where due to poor KC reset proc's, I'll hit max focus with under 3 stacks, Wildfire on cd, plenty or time on SS and 3+ sec left on KC. Left between the choice of a sub max stack RS or nothing, I'll burn the RS but worry if might be better to hold off to max out Tip. 

Also, as T21 4pc is really only a factor for the next 7 days, once we're all at 120 are Tip and Mongoose still competitive or will be shifting to Mongoose?

Thanks

Well, the thing is that if you can cast KC instead of Raptor Strike without Focus capping, then you should do so regardless if you are using Tip or not. Therefore, Tip does not influence your rotation. Simply by playing optimally, you get full usage out of Tip.

So to answer your question, no, it is never worth Focus capping in order to get a 3-stack Tip versus a 1-2 stack one.

At 120, Tip and Mongoose are very close regardless of T21 4p. Mongoose Bite is probably going to be more competitive overall, but Azerite Traits and Haste levels going down significantly can shift that around.

[Raeyn 0]

Thanks for clarifying that - kinda felt I was falling short on Tip stacks due to the rotation and getting used to the new focus regen rate. Spent some more time on a dummy and still ended up with 2 stacks every so often but it's good to know for certain to just follow the core rotation regardless of Tip stacks which is what I suspected, just wanted to make sure. 

I'll have to play around with Mongoose, but that Mongoose window has always felt a bit wonky. 

Also, thanks for all the work you put into these guides Azor. 

[Guest Husk]

I don't know if i understand the rotation. It says "The single target rotation for a Survival Hunter is based on the following priority system" but #3 says to use serpent sting immediately so shouldn't that be #1 priority? If i have 50 focus with kill command off cd and wildfire bomb off cd and not on the enemy and also serpent sting not on the enemy, do i use kill command since it is #1 priority or what do i use? What if i keep getting kill command resets? My wildfire bomb is just sitting there off cd?

[Guest Typochondriac]

Regarding the simulation section, any tips on simming with Raidbots for Mythic+? Is it just a matter of choosing something like Hectic Add Cleave and hoping that's close enough, or is there a more finely tuned way to better assess talents & trinkets for mythic+ optimization? Probably more focused on a fortified week, since tyrannical would just call for something closer to single target I assume. Thanks!

[Azortharion 60]

12 hours ago, Guest Husk said:

I don't know if i understand the rotation. It says "The single target rotation for a Survival Hunter is based on the following priority system" but #3 says to use serpent sting immediately so shouldn't that be #1 priority? If i have 50 focus with kill command off cd and wildfire bomb off cd and not on the enemy and also serpent sting not on the enemy, do i use kill command since it is #1 priority or what do i use? What if i keep getting kill command resets? My wildfire bomb is just sitting there off cd?

In priority lists, it is always implied that whatever is in a step (like step #3) is dependent on the steps ABOVE it already being done.

[Azortharion 60]

3 hours ago, Guest Typochondriac said:

Regarding the simulation section, any tips on simming with Raidbots for Mythic+? Is it just a matter of choosing something like Hectic Add Cleave and hoping that's close enough, or is there a more finely tuned way to better assess talents & trinkets for mythic+ optimization? Probably more focused on a fortified week, since tyrannical would just call for something closer to single target I assume. Thanks!

I find it best to do single-target and 3-4 multi-target individually and using that as your basis for M+ (since you can no longer swap gear).

Most dungeons are a 50/50 time split between bosses and trash. If something is a 2% gain on multi-target, but a 1% less on single-target, then you can still consider that a net 1% gain, very roughly speaking. You can adjust this calculation for the dungeon, if you are doing a 75% time spent on bosses dungeon, you weigh the single-target sim higher.

[Guest Furzok]

Hi there.

Talking about pets, cats can do a little bit extra dmg because of prowl, am i right?

I think you should comment aswell that going ferocity pet for dungeons is the best option in case that you need a BL

Thank you!

[Azortharion 60]

Prowl makes the pet slower which is likely to cost it auto-attacks, and the damage buff from the Prowl itself is so tiny that these two facts more or less cancel each other out.

Regarding Ferocity, it's situational, and even without it you got Drums etc.

[Nogewdz 0]

in regards to the raptor strike and latent poison. I currently use 
#showtooltip Raptor Strike
/cast Chimaera Shot
/cast Claw(Basic Attack)
/cast Bite(Basic Attack)
/cast Smack(Basic Attack)
/cast Raptor Strike
will that work as well as the /pet attack one you've posted  

[Azortharion 60]

There is no point having Basic Attacks in your Survival macros, you can do so but /petattack will be more reliable.

[Guest Darkmoon Trinket?]

I might be overlooking things, but I don't see the Darkmoon trinket listed under the trinkets; is it just irrelevant, or just untested?

[Guest Guest]

Can you please explain why is critical better than versatility in stat prior?

You need ~71 versa for 1% dmg

You need ~72 Crit for 1% crit chance, and additionally you start with 10% crit as standard.

 

[LZRD 0]

Can you fix the part where Steel Trap contests Bloodseeker damage. They nerfed it on the Beta a while back and its only perk is the CC.

Edited August 20, 2018 by LZRD

[Azortharion 60]

On 8/19/2018 at 1:58 PM, Guest Guest said:

Can you please explain why is critical better than versatility in stat prior?

You need ~71 versa for 1% dmg

You need ~72 Crit for 1% crit chance, and additionally you start with 10% crit as standard.

 

Here is a scale factor simulation with all stats set to 0 (rating). https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/nfhZbYcwC6caiujHvzM8U

Adding 2000 Versatility to the simulation confirms that Versatility is appropriately affecting every single damaging ability here.

[Guest Darkmoon Trinket]

I posted the original comment about this; just wanted to say thank you. I did my own sims but I do like to confirm others were seeing the same results as me with the trinket and I didn't want to invest time into picking flowers if it was irrelevant. You da bomb!

[Guest Punsh]

What weapon you acquire in Shrine of the Storm,according to this guide? There are no agility 2-handers according to Dungeon Journal

[Guest StormShit]

What exactly does "zone-related and content-related" mean?

[Azortharion 60]

On 8/21/2018 at 3:34 AM, Guest Punsh said:

What weapon you acquire in Shrine of the Storm,according to this guide? There are no agility 2-handers according to Dungeon Journal

That was a mistake and the weapon is actually in Temple, should be fixed by now.

 

 

On 8/21/2018 at 2:53 PM, Guest StormShit said:

What exactly does "zone-related and content-related" mean?

Zone-related refers to traits that appear on items that drop from dungeons in specific zones. It is a way to distinguish between the traits, but it doesn't actually matter much for you as the end-user.

Content-related refers to where you get items with the trait. The main distinction is that the "PvP" traits are only found on Azerite gear obtained through, you guessed it, PvP content!

[Guest Serôtex]

I'm looking for a Pawn String for the Hunter Survival.