Survival Hunter DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Midnight (12.0.1)

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Survival Hunter for Midnight Pre-Season. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing a Survival Hunter, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

The Midnight Expansion brought a major stat squish, reducing the stats and numbers of virtually everything in the game, including Item Levels and the stats on gear.

You can find more information about Gearing and much more in Midnight on our Midnight page.

For discussion and information on Stats specifically, check out our Stats page below.

Survival can freely choose between using 1-handed weapons like Daggers, or two-handed weapons like staves and Polearms. The choice between dual wielding and using a two-handed weapon depends on your Hero Talent.

Sentinel should always use a 2-handed weapon, regardless of the situation, as your abilities will benefit from stronger overall Agility scaling.

Pack Leader should always use two Daggers. This is because of the Lethal Barbs Talent, which ties your Focus regen to your auto-attack speed directly. This Talent enables very Focus-expensive playstyles that are exclusive to Pack Leader, and Dual Daggers are required to fully realize this potential.

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BiS Gear for Survival Hunter

Pre-Season BiS List for Pre-Season

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Pre-Season BiS List for Survival Hunter in Pre-Season

This list contains the best gear in every slot for Pre-Season of Midnight, from all Pre-Season sources like Mythic0 Dungeons, Delves, and Crafts.

Out of respect for your time, I should mention that you achieving this gear is not really important at all, as it will get swiftly replaced by the time the Season comes out in a matter of days. With that said, if you need something to focus on during the Pre Season, this is the list for you.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Helm	Vortex Visage	Magister's Terrace
Neck	Pendant of Malefic Fury	Murder Row
Shoulder	Spaulders of Arrow's Flight	Windrunner Spire
Cloak	Courtly Cloak	Tailoring
Chest	Decaying Cuirass	Maisara Caverns
Bracers	Scout's Scaled Bracers	Leatherworking
Gloves	Grips of Forgotten Honor	Windrunner Spire
Belt	Behemoth Waistband	Voidscar Arena
Legs	Greaves of the Divine Guile	Nexus-Point Xenas
Boots	Whipcoil Sabatons	Windrunner Spire
Ring #1	Bifurcation Band	Magister's Terrace
Ring #2	Lightwarden's Bind	The Blinding Vale
Trinket #1	Lightspire Core	The Blinding Vale
Trinket #2	Vessel of Tortured Souls	Maisara Caverns
Weapon ( Sentinel)	Roostwarden's Bough	Windrunner Spire
Main Hand ( Pack Leader)	Thornblade	The Blinding Vale
Off-Hand ( Pack Leader)	Thornblade	The Blinding Vale

Throughout this page, we regularly refer to the importance of simming yourself on Raidbots, as it is an indispensable aspect of optimizing your character.

If you are new to simming and Raidbots, check out our detailed guide below.

Note that simulations for Embellishments are in their early stages, and this information only reflects the current state of those simulations. It is likely that this recommendation will change slightly or entirely by the time Season 1 rolls around, so check back on this page before you are about to craft.

The Prismatic Focusing Iris + Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier combination of Embellishments are optimal for all content in Midnight Season 1, as it currently stands. While other combinations can do better in raw AoE, the Focusing Iris prefers your primary target and is thus excellent for priority- and single-target damage in Mythic+, enough to make it optimal even in those situations.

You should ideally sim the optimal stats to craft for your particular character, but Mastery/Crit is most likely your best option with a Thalassian Missive of the Peerless.

1. First, a Crafted Neck - Masterwork Sin'dorei Amulet with Prismatic Focusing Iris applied.
2. Second, Bracers - apply Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier to double the value of the Focusing Iris Embellishment — we recommend Farstrider's Plated Bracers, as they are one of the weakest slots, and thus the 4 iLvl disadvantage that crafts have will cost you a minimal amount of DPS. It also gives you a slot that you know will provide long-term value for a future Vault Socket.
3. After sorting out your Embellishments, you should chase Item Level with your crafts on your otherwise weakest slots. If you are coming to the season relatively late and gearing up, crafting a Weapon followed by Jewelry can be really good here as it lets you customize your secondary stats to a significant degree.

You do not need to have a Professions to get gear crafted for you, that is what Crafting Order NPC's are for, but if you are interested in crafting for yourself and saving some Gold, check out our Professions Overview page:

You will be able to upgrade your items via Crests such as Gilded Ethereal Crest. Once you have upgraded a slot to a certain item level, upgrading other items of that slot to that item level is free.

When you upgrade with Crests, you should think of it as upgrading slots and not items.

Additionally, since Crests are a limited resource, you will want to obtain the highest item-level possible before upgrading a given slot, as this means you will spend fewer Crests on that slot in total. If you are at all capable of doing a +10 Dungeon (701 iLvl), for example, it would be a VERY bad idea to upgrade an item from a +9 Dungeon (697), because you just wasted 15 Crests that could have been saved by just farming the slot on a +10.

We see a ton of players, even at a high level, mess up their upgrade priorities, and upgrading prematurely. Getting this right will put you far ahead of most players.

Below is the slot priority you should upgrade your items in. If you ever want to deviate from this, you should have a very good reason.

1. Weapons
2. Trinkets
3. Helm/Chest/Legs
4. Rings and Necks
5. Shoulders/Gloves/Belt/Boots
6. Cloaks and Bracers

Note that exceptions are possible, such as special items that have more Item Level scaling than their slot would imply.

You can learn more about the Gear Upgrade System in our Gear Upgrade System page.