Survival Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Pet Talents — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Survival Hunter in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0). We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Survival Hunter talents.
Best The War Within Talents for Survival Hunter
Note that these builds are generic recommendations for various content. Check out the dedicated pages below for more specific recommendations for the Raid and Mythic+.
Best Talents for Survival Hunter in The War Within
Best
Pack Leader Single-Target Talents for Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This is the strongest build we have for pure single-target scenarios, which includes most Raiding.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best
Sentinel Single-Target Talents for Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This is the strongest Sentinel-based build for pure single-target encounters. I do not recommend playing it over
Pack Leader.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best
Pack Leader Mythic+ Talent Build for Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This build offers vastly more single-target and priority-target damage than
Sentinel, at a cost of AoE. This is, in my opinion, a more efficient
build for general Mythic+, as even Sentinel Survival has poor AoE. I would
rather lean into Survival's strengths than be mediocre at everything.
Wait,
Flanking Strike over
Butchery?
Yes. As described further below on this page, my Mythic+ builds are
optimized for dungeon completion time, which is achieved via a mixture
of single-target damage, priority-target damage, and general AoE DPS. The
perfect Mythic+ build is something like the perfect middle-ground of these 3
disciplines. In this case, Butchery is such a massive single-target
DPS loss (upwards of 15%), but is a much smaller AoE DPS gain (10%, often
less), that
Flanking Strike's incredible single-target and
priority-target damage will actually complete keys more efficiently overall,
finding a ton of time save in destroying bosses and priority targets in packs.
If AoE is the goal,
Sentinel simply does a better job of this.
Survival Hunter Utility Talent Considerations in Mythic+
We cannot have everything we could possibly want for every single dungeon in a single build, unfortunately. Here are the recommended utility talents to swap to for different, specific Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within Season 2.
- For Cinderbrew Meadery, Darkflame Cleft,
Theater of Pain, and The MOTHERLODE!!, swap
Kodo Tranquilizer over to
Devilsaur Tranquilizer.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best
Sentinel Mythic+ Talent Build for Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This build has the highest AoE of our two Mythic+ builds, but has vastly inferior single-target and priority-target damage, so I do not recommend it for general use, though it is very viable and can do strong overall DPS.
Survival Hunter Utility Talent Considerations in Mythic+
We cannot have everything we could possibly want for every single dungeon in a single build, unfortunately. Here are the recommended utility talents to swap to for different, specific Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within Season 2.
- For Cinderbrew Meadery, Darkflame Cleft,
Theater of Pain, and The MOTHERLODE!!, swap
Kodo Tranquilizer over to
Devilsaur Tranquilizer.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Raid AoE Talent Build for
Pack Leader Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This is my recommended build for Raid encounters that feature significant AoE. It seeks to keep as much of Survival's single-target power as possible, while grabbing as much burst AoE as possible.
There are a lot of "steps" on the ladder from single-target to AoE here.
Some situations will call for more AoE and less single-target, and vice versa.
It is difficult to pick a single step on the ladder to recommend for general
usage — This build seeks to ensure that you are never left with too
little AoE. If you want more single-target, swap the Fury of the Eagle
Talents over to the
Spearhead side of the tree.
Butchery is almost never worth using for Raid AoE scenarios, as the single-target loss is simply too massive.
Flexible Talents
Survival has several talents that lets us basically choose what our cooldown cadence should be. This build is a 2-minute build by
default, but if you find that a fight's add spawns demand a 1-minute cadence, then you can choose
Symbiotic Adrenaline instead of
Relentless Primal Ferocity to facilitate this.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Raid AoE Talent Build for
Sentinel Survival Hunter in The War Within Season 2
This is my recommended build for Raid encounters that feature significant AoE. It seeks to keep as much of Survival's single-target power as possible, while grabbing as much burst AoE as possible.
There are a lot of "steps" on the ladder from single-target to AoE here.
Some situations will call for more AoE and less single-target, and vice versa.
It is difficult to pick a single step on the ladder to recommend for general
usage — This build seeks to ensure that you are never left with too
little AoE. If you want more single-target, swap the Fury of the Eagle
Talents over to the
Spearhead side of the tree.
Butchery is almost never worth using for Raid AoE scenarios, as the single-target loss is simply too massive.
Flexible Talents
Survival has several talents that lets us basically choose what our cooldown cadence should be. This build is a 45-second build by
default, but if you find that a fight's add spawns demand a one or two-minute cadence, then you can choose
Relentless Primal Ferocity instead of
Symbiotic Adrenaline to
facilitate this. You would also go a step further and swap out
Sentinel Watch in
the Sentinel Tree for
Eyes Closed. A lower
Coordinated Assault cooldown scales very well with the
Bombardier Talent!
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Delve Talents for
Pack Leader Survival Hunter in The War Within
The Delves build is very similar to our Mythic+/AoE build, but grabs some talents that bolster pet tanking survivability in No Hard Feelings.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Delve Talents for
Sentinel Survival Hunter in The War Within
The Delves build is very similar to our Mythic+/AoE build, but grabs some talents that bolster pet tanking survivability in No Hard Feelings.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Build Types — Single-Target, Mythic+, & Raid AoE
On this page, we generally offer three types of builds; Single-Target, Mythic+, and Raid AoE. Here is a brief explanation of what each build is optimized for and how they should be used.
Single-Target builds are straightforward — They do as much damage to single target as possible. Cleave and AoE are totally ignored here. Many raid fights are either wholly or predominantly single-target. In many cases, even if a fight has AoE moments like add spawns, if those add spawns are not especially important or dangerous, playing a single-target build can be optimal, even on such fights.
Mythic+ builds are optimized for completing Mythic+ dungeons as quickly as possible. To obtain them, thousands of builds are simulated across both single-target and AoE, and math is used to analyze this simulation data and arrive at the build that performs the best across both single-target and AoE, without disproportionately preferring AoE as many other methodologies tend to. Open-World and Delve Builds are often variants of this, as these disciplines also contain a healthy mixture of single-target and AoE, both of which ought to be optimized.
Raid AoE builds try to maximize single-target first, while also doing respectable AoE. While many raid encounters do have AoE in the form of add spawns and so on, the value of this AoE is often finite. Meaning, as long as they die within a certain, reasonable timeframe, extra damage done beyond this critical point is often worthless, and should not come at the cost of increased single-target damage, which tends to have infinite value, in that a faster-dying boss is nearly always easier. These builds pick up the bare minimum in terms of AoE proficiency, to not be completely useless for these add spawns, but are predominantly single-target optimized. If Mythic+ is weighed 50/50 on single-target and AoE, Raid AoE builds are weighed 75% in single-target's favour.
Mythic+
Depending on affixes and other variables, Mythic+ can require a mix of AoE and Single-Target talents. You should check out our page below if you want advice specific to Mythic+.
Rotation for Survival Hunter Talents
Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.
Best Pet for Survival Hunter in The War Within
We have made a dedicated page for Hunter Pets information that we recommend you check out!
PvP Talents for Survival Hunter in The War Within
War Mode offers several benefits for you in the open world.
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
- At least 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
- 10% more experience gained while leveling.
- Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will be available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
PvP Talents (War Mode) for Survival Hunter
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of all PvP Talents for Survival Hunter
Best PvP Talents for Survival Hunter
Survival Tactics is useful for negating powerful casts from mobs and other players that you cannot otherwise stop.
Mending Bandage is a potent out-of-combat heal that also clears lingering debuffs.
Hunting Pack is a valuable speed increase for leveling and open world content.
You can consider the other options essentially down to preference.
For details on how to play in Survival Hunter PvP, please visit our Survival Hunter PvP page.
Changelog
- 25 Mar. 2025: Updated for March 25 Updates.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.1.0.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 13 Nov. 2024: Updated the Mythic+ Sentinel Build to account for Ruthless Marauder previously having been undersimming.
- 06 Nov. 2024: Added M+ builds and added a note of a good Talent Swap for beginners.
- 30 Oct. 2024: Updated for October 29 Hotfixes.
- 22 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 08 Oct. 2024: Updated for October 8th Hotfixes.
- 29 Sep. 2024: Added an alternative single-target build.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Preliminary update for The War Within Season 1.
- 27 Aug. 2024: Updated the "short-term burst" AoE Build to be default for pre-season.
- 24 Aug. 2024: Added a recommended Delves build.
- 22 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 26 Jul. 2024: Added Talent Builds for players using the Season 3 Tier Set, which is optimal.
- 25 Jul. 2024: Updated the M+ Build in light of Bloody Claws not working in prepatch as it does on Beta.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 12 May 2024: Added Misdirection to the M+ Build by default.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 29 Jan. 2024: Updated the default M+ build to a No-CD Build.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5.
- 28 Nov. 2023: Updated the ST and Mythic+ Talent Builds.
- 12 Nov. 2023: Added a T30 Mythic+ Build.
- 09 Nov. 2023: Small change to the Mythic+ build, for more single-target.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Restructured the page and updated for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 23 Jun. 2023: Updated the AoE and AoE No CD Builds in light of recent APL changes.
- 26 May 2023: Added a Bombardier and Spearhead Build.
- 19 May 2023: Updated the layout of the page.
- 13 May 2023: Updated the recommended AoE/Mythic+ Talents.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Updated the recommended M+ build.
- 08 Jan. 2023: Updated the recommendation status of Lunge, and re-checked Talents for correctness in light of recent buffs.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 29 Oct. 2022: Updated the recommended low-target AoE Venthyr build further.
- 27 Oct. 2022: Updated the recommended low-target AoE build and fixed an issue with the string.
- 26 Oct. 2022: Added a Kyrian-based Talent Build that emphasizes strong burst, primarily for high-target Mythic+ keys.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Azortharion, a Hunter Guidewriter, Theorycrafter, and top player since 2014, who is widely considered one of the best PvE Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with hundreds of top parses across all Hunter specs. He is the Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the official Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own, personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!
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