Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are 2 more things you can use to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact they can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Survival Hunter.
Addons
Addons are direct quality-of-life improvements to the existing game features. They can range from User Interface modifications to simple tools such as a Damage Meter or Threat Meter. Addons can also be used to generate text notifications or even in-game vocal notifications to keep better track of your buffs and procs. They can also be used to display boss tactics and notify you of impending threats.
- DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
- Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends!
- WeakAuras – Extremely versatile addon that can be used to track buffs, debuffs, or create audio notifications.
- Auctionator – A great tool for any interaction with the Auction House
Macros
Survival Hunters have a few generic Hunter macros that can be useful to improve their overall performance besides the standard essential macros that all DPS specializations use.
Startattack Macro
It is optimal to have the /startattack command on all of your abilities as a melee character. Doing so allows your character to begin auto-attacking your target right away, even if you aren’t currently in range to attack them, that ability is on cooldown, etc.
#showtooltip Cobra Shot
/startattack
/cast Cobra ShotCancel Aura Macro
There will be abilities that will be cast on you for brief invulnerability purposes that you will need to remove as soon as possible to optimize your damage output! Examples of such abilities include Hand of Protection and Deterrence. You can bind any ability to this macro to cast it after you remove the aura itself, however, you will need to press the button twice for it to also cast the ability.
#showtooltip
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast Arcane Shot#showtooltip
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cast Arcane ShotMouseover Macro
This macro can be used to cast an ability on any target by simply hovering your mouse over it. You can either hover your mouse over the target itself or over the UI raid or party frame in the case of a friendly target. For any beneficial spell, you will want to have “Help” in your macro, and for any damaging spell you will want to have “Harm”
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, harm, nodead] Distracting ShotOffensive Cooldown Macro
This macro is useful for activating multiple offensive effects at the same time with a simple press of a button!
#showtooltip
/use 10
/use 13
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Call of the Wild
/use Potion of the Tol'virFocus MD + Pet Macro build in one
This macro can be used to cast Misdirection on your Focus target. If you don’t have one it will cast it on your pet instead (useful for farming by MDing to your pet, or raiding/being in a dungeon while having your tank on /focus.
#showtooltip misdirection
/cast [@focus,help][help][@pet,exists] MisdirectionSurvive macro
You can use this macro to activate both Deterrence and Feign Death at the same time, effectively blocking any incoming attack while also removing your threat. Beware that this macro was tested in the Beta version of Cataclysm Classic and may not function the same in the live version of Cataclysm Classic!
#showtooltip
/cast Deterrence
/use [combat] Healthstone
/cast Feign Death
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