PvE Survival Hunter Talents, Builds & Glyphs

PvE Survival Hunter

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

There are generally two talent builds that Survival will use throughout the whole expansion, the ”single target build” and the ”AoE build”

Notable Talents

• https://www.wotlkdb.com/?spell=52788 – Increases damage done to beasts, humanoids, elementals, and more, while tracking them by 5%. However, you do not have to track every individual type to gain the 5% damage increase from it. If you track humanoids you gain 5% damage from all the types of mobs listed, same goes for tracking any of the types of mobs listed, so you do not have to ‘’track dance’’ as some hunters may think!
• Trap Mastery – Increases the duration of all your traps by up to 30% when maxed out — this is a Survival Hunter’s bread and butter when it comes to explosive trap damage.
• Lock and Load – Speaking of bread and butter, this is probably THE talent that makes people want to play Survival. When it procs you get three explosive shots in a row, without a cooldown. Do not spam an explosive shot 3 times in a row, however — either weave in a different shot or wait until the last tick of the previous explosive shot is about to expire, before firing a new one. Frost Trap will not trigger this effect on a boss, but it will guarantee a proc on slowable targets as long as the internal cooldown is up.
• Hunting Party – This is a deceptively bad talent. You probably still want to spec 1 out of 3 just for the replenishment, but the 1% Agility gain is very neglectable — even if you had 1,000 Agility, this talent would only give you a 10 AGI increase. And while we do love AGI, these are very low numbers to work with — a different talent is often better.
• Hunter vs Wild – This increases your attack power based on 30% of your stamina, a cool little talent. Although this is only a small amount, it’s still something to be aware of when you are playing survival.
• https://www.wotlkdb.com/?spell=53304 In my opinion a clunky talent for a very mobile class and spec – rewarding you for not moving, and making it increase your damage It’s very easy to keep up for your single target build since you aren’t moving around to trap too often but you are going to want to pay good attention in your AoE trap spec.
• Focused aim – Preferably, you want this maxed out, however, due to gear issues this may not always be optimal. When you have too much hit (how much is too much?) to go for this talent you may want to consider Improved aspect of the hawk, especially once you gain more gear.

Talent Builds

Single-Target DPS Build

This is what a single target build should look like, preferably with 3/3 Focused Aim. The glyphs are not contestable early and are the better choice for single-target without trapping. The only exception to the rule is if you run 3 or more hunters, in which case it’s worth it for one of them to go [Glyph of Hunter’s Mark] and Improved Hunters Mark talent.

AoE-Focused Build

This far more AoE-focused build replaces Glyph of Serpent Sting with Glyph of Explosive Trap . You will want to trigger lock and load using traps instead of black arrow using this spec, however it is still wise to spec it for moments where you absolutely cannot be in melee range.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Serpent Sting – Increases the duration of your serpent sting giving you more time to fill in other shots.
• Glyph of Explosive Trap – Makes it so your explosive trap DoTs can crit.
• Glyph of Explosive Shot– Gives your highest damage ability more crit.
• Glyph of Kill Shot – Reduces the cooldown of your 2nd highest damage shot (during execute)

Minor Glyphs

some of these glyphs may prove useful in combat as well – so those will be the ones listed.

Glyph of Feign Death – Reduces the cooldown of feign death
Glyph of Revive Pet – Reduces knockback when you’re trying to revive your pet.