This WoW Cataclysm Survival Hunter Raiding build focuses on taking down bosses with our high crit chances.
The rotation we want to use is as follows
- Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
- Refresh Serpent Sting when needed.
- Always hit Explosive Shot when it’s available if you can — this means you’ll need to try to have the focus saved up for it.
- Fire Black Arrow when it’s available.
- Use Arcane Shot to bleed of excess focus. This probably won’t happen often.
- Use Steady Shot to regen focus.
- If you are looking for the fastest leveling guide, check out the Zygors 1-85 Leveling Guide Review
Here is the level by level talent guide for your Hunter to 80 After that you can put the talents where you want, we have linked a full talent sheet to 85 with our suggestion below. If you want to level your Hunter faster you MUST check out this guide.
Link to the Survival Build 0/5/36
Level 79 Hunter (0/5/31)
Survival (31 Points)
Pathing – Rank 3/3
Increases ranged haste by 3%.Improved Serpent Sting – Rank 2/2
Your Serpent Sting also does instant damage equal to 30% of its total periodic effect.Also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Serpent Sting by 10%.
Survival Tactics – Rank 2/2
Reduces the chance that your trap spells will be resisted by 4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 4 sec.Trap Mastery – Rank 3/3
Ice Trap and Freezing Trap – Increases the duration by 30%.Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow – Increases the periodic damage done by 30%.
Snake Trap – Increases the number of snakes summoned by 6.
Thrill of the Hunt – Rank 3/3
You have a 15% chance when you use Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot or Black Arrow to instantly regain 40% of the base focus cost of the shot.Lock and Load – Rank 2/2
You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap or Ice Trap to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot abilities to cost no focus and trigger no cooldown.Resourcefulness – Rank 3/3
Reduces the cooldown of all traps and Black Arrow by 6 sec.T.N.T. – Rank 2/2
When you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap or Black Arrow you have a 12% chance to trigger Lock and Load.Toxicology – Rank 2/2
Increases the periodic critical damage of your Serpent Sting and Black Arrow by 100%.Wyvern Sting – Rank 1/1
A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 2736 Nature damage over 6 sec. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.Noxious Stings – Rank 2/2
Increases your damage done on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 10%.If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining.
Hunting Party – Rank 1/1
Increases your total Agility by an additional 2%, and increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Speed of all party and raid members by 10%.Sniper Training – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%, and after remaining stationary for 6 sec, your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot deal 6% more damage for 15 sec.Serpent Spread – Rank 1/2
Targets hit by your Multi-Shot are also afflicted by your Serpent Sting equal to 6 sec of its total duration.Black Arrow – Rank 1/1
Fires a Black Arrow at the target, dealing 2395 Shadow damage over 15 sec. Black Arrow shares a cooldown with other Fire Trap spells.
Beast Mastery (0 Points)
None
Marksmanship (5 Points)
Go for the Throat – Rank 2/2
Your ranged auto-shot critical hits cause your pet to generate 10 Focus.
Efficiency – Rank 3/3
Reduces the focus cost of your Arcane Shot by 3, and your Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot by 6.
If you are having trouble leveling your Hunter I highly suggest you check out Zygor’s Leveling Guide because it has a perfect Hunter leveling path that gets you to 80 faster and easier than any other way. No matter what level you are, you load the thing and it points with an arrow the direction to each monster, quest giver, trainer etc. Its pretty crazy. It also has an in game box that tells you exactly what to do, like kill 5 boars, run west 10 miles, etc. You can find out more here or check out the review.
I totaly disagree with most of the spec focus of survial found on the internet.
With the subtraction of Volley, especially in large mobs and battlegrounds – there’s a need to be able to hit more targets many times, then just one or two continously.
Survial has within itself the ability to keep agro in the center of a room – , do some serious explosive casting very fast on a single target for short amounts of time, and with the right spec – especially for mobs you can do a seriously large amount of dps in comparions to most anyone near you hitting the same mobs with their specs.
In my comparisons with many dungeons and bgs since the new changes to the classes, I’ve found a spec that I think just might add a little edge to the hunters abilites.
Combining serpent sting with multi shot – using traps to increase the degree of poison and duration. Using frost freezes everyone, reducing speed by 50%! – also, with the right spec you can make it so both your serpent sting and snakes do even more damage. Combine that with the snake glyph for 90% reduced damage from AOE effects on your snakes, your fire trap – then … to top it off, you add instant 3 free Arcane or Explosive shots as soon as the first person is hit by your frost or ice traps.
So imagine this:
With this spec this is the different damages that take place:
in seconds you can :
a) Md tank, frost(or ice trap for single target for cc), snake and fire – as soon as the explosion from the fire goes off the tank gets MD’d instantly.
b) Multi shot as soon as you d/e in the air(if you don’t want to use the focus for trap launcher). If you click tab on a large mob, you can usualy give out at least 1 more multi shot, i usualy push tab – so that I effect more targets with serpent sting.
c) i’ve got explosive and arcane shot triggered for 3 free shots because of the frost/ice trap – so as soon as im back to ranged spot, i can fire 3 explosive shots at 3 targets , or 1 explosive, then 1 arcane then 1 explosive shot at a singel target.(if its a single target i always try to put black arrow, however the cd of this is used if u have used explosive trap)
d) the snakes also inflict all creatures in the arrow with nature damage x 5 with the right spec set up, and also stun and daze crowds and demobilizing them.
During the past, besides all the fun i’ve had with this spec in PVP – the serious PVE has a lot of issues with agro atm, and having enough cc’s for certain scenarios. With all these traps right by the tank – this helps massively especialy in these new dungeons.
On single boss fights, it gives less dps – but way more ability with aspect of fox. Moving around from the fire and ground problems, seriously helps at least be able to do something, and keep your buffs from gear going.
I have saved some seriously defetead groups with this spec.
MM and BM are so bloody boring for me
I love BM pets, but Kill Command Kill Command Kill command Kill Command FML! This is a game, not work for me anyhow lol And with Hunting Party in SURV , i’d take that over Trueshot aura anyday.
To go with my survival spec, i’ve chosen bets that do good AOE moves. I keep the agro moves turned off my pet in dungeons, but always have them ready when i see the tank getting almost dead
( my gorilla has over 100k health buffed atm, he can handle a hit or two while the healer catches up on heals)…. also if tank dies(which they seem to do a lot these days, MD Pet – save healer, use feign death a million times = kill boss no matter freeking what)
Its so beautiful watching 50 people in a crowd getting zapped with Serpent sting crits for 6k every few seconds lol – this spec needs add one more point to serpent spread, and take it from Go For The Throat. Because realy these arn’t BM pets, yes they do damage – but they do more hinderance and in your face then anything.
Thank you for your informative posts. I actually didnt realize how out of date this guide is until I saw your posts. I will read over your suggestions and update this guide.