Just speced survFollow

I decided to go from Mm to Bm and from there to surv. right now imo its the best spec for me. but i know nothing about it. could someone shed some light on it?

Survival is the only reason i still play my hunter i love it. To me its the most fun because instead of pewpewing i can put myself into more challenging situations like CC for instances and kiting.

From what i have gathered there are basically 2 popular ways to go Surv. 1. Is the raid survival DPS build and 2. is the 5 man CC trap build. It depends on what your doing, if your still doing alot of 5 mans get every trap talent you can it really is amazing the boost we get to our traps and the difference is huge.

A well played survival hunter doing CC for a group is a beautiful thing to see.

Im sure someone will be along shortly with links to builds and such im just too tired for all that right now

Now the downside to survival and it can get ugly.

Worst part about it is other players. The belief that BM is the ONLY specc for hunters has spread like the plague and you will undoubtedly take your fair share of flak during PuG's about it. and until you refine your skills as survival there is no way to convince them otherwise. However if you get the chance to do CC for a group and know your stuff it will almost always shut them up. I have left countless groups because of this sort of ignorance and gained respect for survival hunters as well in other groups.

You will no longer be topping the DPS charts like you would have as BM which is not so much of a big deal because of the utility you bring and either way any flavor of hunter is still respectable DPS.

And the last one i have found is because were so crit heavy soloing will be a pain because you will end up stealing aggro from your pet alot until you get into the swing of things.

GL to you i personally stand by survival 100% and for me anyway its the most fun i can get out of my hunter.

I've found that the transition from marks to SV was easier than the marks to BM thing. I tried BM for a few days and didn't really enjoy it, thought maybe I didn't give it a fair shot.

I would say that the biggest thing is the pulling aggro off my pet, but quite honestly I have a TON of fun wiht the CC, and seeing big crits all the time :)
Plus, it's a viable damage spec, too... I actually out-DPS 3/4 BM hunters in our guild :) BM is probably more DPS for the average player, but I think that with gear survival really starts to shine... just IMHO.

I'd reccomend it to any marksmen who want something new but not DRASTICALLY different. It's definitely got some good CC focus, and I enjoy being able to trap an enemy, wyvern sting another, have my pet tank one and kite one around :)

I love survival, there is only 1 hunter in my raiding guild that can out dps me, but when they nerf the scorpion, ill sit alone at the top of the damage meter. The turning point for when a sv starts to out dps a BM is around 1000 agility.

imo its the best for me because ive tried all the specs and even though i dont know much about it i like it.

I just respecced from raid MM to raid Survival i know longer top the dps charts but i crit once ever three shots or so and every time i crit the raid gets Ap worth 25% of my agility...also the wyvern sting is fun in pvp :p and the improved traps work nicely in instances.

Now as for MM ive have never seen a BM hunter in gear equal to mine that could out dps me on the dmg meter...but its kinda repetitive and its not amazing at soloing

As for BM...I find it worthless if your not lvling or farming...Its also REALY REALY REALY boring...

bottem line try survival don't worry what others say have fun and enjoy it when you wyvern sting a mage mid pyro blast bandage and hit them with a 3k aimed shot crit :p (bandage part is only in BG bandaging in duels is cheap)

Gearwise, SV is a whole new world compared to BM and MM.
Playstyle is more like MM then BM is, so i guess the MM fans have an easier time changing to SV.

For gear for an SV you need to focus on agility.
Not to a point where you are gimping your AP but you can give up a fair share of stamina (survivalist keeps it high) and some int (effeciency+TotH= good) for agility.
And ofcourse you can trade some AP for Agi too.
Aim for 650-700 agi unbuffed (565-609 agility before speccing SV) as a solid amount of agility while keeping your AP as high as you can and aim for ~27.5-30% crit unbuffed.

One of the best things about Sv is that it scales so nice with buffs.
if you have a paladin and you get kings, you get an added 65-70 agility from 1 buff alone (and thus also ~1.5% crit and an extra 15+ ap from EW)

Sorry about your bad luck, but I am sitting over 1000 raid buffed for grull's, thats not counting if I get a agi totem from a shammy.

Self buffed I am at 970, and once I get my boots enchanted, and gemmed, I'll be very close to it

no offense, but the nubspec is MM.
95% or more of all new hunters start with MM and a lot stay MM.
Out of that 95%, it is ofcourse logical that most idiots are there.
Add in that MM is usually said to be the "best" hunter spec and all the nubs go for MM.

And besides that, BM currently has its place as top raid Dps, MM has become a PvP spec.

Verosa,....

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodhoof&n=Montaghar

Looks like he is at 835 without any buffs, and his 17% bonus to agility means he only needs 141 points of agility buffs to hit 1000 total agility in raids.

Also, before you run around calling people liars based on the stats of some other persons character please keep in mind that is not YOUR character, and you do NOT know what decisions were made by the player. For instance, Nihiliums may have decided to give up a some amount of agility in favor of attack power or armor, or something else. It may not be obvious he did so, even when you look at his gear, but that doesn't mean he isn't. For instance, if he is in T6 gear then he may be giving up some T4 gear with 36 agility to wear T6 gear with much better stats overall, but with only 32 agility. He also may be wearing partial or full set gear that lowers his agility compared to individual pieces, but which improves his character overall. So it may even be possible to hit 900 agility unbuffed with a mix of the best +agility gear from T4 through T6. It just may be pointless to do so since you may have to wear mis-matched and weaker pieces from many different tiers to maximize agility at the cost of every other stat.

Also Nihiliums may not have made the necessary sacrifices to get that extra 2% agility buff from Combat Experience, which makes it a lot easier to break 800 unbuffed agility.


Edited, Aug 29th 2007 11:52am by arentolfourtwo

Edited, Aug 29th 2007 1:14pm by arentolfourtwo

Im not saying i dont believe you can hit 1k like the other guy is saying i was thinking more along the lines of 1k unbuffed when i made the original post regarding this. You where after all the first to mention hitting 1k with buffs etc.

What i would like to know is what you use to self buff to 970.

Now about 1500 agility unbuffed this i would have to see to believe. That would require at a minimum 107 agility per slot (excluding trinkets) and considering there are slots that are impossible to get that much agility with (rings, neck and back come to mind) that means even more agility for every other slot. I went to elitistjerks and browsed their forums and came up with zilch. and a google search turned up nothing as well you would think if a hunter hit 1500 agi someone would talk about it.

Interesting.. That elitist jerks post you linked didn't include the possibility of having a 17% agility bonus from talents instead of just 15%. Having that little bit extra does get you over 15k, to 1514.8

I messed up the screen shot when I uploaded it, it made it tumbnail size so i will have to reupload it when i get home. I now have 1.1k agi raid buffed.
Improved aspect of the hawk is not really an issue for a SV hunter. You can read through that thread I linked above, and it discusses the theory crafting behind it I will not get into it here. I am planning on respeccing without the 2% agi bonus, to be more mana efficent even though i dont really have any issues with it, the 2% agi and 6% int can be spent other places. I made this build when I just specc'd surv, and wasnt really geared for it, so I needed the agi boost. Although I would like to keep scatter shot, simply because it can be a life saver in 5 mans, arena, and some fights in kara. I will be going deeper into the suvival tree, something like 41-20. This is probably the build i will be trying:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cZVVbRVZIu00xfMhVbAo

Now that I have 1.1k agi raid buffed, I will be focusing more on some of my weaker areas like mana and attack power, but trying to keep my agility around 1k. I have also capped my hit rating so I can also scratch that off the list.


Edited, Aug 31st 2007 11:00am by montaghar