Survival Hunter Raiding 101

Yeah...informative post....more for my guildies who are up and coming hunter alts. They said they want "to learn from the master." And who am I to deny their request? Okay, not master, but definitely best SV hunter in guild, by a lot. The other high end raiding hunters are MM.

Anyways, breakitdown!

BASICS:

Primary Stat for Survival hunters is Agility. This is an undeniable fact, we receive a greater bonus from agility than the other hunters and one of our major procs is based and scales with it. Most SV hunters stack it like crazy ignoring slot bonuses and the like. However, I'm a sucker for gem bonuses, and due to a certain talent, blue slots aren't useless for we of the SV. 15 stamina is 5 ranged attack power and increased survivability, pure win in my books.

Shot Priority:

It's not a rotation, it's a priority. This is the one most commonly informed to people who are just looking up a quick rundown on the interwebs.

Quick rendition, Rapid Fire -> Kill Shot -> Explosive Shot -> Black Arrow -> Aimed Shot* -> Serpent Sting -> Steady Shot.

I know, Rapid fire's not a shot. And frankly, that one's dependant on the fight. If you know for a fact that you're going to need high burst at a specific time, save it for then (Twins in ToC come to mind...)

• Kill Shot is always your highest priority, but for the majority of the every fight it's not useable.'

• Explosive shot should, ideally, deal the majority of your damage. Auto-shot's normally a close second though.

• Black Arrow, so useful. Increases damage dealt, can proc Lock and Load, deals shadow damage, and just all around goodness.

**Note: I tend to get black arrow up before my first barrage of Explosive shots, due to the damage increase. Frankly, if I have booth of them off CD, I'm gonna toss up black arrow before Explosive Shot.

• *Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot. If you took the talents in the MM tree to get Aimed shot, use that over Multi-shot in single-target fights. Otherwise, they're both decent physical damage and something to keep you from spamming Steady Shot.

• Serpent sting should be up at nearly all times, the only exception being at the beginning of the fight when you're unloading all your other shots.

• Steady shot is your go-to when everything else is on CD. Not something you want to constantly be spamming, but definitely a good (and the only) filler when you've got nothing else.

Tips and Tricks:

One of the things I see new SV hunters screwing up on is the weaving of shots with a Lock and Load proc. Here's what I mean by "weaving shots." Basically, when you've got your L&L proc, you can launch 3 explosive shots in a row. This is a bad idea. Very bad. The length of time that it takes for it to tick down and utilize all its killing power is slightly greater than that of the GCD, meaning you cut it off prematurely. As such, if you just launch 3 in a row, you're gonna lose at least 2 ticks of your explosive shot, and if your gear is anywhere near mine, that could be anywhere from 6k-18k damage your missing out, depending on other procs, the fight, and what shots you've recently launched.

Here's what you do about it.

A) Make sure you've got some way to know your L&L is proc'd, I use powerauras, but if you pay attention it's got a very obvious animation, and battle text tends to tell you when you get buffs mid-fight.

B) After the first explosive shot, fire a different type of shot. I don't really care what, but it's better than wasting a GCD waiting for the explosive shot to tick down. Remember: if all else fails, steady shot. Oh, though you may want to check to see where your serpent sting's at, and if it's still got a bunch of time ignore than and use steady shot instead.

C) Explosive shot again! And then repeat part B, though you probably want to use a different shot.

D) Last explosive shot, now continue on with your shot priority until your next Lock and Load proc, rinse and repeat.

(the term weaving comes from how you go from one shot to another back to the first and so on, making sure that everything comes out even and clean, and basically how you throw in another shot in between the explosives to maximize awesomeness.)

Mkay, I think that wraps up most of what you need to know to get started as a SV hunter raiding. Naturally, raid awareness and quick reflexes are always an integral part of your raiding experience, but that should go without saying.

Good Hunting,

~Tox