Survival Hunter – Not updated for 6.2, yet.

Abilities

Resource System: Focus

Hunters use the Focus resource system. Focus is an expendable resource which automatically generates at a base rate of 4 focus per second for both you and your pet. More focus can be generated (besides the passive regeneration) by using focus-generating abilities like Cobra Shot/Steady Shot and Focusing Shot (level 100 talent) and is spent on higher-damage abilities, forming the basis of all the hunter rotations. Focus management is an essential skill. It is a cappable resource at 100 focus for Survival and 120 for Beast Mastery and Marksmanship.

Core Abilities

Explosive Shot

A high-damage Fire damage ability on a 6-second cooldown. It is, as Chimaera Shot and Kill Command for the other two specs, important to hit on cooldown. It interacts with Black Arrow by way of the Lock and Load proc which gives you 2 focus-free, cooldown-less Explosive Shots. It is important to note that Explosive Shot can now be spammed. It functions like the Fire Mage Mastery: Ignite, by stacking its damage on top of itself when you refresh the DoT with time remaining on it. With the T17 4-piece bonus, using Explosive Shot gives you the buff Heavy Shot, increasing your multistrike damage by 15% for 3 seconds. The duration of this buff stacks, but its power does not.

Lock and Load

A Survival-exclusive passive that gives Black Arrow ticks a 20% chance to proc Lock and Load, granting you 2 free Explosive Shots.

Black Arrow

A strong Survival-exclusive DoT that deals fairly high damage and has a 20% chance per tick to proc Lock and Load, giving you 2 cost-free and cooldown-less Explosive Shots. Using this on cooldown is extremely important, as delaying it may mean wasted ticks and fewer chances of Lock and Load, escalating into a huge DPS loss if it is neglected. With the T17 2-piece bonus, using Black Arrow immediately triggers Lock and Load.

Serpent Sting

Another strong Survival-exclusive DoT that is applied automatically by Multi-Shot and Arcane Shot, dealing moderate-high damage over 15 seconds.

Arcane Shot

A magical-damage shot with no cooldown for 30 focus, exclusive to Beast Mastery and Survival and their single-target focus dump, frequently used when you have more focus than your priority abilities can spend without capping your focus. For Survival, Arcane Shot instantly applies Serpent Sting. It also causes an instant tick of Serpent Sting on hit, and Multistrikes cause more of these instant ticks. This drives the value and potential damage of Arcane Shot up very high, making it the strongest focus dump for any of the specs relative to its signature shot.

Multi-Shot

Multi-Shot hits for next to nothing, but has an adverse effect depending on your spec. For Survival, it causes an instant tick of Serpent Sting on all targets it hits, and applies the Serpent Sting DoT to all of them.

Cobra Shot

A magical-damage shot with no cooldown and a 2-second base cast time that generates 14 focus, exclusive to Beast Mastery and Survival, acting as the focus generator for those two specs unless Focusing Shot is specced. Along with Arcane Shot, managing this is a staple of the rotation.

Explosive Trap

A magical-damage trap on a 30-second cooldown which applies a DoT to all targets close to it when it triggers dealing modest damage over a 10-second period. It is only really used by Survival because it deals Fire damage which counts as the Elemental damage which the Survival mastery buffs.

Defensive Abilities

Deterrence

The main hunter defensive cooldown on a 3 minute cooldown (reduced to 2 minutes by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera) that acts as a immunity for many (but not all) abilities, and a flat 30% (50% with the Glyph of Deterrence) damage reduction otherwise. It has 2 charges, meaning that it can be used twice within the 2-3 minute window. Each charge incurs the 2-3 minute cooldown.

Feign Death

A hunter aggro dump. Using Feign Death drops you from all threat meters in the vicinity, should you have gotten aggro on something undesirable. Feign Death can also negate a number of targeting mechanics by Feigning Death when you have been targeted so that it may target someone else or avoid killing you.

Utility

Camouflage

Camouflage lasts 6 seconds when used in combat, and 1 minute otherwise. It makes you untargetable by ranged attacks, but this does not work with most boss encounter abilities that are ranged, anyway, meaning it almost never has worthwhile usage. When glyphed, it provides a 10% spell damage reduction which may help a tiny amount with negating unnecessary damage taken but it is usually not worth taking.

Master’s Call

Clears all movement-impairing effects, but its primary usage in a raid is the charge that the pet does to the target which you Master’s Call, allowing you to throw your pet around extremely quickly – say to reposition it across the room on The Blast Furnace encounter for a slight DPS increase.

Distracting Shot

A taunt, effectively. With the Glyph of Distracting Shot, it sends the target to attack your pet instead of yourself which may be occasionally useful.

Tranquilizing Shot

A soothe-shot, essentially, that removes dispellable enrages from all enemies at a hefty focus cost of 50, but with no cooldown. With the Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot, you eliminate the cost, but add a 10 second cooldown. This is recommended for fights where you might be given a dispel duty because your dispels will rarely have to land within 10 seconds of each other.

Misdirection

A hunter threat-redirection ability. It is an 8 second buff during which all threat that you deal will be applied to another target of your choice, usually your main tank.

Aspect of the Cheetah

A strong movement speed increase. Since you should be using the minor glyph, there is no reason not to have this on until it fades during the fight, and reapplying it when you are out of range of the boss/have deadtime due to mechanics or have to move somewhere extraordinarily fast. High-end hunters may consider it an additional movement-speed cooldown.

Counter Shot

A run-of-the-mill ranged interrupt with a cooldown on the longer side – 24 seconds.

Aspect of the Fox

A 3-minute cooldown ability that allows your entire raid to cast while moving for 6 seconds. This can be chained with the Aspect of the Fox of other hunters to prolong the effect and make longer (6s+) casts while moving although that is only rarely useful. Be careful not to overlap another hunter’s Fox with your own.

Ice Trap

An ice trap dropped on the ground that slows all targets that enter it – good for mob control on AoE packs.

Freezing Trap

A freezing trap dropped at the feet of a target to encase it in ice for up to one minute, mostly for pre-pull crowd control or mid-fight emergency crowd control.

Priority List

Stampede should used as many times as possible throughout the fight, but due to its long cooldown, it is often beneficial to evaluate your situation and try to pop it when you are the most powerful. Trinket procs and Bloodlust/Heroism is ideal.

Single Target

1) Use Black Arrow off cooldown.
2) Use Explosive Shot off cooldown.
3) Use Arcane Shot when Thrill of the Hunt is up.
4) Use Powershot off cooldown.
5) Arcane Shot should be used to dump excess focus. 70 focus is a decent (but not final) guideline.
6) Use Explosive Trap when there is nothing else to do or while waiting for focus to regenerate (before using Cobra Shot)
6) Cobra Shot/Focusing Shot should be used when there is nothing else to do or you need more focus.

 

While facing 2 targets

1) Maintain Serpent Sting on both targets using Multi-Shot
2) Use Barrage off cooldown.
3) Use Black Arrow off cooldown.
4) Use Explosive Shot off cooldown.
5) Use Explosive Trap off cooldown.
6) Use Arcane Shot when Thrill of the Hunt is up.
7) Arcane Shot should be used to dump excess focus. 70 focus is a decent (but not final) guideline.
8) Cobra Shot/Focusing Shot should be used when there is nothing else to do or you need more focus.

 

While facing 3 targets and above

1) Maintain Serpent Sting on all targets using Multi-Shot
2) Use Barrage off cooldown.
3) Use Black Arrow off cooldown.
4) Use Explosive Shot off cooldown.
5) Use Explosive Trap off cooldown.
6) Multi-Shot should be used to dump excess focus. 70 focus is a decent (but not final) guideline.
7) Cobra Shot/Focusing Shot should be used when there is nothing else to do or you need more focus.

Opening Rotation

1) Pre-Draenic Agility Potion
2) Boss is engaged – /petattack
3) Explosive Shot
4) Black Arrow
5) Stampede
6) Arcane Shot
7) On-uses + trinkets + racials
8) Powershot/Barrage
9) Follow Priority

This is a list of general rules to manage while executing the Hunter rotations, although it applies to all rotations for all DPS specs for the most part. Whenever evaluating your own performance, take these into account, and especially so when trying to improve your play. A lot of the things here are best observed in your own play by looking at actual videos of you playing. I can recommend recording those, and alternatively/additively having a look at my YouTube channel for my Mythic kills to see what I do to squeeze out the most damage.

1. Do not cap your focus. Any focus ‘generated’ while at focus cap (100 for SV, 120 for BM and MM) is wasted and can thus never be put to good use. As Beast Mastery, this rule may sometimes be broken which is mostly okay. The less the better, however.

2. Do not delay your cooldown abilities. Stuff here is stuff like: Chimaera Shot, Explosive Shot, Kill Command, Barrage, Black Arrow, you get the gist of it. The only time where you delay stuff is if something is higher than it in the priority list further above.

3. Do not stop casting. You always want to be casting something or the other. Clever Explosive Trap use helps for this, as Survival. It can be used as a filler in the rotation where Arcane Shot would leave you starved, breaking rule 2, and a Focusing Shot would leave you capped, breaking rule 1. Similarly, it can be used for movement. It has a low cooldown, which helps with maximizing its usage. Everything else equal, the hunter with the higher APM/CPM (actions/casts per minute) will end up with higher DPS barring extreme cases.

4. Think ahead. You want your brain to buffer incoming information in order to be able to react several seconds ahead. The more seconds ahead, the better. The impact of this is immense. You may think that you never miss a beat while doing your rotation, but do record yourself and look it over and I can almost guaranteethat  you will find places where you seem to hesitate for half a second before continuing. Maybe even less, but it adds up very quickly. This ties into rule 3, a bit.

5. Know the fight. Simulations on your character, gearing on your character and everything else that exists outside of the game itself can only do so much for your actual performance. You cannot always be following a static priority list, even the ones I provide in this guide. The most important part for DPS, at least on non-Patchwerk (Gruul) fights, is flexing your muscles by making the best use of what the fight presents to you in terms of targets to hit and mechanics to take advantage of, whether it be to DPS higher or help the raid out just a bit more than the rest. Know the timings of when adds will spawn. Keep timers on that stuff, save some stuff for high-DPS phases if you know they are coming. -Always- be engaged in what is happening. This is the finishing rule. If you pull this off very well, and all the other tips, you will be a candidate for rank 1 DPS.

Talents Cheat Sheet

Level 15: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera

Level 30: Binding Shot

Level 45: Iron Hawk/Exhilaration depending on encounter needs.

Level 60: Thrill of the Hunt

Level 75: Stampede

Level 90: Powershot for pure single-target, Barrage for any sort of multi-target.

Level 100: Lone Wolf for mostly single-target fights, Focusing Shot for multi-target heavy fights.

Advanced Talents

Level 15: Posthaste, Narrow Escape, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera

Posthaste
PH increases your movement speed by 60% and removes all movement-impairing effects like dazes after using Disengage. The buff does not apply until you land your Disengage. This talent is only really used when the movement-speed increase is much desired, and Deterrence/frequent Disengage use isn’t.

Narrow Escape
Narrow Escape immobilizes all targets in an 8-yard radius around you when you Disengage. This is more of a PvP talent and is not used in PvE currently.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimaera reduces the default cooldown of Disengage from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, and Deterrence’s cooldown from 3 to 2 minutes. This enables way more usages across a fight duration and is the default choice unless the movement speed from Posthaste is more desirable.

Level 30: Binding Shot, Wyvern Sting, Intimidation

Binding Shot
BS is a powerful stun on a 45-second cooldown that tethers enemies in a radius around it to it. The targets are immobilized in the sense that if they try to move mor ethan 5 yards away from the Binding Shot’s landing location, they will be stunned for a duration. This is an amazing talent for performing AoE stuns on groups of mobs that are eager to spread and go everywhere and remains the default choice.

Wyvern Sting
Wyvern Sting is a 1.5s cast time, 45-second cooldown single-target sleep. Using it immobilizes your target for up to 30 seconds by putting it to sleep, but any damage caused will cancel the effect. This is rarely a useful talent as prolonged immobilization like this can usually be handled by a Freezing Trap.

Intimidation
Intimidation is a 3-second stun on a 1-minute cooldown that your pet activates, meaning that it does not work with Lone Wolf enabled. This talent is only really useful as a stun over Binding Shot when you are facing a caster mob which is not going to move anyway, meaning that a Binding Shot would be useless since caster mobs tend to be stationary.

Level 45: Exhilaration, Iron Hawk, Spirit Bond

Exhilaration
Exhilaration is a complementary sort of “health potion” on a 2-minute cooldown that heals you for 30% of your maximum health, and your pet for 100% of its maximum health. This talent is a potential life-saver in many nasty situations. When one has to pick a talent for a fight in this tier, you have to consider which you expect to save your life more: The 10% damage reduction from Iron Hawk as a whole, or an on-demand heal like Exhilaration. In many cases, the answer is actually going to be Exhilaration but the talent relies on proper, active usage while Iron Hawk is a passive effect.

Iron Hawk
Iron Hawk simply reduces all incoming damage taken by 10% and is a strong talent from a passive perspective, but Exhilaration is a very strong self-heal and may save your life in more situations. The choice between these two is going to be on a fight-by-fight basis.

Spirit Bond
Spirit Bond heals you for 2% of your maximum health whenever your pet is active, meaning that the talent does not function with Lone Wolf enabled. Spirit Bond, given its slow-healing, passive nature, is unlikely to ever save your life and is generally not recommended.

Level 60: Steady Focus, Dire Beast, Thrill of the Hunt

Steady Focus
SF increases you and your pet’s focus regeneration by 50% whenever you use Cobra or Steady Shot twice in a row for 10 seconds. The focus return granted by this ability does not presently outperform the focus saved by using Thrill of the Hunt and the talent is thus never used.

Dire Beast
DB summons a sort of minipet that attacks your current target for 15 seconds on a 30-second cooldown and acts upon the Assist flag, meaning that it will attack your current target until you switch to another. Dire Beast does not have a focus pool, scales from (BM)Mastery and generates 2 focus every time it attacks and deals moderate damage. Dire Beast gets a higher chance of getting another attack through for its 15-second duration with more Haste rating. Since Survival does not have Beast Mastery’s Mastery scaling with this pet, it is not worth using in any situation.

Thrill of the Hunt
TotH is a buff that has a 6% chance per 10 focus spent on any ability to be activated, enabling your next 3 Arcane-, Aimed-, or Multi-Shots to cost 20 less focus. Given the strength of Survival’s focus dump and the frequent high-cost abilities, this talent becomes extremely powerful for Survival and is used in any conceivable situations.

Level 75: A Murder of Crows, Blink Strikes, Stampede

A Murder of Crows
AMoC is a 1-minute cooldown ability with a focus cost of 30 that summons a murder of crows to attack your target over the next 15 seconds. If the target dies within the 15-second DoT duration, the cooldown of A Murder of Crows is reset. This talent is generally not chosen as it does very little damage for the global and 30 focus a minute which it eats out of your rotation, but if you can very reliably and constantly reset it, it might be worth taking. Finally, it is useful for frequent single-target nukes like the Primal Elementalists on The Blast Furnace encounter in the Blackrock Foundry, but unless you have trouble taking those down in 2 goes or less, DPS on them should not be an issue.

Blink Strikes
BS gives your pet the ability to blink behind the target it is currently at when using its Basic Attacks from a maximum 30 yard range and increases the damage done by its Basic Attacks by 50%. Since pets are pretty rarely used as Survival, this talent is simply never chosen as it does next to nothing.

Stampede
Stampede is a strong ability on a 5-minute cooldown and is free of a focus cost. It summons your entire stable, or (if you have the minor glyph activated) 4 copies of your current pet to attack your target for the next 40 seconds. Stampede pets spend no focus, scale from (BM)Mastery and Haste in the same manner as Dire Beast and act upon the Assist flag like Dire Beast does. This ability deals insane amounts of single-target damage and its almost universally used for any raid encounter these days. Using it properly and cleverly is essential.

Level 90: Glaive Toss, Powershot, Barrage

Glaive Toss
GT is a talented ability on a 15-second cooldown with a focus cost of 15 that hurls two glaives at the target for moderate damage and hits all targets on their path to the target for half of the damage dealt to the primary target. This talent is only chosen for Survival on pure single-target encounters where there is too much movement to make Powershot usable.

Powershot
PS is a talented ability on a 45-second cooldown with a focus cost of 15 that lines up one, powerful shot at the target which knocks it back (works on non-boss targets), often to the extreme annoyance of your raid. It deals very high damage to suit its long cooldown, but cannot be cast on the move. This talent is a very strong choice for single-target Survival because Survival’s focus dump is, in comparison to its other abilities. Using a long-cooldown spot that does not take a lot of focus out of your rotation allows you to do acceptable damage with your level 90 talent while sacrificing the least amount of powerful Arcane Shots.

Barrage
Barrage is a talented ability on a 20-second cooldown with a focus cost of 60 that fires a copious amounts of arrows at the target, dealing very high single-target damage and even higher multi-target damage. This talent is chosen for Survival on any encounter where you face multiple targets, as Barrage’s damage rapidly scales up with these.

Level 100: Exotic Munitions, Focusing Shot, Lone Wolf

Exotic Munitions
EM gives you the ability to switch between different types of ammunition for your weapon of choice. Poisoned Ammo is a passive, Serpent Sting-like DoT that is refreshed and applied by your autoshots and simply adds some damage to them. Incendiary Ammo does the same thing, although weakened, but applies this DoT to all targets within an 8-yard radius of the original target. Frozen Ammo applies an even weaker DoT to a single-target, but slows the target by 50%, constantly refreshed by autoshots. This talent is never chosen for any situation and is frankly very terrible for Survival in any situation.

Focusing Shot
FS is a talented ability that replaces Cobra/Steady Shot with Focusing Shot, a higher-damage, longer cast-time focus generator which generates 50 focus instead of the usual 14 from Cobra/Steady Shot, but it cannot be cast on the move. Presently, the immense focus return from using this ability does not outdamage the flat damage gained from Lone Wolf and the talent is unused.

Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf is a Survival/Marksmanship-only talent that provides you with a significant damage bonus to your primary spec abilities in exchange for giving up your pet, removing any reliance on it, but also the ability to use any talents that use it like Spirit Bond, Intimidation and the Glyph of Animal Bond which increases healing taken by 10%. This talent is used for Survival for its immense damage bonus to your many Explosive Shots, especially with the T17 set tier bonuses.

Glyphs

Major
Glyph of Disengage
This glyph allows you to travel farther with Disengage, effectively increasing your movement speed when you need it. There are no downsides to this glyph and it is strongly recommended.

Glyph of Deterrence
This glyph increases the damage reduction from Deterrence by 20%. The usefulness of this glyph only really exists when Deterrence does not completely negate the damage of a mechanic, which is somewhat rare. In lieu of any better glyphs, though, it remains the default choice, but also the first glyph to replace should there be more favorable glyphs for a specific encounter.

Glyph of Pathfinding (with Lone Wolf)
This glyph increases your movement speed when Aspect of the Cheetah is active, naturally synergizing very well with the Aspect of the Cheetah minor glyph. One notable use of this glyph in Tier 17 is on the Brackenspore encounter, if you are clearing the moss. Using Aspect of the Cheetah when out there can drastically improve your stack accumulation rate and DPS. It is worth noting that since you usually use Posthaste when doing the flamethrower duty on Brackenspore, these movement-speed increasing effects do not stack.

Glyph of Animal Bond (with Focusing Shot)
This glyph increases healing done to you by 10% when your pet is active, meaning always for Beast Mastery. This glyph is extremely strong for any raid encounter and should always be one of your 3 chosen glyphs, unless you are playing Marksmanship or Survival with Lone Wolf activated, in which case this glyph does nothing.

Minor
Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah
This glyph eliminates the movement speed reduction when you are struck with anything using Aspect of the Cheetah. This lets you enable it in combat with no real penalty and is an absolutely essential glyph. When Blizzard removed Aspect of the Hawk in the newest expansion and made it essentially baseline, this glyph became extremely powerful now that there is no penalty to dropping any Hawk aspect. Enable this before any raid encounter, simply because there is no reason not to, and enjoy the increased movement speed until it is removed from you. Additionally, Aspect of the Cheetah can be used as a mini-movement speed cooldown for when you are attempting to chase down a Siegemaker on the Blackhand encounter, for example.

Situational

Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot
This glyph removes the now insane focus cost of Tranquilizing Shot (50) entirely, but applies a 10-second cooldown to the ability. A must-have glyph for any encounter where you are assigned to dispelling a target, provided that it is no more often than 10 seconds per dispel.

Glyph of Distracting Shot
This glyph makes Distracting Shot function as a pet taunt instead of a personal taunt. Quite useful on an encounter like Blast Furnace where sometimes threat has to be redirected to the tank, but Misdirection is not available. By bringing targets to the pet instead, which is in melee range, the tank will have an easier time picking up the target. It does put your pet at risk, however.

Glyph of Camouflage
This glyph makes Camouflage reduce spell damage taken by 10%. Since Camouflage lasts for 6 seconds when used in combat, this has a place as a very minor defensive cooldown. It is generally not recommended switching out the other glyphs for since a 10% reduction is unlikely to ever save your life.

Glyph of Explosive Trap
This glyph removes the damage from the Explosive Trap ability, but makes it an AoE-knockback. It is somewhat unreliable, though, and Powershot proves a much better (if DPS loss) knockback in the horrible off-chance that your raid has no other knockbacks.

Other
Glyph of Liberation
This glyph heals you for a small amount whenever you use Disengage. The raw healing provided by this glyph is somewhat nice, especially if you find yourself Disengaging a lot (and it can be argued that it turns Disengage into a small defensive), but the healing provided will rarely save your life, and it comes at the cost of the Glyph of Disengage. Generally not recommended.

Glyph of Play Dead
This Minor glyph is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is extremely useful for when you wish to survive through a wipe by way of dumping your pet’s aggro from the table as well, shortening the time it takes to wipe and increasing your chance of Survival. On the other hand, it is a DPS loss for when you are just looking to dump aggro from yourself, since the pet stops attacking until you stand up again.

Glyph of Quick Revival
This glyph removes the cast time of Revive Pet, but increases the focus cost to 80 (from 35). This glyph is just a DPS loss and there is no use for it in this tier.

Glyph of Misdirection
This glyph resets the cooldown of Misdirection when used on your pet. Mostly for soloing.

Stats

Multistrike > Critical Strike > Versatility > Mastery > Haste

Pawn Strings

Agility 1.00
AttackPower 0.88
MainHandDps 0.78
Multistrike 0.63
CriticalStrike 0.41
Versatility 0.41
Mastery 0.33
Haste 0.27

The strings found in the Pawn link are meant to be used with the in-game addon Pawn which can tell you in an in-game tooltip on all items if they are an upgrade, and by how much. This is very useful for identifying immediate upgrades from in-game. The ones right above are to be used for AskMrRobot/an easier overview of relative stat values. These stats are centered entirely around single-target.

Agility is a primary stat that provides 1 Attack Power (AP) per point. A majority of our abilities use a percentage of attack power to the damage they deal.

Attack Power increases damage done and proides 1 Attack Power (AP) per point. The value is smaller than Agility because Agility gets scaling boni out of the raid-wide Mark of the Wild buff and Mail Specialization.

Mastery Mastery: Essence of the Viper increases your elemental damage done. This encompasses Cobra Shot, Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot. So in short, most of your damage.

Critical Strike increases the chance to critically hit with abilities.

Haste increases attack speed, focus regeneration rate, pet attack speed and pet focus regeneration rate.

Versatility increases all damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Multistrike causes abilities to have a chance to hit a second and a third time, each dealing 30% of the initial damage. Pets can Multistrike and are affected by the stat as well.

Enchants

Rings: Enchant Ring – Gift of Multistrike
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Gift of Multistrike
Neck: Enchant Neck – Gift of Multistrike
Weapon: Oglethorpe’s Missile Splitter
Gems: Greater Multistrike Taladite

Consumables

Food: Salty Squid Roll
Potion: Draenic Agility Potion
Flask: Greater Draenic Agility Flask

Gear

Slot	Item	Source
Helmet	Blast-Proof Cowl	Blast Furnace
Necklace	Darklight Necklace	Gruul
Shoulder	Rylakstalker’s Spaulders	Operator Thogar
Cloak	Drape of the Dark Hunt	Iron Maidens
Chest	Rylakstalker’s Tunic	Flamebender
Bracer	Bloodwhirl Bracers	Iron Maidens
Gloves	Rylakstalker’s Gloves	Iron Maidens
Waist	Grenadier’s Belt	Operator Thogar
Legs	Rylakstalker’s Legguards	Blast Furnace
Boots	Treads of the Veteran Smith	BoE/Trash Drop
Ring	Cinderwolf Signet	Flamebender
Weapon	Gar’an’s Brutal Spearlauncher	Iron Maidens
Trinket	Beating Heart of the Mountain	Kromog
Trinket	Scales of Doom	Butcher (Highmaul)

Xero’s Hunter Gearing Spreadsheet

Bitterst’s Hunter Gearing Spreadsheet

Both of these spreadsheets are there to help with gearing (non-trinket) comparisons. They base themselves on the stat weights found in the Stats section and assign a value to each item based on those.

Trinket Simulations (and more)

On this page, you can find simulation runs for BRF trinket combinations as well as single trinket sims for all specs in a single (1-target) and multi (4-target) situation.

Tier 17 Set Bonuses

2-piece: Makes Black Arrow immediately give you Lock and Load, quite strong for single-target.

4-piece: Makes Explosive Shot apply Heavy Shot, increasing your Multistrike damage by 15% for 3 seconds. The duration of the buff stacks if you spam Explosive Shot consecutively. Flat and quite strong.

What spec do I play?

“What spec do I play” is a very commonly asked question, simply because the answer is not very clear-cut. What spec is best for a given situation will depend on the encounter (covered in another section worth reading) for the most part, but people would like a clear-cut answer to the question of “What spec do I play, as an overall statement?”.

Looking past encounters there are other variables. Mostly trinkets, stats on your gear and to some degree, the item level of your ranged weapon.

Marksmanship relies on high weapon damage and scales exceptionally with it. If your weapon is a higher item level than the rest of your gear, generally, your best bet for single-target is going to be Marksmanship. In BiS gear where the item levels of gear and weapon match, Beast Mastery and Marksmanship are near-equal in single-target DPS potential, meaning that as soon as you have a weapon damage advantage, Marksmanship is generally going to scale ahead. With Marksmanship having its main cooldown, Rapid Fire, locked to a 2-minute cooldown, the spec also loves a 2-minute cooldown on-use trinket like the Beating Heart of the Mountain and it can be argued that this trinket is near-mandatory to complement the strengths of the spec. Finally, the prevalence of low-target count cleave and priority targets in Blackrock Foundry lend themselves well to the Marksmanship spec, since the spec is quite weak at prolonged AoE (but great at multi-target nukes like the Pack Beasts, usually only needing a Barrage).

Survival relies on high Multistrike and scales exceptionally with it. Multistrike is to Survival what weapon damage is to Marksmanship, to a certain degree. However, Multistrike is a very good stat for all three specs, so if you have exceptionally high Multistrike on your gear through sockets and the like, your best bet is not -necessarily- Survival. The “strength” of Survival is its ease of play compared to the other two specs, having no cooldown management outside its trinket. Survival has exceptional AoE in every sense of the word, having no pet reliance to do this. Finally, as target count increases, Multistrike becomes even more powerful. Survival isn’t objectively better for anything, really, but if its ease of play and relative simplicity appeals to you, you will not be holding your raid back by going Survival for most fights since its single-target damage is only slightly worse than the other specs.

Beast Mastery relies on the Tier 17 4-set bonus which spawns another pet while Bestial Wrath is up that deals 50-60% more damage than your regular pet through auto-attacks only. This is huge since it is always paired with the Tier 17 2-piece bonus, enabling you to have very high Bestial Wrath uptime if you get lucky, and above-average still if you don’t. This set bonus is a ~12% DPS increase for Beast Mastery on a single target, just to give you an idea of how strong it is. For multiple targets, Beast Mastery is generally worse than Survival because of its reliance on the pet. Should all the targets be available to you in a stationary situation, however, the AoE of the specs turn out about equal. With the 4-piece bonus, Beast Mastery is the single-target king, but is also a bit more complicated to play than the other two specs, so a novice with good gear might still wish to go Survival or Marksmanship.

Here, you can access Azortharion’s repository for SimulationCraft where a lot of the raw data behind suggestions made in this guide can be found. Furthermore, the very popular trinket simulations can be found here.

Click here to access the repository.