PvE Survival Hunter Talents, Builds & Glyphs

wotlk pve survival hunter talentbuildsglyphs

Survival has two main choices when it comes to their talents. You can either maximize single-target DPS, or sacrifice some DPS in exchange for better mana sustainability and Replenishment.

Notable Talents

  • Improved Tracking – 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 a Rank 4 explosive shot 3 times in a row, as the damage-over-time component does not stack. Instead, you should use Rank 4 Explosive Shot, followed by Rank 3, followed by another Rank 4. The different ranks do stack, allowing you to not waste any time. An exception to this is during Execute, where you will want to swap to Rank 4 > Kill Shot > Rank 4 > Rank 3 Explosive Shot. Frost Trap will not trigger Lock and Load 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 Agility increase. And while we do love Agility, these are very low numbers to work with — a different talent is often better, but not always. It remains one of the weaker talents for individual DPS.
  • 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.
  • Sniper Training – 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

This is what a single target build focused purely on DPS would look like.

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2/18/51

If you are in need of 1% Hit, you can swap a point from Aimed Shot into Focused Aim.

This build focuses on sustainable damage as well as providing Replenishment for your raid through Hunting Party.

0 15 56 survival hunter
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wotlk pve marksmanship hunter talents pet build

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

Most builds will opt to use Glyph of Explosive Trap , Glyph of Explosive Shot, and either Glyph of Serpent Sting or Glyph of Kill Shot.

Minor Glyphs

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

 

About the Author

Jamielolx

I played this expansion hardcore for 10 years
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Pet talents
Pet talents
1 year ago

Where did the pet talents go?

Wyvern
Wyvern
1 year ago

Why do we spec in wyvern sting & noxious stings when it doesn’tgive any benifits and isn’t part of our rotation? Aren’t those 4 points better of spent somewhere else? If im missing something my bad :<

Narcoticks
Narcoticks
Reply to  Wyvern
1 year ago

Noxious stings gives you a flat 3% damage bonus to the target that has your sting applied

Jabboroko
Jabboroko
1 year ago

In my mind there is no way that aimed shot in not worth taking, when I looked at this guide a few months ago it was different. What happened here?

Jabboroko
Jabboroko
Reply to  Jabboroko
1 year ago

I get it now, Multi-Shot is almost as strong and therefore it’s worth spending that point on another talent.
One thing that worries me is mana issues while doing 10man with this build though, I’ve found myself having to chug mana potion in multiple 10mans. I’ll give it a try!

Survival Superstar
Survival Superstar
1 year ago

I don’t agree with not using explosive trap glyph in your single target spec. Even on single target, the glyphed explosive trap will do FAR more damage than black arrow, even with the 6% damage modifier to all your other abilities. On static boss fights, you don’t even need to move for explosive traps – You just stand at minimum ranged attack range and due to how traps are being placed slightly in front of you, the trap will proc instantly. Another way to properly gauge the range is to stand slightly behind your pet.
There are maybe like 2-3 fights in entire WoTLK expansion where you are strictly forced to use black arrow.

Survival Superstar
Survival Superstar
Reply to  Survival Superstar
1 year ago

To add onto to this, if you check beta logs you can see that glyphed expl trap does 2-2.5x damage over a fight and this is with template gear. At P1 BiS you would be looking probably at 3x-3.5x damage diff between abilities. It’s probably only not worth it, if you’re a horrible hunter player and you’re losing 3-4 auto shots everytime you’re going to place a trap

who defuq
who defuq
1 year ago

not gonna lie this build is trash

ani whodafq
ani whodafq
Reply to  Jamielolx
1 year ago

dont mind the Elite wanna be

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