Introduction
Hey, I'm Symex, and welcome to my Survival Hunter guide. Survival is a unique melee spec due to most of our abilities being ranged and having cooldowns that lets us freely DPS from far away while losing little to no DPS. Our good consistent uncapped AoE coupled with the general hunter utility also makes us desirable in mythic+ dungeons.
What has changed
Season 4 Survival Hunter Changes
August 9th SV Hunter Changes
On August 9th, Blizzard announced some additional Survival Hunter tuning.
- Set Bonus (4): Mad Bombardier damage bonus has been reduced to 50% (was 70%).
- Mongoose Bite damage increased by 20%.
- Raptor Strike damage increased by 20%.
- Serpent Sting damage increased by 20%.
- Kill Command damage increased by 20%.
These are overall bigger nerfs than the previous ones but survival will keep being one of if not the best spec for M+ and AoE raid fights.
Season 4 SV Hunter Changes
- Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, and Kill Command damage increased by 15%.
- (4) Set Bonus: Wildfire Bomb bonus damage lowered to 20% (was 30%).
- Wildfire Bomb, and any Wildfire Infusion variants of Wildfire Bomb now deal reduced damage when hitting more than 8 targets.
These are overall very small nerfs, which will be barely noticeable in most situations.
9.2 Survival Hunter Changes
Coordinated Assault will now show up above the player's resource display.
9.1.5 Survival Hunter Changes:
9.1.5 indirectly buffed survival due to the aoe cap removal for both Carve and Butchery.
Flayed shot also got buffed to deal an initial tick of damage when applied. This change buffed venthyr enough to be competitive/better on most single target/ light cleave bosses.
Death Chakrams now also applies a debuff which increases your physical damage by 10%. This change is not impactful enough to make Necrolord viable.
Changes in 9.1:
Survival has gotten a couple of buffs at the start of patch 9.1, and the spec got additional buffs in the July 13th patch.
Raptor Strike damage increased by 15%.
Mongoose Bite damage increased by 15%
Flanking Strike damage increased by 15%.
Kill Command damage increased by 15%.
July 13th Hotfix:
Raptor Strike damage increased by 10%.
Mongoose Bite damage increased by 10%
Flanking Strike damage increased by 10%.
Serpent Sting damage increased by 10%.
Kill Shot damage increased by 10%
Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 10%
With the release of 9.1, hunters also got covenant-specific legendaries. The most notable one being Pouch of Razor Fragments which depending on the fight, can trade blows/straight outperform our currently best single target legendary Nesingwary's Trapping Apparatus.