Survival Hunter Talents Guide

Patch 11.0.5 Last Updated: 28th Nov, 2024
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Symex

Talent Builds

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Class Talents

Key Hunter Class Talents

In the Class talent tree it is generally very important to take all talents which increase your overall dps such as Explosive shot, keen eyesight, Trigger finger, unnatural causes etc while also making sure to pick up key defensive talents such as Rejuvinating wind, Hunters avoidance and survival of the fittest, as well as all of its adjacent talents.

For Key utility talents you want to make sure to spec into Miss Direction, Muzzle, Intimidation, Binding Shot, Bursting Shot, Camouflage and Implosive trap.

These talents will be your goto talents 90% of the time, although depending on the situation you are finding yourself in you might be able to swap certain talent points, for example removing camouflage while raiding as you can not use it while in combat.

Doing this will generally let you customize your last 2-3 Talent points to your personal playstyle and preferences. Scrappy, Tar-coated bindings, trailblazer and territorial instincts are generally worthwhile to place your last talent points in.

Spec Talents

Single Target

With the changes to Packleader in 11.0.5 it now performs better in pure single target compared to Sentinel. Its main weakness is downtime. Howl of the pack applies a stacking crit buff whenever your pet auto attacks. Having downtime causes this buff to fall off which is a significant dps loss.

AoE

In AoE there are some changes that can be done that slightly swap your playstyle.

Coordinated assault can generally be specced into 2 different versions.

Relentless primal ferocity will cause coordinated assault to be a big burst cooldown with a 2 minute cooldown.

Symbiotic Adrenalin is generally the shorter cooldown, but less strong option.

Generally relentless primal ferocity is your default option but picking up symbiotic adrenalin is a viable option if the damage profile is needed for the situation

Fury of the eagle can be exchanged with bombardier for a slightly more upfront bursty damage profile. This is generally better vs enemies which die before you can use the extra explosive shots from Bombardier.

Mongoose bite is also a viable option if more Single target is needed compared to bombardier and fury of the eagle.

Hero Talents

Sentinel vs Packleader

TLDR:

  • Sentinel performs better in AoE
  • Packleader performs better in Single target or light AoE

Sentinel

The sentinel hero talent focuses on summoning an owl every 15 seconds, which deals AoE damage. This owl is spawned every Wildfire Bomb, every 15 seconds. To minimize the downtime of this you will unfortunately need a weakaura, as it is not tracked properly in the base-game UI.

The main downside of this hero talent tree is this owl will create a ground effect similar to Wild spirits, which means your tank can move out of it which will cause you to lose a significant amount of DPS.

Its main defensive benefit is Don't Look Back, which will shield you overtime. This is great not only for rot damage, but also for potential 1 shots.

Packleader

The pack Leader hero talent tree is focused on increasing the damage of kill command and your pet overall.

As survival is sharing this talent tree with BM (the literal pet spec) it is an uphill battle for survival to be able to perform as well as Beast Mastery for a pet based tree. Unfortunately Pack leader is currently losing this battle compared to sentinel as its damage is subpar.

Its defensive causes Aspect of the turtle and survival of the fittest to apply a heal over time, which is bad as you are essentially stacking defensive cooldowns, which will cause you to get healed when you are likely not in trouble anymore.