OutDPS!

patch 3.1 edit: while some of this is still good, patch 3.1 changed the game a little for survival. Here’s the guide, and here’s the shot rotation.

OK, I’ve rambled on about how to play a survival hunter, but unless you have a good spec, you’re still going to suck, even if you take all my advice.

First off, whenever discussing specs, the cookie cutter response from elitist jerks huntards everywhere is “Use the spreadsheet, n00b”. Then they report you, then someone gives you an infraction, then you write up a complaint by PM to the moderator who gave it to you because they mocked your grammar in the comment, who then gives you another week off for mod sass. I watch this process repeat itself ad nauseam.

The problem with the spreadsheet is that is has a few problems. Firstly, it thinks raptor pets are the second coming because when you model their long cooldown special attack, it looks good on paper. In reality, the consistent DPS of a cat or wasp would probably be better for your group (more on that soon!). Secondly, it thinks that sniper training is much better than it really is. There’s no easy way to model the positioning of your shaman totems and paladin auras other than manually removing them from the buffs tab, and this means you can’t assume that you would be in range some of the time. Thirdly, it assumes you can’t count to two and are casting shots between explosive shots when you have lock and load. Fourth, I don’t think it knows that until patch 3.1, frost traps with resourcefulness are a guaranteed lock and load every 24 seconds.

All that said, it’s invaluable for determining your best gear and enchants, but for crafting a spec, I did it the hard way.

Here is the minimum spec for frost trap dancing. It leaves you 6 points to spread around. You might be asked to use some more of them on hunting party to provide mana replenishment, and personally, I always take aimed shot for mobility fights. The rest of them can be dumped into improved aspect of the hawk to provide a decent DPS increase. Expecially good if your steady shots take more than a global cooldown, and passably good if you’re already at the haste soft cap.

Some notes on this spec:

• Whenever evaluating talents like go for the throat (marks tree) and expose weakness (surv tree), bear in mind that you will crit a lot. Putting more than one point into GFTT will be a waste as your pet can’t spend focus as fast as you can generate it with just the one point.
• Expose weakness will have almost 100% uptime with two points.
• The only reason to take wyvern sting is to get noxious stings.
• Hawk eye is just a filler to get to the next level, however it’s a better filler than any of the melee or pvp talents I chose it over.

Using this information, you should be able to approach the maximum possible DPS atainable with your gear.