[Archived] Survival Hunter 5.4

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Survival Hunter guide.

[zarila 0]

Awesome guide thansk for the info...can't wait till Tuesday. FYI the picture for the talents is incorrect but your guide for each tier is correct...just wanted to let you know. Thanks again

[Damien 1,514]

Awesome guide thansk for the info...can't wait till Tuesday. FYI the picture for the talents is incorrect but your guide for each tier is correct...just wanted to let you know. Thanks again

Nice comment, thanks! What do you mean by "the picture for the talents is incorrect"?

[zarila 0]

Shown on the page 15 Posthaste Narrow Escape Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera 30 Silencing Shot Wyvern Sting Binding Shot 45 Exhilaration Aspect of the Iron Hawk Spirit Bond 60 Fervor Readiness Thrill of the Hunt 75 A Murder of Crows Dire Beast Lynx Rush 90 Glaive Toss Powershot Barrage

what is current from what I see in Beta and on wowhead

15

Posthaste

Narrow Escape

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera

30

Silencing Shot

Wyvern Sting

Binding Shot

45

Exhilaration

Aspect of the Iron Hawk

Spirit Bond

60 Fervor

Dire Beast

Thrill of the Hunt

75

A Murder of Crows

Blink Strike

Lynx Rush

90

Glaive Toss

Powershot

Barrage

levels 60-90 talents are incorrect. rediness will be a talent everyone gets and the dire beast and murder of crows have been changed...along with a few other things

Edited August 26, 2012 by zarila

[Damien 1,514]

Sorry about the confusion! We had some scripts that were getting all the information directly from Battle.net: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists-of-pandaria/feature/talent-specification#Y! Looks like Blizzard isn't in a hurry when it comes to fixing their calculator :P

Thank you again for reporting this, it has been fixed ;)

[zarila 0]

No problem...I was just confused then thought the content was outdated..which is usually NOT the case with icy-veins website (thank you very much for that). Now it is correct! (except for the pictures of the spells dire beast looks like rediness and blink shot looks like dire beast.)

[Damien 1,514]

No problem...I was just confused then thought the content was outdated..which is usually NOT the case with icy-veins website (thank you very much for that). Now it is correct! (except for the pictures of the spells dire beast looks like rediness and blink shot looks like dire beast.)

Ah yes, I forgot to upload the new images :P

[Tehstool 10]

The guide has this in the macro section:

1.1. Generic Macros for Hunters

1.1.1. DPS Cooldown Macro

• /cast Rapid Fire
• /cast Bestial Wrath
• /cast Dire Beast
• /cast A Murder of Crows
• /cast Lynx Rush
• /cast Stampede

Bestial wrath isn't a SV ability. I assume copy/paste was the culprit for this small typo. Edited August 28, 2012 by Tehstool

[Vlad 411]

The guide has this in the macro section:

1.1. Generic Macros for Hunters

1.1.1. DPS Cooldown Macro

• /cast Rapid Fire
• /cast Bestial Wrath
• /cast Dire Beast
• /cast A Murder of Crows
• /cast Lynx Rush
• /cast Stampede

Bestial wrath isn't a SV ability. I assume copy/paste was the culprit for this small typo.

This was actually intentional, so that players who change between specs do not need to alter their macro each time. We meant to include a mention of this fact in the description, but it seems we forgot to :)

[Luciferka 0]

Nice guide, thank you for it. Although i write this comment to point out some misunderstandings. In the Statistic priority and reforging section, you are speaking about Hit and Expertise cap, which is OK, but than there is the Soft haste cap, where you are speaking again about Hit and Expertise cap and no mentioning about haste, which makes a little confuse.

So... it is than 6000 or 2550 Hit/Expertise cap most hunters will need?

And what is the Soft haste cap?

Thank you :)

[Damien 1,514]

I'm sorry about that, I messed up something on the stats page. It should be fixed now.

We imagine that there will be a soft haste cap in MoP, but we prefer to not speculate too much for now.

[Tehstool 10]

This was actually intentional, so that players who change between specs do not need to alter their macro each time. We meant to include a mention of this fact in the description, but it seems we forgot to

Can't believe I didn't think of that I have the same thing in my macro lol.

I'm sorry about that, I messed up something on the stats page. It should be fixed now.

We imagine that there will be a soft haste cap in MoP, but we prefer to not speculate too much for now.

I predict the soft haste cap for SV will be 1170 haste in 5.0.4. I don't think the SV rotation will change at all until mop.

[Tehstool 10]

The guide says this

Mastery Rating is the least powerful stat for Survival Hunters. It increases the damage done by all your abilities, with the exception of your auto attacks and Kill Shot.

Before 5.0.4 mastery was better than haste and the reasons provided on why haste is better are the same as why haste is worse, doesn't seem like it should change.

Haste Rating increases your attack speed and focus regeneration.

What the stats do haven't changed.

Can I please get an explanation on why haste would beat out mastery now?

[Branah 3]

Error in Guide:

Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot removes the focus cost of Tranquilizing Shot, but gives the spell an 8 second cooldown.

The actual value is 10 seconds.

[Davs 7]

the hit cap now is only 7,5% ?

[Raynewyn 0]

Sorry to inform you guys, but your DPS Cooldown Macro that is intended to blow every cooldown for burn phases (with the exception of Readiness) won't work for patch 5.0.4. Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows and Lynx Rush share the same GCD. This means you will have to spam some extra buttons or come up with some other clever macro. Looking forward to any working suggestions before I find some solutions for myself.

[Branah 3]

Further to the above, even a simplified macro (for SRV Hunters):

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast Dire Beast

/cast A Murder of Crows

Does not appear to work.

Doing some testing shows the following:

1.

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast Dire Beast

/cast A Murder of Crows

Result:

Rapid Fire = PASS

Dire Beast = PASS

A Murder of Crows = FAIL

2.

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast A Murder of Crows

/cast Dire Beast

Result:

Rapid Fire = PASS

A Murder of Crows = PASS

Dire Beast = FAIL

3.

/cast Dire Beast

/cast A Murder of Crows

Result:

Dire Beast = PASS

A Murder of Crows = FAIL

4.

/cast A Murder of Crows

/cast Dire Beast

Result:

A Murder of Crows = PASS

Dire Beast = FAIL

5.

/cast A Murder of Crows

/cast Rapid Fire

Result:

A Murder of Crows = PASS

Rapid Fire = FAIL

6.

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast A Murder of Crows

Result:

Rapid Fire = PASS

A Murder of Crows = PASS

7.

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast Dire Beast

Result:

Rapid Fire = PASS

Dire Beast = PASS

8.

/cast Dire Beast

/cast A Murder of Crows

Result:

Dire Beast = PASS

A Murder of Crows = FAIL

If anyone can explain why this very simple three cast macro fails, and suggest a fix, it would be much appreciated!

Edited August 29, 2012 by Branah

[Vlad 411]

Can't believe I didn't think of that I have the same thing in my macro lol.

I predict the soft haste cap for SV will be 1170 haste in 5.0.4. I don't think the SV rotation will change at all until mop.

That makes sense indeed. I'll look into it more tomorrow and make the necessary edits.

The guide says this

Mastery Rating is the least powerful stat for Survival Hunters. It increases the damage done by all your abilities, with the exception of your auto attacks and Kill Shot.

Before 5.0.4 mastery was better than haste and the reasons provided on why haste is better are the same as why haste is worse, doesn't seem like it should change.

Haste Rating increases your attack speed and focus regeneration.

What the stats do haven't changed.

Can I please get an explanation on why haste would beat out mastery now?

Error in Guide:

Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot removes the focus cost of Tranquilizing Shot, but gives the spell an 8 second cooldown.

The actual value is 10 seconds.

Thank you a lot for pointing this out. I'll update the guide in the morning with this fix :)

the hit cap now is only 7,5% ?

Yes, it's only 7.5%. Don't forget you now also need to cap Expertise :)

Sorry to inform you guys, but your DPS Cooldown Macro that is intended to blow every cooldown for burn phases (with the exception of Readiness) won't work for patch 5.0.4. Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows and Lynx Rush share the same GCD. This means you will have to spam some extra buttons or come up with some other clever macro. Looking forward to any working suggestions before I find some solutions for myself.

Thank you! Don't be "sorry", we love getting feedback on our guides. It's the main way of improving them. I'm not sure if Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows, and Lynx Rush were added to the GCD when the patch went live... or if I was blind as a bat on the Beta. In any case, I'll rework the macro part in the morning. Thanks a lot.

Further to the above, even a simplified macro (for SRV Hunters):

*experiments*

If anyone can explain why this very simple three cast macro fails, and suggest a fix, it would be much appreciated!

As I mentioned above, the reason is that Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows, and Lynx Rush are all on the global cooldown. I'll update the guide in the morning with whatever working versions of the macros I can come up with :)

[Davs 7]

hello vlad!

Have you arranje some killing dps macro?

I've tried yours, but as someone said, It dont work very well :(

What should we reforge less ( i.e, wich one should we take to put more exp cap ) ??

Thank you !1 :D

[Vlad 411]

hello vlad!

Have you arranje some killing dps macro?

I've tried yours, but as someone said, It dont work very well

What should we reforge less ( i.e, wich one should we take to put more exp cap ) ??

Thank you !1

For your second question, it's safe to reforge out of Mastery Rating now, to get your expertise cap.

For the first, no, I haven't. With so many of the abilities being on the global cooldown, you can just use them yourself manually. If something changes, or a better macro comes up, then I'll include it. I'm personally not a great fan of macros that just do together things you can do yourself anyway, so I probably won't include a macro for just using 2 spells together.

[Glatzel 1]

I would recommend to replace arcane shot with Multishot in the rotation against 3 mobs, because multishot costs twice the focus of arcane and does about the same amount of damage. so with this it does more 1.5 times the damage of arcane against three mobs with the bonus, that it applies serpent sting for 15 seconds so there is no need to cast cobrashot at one mob after the other to keep it up.

maybe it would pay out to do this also against 2 mobs, but there would be not much of a change in dps.

[Burger 0]

You can use /castsequence to cast macros that are on the GCD. You would have to hit the button several times, but it seems a more useful thing to have them on their own buttons. You would want some way to watch the individual CDs anyway since a bunch of them have different lengths. And as it's been stated, things like Stampede you might want to save for a certain section of a fight, while others like Rapid Fire you may get to use a couple of times through the fight.

I don't use /castsequence on any of my characters, so i can only assume that it has not been removed in this patch.

the setup I do use on many characters for macros looks like this:

#showtooltip

/cast [no mod] <spell 1 name>

/cast [mod:shift] <spell 2 name>

/cast [mod:ctrl] <spell 3 name>

/cast [mod:alt] <spell 4 name>

I have both versions of the Steel Series WoW mice, and this macro is very useful for attaching many of my abilities to most of the mouse buttons, allowing me not to have to move either hand very much to cast many abilities. if you just use /cast, it will cast it every time you press the button. Pressing just the "mod" button will show you the icon, so if you're using it with a CD, you can check the time on it, if you don't have it watched somewhere else, and if you just have the macro as it's shown. you can macro several things together, for example:

/cast [no mod] Rapid Fire

/use [no mod] Potion of the Tol'vir

/cast [mod:shift] Stampede

This will always try to use a potion when you cast Rapid Fire, but will only cast Stampede when you are holding down shift.

[Vlad 411]

I would recommend to replace arcane shot with Multishot in the rotation against 3 mobs, because multishot costs twice the focus of arcane and does about the same amount of damage. so with this it does more 1.5 times the damage of arcane against three mobs with the bonus, that it applies serpent sting for 15 seconds so there is no need to cast cobrashot at one mob after the other to keep it up.

maybe it would pay out to do this also against 2 mobs, but there would be not much of a change in dps.

Thanks for the post. I've made some modifications in the guide in this respect. They should show up later today :)

You can use /castsequence to cast macros that are on the GCD. You would have to hit the button several times, but it seems a more useful thing to have them on their own buttons. You would want some way to watch the individual CDs anyway since a bunch of them have different lengths. And as it's been stated, things like Stampede you might want to save for a certain section of a fight, while others like Rapid Fire you may get to use a couple of times through the fight.

I don't use /castsequence on any of my characters, so i can only assume that it has not been removed in this patch.

the setup I do use on many characters for macros looks like this:

#showtooltip

/cast [no mod] <spell 1 name>

/cast [mod:shift] <spell 2 name>

/cast [mod:ctrl] <spell 3 name>

/cast [mod:alt] <spell 4 name>

I have both versions of the Steel Series WoW mice, and this macro is very useful for attaching many of my abilities to most of the mouse buttons, allowing me not to have to move either hand very much to cast many abilities. if you just use /cast, it will cast it every time you press the button. Pressing just the "mod" button will show you the icon, so if you're using it with a CD, you can check the time on it, if you don't have it watched somewhere else, and if you just have the macro as it's shown. you can macro several things together, for example:

/cast [no mod] Rapid Fire

/use [no mod] Potion of the Tol'vir

/cast [mod:shift] Stampede

This will always try to use a potion when you cast Rapid Fire, but will only cast Stampede when you are holding down shift.

Personally, I don't use /castsequence macros either, nor, in fact, am I particularly fond of modifier macros. I recognize that they're there, but I feel that they can get quite cumbersome to use, and it takes a lot of versatility and flexibility away.

In the case of these abilities that you stack at the start of the fight (and that pretty much never again line up to be stacked that way again), it's really not that hard to simply use them from their regular keybinds.

If you want to put together an opening sequence, /castsequence macro, I'll be happy to include it in the guide as an alternative for people who are into it though :)

And thanks for your awesome post.

[Tehstool 10]

I read somewhere that the murder of crows talent can actually proc your vishanka proc... That being said even though you recommend it maybe you should try to confirm what I said is true and note it as a perk from the ability as well.

[Blaze78 1]

I'm not entirely sure if it's worth using, but I did see that Snake Trap got a pretty big buff for Mists and I hear it might be useful for AoE as Survival, or even other specializations (or at least when you've got a gcd available and not enough focus for Multi-Shot).

You can experiment or research it to find out if it is worth using, since I again am not sure.

Edited September 2, 2012 by Blaze78