Survival Hunter 7.3

[Guest Holtz]

Trailblazer stacks with both of Aspect of the Cheetah's movement speed bonuses. 

[Realmouse 5]

the changes to flanking strike with animal instincts have given me a minimum 20% dps increase on every fight.  flanking strike is the skill most likely to have its cooldown reduced making it available almost all the time, HOWEVER, 30% haste is a minimum requirement for that talent to be useful, or you will be focus starved.

 

[Ilovemuffins 0]

It appears that Animal Instincts is smart: it will not lower the cooldown of an ability that is not on cooldown. You can test this by spamming only flanking strike and watch it's cooldown be set to around 3 seconds instead of 5. Just using recount, I wasn't able to see how often abilities were put on cooldown, but there was a noticeable affect on mongoose charges. If RNG hits it right, you can go from 0 chargers to 2 real quick, or even more, and then you're wasting mongoose cooldown time. 

 

Compared to WotM, it seems like WotM is about 10-20k better DPS for me. Animal Instinct seemed to barely keep my AotE ahead of my Snake Hunter (base CD 1.6 mins versus 1.5 mins). Some caveats, WotM is harder to maintain and the rotation is different. I found myself hardly ever using raptor strike with Animal Instincts and hardly using flanking strike with WotM. I'd imagine there's a better rotation than what I found myself using.

More info: both series of tests were using the following talents
Snake Hunter, Posthaste, Improved Traps, Rangers Net, DFG, and Expert Trapper. 

Crit: 39%

Haste: 9%

Mastery: 7%

Vers: 13%

22,893 Agi

856 ilevel

877 Talonclaw, 20 points deep using the same path this guide suggests (ending at Embrace of the Aspects atm)

Serpent sting may change a few things (i prefer it for multi-target fights in M+) in your rotation

[Metztli 0]

Is the guide still viable after 7.1 or there will be incoming changes to it soon ?

Edited October 26, 2016 by Metztli

[Guest Undependable]

6 hours ago, Metztli said:

Is the guide still viable after 7.1 or there will be incoming changes to it soon ?

It appears that in the night the mastery was stealth buffed to now proc of pet auto attacks, as well as everything else it was already currently proccing off of. With this change, and the animal instinct talent change as well as a multitude of buffs (mostly AOE) I think this guide needs a full overhaul, I would especially be interested to see if there is changes to the stat weights.

[Guest Rylatar]

It looks like Mastery was fixed and procs now off basic attacks (possibly autoattacks too). Will that change the stat priority?

[Guest Ilitiel]

What do you guys think about the Trinket Simcraft? is that right? can you confirm that?

[Guest orconcio]

8 hours ago, Guest Rylatar said:

It looks like Mastery was fixed and procs now off basic attacks (possibly autoattacks too). Will that change the stat priority?

I guess Azor needs to confirm this but testing today in a Raid dummy thats correct: pets now procs MB from autoattacks. 

So with this in mind and by my today test i can say a Ferocity pet is pulling 20k DPS more that a Tenacity speced pet. 

However this not change stats priority. Versatility and Criticals are still on the top. What you want to do considering this pet change is stack a decent amount of mastery (a 10% would be ok) without sacrificing your main stats.

However would be great if Azoration could test it and comeback with some conclusions and also edit the pet part on his guide to reflect this change.

[Guest Undependable]

survival hunters are in dissaray with these changes. It seems very clear now that at the very least you should spec your pet ferocity, however, many questions remain unanswered. Did haste go up considerably in value given how many moongoose procs we get now? What is the mastery cap, considering how many GCD's we have vs the power of versitility and crit. Animal instincts, is it better? WE NEED YOU AZOR.

[Guest Questions]

9 hours ago, Guest Undependable said:

survival hunters are in dissaray with these changes. It seems very clear now that at the very least you should spec your pet ferocity, however, many questions remain unanswered. Did haste go up considerably in value given how many moongoose procs we get now? What is the mastery cap, considering how many GCD's we have vs the power of versitility and crit. Animal instincts, is it better? WE NEED YOU AZOR.

 I think the community is in 100% agreement that your pet should now be specced ferocity for the large DPS increase and number of mastery procs off Autoattacks, far outweighing thunderstomp in tenacity. However, abilities are still proccing Mongoose, so we are still stuck using Mortal strike pets (sadly).

What is the mastery cap? It's clear that a little bit of mastery is beneficial (unlike before), but many people have already tested that full mastery gear is 100k dps behind Ver/crit gear. What is the cap before you start losing damage compared to gaining it? My personal view is around 7-9% max.

Animal Instincts? Is is better then Axes? especially now with the mastery changes. Can it's benefit outweigh the hard hitting range ability we use in downtimes? 

Snake Hunter? is it redundant with 8-9% mastery? Should we be going MoC now?

Raptor Strike. Apparently it is possible to make a competitive build, according to warcraft logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#boss=1841&difficulty=4&class=Hunter&spec=Survival 
There is a korean hunter named "루루팡루루피루루" who pulled 359k on Ursoc with a Raptor Strike build, unfortunately I can't find a way to view his gear anywhere, so I don't know what stats he is using. Has anyone experimented with raptorstrike/moknathal/serpent sting? What would be the best stat combination.

Last but not least: Haste, how valuable is it now? With Moongoose bites for days, is it worth more? Is it worth more with the new Animal Instincts?

 

[Azortharion 60]

No one has meaningfully tested full Mastery gear to be 100k dps behind anything else.

There is no magical Mastery cap. Its value is determined by how much you have of it compared to other stats. Just like every single other stat. This is not unique to Mastery.

Animal Instincts is not conceivably better than Axes. Way of the Mok'Nathal likely is.

Snake Hunter may not be the best talent anymore. Like with Way of the Mok'Nathal vs Axes, this s till need an objective look through.

I would refrain from looking at those logs to try and figure out what may be viable and the like. 

There is no such thing as "best stat combinations" in the real world.

Haste is moderately to very valuable, just like it was before.

Survival will get some overhauls in the coming few days as we're finally getting a bunch of new stuff in SimCraft that will reflect it much more realistically. This will:

1) Likely make Survival a pretty solid spec. Maybe even the strongest single-target performer. Yeah, really.
2) Almost definitely make Mastery a half-decent stat. Probably still the worst.
3) Possibly change some talent recommendations, and a lot of things about how it is played.

Soon(tm). I am not in the business of doing guesswork or feelycrafting. The tools will be available for me to mostly objectively analyse this stuff very very soon. A lot of it is already in place.

[Blazenar 0]

Ok so stat prio stay versa-crit? i ask this question cause i have confused about the gear..there is a haste cap? trinkets with haste procs are good?

[Guest Shiyou]

So, here's what I'm seeing, and forgive me for lack of numbers posting.

Before the change, I decided to go to Animal handler, and had a constant haste/mastery/speed buff up (you can double stack. Something I noticed is that it didn't renew itself, lasted 7 seconds. with flanking on a 5 second GCD it meant I'd get one buff, and then another buff, so no matter what I would have 10% haste, 10% mastery, or both. The mastery didn't improve me too much, but the 10% haste was wanted.

I moved out of way of the mok' nathal because it requires the use of our worst ability: Raptor strike. And it's hard to manage, and takes too much focus for how bad it is which doesn't let me switch between using carve or just keep up flanking strike and lacerate the way I'd like to.

Throwing axes didn't do more damage for me for one simple reason: I had too many buttons to push already. I'm having problems already NOT being mongoose capped. I'm constantly at 3, by the time I get to 1, I get 3 right back up somehow.

It's because of the above reason  I switched to murder of crows. My current stats are crit=29/ haste 16%/ mastery 12%/ vers 9%/ Leech 1%. If that helps any comparison. Maybe I'm getting too lucky.

but so long as there's too many mongoose bite, and no opportunity for me to use raptor or use axes (only time I could use axes is when a mechanic forces me to run away from the boss for a bit) the old Animal handler was the vastly superior stand and stab talent.

Now, the new one.. I'm actually not liking it as much because there's a slight reduction to my haste... however, the way it works, I have more upkeep up Aspect of the Eagle, so my dps is higher, it just doesn't FEEL higher because I have less haste, more time to carve, or use focus in general. Also, the flanking strike reducing itself urges me to waste more focus than before to keep flanking strike. but I've noticed that it seems to favor in some testing harpoon to reset time, followed by aspect, mongoose, then itself.

I tried testing this by having one ability off CD at a time or charging to see which would come first, flanking or the ability tested. Then I'd move over to trying 3 at once to see where it went.

Luckily, resetting harpoon is pretty easy so it won't do that one too often. Resetting Aspect of the Eagle should be of the highest priority anyways, so good thing it seemed to want to do that more than mongoose bite charges. It could also just be me tricking my own mind.

I'm also still seeing higher dps with tenacity pet. quite possibly it encourages more mongoose bites for me over more priority on flanking strikes. if I prioritized to use more flanking strikes when it's off CD ferocity might yield higher, but I've yet to do it that way.

I would strongly NOT using serpent sting. we're already getting focused starved with the new flanking strike. it's nice to have a big bursty no focus costing move like dragonsfire

I've also not tested Aspect of the beast, but if ferocity got buffed, maybe Aspect of the beast is actually doing better than trap mastery?

I know their AoE is viewed as meh, but if there's a lot of mobs to hit, due to carve's scaling damage with more enemies, would high AoE fights see better dps returns from spitting cobra to help spam carve? (it's the only talent that gives us focus)

[Guest Shiyou]

Also, another thing. anyone else not liking our mastery? I can see in higher content where we can hit higher mastery %'s it only hurting our dps.

Haste affects our mastery, and I think it affects the chance we get a charge of mongoose more (it reduces it's innate charge time, increases pet attack speed so more attacks per second to proc it)

And I'm already having problems not being capped on it...

Anyone think blizzard will change it?

Like maybe pets have a static chance to proc mongoose bite chance like 5-10% per attack... and mongoose fury could instead buff mongoose bite by 30-45% per stack... and the mastery would affect the damage bonus per mongoose fury stack. That way I could see us scaling into Legion T2 and T3 just as well without being hindered by gear with mastery... or the fact it's the only stat that doesn't see diminishing returns like haste/crit do.

[Blazenar 0]

If haste is stat with the most value right now how is possible that all gems and enchants must be with versatility?

and talents mok nathal is spend of focus and time..

 

Edited October 29, 2016 by Blazenar

[Guest Huntress Kalyri]

Firstly, I follow your guides almost religiously and I want to thank everyone involved for the hard work and sharing.

Secondly, Upon reading the rotation for Survival Hunter, it says to use Raptor Strike for the Mok'Nathal talent buff...here's my issue:

In the talent line-up, you say not to take that. You say to take Throwing Axes... and it is not added to the rotation. Is this a typo?

[Azortharion 60]

What talent lineup are you referring to?

[Guest Guest Remark]

3 hours ago, Azortharion said:

What talent lineup are you referring to?

I'm guessing here's referring to the picture of that talent row, where throwing axes still has the checkmark. Not saying it's hard to actually, you know...read what was actually written instead of looking at the picture; but that's probably what he's referencing.

[Guest Undependable]

Hey Azor. I wanted to thank you for the work you put into theorycrafting the new 7.1 Survival hunter. I was the one who made the long post earlier in the thread you responded to. There are not alot of us out there, but we have fun with this spec and we care about it.

 

That being said, there are 2 additions that I feel would really help your guide and other survival hunters.

I take my character and rotations seriously. This morning I switched out what gear I could and got myself to 11% haste using your pawn string (was 3%). I know you have already stated that there is no "cap" on any stat, however, I spent a few hours in front of the training dummy this morning, and no matter how I slice it, I cannot reliably and effectively maintain way of the mok'nathal without severely damaging my rotation. It's simply a matter of GCD's, I could not on a regular basis reach 6 stacks of moongoose, while at the same time weaving in ET, LAC and DFG, while at the same time putting in far fewer flanking strikes then I am used to. Compounded with having to channel Fury of the Eagle, it just makes the rotation almost impossible to pull off.

I think there is some level of haste necessary to be able to effectively weave WoMN into your rotation, and I haven't reached it yet (20+%?). If there is a % that makes things considerably easier, I think it would be worth noting in your guide. Right now I am not showing a noticeable DPS increase with my level of haste, due to simply not having the GCD's.

The 2nd and very important thing that would be great if you can add to your guide, the majority of raid fights in the game (and I am sure in the future) have downtimes, times when you have to move to the wall to plant a debuff, times when you have to run across the room. Due to the low mobility of the spec, this makes a large number of fight have WoMN dropping off virtually guaranteed. In cases such as this, how much of a DPS loss is it to have to rebuild 4 stacks in a fight multiple times? Is it still far and above worth it to use WoMN in every raid encounter, even if I know that I will have to rebuild it at least 3 times over the encounter? Could axes be better in this circumstance?

These 2 answers would really help the community out.

[Guest Undependable]

Update on the post I just made. I simply cannot make WotMN work. I actually lose DPS. I am following your guide exactly. There must be some level of haste needed for it to be realistic, and I don't have it. Currently at 15% now. Swapping out DFG for serpent sting makes the rotation a bit easier, but outside of that, I just can't make it work. And the rotations quality of life is terrible.

[Guest Huntress Kalyri]

18 hours ago, Azortharion said:

What talent lineup are you referring to?

When I originally read the guide, it called for Throwing Axes and not the Mok'nathal talent. With the changes brought by 7.1, I glanced to see if the guide had been updated and assumed that since the photo remained the same, then the guide hadn't changed just yet....surely when you update something you change the photos too.

[Guest Superdemo]

I also tried the reviewed version of the guide (7.1) and i can also say that the Way of the mok'nathal falls behind in DPS, maybe with a little more Haste (Currently 15%) it will be viable, but for now, is not working for me. Rotating with this setup makes you loose important stacks on Mongoose Bite, and maintaining the buff makes it pretty difficult to perform perfectly(Even at the dummy). By using Throwing Axes and prioritizing Flanking Strike over Raptor strike i got soooo many stacks of Mongoose Bite, and reach 6 stacks at least twice the times. I'm not saying this is not the correct build, but in my personal experience, im sticking with the axes and the Flaking Strike.

[Realmouse 5]

I main a SV hunter, my ilvl is 850 with 33% haste..i average 260k on the low side of every fight, 350k+ when the stars align.  i do not use half of the stuff in this guide atm as it gives a ton of dead time and lowered dps ...my stat priority is haste >mastery>anything else...if it doesnt have haste, i dont want it.  i use animal instincts, snake hunter, trailblazer, imp.traps, camo, grenade and trapper. the reason for trailblazer is the short speed bursts between fights is greater than the wasted speed boost after a harpoon. the reason for camo is to help heal up between pulls, and to make skipping easier, and the reason for animal instincts is to lower my dps cooldowns faster (aspect of the eagle for the big one) because of this (as well as the artifact trait embrace of the aspects) and my (lucky AF) legendary bracers -call of the wild- i have eagle aspect up for EVERY fight, my mongoose bite stacks never fall off at less than 6, and my dps is huge for my ilvl. (i vastly out perform the sims my guildies do of me)

 

 

[Guest Kish]

The guide should really mention that WotM is for people who are good at micromanaging a buff, because if you let it fall off even once, the talent will result in a dps loss. (Other specs, like Windwalker, mention this for talents like Serenity)

As such, Throwing Axes is much easier to maintain, and should be grabbed for people who are not good at maintaining low-duration buffs.

On top of that, WotM is something that will easily fall off in battles where adds are disappearing, or where swaps need to be made like Dragons of Nightmare. As such, it's not a talent that fits every role. Whereas Throwing Axes is something that is very diverse. Same with Animal Instincts.

WotM is a VERY high risk, low reward talent. Which is something that should be mentioned. It's very easy for the talent to become a dps loss if you are not on your A+ game. Throwing Axes is good if you want an active ability, and Animal Instincts if you want more of a passive ability. (With Raptor Strike working as your filler spell, since you won't have Throwing Axes)

[Guest Radius]

I'm actually liking the WotM build and playstyle that is presented right now. However I do want some clarification on the opener and AotE in general with this build.

If you follow the opener presented your WotM buff will fall off at something around when youve built your 4th stack of MF. Is it worth it to refresh WotM just before going into AotE and refreshing it again just before using FotE? This way you lose 2 GCDs that could have been MBs instead (assuming that you always have stacks of MB to use for the full duration of MF which isn't all that unlikely with the mastery fix), but you keep your WotM buff up.

I've just been hitting dummies in an attempt to compare these differences (since I don't know much about SimC) and never letting WotM fall off, even tho you lose some MB attacks in MF, has been doing about 10k more dps every time.

Can someone confirm this?