WotLK Classic Survival Hunter Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

For Hunters, Survival is the best PvE spec for at least the first tier of Wrath. Survival has exceptional base damage, which means you need virtually no gear to start pumping out huge damage in raids. That is not to say Survival does not scale well, just that early content is where it shines the most. Marksmanship will eventually out-scale Survival in later content primarily due to how strong Physical damage spells are with capped ArP.

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Hunters.

This is the standard talent build that you should take for raiding and dungeons as a Survival Hunter. There are several points that can potentially be swapped around depending on your gear level and the situation, but ultimately this is close to what your tree will look like.

The first thing you might notice is only 1/2 points in Go for the Throat, but 1 point is all you need to essentially give you pet limitless focus. Similarly, you only need 2/3 points Expose Weakness for 100% uptime, and this even goes down to 1/3 points needed with enough crit much later on.

Hunting Party is another talent where you only need 1/3 points. Eventually with high enough gear levels where you do not need more Hit, you will take points out of Focused Aim to put into this for the extra Agility. However, point for point, 1% Hit is worth far more than 1% Agility. Before you fill out Hunting Party however, first you should move points to get 3/3 in Resourcefulness once you can spare the points later on. It is also worth noting that Resourcefulness becomes much more valuable on AoE when you use Explosive Trap.

Glyph of Explosive Shot increases the crit chance of your Explosive Shot by 4%. Explosive Shot is your strongest and most important ability, so buffing it is an easy choice.

Glyph of Kill Shot reduces the cooldown of your Kill Shot by 6 seconds. Kill Shot is your hardest hitting ability by far, so getting more in per fight is an excellent choice.

Glyph of Serpent Sting increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 seconds. Since you need to maintain a 100% uptime, this will save you multiple casts over an encounter.

Glyph of Explosive Trap enables the ticking damage from your Explosive Trap to crit. This is incredibly valuable on any sort of AoE, so you would drop Glyph of Serpent Sting for it.

Glyph of Mend Pet slightly increases your pet's happiness, which means you should not need to feed it anymore. It is a nice quality of life glyph.

Glyph of Feign Death reduces the cooldown of Feign Death by 5 seconds.

Glyph of Revive Pet makes it so you no longer get spell push-back when taking damage while casting Revive Pet.