Survival Hunter Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Shadowlands 9.0.2

This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:

• Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
• Hunter Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Hunters gain by joining each Covenant;
• How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
• General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
• Hunter Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Hunters.

There are several things to know about Soulbinds and Covenants before you read the rest of this page and its recommendations:

• The first thing to know is that these recommendations are based on maximizing your performance on the first week of Mythic Castle Nathria.
• This means that these are based on a maximum Renown of 13 with every Soulbind, which limits the Conduit slots and Soulbind Abilities which are unlocked.
• Past the fourth week of the Shadowlands, we will start unlocking more Conduit and Soulbind Ability slots, which will cause this page's recommendations to change.

In other words, the best Covenant/Soulbind is not a static thing. The ideal combination will change with time. Eventually, there will be a final best combination once all Soulbind Abilities and Conduit slots have been unlocked, but this is months into the future.

In the Summary below, you will find separate BiS Soulbind/Covenant combinations for Mythic Raiding Week 1, and the Full Tree which will not be possible to achieve until around late January 2021.

Focus	Covenant	Soulbind	Advised Tree
Raiding (Mythic Raiding Week 1)	Night Fae	Niya	Survival Hunter Niya Raiding tree
Raiding ( Podtender Cheat Death Ability, 1% Less DPS)	Night Fae	Dreamweaver	Survival Hunter Dreamweaver Raiding tree
Mythic+	Night Fae	Korayn	Survival Hunter Korayn Mythic+ tree

There are a few things to consider for your Survival Covenant Choice. Namely, the build you are using ( Birds of Prey or Wildfire Infusion), and the situation you find yourself in.

Generally speaking, this guide is based on Wildfire Infusion as it will be much more common in both the Raiding and Mythic+, with Birds of Prey reserved for only a few fights in Castle Nathria.

For this reason, Night Fae is the best choice for Survival Hunters, providing superior single-target and AoE DPS to the other choices.

We cover our thoughts on the Covenants and their Soulbinds in this section further below.

In the list below, you will find the best Conduits, organized by type. For more information, please the Conduits section of this page.

• Best Potency Conduits: Strength of the Pack, Spirit Attunement
• Best Finesse Conduits: Personal choice. None of them are especially good or bad.
• Best Endurance Conduits: Resilience of the Hunter is very strong. For the final slots, go with your personal preference or whatever suits the fight

Stinging Strike and Deadly Tandem are very close to each other, with the former being better for single-target situations and the latter being a bit better when there is a mix of single-target and AoE.

This section only covers which Conduits you should pick. For detailed explanations on what all of the Hunter Conduits do, check out our Hunter Soulbinds and Conduits Page below.

Sometimes a Conduit will be much better for a particular type of damage than another. Because of this, we will sometimes label Conduits' position in the Tier Lists by either Single-Target or Mythic/AoE.

SS-Tier refers to Conduits that are ideal in every single scenario and should always be chosen when possible.

All Covenants and Conduits are ranked relative to the best overall setup.

• Spirit Attunement (Night Fae)
• Enfeebled Mark (Kyrian)
• Strength of the Pack

• Stinging Strike
• Deadly Tandem (with Birds of Prey)

• Empowered Release (Venthyr)
• Deadly Tandem
• Necrotic Barrage (Necrolord

In some situations, Stinging Strike and Deadly Tandem will compete with Strength of the Pack on pure single-target. However, Strength of the Pack is so much stronger for Mythic+ and is generally a lot more versatile option, so it should be your go-to.

All of these Conduits are geared towards survival and defensive options. This means that there is a bit more room for personal choice here.

With that said, we feel that Resilience of the Hunter is by far the best choice here. This is because a damage reduction will pretty much always be useful, and Feign Death has a forgivingly short cooldown. Using this Conduit leading up to periods of high damage taken is extremely powerful.

These Conduits are geared towards mobility and utility. None of them are particularly good, so we recommend picking what you feel suits your playstyle the most, and taking your situation into account.

Night Fae is the best Covenant for Survival Hunters, providing the best single-target by a small margin, and AoE DPS by a large margin.

Kyrian is the second-best Covenant for Survival Hunters, providing equivalent or very slightly better single-target DPS to Night Fae. However its AoE is much weaker than Night Fae, and so is its burst.

Venthyr is the third-best Covenant for is only around 2% worse than Night Fae for pure single-target situations, but its ability only really works for single-target, making this a bad option for AoE and Mythic+.

Necrolord is the fourth-best Covenant for Survival Hunters. It does not have any particular strengths over Night Fae and Kyrian, so there is not much to say about it beyond this.

Important note: When evaluating the Soulbinds, we have not included the final Soulbind Ability in their trees which has a major impact on their viability. This is because we will not unlock these Soulbind Abilities until we reach Renown 30-34, which can be potentially months into the future. The guides are designed for you to have an optimal character in the first week of Mythic Castle Nathria, but keep in mind that these descriptions may completely change in a few months once we unlock the last row of Soulbind Abilities.

• Niya is the best choice for most situations with Grove Invigoration being tuned so well despite Mastery being a poor stat for us.
• Korayn is recommended for Mythic+ as a Survival Hunter as it offers a large boost to your burst AoE via Wild Hunt Tactics.
• Dreamweaver is a very strong choice as well. It is only very slightly behind in terms of DPS (around 1%), but its Podtender effectively allows you to Cheat Death once a fight. We recommend this for very high Mythic+, and situationally in raids.

• Pelagos is the best Soulbind for Kyrian, assuming that you are always able to collect 3 orbs from Combat Meditation. If not, look towards Forgelite instead.
• Kleia is extremely poor for Kyrian and should never be chosen.
• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is within 1% of Pelagos and a decent choice overall, but it has nothing that stands out about it otherwise.

• Bonesmith Heirmir is the best choice for Necrolords, providing the best DPS output by a decent margin.
• Emeni is not a bad choice either, being roughly 1% behind Heirmir.
• Plague Deviser Marileth is the worst Necrolord Soulbind and should not be chosen in pretty much any situation.

• Nadjia the Mistblade is the best choice. Survival loves Haste, and Thrill Seeker provides a bunch of it.
• Theotar the Mad Duke is competitive as well, being only 1% worse than Nadjia.
• General Draven is a terrible choice, being over 2% behind Theotar and having no major strengths otherwise.