Survival Hunter Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — 12.0.5

Survival Hunter, thanks to being able to use its pet as a tank to some extent, is good for both questing and dungeon leveling. It has the best survivability of the Hunter Specs, though because its pet is not as sturdy as a Beast Mastery Hunter's, it can still not make the same kind of pulls.

Grab a Ferocity pet and Misdirection, and activate it before tagging as many mobs as possible, usually with Wildfire Bomb, and watch the mobs flock to your pet. Then, take out the mobs with Wildfire Bomb. Whenever you kill an enemy, the cooldown of Harpoon is reset and you can fly to a new one!

If this is your first character, or you simply want to find out more about leveling in WoW in general, we got you covered!

When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but two secondary stats on it instead of one.

When using Heirloom items, we recommend using those with Critical Strike and Haste, as they will slightly improve the gameplay flow while leveling. Find out more about Heirlooms in our dedicated guide!

If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.

This is our recommended Leveling Build for Survival Hunter in Midnight. Be sure to click the "Talents by Level" option in the bottom right.

To keep things simple while leveling and learning the spec, use the slider to select your level, and watch as the leveling rotation grows with each level!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

1. Use Misdirection on your pet to shift aggro onto it.
2. Use Moonlight Chakram after your very first Wildfire Bomb inside each Takedown window. This button appears in place of your Takedown button once it is activated.
3. Use Harpoon to close gaps to enemies quickly.
4. On AoE, Use Boomstick once you can get all of the packs' mobs into its fairly wide and long cone.
5. Use Wildfire Bomb on cooldown.
6. Use Kill Command on cooldown. This generates Tip of the Spear stacks that empower your other abilities, too, so try to use those stacks on all of your other abilities.
7. Spam Raptor Strike.
8. Spam Arcane Shot.
9. Use Steady Shot as a filler.

All pets do the same damage, but they vary in their utility and special abilities. For Leveling, the best pet is any Ferocity-type pet, as they heal themselves whenever they do damage, allowing you to make larger pulls.

Ferocity pets also come with Primal Rage which is a Bloodlust effect. This should be used as often as possible when you are fighting for over thirty seconds.

You can find a list of all the Pets and the abilities they bring on our Spell Summary Page.

When Leveling up from 80-90 in the Midnight Expansion in particular, there are a lot of consumables that can help ease the process, aside from the "regular" PvE consumables mentioned further below.

• Gunshoes — Massive movement speed boost that works when Mounts do not, and much faster than ground mounts.
• Goblin Glider Kit — Lets you glide off of ledges and cover vast distances quickly.
• Light-Step Hoofplates — Do not forget this Mount Equipment to make your mounts faster on the ground.
• Fried Bonefish — An incredible amount of movement speed from a Food.

Azortharion

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Azortharion, a full-timer Hunter Guidewriter, Theorycrafter, Content Creator, and top player since 2014 who is widely considered one of the best PvE Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with hundreds of top parses across all Hunter specs. He is the Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the official Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own, personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!