Survival Hunter Shadowlands Leveling Guide From 1 to 60
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Survival Hunter leveling guide for Shadowlands Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Hunter leveling guide.
Gear Options
When leveling up, you should 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 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.
Level by Level Rotation and Talents
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
Talents to Level Up as a Survival Hunter
Your first talent row unlocks at Level 15.
Your talent set up should be as follows.
- Level 15:
Terms of Engagement for Questing,
Alpha Predator for Dungeons
- Level 25:
Guerrilla Tactics
- Level 30:
Trailblazer
- Level 35:
Bloodseeker
- Level 40:
Posthaste
- Level 45:
Flanking Strike
- Level 50:
Wildfire Infusion
Rotation to Level Up as a Survival Hunter
Starting at Level 1, you only have one main attack
ability: Steady Shot.
Raptor Strike is your signature ability. It deals a good amount of damage and spends 30 Focus.
Kill Command is your other signature ability. It generates 15 Focus that is spent mostly on
Raptor Strike. Most of your time will be alternating Kill Command and
Raptor Strike. It also has a 25% chance to reset its own cooldown from Level 28 onwards.
Serpent Sting is a 12-second DoT that should be kept up at all times.
Harpoon allows you to quickly pull yourself towards a target to get in melee range. With
Terms of Engagement chosen, you can use this pretty much all of the time while leveling.
Wildfire Bomb deals heavy damage over 6 seconds on an 18-second cooldown. At Level 25, it gains a second charge via the
Guerrilla Tactics Talent. Never use them back-to-back as this will override the 6-second DoT and waste it!
Carve is your signature AoE ability. It hits up to 5 nearby targets and from Level 32, reduces the cooldown of
Wildfire Bomb by 1 seconds for each target hit, which is its primary purpose. Use it in place of
Raptor Strike when possible.
Aspect of the Eagle is a 1.5-minute cooldown makes
Raptor Strike usable from range.
Coordinated Assault is your main cooldown. It increases your damage done by 20%, and increases the chance for
Kill Command to reset its cooldown by 25%.
Steel Trap can either be used to immobilize targets you currently do not want to fight, or it can be used on targets you are hitting for more damage.
Kill Shot does extremely heavy damage, but it can only be used on targets below 20% health. Use it to kill off low-health enemies.
Flanking Strike should be used on cooldown in place of
Kill Command, as it generates 30 Focus. It is basically a much stronger Kill Command.
In addition to these baseline abilities, there are a number of passive effects that you unlock throughout the leveling process that are worth knowing about:
Mastery: Spirit Bond increases the damage of you and your pet's Focus-spending abilities. It also heals you and your pet for 1% of your maximum health every 5 seconds. More Mastery increases the damage and healing.
- From Level 28,
Kill Command will have a 25% chance to reset its own cooldown when used, allowing you to use multiple times in a row.
Survival Hunter War Mode Talents for Leveling
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Survival Hunter-specific PvE talents.
Survival Hunter PvP Talents for Leveling
Mending Bandage instantly clears all bleeds, poisons, and diseases from you, and heals you for 30% of your maximum health over 6 seconds. You cannot use this while being attacked.
Dragonscale Armor is useful for the damage reduction. A lot of the most powerful mobs in the open world are casters, and Survival survivability is a tad low to begin with. This helps make up for it.
Hunting Pack is a useful mobility option, allowing you to use
Aspect of the Cheetah much more often.
Survival Tactics,
Viper Sting,
Spider Sting,
Scorpid Sting,
and
Hi-Explosive Trap have limited use in PvE content in terms of
increasing your damage in the open world, but they can be situationally
useful.
Best Leveling Pet for Survival Hunter
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 and rely on your pet's own damage to heal it up.
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.
Congratulations!
Congratulations on reaching Level 60! Now that you have hit Level 60, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 10 May 2021: Updated the recommeded Level 45 Talent.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 27 Oct. 2020: Removed deprecated "trinket-style" PvP Talent section.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Guide added.
This guide has been written by Azortharion, a theorycrafter of all things Hunter-related for many years. He is an accomplished player with dozen of top parses for all specs throughout the game's history. He is also the Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the Hunter Class Discord, and you can watch his stream on Twitch. He even has his own personal Discord channel where you can get notifications about when the guides get updated and have direct communications with him.
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