Survival Hunter DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Shadowlands 9.0.5
On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Survival Hunter in World of Warcraft Shadowlands 9.0.5.
If you were looking for WoW Classic content, please refer to our Classic DPS Hunter gear and best in slot.
Gearing a Survival Hunter
Welcome to our Gearing Page for Survival Hunter, this section will cover everything you need to know about equipping your character correctly.
For more detailed information on Stat Priority, please visit our Stats page.
For more detailed information on Gems and Enchants, please visit our Gems and Enchants page.
We also have a page dedicated to simulations for different aspects of your character. These can be found on our Simulationspage.
The Importance of "Simming Yourself" as a Survival Hunter
At this stage in the game, and despite the stat priority, there are so many variables and so many layers of optimization that you can apply to your character that there is no way for a guide or anything else to tell you exactly what gear you should wear. This is why we always recommend simulating your own character using Raidbots. The website can help you choose items, trinkets, Legendaries, Enchants/Gems, and even Covenants, Soulbinds, Conduits, and so on.
Upgrading Survival Hunter Gear with Valor Points
Patch 9.0.5 reintroduced the Valor currency. For more information on where to get Valor from, how it works, weekly caps and more, see our Valor page.
Survival Hunters should upgrade the items with Valor that will benefit the most in the moment. The easiest way to figure out what is best for your specific character is by using Raidbots' Droptimizer. You can select "+10 Weekly Chest" as a replacement for the highest item level Valor upgrade. Below is a list of item slots that you might want to upgrade first.
- Your weapon is by far your strongest item, and if you do not have a 220+ iLvl one already, this should be your first upgrade every single time.
- Trinkets have a major impact on your DPS, particularly on-use ones such as
Inscrutable Quantum Device and
Overcharged Anima Battery.
- Aside from this, the best scaling items tend to be Helms, Chests, and Leg items. Wrists and Cloaks are low-priority as they have relatively little Agility on them.
Trinkets
Thanks to Bloodmallet.com, a comprehensive list of available trinkets for Survival are listed against each other below. Keep in mind that this is only a guideline, and that you should be simming your own character if you care about optimizing it.
Note on the Inscrutable Quantum Device
While the Inscrutable Quantum Device trinket performs exceptionally
well in simulations, we generally recommend not using it for Raids. This is
because it has a lot of potential effects when pressed, including healing and
giving Mana to others in your group, all of which will not help your DPS.
This means that your second and third usages in raids will often not give a DPS benefit, significantly reducing the actual DPS value of the Trinket. For Mythic+ Scenarios, it is basically as good as it sims and a very strong choice.
Stats
Many people have a tendency to overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is nearly always better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item level gear with great stats. The exception for Survival Hunters would usually be Mastery, which is terrible in all cases and should be avoided, but keep this general principle in mind when considering gear. For more detailed stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.
Pre-Raid Best in Slot Gear for Survival Hunter
This does not include trinkets as they are covered in the above chart.
Slot | Item | Source |
---|---|---|
Helm | ![]() |
Lord Chamberlain in Halls of Atonement |
Necklace | ![]() |
Halkias in Halls of Atonement |
Shoulder | ![]() |
Margrave Stradama in Plaguefall |
Cloak | ![]() |
Devos in Spires of Ascension |
Chest | ![]() |
Mueh'zala in De Other Side |
Wrists | ![]() |
Devos in Spires of Ascension |
Gloves | ![]() |
Oryphrion in Spires of Ascension |
Belt | ![]() |
Executor Tarvold in Sanguine Depths |
Legs | ![]() |
Nalthor the Rimebinder in The Necrotic Wake |
Boots | ![]() |
Dealer Xy'exa in De Other Side |
Ring #1 | ![]() |
Blightbone in The Necrotic Wake |
Ring #2 | ![]() |
Dessia the Decapitator in Theater of Pain |
Weapon | ![]() |
Domina Venomblade in Plaguefall |
Changelog
- 19 Mar. 2021: Added a note that Mastery should nearly always be avoided.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Added a section dedicated to Valor Point upgrades.
- 09 Jan. 2021: Added note about the Inscrutable Quantum Device.
- 27 Nov. 2020: Updated the Trinket Sims.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 15 Oct. 2020: Updated the BiS Bracers, Belt, Gloves, and Rings.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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