Survival Hunter DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5
On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Survival Hunter in World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5.
1. The Importance of "Simming Yourself" as a Survival Hunter
At this stage in the game, 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 Azerite traits, trinkets and combinations thereof in a way that is tailored completely to your specific character. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as there is simply no other way to take all the variables into account.
2. Best Dungeons for Survival Hunter
This is a table containing all the currently available dungeons, and listing how many good items each dungeon can drop. We classify a "good item" as pieces that have a high amount of your best stat on it (Haste), as well as low/no Mastery. This will help guide you on what dungeons to focus on when farming for upgrades.
| Dungeon | Item Slots |
|---|---|
| Temple of Sethraliss | Weapon, Chest, Bracers, Pants |
| Siege of Boralus | Belt, Ring, Shoulders, Trinket |
| Kings' Rest | Belt, Ring, Trinket |
| Freehold | Bracers, Ring, Trinket |
| Atal'Dazar | Boots, Ring, Helm |
| Shrine of the Storm | Gloves, Trinket |
| Tol Dagor | Bracers, Shoulders |
| The MOTHERLODE!! | Cloak, Chest |
| The Underrot | Belt, Pants |
| Waycrest Manor | Boots |
3. What Gear Do I Farm/Bonus Roll/Chase After?
When identifying what gear you should be aiming after, we recommend using RaidBots' Droptimizer feature. It requires the SimulationCraft Addon. Once you have the addon installed, write "/simc" into the chat in-game, and copy-pasting the contents into the RaidBots Droptimizer.
Simply select the raid and difficulty you are interested in, and RaidBots will take a while to figure out where you should spend your bonus rolls, and more.
4. 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. Keep this in mind when considering gear.
5. Trinket Simulation for Survival Hunter
A generic ranking for the top 13 single-target Trinkets can be found here:
A generic ranking for the top 13 cleave Trinkets can be found here:
6. Recommended Battle for Dazar'alor/Crucible of Storms Gear
This does not include items that are found outside of the raid, so this may be altered based on items you have available from outside sources. Note that this also does not include trinkets as they are covered in the above chart:
Also note that this is not a guide on which bosses to bonus roll. Refer to the Droptimizer guide above to plan out your bonus rolls!
7. Changelog
- 15 Apr. 2019: Updated the Raid-based Best-in-Slot list for Crucible of Storms.
- 21 Jan. 2019: Added a Recommended Gear List for Battle for Dazar'alor, and an introduction to the Raidbots Droptimizer feature.
- 10 Dec. 2018: This page has been reviewed for Patch 8.1 and no changes are necessary.
- 07 Sep. 2018: Updated the trinket simulation.
- 30 Aug. 2018: Updated the trinket simulation to include the recent SimCraft changes to RPPM.
- 26 Aug. 2018: Updated the trinket simulation to include buff to the Tiny Electromental in a Jar.
- 24 Aug. 2018: Updated the trinket simulation to include various World Quest trinkets.
- 23 Aug. 2018: Added a link to the origin spreadsheet for the simulation chart.
- 21 Aug. 2018: Updated Trinket simulations.
- 18 Aug. 2018: Gear and Trinket list updates.
- Updated the trinket simulation.
- Changed the BiS list to a more generally useful list of good dungeons to farm, as this will be relevant throughout the entire expansion.
- 12 Aug. 2018: Updated for Battle for Azeroth launch.
- 20 Jul. 2018: Made a few updates.
- Updated Celerity of the Windrunners' Haste level from 2% to 3%.
- Added Butcher's Bone Apron to the Legendary ranking.
- 19 Jul. 2018: Made several updates.
- Added a tier-piece alternative to the off-piece Best in Slot helm, if you are using both top Legendaries.
- Fixed Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish's position in the Legendary rankings, so that it no longer appears twice under the multi-target list.
- Updated the 2nd BiS trinket from the Shadow-Singed Fang to Gorshalach's Legacy.
- 18 Jul. 2018: Updated Golganneth's Vitality to just be an Argus Personal Loot drop. Revised Legendary ranking and added Soul of the Huntmaster and Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish to it.
- 18 Jul. 2018: Added Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish to the bottom of the single-target legendary ranking.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
Raid Guides
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.
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