Survival Hunter DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.0.7

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 Simulations page.

Patch 10.0.7 introduces the Onyx Annulet, a special Ring with unique sockets that can only be filled by Primordial Gemstones, unique gems with special effects, but no secondary stats. The ring itself has no secondary stats either.

Currently, a fully upgraded Onyx Annulet with the best 424 iLvl Gems available is equivalent to a ~445 iLvl Ring with a Socket. A socket adds roughly 15 iLvls of DPS value to a Ring. It is much more powerful for single-target than it is for Mythic+, so you should sim yourself in both scenarios to be sure of what to use.

For more information on the best Primordial Gemstones to put in your Onyx Annulet, check out our Enchants and Gems page below.

For more information regarding the Onyx Annulet, the Primordial Gemstones, and how to obtain them, check out our dedicated guide for it below.

• Survival Hunter 2pc increases Raptor Strike/ Mongoose Bite/ Carve/ Butchery damage by 10%.
• Survival Hunter 4pc gives the abilities above a 20% chance to make your next such ability free, and deal 50% increased damage.

It is impossible for a guide to provide a truly accurate BiS Tier List. This is because the values of stats, procs, and so on, will depend a lot on your other gear, your character's race, and more. Everything affects everything else. Furthermore, stats are generally close together in value, enough so that Item Level becomes the most important aspect of whether you equip a new piece of gear.

For these reasons, we do not provide a "BiS List" on this guide, and would suggest that you stay clear of them. Instead, when deciding if an item is an upgrade, you should sim yourself using Raidbots. On this page, we will focus on more general and universal guidance, but it is wise to sim yourself for practically all gearing decisions.

If you are not familiar with Raidbots, you can use our Raidbots Guide to get started.

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 "+16 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 should always be the top priority to upgrade.
• Trinkets have a major impact on your DPS, particularly on-use ones.
• 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.

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. For more stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.

As mentioned above, it is highly advised that you sim yourself for all gear slots. Trinkets are different than most gear, as they are far more unique, with way more than just secondary stat distribution setting them apart from each other. For this reason, we feel confident enough to list some of the best overall Trinkets.

Unless otherwise noted, Raid Trinkets are the best of all simply because they go to much higher item levels than Mythic+ can offer. The situation can be different when comparing Heroic Raid Trinkets to Mythic+ ones, and you should sim your own trinket setup to find out what is optimal.

1. Manic Grieftorch is excellent and BiS for nearly all situations, even with no deaths. But deaths are common in most forms of difficult content, making this even better.
2. Whispering Incarnate Icon is very strong, even if nobody in your party is wearing it.
3. Storm-Eater's Boon deserves a mention for having amazing DPS, but it locks you from movement while using it, which can be a hazard. Great in theory, but not so much in practice.
4. Spiteful Storm suffers, because no target lives long enough for it to be truly powerful. An unfortunately weak last-boss trinket.
5. Decoration of Flame suffers from its low item level, and being essentially a Melee trinket. It has a defensive benefit, which is worth noting.
6. Controlled Current Technique is poor, as we do not have anything relevant that scales from our auto-attacks.

1. Windswept Pages has a simple, powerful Haste proc and is great for all situations.
2. Hunger of the Pack is a "stat-stick" Trinket that provides a ton of passive Crit. Great for all situations and with a movement speed benefit to boot.
3. Bottle of Spiraling Winds is a decent, but not great Agility proc trinket.
4. Windscar Whetstone is excellent for AoE, but somewhat weak in single-target. A good trinket to have, but not a "master-of-all" like the Trinkets above.
5. Eye of Skovald has excellent single-target, but is pretty one-dimensional and does not do AoE well.
6. Algeth'ar Puzzle Box has strong burst potential, but Mastery is not fantastic for Survival and it has a 2-second cast time, making it undesirable.
7. Horn of Valor is unfortunately weak, even when paired with Coordinated Assault, the tuning simply is not there.
8. Ruby Whelp Shell is just weak and not useful.

We highlight Jewelry items because they have by far the biggest secondary stat pool, meaning that they can vary quite a lot between them even at the same item level.

Our main consideration here is avoiding Mastery, and maximizing Crit and Haste.

Below are some noteworthy Jewelry items.

1. Jeweled Signet of Melandrus from Court of Stars is a slightly special ring, as it increases our auto-attack damage. This is not gamechanging, but since the stats are also good, it is a good ring to consider and farm.
2. Elemental Lariat is a necklace crafted by Jewelcrafting. Its proc is moderately powerful, and it will beat other Necklaces of its item level.
3. Other than these two special items, you should chase Haste and Critical Strike, but other stats are fine too. Sim yourself!

Weapons are just like normal armor items, in that item level nearly always wins. In fact, this is even more true for weapons, since weapon damage is such an overwhelmingly powerful stat.

To make this list, we have looked at all viable "BiS"-tier items from Mythic Dungeons, and counted out which dungeons drop the most of them. For the most part, we have focused on Haste/Crit items, or at least a good amount of one of them where possible, and we have filtered down to the strongest Trinkets. When equal, we have focused on items with a higher stat budget, but we list the items that drop from the dungeons so that you can make a decision based on your own gearing situation. The baseline ranking assumes that you have none of the BiS items to start with.

We include ALL Dragonflight Dungeons in this list, including ones that are not available on Mythic+. Keep in mind that a "bad" dungeon at Mythic+ will vastly outperform any non-Mythic+ Dungeon, as item level is nearly always king.

Dungeon	"BiS" Items
Halls of Valor (Mythic+ Only)	Neck, Cloak, Chest, Bracers
Temple of the Jade Serpent (Mythic+ Only)	Cloak, Gloves, and Trinket
Shadowmoon Burial Grounds (Mythic+ Only)	Helm, Neck, Cloak, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Bracers, Boots, and Ring
Ruby Life Pools	Shoulders, Cloak, Gloves, Weapon
Court of Stars (Mythic+ Only)	Helm, Cloak, Belt, Ring
The Azure Vault	Shoulders, Cloak, Legs, Ring
Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr	Neck, Bracers, and Ring
Brackenhide Hollow	Neck, Belt, and Weapon
Algeth'ar Academy	Boots, Ring, Weapon
Neltharus	Helm, Cloak, Chest
Halls of Infusion	Ring and Trinket
The Nokhud Offensive	Trinket

This guide assumes that you understand the basics of Crafting, Reagents, and materials. I will explain how to best strategize your crafting for your character. Check out our Dragonflight Professions page below to learn about crafting in general and how it works.

Best Way to Spend Sparks of Ingenuity as a Survival Hunter in Dragonflight

Spark of Ingenuity is a time-gated profession material used to craft Epic items in Dragonflight. You can read more about obtaining Spark of Ingenuity and how it works on the page below.

The best way to decide how to spend your Sparks is to use Raidbots Droptimizer. Plug in your character then set the Item Level appropriately. Early in Season 1, this will be 405, but with some farming, you can get them to 418 rather quickly.

If you do not have Raidbots Premium, you can manually import the relevant items (listed in Droptimizer) into Gear Compare. Remember to set correct item levels, gems, and enchants where applicable to ensure an accurate sim result.

Then, run the sim as you usually would and note the results. Note that weapons cost 2 Spark of Ingenuity and that you should halve the DPS increase for them to calculate your DPS per Spark correctly.

Aside from your sim result, you should think critically about the longevity of your crafted items. Will you replace this slot from the Raid or Mythic+ soon? If yes, you should probably craft something else. All items can be upgraded later on to higher item levels, but if you need character power in the short-term and you are happy to farm Mythic+ to get a lot of 405 iLvl gear, which you can upgrade to 415 with Valor; then you may consider the Unique Embellished Crafts discussed below.

Finally, consider your tier pieces. Early on, you will likely want the first 4 tier pieces that you can get, regardless of their slots. Thus, having a crafted item in a tier slot can risk wasting the Craft if you need to use that slot for a tier item.

There are two types of Embellished Items; Items that have special effects built-in, such as Elemental Lariat, and other Rare items with Optional Reagents added, such as Blue Silken Lining or Fang Adornments.

You can wear two Embellished items at a time, and you can combine pre-Embellished items with regular items that have been Embellished with an Optional Reagent.

Below, we rank the best Embellishments.

1. Obsidian Seared Halberd/ Kinetic Pillar of the Isles/ Primal Molten Greataxe with the Blue Silken Lining Embellishment are powerful weapons that can be upgraded to iLvl 418. This is a mighty craft that will work for you long-term. As for which of the three to Craft, they are equal, and you should craft the cheapest.
2. Elemental Lariat is an excellent choice. It does not interfere with tier; it has a high secondary stat budget. It can be crafted with your ideal secondaries. Its proc is "customizable," as it relies on your other Gems to determine its stat. The best Craft with your third Spark.
3. With endgame gear, the combination of Ancestor's Dew Drippers and Wind Spirit's Lasso to enable their powerful set bonus can be even better than a Lariat combo. This set bonus will take two of your Embellishment slots, as well as your Shoulder Tier Slot. With absolute peak gear, it can be 1% better than Lariat setups, but you should sim your own character to be sure.

You can keep these items for a long while. Eventually, you may end up replacing your Weapon with a higher iLvl Raid one, for example. In that case, look below for other strong Embellished items to replace it with.

1. Any Non-Embellished Craft Craft with Potion Absorption Inhibitor is going to be strong here. Which Craft you use should be simmed, with the general idea being to cover gaps in your gear and increase your overall item level without impacting your 4pc bonus. The general best choice for your fourth Spark.
2. For PvE, other crafts are generally not worth considering.

Professions present an opportunity to get bonuses that are otherwise unobtainable. In Dragonflight, a few of them also provide distinct combat benefits.

That said, these advantages are subtle, and most Profession benefits are essentially to save you gold, rather than combat benefits, with a few key exceptions.

Alchemy is the only Profession with specific combat advantages. Not strong, but better than nothing.

• A movement speed buff when you use your combat potion.
• A self-heal when you use your combat potion.
• Reduced damage taken from the side-effects of Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage
• Longer-lasting Phials to save you gold.

Leatherworking does not provide gear or benefits that are not obtainable without it, but since crafting is a bigger part of Dragonflight than previous expansions, you can save a lot of gold in the long run by crafting your own gear as a Leatherworker, rather than relying on others to do it for you.