Survival Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.1

Wildfire Bomb is a core ability for Survival. Its damage is split into its "direct" damage, which is buffed by Tip of the Spear, but it also leaves a 6-second DoT which is unaffected.

One of the most crucial things to understand about Bomb is how it targets. You throw it at a target, and then the Bomb explodes once it reaches that target. The Bomb explodes in a cone behind the target and a small radius circle around the target. In other words, if the mob is tightly bunched with a bunch of other mobs, then Bomb will hit them all, regardless of how you are facing.

If, however, the targets are a little bit more spread out, then you will need to rely on the cone behind the target, and "behind" in this case is relative to your position. In other words, you are effectively throwing your Bomb through your target, so that it will hit the ones behind it. Angling and positioning your character appropriately relative to the targets you want to hit is therefore essential to maximizing this ability, particularly in Mythic+.

Raptor Swipe makes our Raptor Strike button "upgrade" itself to an AoE version of the same button every second cast, which also does significantly increased single-target damage. This happens all on its own, and does not impact our rotational priorities much.

Takedown is Survival's primary cooldown. It is a relatively simple 1:30 cooldown that can be reduced to a 1-minute cooldown with 2 points of the Savagery Talent. It deals heavy damage on use, and then increases all your damage by 20% for 8 sec, and doubles your auto-attack speed.

The most unorthodox thing about this cooldown is its extremely short duration. In WoW, the vast majority of DPS cooldowns are 15-20 seconds long, but Takedown only lasts 8 seconds. This means that if we want to pack heavy damage-dealers into its duration, we do not have a lot of time to do so, which informs our opener choices and occasionally Trinket choices (30-second on-use trinkets are not so great, for example).

Note that 1 Tip of the Spear stack is sufficient for all abilities except Takedown, which must be cast with 2 if you have no Twin Fangs. Takedown has 2 elements, the player portion and the pet portion, and they do not happen simultaneously. If Tip is not active when the pet hits 1 second later, it will not get the Tip buff. For this reason, without Twin Fangs, Takedown must be cast with at least 2 Tip stacks. Always.

For Sentinel, Takedown's button will turn into Moonlight Chakram once pressed. This ability deals heavy damage, and can even reduce the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb by 10 sec if Stalk and Strike is chosen. We only get one use in our Takedown, but because it takes quite a long time to do all of its damage, we do not want to leave it until the end of a burst window. If we do run Stalk and Strike, it is also important to dump our Wildfire Bombs before using it, so as not to waste the cooldown reduction.

For Pack Leader, Takedown immediately procs Howl of the Pack Leader, causing your next Kill Command to summon a Beast. This "stacks" with the naturally occurring, cooldown-based Howl procs, and you do not need to worry about sending Howl procs before activating Takedown. In addition, your first Kill Command inside Takedown will also launch a Stampede. This is a roughly 30 yards long "line" of beasts that charge at your target, and it gets placed when you press the Kill Command. It deals heavy damage to all enemies inside it over 7 sec.

Because this effect is placed the moment you cast your first Kill Command in Takedown and does not move, and because it is a long line that originates from your character position, aiming and positioning this line is essential, particularly in AoE situations.

You want to place the Stampede in such a way that it will cover as many targets as possible, for as long as possible. Positioning your character so that the line extends through not just where the mobs currently are, but if they are moving, where you think they might be going, is essential to making optimal use of Stampede.