Survival Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle (BfA / Patch 8.3)

The main role for a Survival Hunter is simple: use your mobility to land Freezing Traps on the enemy healer and use your strong single-target cooldowns to burst your enemies down. Unlike other melee classes, Survival Hunters have strong crowd control and kiting abilities. This makes them very hard to kill and extremely deadly.

Make sure to use Camouflage before the gates open. This will guarantee an opener from you.

If you are playing against a team with stealth, make sure to use Flare to try to reveal them.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. Survival Hunters have Freezing Trap, Intimidation and Spider Sting, which can help to this end.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Use Kill Command as often as you can to generate Focus.
   • Kill Command has a 25% chance to immediately reset its cooldown. Make sure to pay attention and use Kill Command again, unless you are about to fill up your Focus bar.
2. Use Wing Clip to slow your main target.
3. Use and maintain Serpent Sting on your primary target.
4. Use one charge of Wildfire Infusion.
   • Remember, this deals area-of-effect damage and can potentially break crowd control on enemy players.
   • Use Volatile Bomb to refresh your Serpent Stings.
   • Use Pheromone Bomb when you are low on Focus because Kill Command will be generating a lot of Focus.
5. Use Carve if the enemy team is stacked.
6. Use Mongoose Bite and start gaining stacks of Mongoose Fury.
7. Use your burst rotation.
8. After your burst, perform your sustained damage rotation until your burst cooldowns are available.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage.

The great part about Survival Hunters is that most of your burst comes from on-demand cooldowns and does not require Mongoose Fury stacks when you start.

1. Use Kill Command.
2. Use Serpent Sting.
3. Use A Murder of Crows.
4. Use Coordinated Assault.
5. Use a charge of any bomb from your Wildfire Infusion talent.
   • Important Note: These bombs can break crowd control if the enemy healer is close by. You can skip using your Wildfire Infusion bombs if it can potentially break crowd control. Use it later in your burst rotation.
6. Use Carve if the enemy team is stacked.
7. Use Memory of Lucid Dreams if you are low on Focus and using this Major Essence.
8. Use your second charge of Wildfire Infusion, if you have it.
9. Aspect of the Eagle is not required for your burst rotation unless the enemy team is doing a great job at kiting your damage.
10. Use Mongoose Bite.
11. Use Kill Command as soon as it is off cooldown.
12. Keep using Mongoose Bite for stacks of Mongoose Fury.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Use Wing Clip to keep your main target slowed.
2. Use Tar Trap to slow entire teams and to help you land a Freezing Trap easier.
   • You can also use Harpoon to help you land the trap.
3. Use Kill Command as often as you can to generate Focus.
   • Kill Command has a 25% chance to immediately reset its cooldown. Make sure to pay attention and use Kill Command again, unless you are about to fill up your Focus bar.
4. Use Memory of Lucid Dreams if you are low on Focus and using this Major Essence.
5. Use and maintain Serpent Sting on your primary target.
6. Use Carve if the enemy team is stacked.
7. Depending on the situation, use Wildfire Infusion.
   • Use Volatile Bomb to refresh your Serpent Stings.
   • Use Pheromone Bomb when you are low on Focus because Kill Command will be generating a lot of Focus.
8. Use Mongoose Bite and start gaining stacks of Mongoose Fury.

Aspect of the Turtle is our main defensive cooldown. Use this when the enemy team is focusing you down and your healer can not heal you through the damage or is stuck in crowd control. Although you can not attack with this cooldown active, you still have the ability to trap. Using this to ignore incoming attacks and use Freezing Trap on an enemy healer could be crucial.

Exhilaration is a very strong instant heal. Try to stagger Aspect of the Turtle and Exhilaration and you will be very hard to kill.

Roar of Sacrifice is a great utility ability for you or your teammates. This makes the teammate you use this on immune to Critical Strikes by spells and transfers 20% of the damage they are taking to your pet. Use this when the enemy team is using their cooldowns on a teammate or yourself and when not many defensive cooldowns are available.

Tracker's Net will mostly be used for landing a trap on an enemy, but it can be used to kite enemy players when you are in trouble.

Mending Bandage instantly clears all bleeds, poisons and diseases from your target, and heals for 30% damage over 6 sec. Being attacked will stop you from using Mending Bandage. You should take this PvP talent when playing against specializations like Feral Druid or Assassination Rogues.

Survival Tactics causes Feign Death to remove all harmful magical effects, and reduces damage taken by 99% for 1.5 seconds. This is a mandatory talent when playing against classes with multiple DoTs (Affliction Warlock, Shadow Priest, Balance Druid). This reduces the enemies' overall damage and helps your healer with dispelling harmful effects. You can also use this to stop incoming spells that are being cast on you.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.