Survival Hunter PvP Talents and Builds (Shadowlands / Patch 9.2.5)

Level	Choices
15	✔ Viper's Venom	✘ Terms of Engagement	? Alpha Predator
25	✔ Guerrilla Tactics	✘ Hydra's Bite	✘ Butchery
30	✘ Trailblazer	? Natural Mending	✔ Camouflage
35	✘ Bloodseeker	✔ Steel Trap	✘ A Murder of Crows
40	✔ Born To Be Wild	✔ Posthaste	✘ Binding Shot
45	✘ Tip of the Spear	✘ Mongoose Bite	✔ Flanking Strike
50	✘ Birds of Prey	✘ Wildfire Infusion	✔ Chakrams

While the above table provides a generally accurate overview of the viability of talents, some finer points are discussed in the sections that follow, and we recommend you read those for a deeper understanding.

Viper's Venom is the best choice in this tier. This will simply increase your overall damage output and gives you powerful Serpent Stings from range.

Guerrilla Tactics is the best choice in this tier. This gives your Wildfire Bomb 2 charges and increases its initial damage. This talent increases your already strong sustained and burst damage.

Camouflage is the default choice for nearly all situations, allowing you to open from Stealth. Natural Mending can be used as an alternative, but it is rarely better.

Steel Trap is the best option in this tier. It is an extremely useful CC that also can be used to deal damage in some situations. We talk more about it in our Rotation and Playstyle section.

Posthaste is always chosen for this tier, providing additional mobility and a way to break slows, snares, and roots on a regular basis.

Tip of the Spear is ideal here, providing the best damage with no extra buttons in your kit.

Wildfire Infusion is the best choice in this tier, providing substantial benefits to your bombs with no extra buttons added to your kit.

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has their uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful, but can be replaced with other PvP talents, depending on your team's goal.

Roar of Sacrifice instructs your pet to protect a friendly target from critical strikes, making attacks against that target unable to be critical strikes, but 20% of all damage taken by that target is also taken by the pet. It lasts 12 seconds and this is a powerful defensive cooldown that is helpful for you and your teammates. With a cooldown of only 1 minute, this is an ability that your healer can call-out to use if they are stuck in crowd control. This is a mandatory PvP talent.

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. This is a mandatory talent when playing against a DoT class.

Chimaeral Sting does offer an interesting range of effects. When used, this will apply a slow, then a silence, then a damage/healing reduction on your target. This could be used if your team wants to focus a healer or caster for most of the game. Use this during your burst rotation.

Mending Bandage instantly clears all bleeds, poisons, and diseases from your target, and heals for 30% damage over 6 seconds. Being attacked will stop you from using Mending Bandage. You should consider this PvP talent when playing against specializations like Feral Druids or Assassination Rogues, or if you are against another Venthyr Hunter as you can clear Flayed Shot using this ability.

Never ever take Sticky Tar, as it is bugged and can lead to DPS increases for the enemy team.

Pets do not have talent trees, and instead have their own types of specialization (Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity).

Each specialization gives your pet a few abilities. Cunning provides the ability Master's Call, by far the best pet ability to have. To get the Mortal Wounds debuff from your pets, you will need one of the following pets:

• Hyena
• Raptor
• Rodent

You can also use a Ferocity pet which grants 10% Leech if you are not comfortable using Master's Call, though we highly recommend it:

• Carrion Bird
• Ravager
• Scorpid
• Wasp