Survival Hunter DPS Guide — 12.0.5

Midnight Season 1 has released, and with it came a lot of new content. It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season 1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided some dedicated hubs covering everything available!

Survival got some buffs in Patch 12.0.5. The changes of significance are:

• Hogstrider ( Pack Leader) now causes your Boar Beast hits to increase the damage of your next Boomstick by up to 20%.
• Sharpened Fangs now increases Wildfire Bomb's primary target damage by 15%. This simplifies the rotation as it makes Bomb worth using normally on single-target again, eliminating the previous "Wyvernmaxxing" gameplay loop. This is a good simplification.
• Lunge no longer grants Bomb cooldown reduction, but simply increases your Agility. This Agility boost is increased when dual-wielding. Blizzard seems to intend to buff dual-wielding, which is strange, as it was already the only optimal play in all situations.

In addition to this, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!

• The Voidforge Unlocks!
  The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our Gear page.
• Void Assaults are Unleashed
  Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
• Disrupt Ritual Sites
  Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.

Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes

March 17th brought significant buffs to Survival's performance particularly on single-target where it was buffed by around 7%, making it, at least on paper, the highest pure single-target Hunter spec! There were otherwise no changes to its Talent Builds or recommended Hero Talents.

Midnight Class Tuning

When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available; these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on March 24.

Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas available the week of March 31.For these two passes we err on the side of caution with the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.

The Midnight Expansion brings huge changes for all Hunter specs, primarily focused on streamlining and simplifying aspects of the kit.

• Core Mechanic: Consuming Tip of the Spear has a chance to proc Sentinel's Mark on the target, causing your Wildfire Bomb to deal increased damage to your target.
• Maximum Focus increased to 125.
• The chance of generating Sentinel's Mark procs is 10% higher during Takedown.
• After activating Takedown, the Takedown button becomes Moonlight Chakram which sends a glowy Chakram that deals heavy AoE damage as it bounces between enemies. Choice nodes can cause this Chakram to give us a charge of Wildfire Bomb and trigger Sentinel's Mark.

• The Bear has been nerfed by 40%, making it more balanced relative to the other Beasts. In the past, we often had to pay special attention to optimizing around the Bear, but now, the Beasts are much closer in terms of power.
• Our TWW S3 4PC mechanic, Stampede, is back, but it only triggers from your first Kill Command after activating Takedown. Which means that every minute, for around 8 seconds, you best hope that the mobs are not either moving, on a ledge, above you, below you, to the side of you, or behind you.

• Hatchet Toss replaces Arcane Shot as a sort of weak filler. It may only really be used for pulling things and is more flavor than it is a real rotational button.
• Takedown is a new 1:30 (baseline) cooldown that replaces and aims to take the best parts of Coordinated Assault and Flanking Strike in one ability. It deals heavy initial damage, gives you 50 Focus, charges you to the target, and then increases you and your pet's damage done by 20% for 8 sec. There are talents that can make this do increased and AoE damage and improve attack speed for its duration, or reduce its cooldown to 1:15/1:00.
• Wildfire Bomb now costs 10 Focus.
• Flamefang Pitch is a new 1-minute cooldown ability that throws down a firebomb of sorts on the ground that deals damage to targets within. Talents can give it an additional charge.
• Fury of the Eagle has been redesigned to Boomstick. Mechanically almost identical, but it fires shotgun blasts instead of hitting very fast with your Spear, and it has a far longer range. It has a 1-minute cooldown. There are talents that significant increase its single-target, dropping off its damage with more targets.
• The abilities Butchery, Flanking Strike, Mongoose Bite, Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, Spearhead, and Coordinated Assault are gone.
• The passive talents Alpha Predator, Bombardier, Born to Kill, Contagious Reagents, Cull the Herd, Sulfur-Lined Pockets, Tactical Advantage, Terms of Engagement, and Viper's Venom are gone.

Midnight introduces new Apex Talents, unlocked between Level 80 and 90. Survival gets:

1. Raptor Swipe
2. Raptor Swipe
3. Raptor Swipe

They cause Raptor Strike to occasionally turn itself into Raptor Swipe, dealing increased damage, and causing it to hit multiple targets as well. Very simple and passive, yet very powerful.

• Hunters have +2% higher max HP than previous.
• Exhilaration's cooldown is now a 1-minute flat, instead of variable (and often lower).
• Aspect of the Turtle's cooldown is now 2:00 with talents, down from 2:30.
• Aspect of the Turtle can now be a 50% damage reduction with talents, up from 30%.
• Roar of Sacrifice is now an external defensive that can be used on yourself or any friendly target to reduce their damage taken by 15% for 10 sec, but 50% of their damage taken will be taken by your pet. It will end prematurely if your pet drops below 25% health.
• Fortitude of the Bear is now 3% passive damage reduction, instead of being an active defensive cooldown.

• Hunter's Mark is now a universal 3% damage increase against a single-target. This essentially guarantees Hunter a raid spot in every raid. It is also a boost to the group in Mythic+, though it is much less potent there.
• Muzzle now spell-locks the target for 5 seconds, up from 3.
• Freezing Trap can now slow the target by 70% for 4 sec after the trap breaks.
• Intimidation is now our sole stun/stop. A choice node either reduces its cooldown to 40 sec, or makes it a 1-second AoE stun. Implosive Trap, High Explosive Trap, and Bursting Shot are all gone.
• The slows from Wing Clip and Concussive Shot are 25% and 10% stronger, respectively.
• Horsehair Tether is now a Class Tree node and not attached to the Pack Leader Hero Talent. It is a choice node with Tar-Coated Bindings, which extends Binding Shot's stun by 1 sec.
• Ghillie Suit is gone.
• Scatter Shot is gone.
• Scrappy is gone.
• Binding Shackles is gone.

• Aspect of the Cheetah's initial "super" speed burst is now twice as long with talents.
• Kill Shot is gone and is a Marksmanship-tree exclusive.
• Successfully kicking with Muzzle/ Muzzle now grants 30 Focus, up from 10, but soothing/purging with Tranquilizing Shot no longer grants Focus.

Overall, we are gaining defensiveness and mobility, while in the utility department, we are losing some things (like the ability to move mobs) but gaining others (stronger Mark, streamlined AoE stun, stronger kick and more Focus return on kicking). I think the changes are broadly positive!