In the first installment of the Survivalism post series, I discussed my spec in-depth. It has changed slightly - I exchanged Monster Slaying, Entrapment and Go for the Throat for Deflection and Savage Strikes.
I know, I know. The much-lauded BRK would probably slap me and steal all my BRK Cool Points for enhancing my melee skills at the cost of my pet, but... screw him. This is my spec. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
One of the things I've tried to shoot for is extreme versatility. My traps cool down before they end, meaning I can keep a mob trapped in perpetuity -- there is zero time required for the mob to chase after me, enabling me to do two things most hunters cannot: emergency-trap a mob standing right next to the healer without consideration of threat (bad, bad strategy, but sometimes necessary), and trap casters. If you lay a trap at the feet of a frozen mob it will go into effect immediately, refreshing the duration of the trap, meaning I can keep him trapped as long as I'm able to stand still.
A word on damage: I've run quite a few instances since the last Survivalism post, running SW Stats the whole time. I was the #1 damage dealer throughout the entire instance every time but twice - a fire mage and one epic Rogue managed to outdo me (with the help of MY Expose Weakness!). And I don't even have Mortal Shots! Don't listen to those who tell you Survival is broken and worthless; they have no facts to back it up. Give them an RS crit + Counterattack combo from me, with bells on, and then fill them full of arrows.
Speaking of things Marksmen and Beastmasters can't do - I've Deterrence tanked the last few percent of Warlord Kalithresh during his +100% attack speed tantrum after we missed an aquarium and the tank bit it. That was satisfying, oh yes. Mmmm. Sweet justification.
Survival hunters are also more than capable of being a primary crowd control class. I can't remember the last time a mob resisted one of my traps and there wasn't something I could do about it, and resisting two of my traps in a row is unheard of - and even if they do, so what? If you make sure the party waits for your cooldown before the pull, you get two traps right off the bat. If the second trap sticks, great, your cooldown will STILL be up before the trap ends, and if it somehow magically resists the second trap, Readiness will be there to save the day.
This isn't a discussion of basic Hunter strategy, but rather specific things that can be done with a heavy Survival spec. If you need such a thing, go visit BRK and read through his extensive collection of "L2HUNTR" posts and weep as he shows you how you've been wrong all this time.
15 comments:
'Bout Time we had a survivalist blog 'round these parts. /applaud
Keep up the good work.
BigRedKitty
SV has something not a lot of specs for any class has. Redundancy.
From your ramblings it appears as if you aren’t spec’d to do anything but recover from your mistakes/resists.
Pick up mortal shots. Drop the ‘garbage’ from the SV tree. Then you’ll do everything you’re already doing AND beat the rogue and fire mage.
-guy
PS: Slaying talents, as much as you want to believe that this is YOUR spec… are not optional. Fix that.
Aww, my first acidic comment! *sniff* ...good times.
I do have Humanoid slaying, and something I haven't seen a lot of in instances is... yep, Beasts, Giants, and Dragonkin.
In order to get 5/5 Mortal Shots, I would have to drop either Resourcefulness or Expose Weakness in their entirety. It's worth more to me to be able to keep Trapping on the science side (as opposed to the art side) as much as possible, and allowing physical damage dealers that extra AP helps push the group as a whole up. More tank damage means more threat means other DDs can cut loose that much sooner.
Oh trust me, I’m very aware of the mechanics surrounding EW.
But if you think that mortal shots isn’t possible with EW, then you rely on resourcefulness too much.
Your primary job is physical DPS. All else is secondary to what any other class can do just as well, if not better.
I don’t doubt that you are a trapping machine. But as I made mention last week to someone, even if your freeze traps did a crap ton of DPS to a frozen target, it still wouldn’t be worth it. You are there to kill. Not play with your traps all day. Set your first trap early enough and never worry about the missing cool down seconds.
Unless you’re saying that you use the talents for mana saved on melee swings.. in which case.. god help you.
-guy
Aww, c'mon, Raptor Strike is so espensive! And that Wing Clip I spam for an extra 30 DPS can really put a hurtin' on my mana.
Truth.
Guy,
Saying "your job is DPS" reeks as much as telling a priest "your job is healing" -- and ordering that player to get rid of that shadow stuff.
If he's most comfortable being the master of CC at the expense of a few points of DPS, AND his actions help the group succeed in the instances, then all you're doing is whining because he's not you.
You're right. He's not me. Nobody but me is that good.
-guy
Thanks for visiting! Even you, Guy. I sense a kindred spirit, and those of us with... Gomer Pyle-magnitude egos (heheh) have to stick together in the long run.
Cheers,
/cheers back.
Seriously, keep up the good work. ;)
"If you lay a trap at the feet of a frozen mob it will go into effect immediately, refreshing the duration of the trap, meaning I can keep him trapped as long as I'm able to stand still."
I never knew this, was wondering where my trap was going when I put a trap close to an already trapped mob.
PS: I'm a BM(42)/SV(19) spec hunter, and must admit the survival side of things has got very tempting as I've put more and more points into it.
And Guy, you have to consider that our new Surv-friend with a blog isn´t raiding as much as you are. And in instances hunter-CC is woth a lot more then in most raids, thats where DPS matters the most.
/Breledorm, trapping hunter at EU-Aszune
I can see the point that in raids where trash can't be crowd controlled the highest DPS spec would usually be most preferable, since without the need for CC or pet tanking or anything else, a Hunter becomes a one-trick monkey. Well, maybe two, if your raid has asked you to do the pulling.
But there is still a scaling element: Expose Weakness. It applies to the entire raid (and their pets), boosting the damage of all those rogues and other hunters and enhancement shaman and DPS warriors and ret pallies. And the other Survivalist who's plugging away with his melee weapon and doesn't see the fiery gkick rapidly approaching.
TOTALLY AGREE about SV scalability..
Pre 2.0 the SV spec reigned supreme because of LR, I think it may take a little bit of time to get there, but in the long run I think SV will win again.
It just scales better than the others.
Though MM comes close..
And there is something to be said about the new epic armor pieces from the 25 man raids which give some pet buffs.
It’s an interesting race..
-guy
LR made survival awesomely scalable, way back when Agility was the main goal of the Hunter class.
Current itemization focuses on lots of other great things, like hit rating and straight up attack power. It's a good change, but it makes LR a much weaker talent than it should be.
I read an interview with the devs some time ago on wowinsider, discussing class balancing, and Lightning Reflexes was specifically mentioned as something that could use an adjustment to bring it closer in line with their vision of the Hunter class.
I've seen Armory profiles for epic hunters that have ranged attack power at insane levels and less Agility than me, and maintaining a very high level of Agility to feed my Expose Weakness is definitely a goal of my spec.
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