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Survival (WoW Talent Tree)  

Hunter
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Survival is the utility-oriented tree for hunters. Whereas Beast Mastery and Marksmanship have different ways of increasing damage, survival works on the other aspects of the class, such as crowd control, support, and longevity. Most of the hunter's melee skills are considered survival, although melee is still not a strong focus for a hunter that focuses on this talent tree.

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Primary uses

A survival hunter in a raid or instance group can leave a debuff on his target, increasing physical damage against it. In a group with melee and other hunters, this is a great benefit to the raid. Additionally, the survivalist has superior traps when they can be used. Despite outward appearances, survival is actually not the preferred spec for PvP, however many of the slowing effects early in the tree are advantageous to PvP'ers.

Tier 1

Tier 2

(5 points must already be spent in the tree)

  • Entrapment (3) - Gives all traps an a 25% chance to entrap an enemy for 4 seconds.
  • Surefooted (3) - Reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 30%.
  • Improved Wing Clip (3) - Gives Wing Clip 20% chance to immobilize your target for 5 seconds.
  • Survival Instincts (2) Reduces all damage taken by 4% and increases the critical strike chance of your Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, and Explosive Shot by 4%.

Tier 3

(10 points required)

  • Scatter Shot) (1) - A short-range shot that deals 50% weapon damage and disorients the target for 4 sec. Any damage caused will remove the effect. Turns off your attack when used.
  • Survivalist (5) - Increases your health points by 10%.
  • Deflection (3) - Increases your chance to parry by 3%, and reduces the duration of all Disarm effects used against you by 50%. This does not stack with other Disarm duration reducing effects
  • Survival Tactics (2) - Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability and all trap spells will be resisted by 4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 4 sec.

Tier 4

(15 points required)

  • T.N.T (3) - Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 15% to stun targets for 3 sec when they land, and increases the chance your Explosive Shot will critically hit by 9%.
  • Lock and Load (3) - You have a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.

Tier 5

(20 points required)

  • ''' Hunter vs. Wild (3) - Increases you and your pet's attack power and ranged attack power equal to 30% of your total Stamina.
  • Killer Instinct (3) - Increases critical chance with all attacks by 3%.
  • Counterattack (1) - Requires Deterrence. After parring an attack, you can counterattack an enemy to immobilize them for 5 secs.

Tier 6

(25 points required)

Tier 7

(30 points required)

  • Thrill of the Hunt (3) - Returns 40% of the mana cost of any ranged attacked that is a critical hit.
  • Wyvern Sting (1) - Requires Killer Instinct. Puts target to sleep for 12 seconds, and applies a 12 second DoT when target wakes up.
  • Expose Weakness (3) - Adds a debuff to the hunter's target after a critical strike, which increase attack power of physical attacks against that target by 25% of the hunter's agility.

Tier 8

(35 points required)

  • Master Tactican (5) - Ranged attacks have a 6% to give +10% critical chance for 8 seconds.
  • Noxious Stings (3) - If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining, and increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 3%.

Tier 9

(40 points required)

  • Point of No Escape (2) - Increases the critical strike chance of all attacks on targets affected by your Frost Trap, Freezing Trap and Freezing Arrow by 6%.
  • Sniper Training (3) - Increases the damage done by your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot and Explosive Shots by 6% if you are 30 yards or further from your target, and increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%.
  • Trap Mastery (1) - Frost Trap and Freezing Trap - Increases the duration by 30%.
Immolation and Explosive Trap - Increases the damage done by 30%.
Snake Trap - Increases the number of snakes summoned by 30%.

Tier 10

(45 points required)

  • Hunting Party (5) - Your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.25% of the maximum mana per second. Lasts for 15 sec.

Tier 11

(50 points required)

Typical Points Spent

Survival in unique for the hunter talent trees because there is no one way that people spend their points. In fact, there are many different variations, depending on the hunter's goals and preferences since very few of the talents are vastly superior, and none of them are completely horrible. Because of the great variation in possible builds, do not take the builds listed here very seriously, as you have a good deal of flexibility as a survivalist. The only thing that is consistent across all survival builds is that they have Expose Weakness (33 points in survival) and Mortal Shots (20 points in marksmanship). How they arrive at that point, and what they do with their other 8 points afterwards, is almost completely open.

One of the foremost decisions you need to make on survival is what your focus is. Most survival hunters are raiders, but some focus on utility and some focus on pure damage. There are, of course, also players that use more of a PvP spec.

Sample pure raid DPS build (0/20/41) There are several variations but this is a very common build.

  • 5/5 Lethal Shots
  • 5/5 Improved Hunter's Mark
  • 2/2 Go For the Throat
  • 1/1 Aimed Shot
  • 2/2 Rapid Killing
  • 5/5 Mortal Shots
  • 3/3 Monster Slaying
  • 3/3 Humanoid Slaying
  • 3/3 Hawk Eye
  • 1/3 Entrapment
  • 5/5 Survivalist
  • 3/3 Surefooted
  • 2/2 Improved Feign Death
  • 2/2 Survival Instincts
  • 3/3 Killer Instinct
  • 5/5 Lightning Reflexes
  • 2/3 Thrill of the Hunt
  • 3/3 Expose Weakness
  • 5/5 Master Tactician
  • 1/1 Readiness
You may ask why get Improved Hunter's Mark instead of Efficiency and the simple answer is that it further adds to your raid buff capabilities and the mana return you see from Thrill of the Hunt should be enough for mana pots to keep you in the safe zone easily... This build focused exclusively on dealing damage, and ignores many of the talents that would be useful under other contexts. Some other variations include (0/28/33) and (5/20/36).

Sample Self-Dps Survival Hunter 7/20/34 This is when the hunter still buffs the raid great but takes a few points to add to his personal Dps.

  • 5/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk.
  • 2/2 Focused Fire
  • 5/5 Lethal Shots
  • 5/5 Improved Hunter's Mark (Grab efficiency if another hunter already has improved hunter's mark)
  • 2/2 Go For the Throat
  • 1/1 Aimed Shot
  • 2/2 Rapid Killing
  • 5/5 Mortal Shots
  • 3/3 Monster Slaying
  • 3/3 Humanoid Slaying
  • 3/3 Hawk Eye
  • 1/3 Entrapment
  • 5/5 Survivalist
  • 3/3 Surefooted
  • 2/2 Improved Feign Death
  • 2/2 Survival Instincts
  • 3/3 Killer Instinct
  • 5/5 Lightning Reflexes
  • 1/3 Thrill of the Hunt (You can get Scatter Shot instead of this point for more utility if you feel confidant about your mana)
  • 3/3 Expose Weakness

Simply getting Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Focused Fire a hunter will boost his Dps a decent amount while still granting full Expose Weakness buff.

Sample Utility Hunter

This (0/21/40) build gives up Readiness, but makes up for it by gaining Scatter Shot, as well as several other unique skills in survival that the DPS hunter didn't have free points to pick up. They lose Master Tactician as a result.

  • 5/5 Lethal Shots
  • 5/5 Efficiency
  • 2/2 Go For the Throat
  • Aimed Shot
  • 2/5 Improved Hunter's Mark
  • 5/5 Mortal Shots
  • Scatter Shot
  • 3/3 Humanoid Slaying
  • 3/3 Hawk Eye
  • 3/3 Entrapment
  • 1/5 Deflection
  • 2/2 Clever Traps
  • 3/5 Survivalist
  • Deterrence
  • 3/3 Surefooted
  • 2/2 Survival Instincts
  • 3/3 Killer Instinct
  • Counterattack
  • 5/5 Lightning Reflexes
  • 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt
  • Wyvern Sting
  • 3/3 Expose Weakness

The utility build has traps that can be used consecutively, two emergency crowd control effects, and some better support skills. One could describe this as the most useful build to run heroics, but many of the perks of this build are wasted against raid targets.

Sample Pvp build

A not so common build is survival PvP and focuses on the ability to survive and CC your enemys. (7/22/32)

  • 5/5 Endurance Training
  • 2/2 Focused Fire
  • 5/5 Lethal Shots
  • 5/5 Efficiency
  • 5/5 Improved Arcane Shot
  • 1/1 Aimed Shot
  • 5/5 Mortal Shots
  • 1/1 Scatter Shot
  • 3/3 Humanoid Slaying
  • 3/3 Hawk Eye
  • 3/3 Entrapment
  • 2/3 Improved Wing Clip
  • 2/2 Clever Traps
  • 5/5 Survivalist
  • 1/1 Deterrence
  • 3/3 Surefooted
  • 3/3 Killer Instinct
  • 1/1 Counterattack
  • 5/5 Lightning Reflexes
  • 1/1 Wyvern Sting

See Hunter Talent Builds for other common and not-so-common specs.

Common Questions

What gear do I look for as a survivalist?

High agility gear is your primary concern, because of Lightning Reflexes and Expose Weakness. On most of your gem slots, you will ignore the bonus and just put in an agility gem, while using what is needed to keep your meta gem active if have one on. Survival is a crit-based build, so crit rating is also beneficial to help fuel Thrill of the Hunter and Expose Weakness, and attack power is not unwelcome. Because of Surefooted, a survival hunter generally needs considerably less hit rating, and Thrill of the Hunt helps with mana regen. However, a survival hunter will probably be using a 1:1.5 rotation, which is very mana-hungry, so you may still want intellect and mana regen.

Should I get Readiness?

The answer to this question is another question: Do you plan on taking Master Tactician? MT is actually not a very good talent, adding roughly 3% crit (averaged out) for 5 talent points. Compare this to Killer Instinct or Lethal Shots that add a full percent with each point. Utility-minded hunters often do not bother with Readiness because they have to give up Scatter Shot and at least 5 other points of talents they would otherwise want to get it. While Readiness is a wonderful tool, it is not worth this sort of loss. However, hunters that have chosen to spec survival to help their raid, and still want to maximize damage, will probably have Master Tactician, and can spring for the extra point since Scatter Shot isn't much of a consideration during raids. Ironically, about the only thing they use it for is to reset the cooldown on Rapid Fire.

Why do some specs only have 2/3 in Expose Weakness? Isn't that important??

Expose Weakness will trigger from any crit. If you crit 30% of the time, roughly 3 out of 10 shots will start Expose Weakness. Would it be acceptable to have just 2 out of 10 do that? Would it be active often enough?
In that particular case, no, however raiding hunters often have a much higher percent chance to crit, and having just 2 points instead of 3 does not significantly affect the uptime of Expose Weakness. Those same hunters are fighting for free points at the end of the tree, and would rather have 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt instead.

How much less damage does a survival hunter do, and is it worth it?

Survival hunters do several hundred less DPS than a beast master, on average. However, EW adds a quarter of the hunter's agility as attack power against the target. A hunter with 1000 agi would effectively give everyone in the raid an extra 250 AP. Players estimate that the DPS for a single point of AP averages somewhere between .25 and .30 DPS, so this is like adding an extra ~60 DPS to each other physical attacker. In a group with 3 hunters, 3 rogues, a DPS warrior, and various tanks, the DPS difference is more than made up for.

However, that's only for the first survival hunter. There is very little incentive for a guild to take multiple survivalists to their raids.

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