Switching to Survival

Posted by Weezzii in , , ,

Well, like many Hunters out there, I'm abandoning BM for the time being to test the waters elsewhere. As Drotara aptly stated, "Marksmanship received no notable buffs to compensate for the beating they took with Steady Shot." [referring to the Steady Shot nerf - for you non-hunters]
So I made the move into Survival. The EJ forum-goers are putting SV at the top of the theoretical dps charts for Hunter specs, so it was time for me to take the plunge and see what it's all about. Last night I spent some time at the practice dummy with some rather lackluster results. I headed off to do a pair of heroics after that and found marginally better success, but dps at levels that are clearly lower than I should be capable of producing.

After re-thinking some things I hit the dummies two more times before heading to bed, and it felt like things started to make more sense to me for some reason. Watching cooldowns and playing reactionary off of them came easier.

I popped online today and spent about 5 more minutes at the dummies going over (I guess what you could call) some shot discipline. Over-writing Explosive Shots is a sound way to make yourself come in somewhere towards the bottom of the meter... so it's something to be watchful of, for sure.

Shortly thereafter a guildie threw together a pug 10man Vault run and asked me to tag along. The results were better than I'd seen last night... I ended up at about 3750dps, with Explosive Shot making up about 48% of my overall damage (ideally, I suppose, I'd like that to even be a little bit higher).

After that, the raid converted to a 25man Vault group...

This raid I found to be fairly encouraging. I ended up at 5251dps. I uploaded the WWS here: click!
Disregard other people's numbers, as this was also a pug group. Interestingly, Recount and WWS report different numbers for the encounter... about 100dps off.
Recount said Explosive Shot made up about 42% of overall damage, while WWS is citing that it was only 35% -- but they agree about the total damage done by Explosive Shot. I'll have to take some more time looking at this to see where exactly the discrepancy is located. One additional note, is that I couldn't stay at 30+ yards from the boss. If it was reasonable for me to reposition a little bit to get back into that range, then I would... but in many cases it would have involved a trip to the other side of the room, which I wasn't going to make.

Regardless, 5k+ dps the night after spec'ing into this has got my attention. For those out there with other thoughts/insights/comments, I had an [Elixir of Mighty Agility] on as well as [Poached Northern Sculpin]... mostly because they were already in my bags at the time.

Additionally, I'm prioritizing shots as follows:
Serpent Sting > Explosive Shot > Kill Shot > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot
.. and of course watching for LnL procs and using Rapid Fire.
Glyphs I'm currently using:
Imp AotH
Serpent Sting
Steady Shot

My spec: 2/18/51

I have a number of concerns about staying with this spec however. The biggest is that utilizing (to its fullest extent) [Sniper Training] is not realistic on some fights. Malygos, Sartharion, and Thaddius immediately come to mind. That may not seem like a big deal... just a couple of bosses that I can't make the best of my dps. The problem however... is that these bosses are tuned to be more dps dependent to kill them.

Ah well, I still need to play around more. There's more dps that can be gained from what I'm doing right now... not to mention the dps that can be gained from whatever I'm not doing right now.

Thoughts/Comments? LOLSURVIVAL?

4 comments

Anonymous   says January 21, 2009 at 3:36 PM

I'd kill for 5200+dps. That being said, is why I have now rolled a hunter.

/sad Rogue face

-Knavve

Anonymous   says January 21, 2009 at 3:41 PM

I'd kill for 5200 DPS too.

But I'm not givin' up BM anytime soon. The other trees aren't fun for me, and if I'm not havin' fun, then there is no point in playin'! *nodnod*

Kobeathris   says January 22, 2009 at 9:01 AM

Weezzii.... How about Personal DPS Versus Raid DPS? Is there much tradeoff either pro or con for BM versus Survival? I know Survival used to be better RDPS overall once you got a ton of agility, how do they compare now?

-- Cobeathris

Weezzii   says January 22, 2009 at 10:07 AM

For the most part, BM really took a dominant position when wotlk came out for both personal dps and raid dps, I think.
That's not to say that the other two trees didn't provide solid raid dps - because some people will show you MM and SV spec'd folks that were really using their abilities to the max and as a result, they turned out some very impressive numbers.
BM has been easy-mode for producing exceptional numbers though... pet dps (particularly the scorpid) was ridiculously overpowered.

For comparing BM vs SV, then you're looking at two different primary stats. As BM, stack attack power... as SV, stack agility. So, as a matter of gearing yourself up, that's something to be thinking about anyway. BM hunters, by talents, are effectively haste capped for anything but auto-shot, that's simply not the case for the other trees - again, something to consider when people see loot drop that isn't favorable to them "right now."
For soloing, my SV spec doesn't provide a couple of "cool things" that might be desireable -- namely scatter shot and entanglement. But that's not to say that solo'ing isn't a piece of cake as this spec. Explosive Shot hits incredibly hard.. and it's ticks can crit. Between that, your pet and autoshot, you've probably killed something by the time it gets to you (mind you, I haven't really been out solo'ing with this spec yet, so I'm guessing).
In pvp, this spec would be trash. No scatter, no entrapment, no improved wing clip... must be at 30+ yards to maximize damage.... it'd be all sorts of bad news, I think.

BM is pretty middle of the road for everything... but at current, it's not going to provide better dps than the other two trees when they're well played in my opinion. BM is probably still the favorable leveling spec, simply because your pet takes any and all damage, which you can heal while you continue to grind mobs/quest/whatever.

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