I decided to try Survival this evening while playing in some Battlegrounds. The spec is interesting to say the least. According to TopScoreFu, I broke a couple of my own critical strike records, I would imagine due to Expose Weakness. Sometimes I felt like the spec really helped me take control of fights, other times I really wish I had Silencing Shot. Going from a 30 second Caster-CC (kind of) to a 2 minute Anything-CC was hard to get used to.
The actual spec I decided to try out was this. It seems kind of janky, but seemed fairly strong. Most people suggest going 21/31 and then distributing the last 9 points in whatever talents you like. Since no Hunter (except for those crazy BM folks) live without Scatter Shot.
At certain periods throughout the Battlegrounds, things went great. I purposely would pick fights with 2 people to see how I could handle it. Sleeping a Warlock and killing a Mage and then handling the Warlock felt great, knowing the Warlock just had to sit there and watch the Mage die. Counterattack was used a couple times throughout the evening, but I never remembered to use Deterrence. If it wasn’t attached to Counterattack, I probably would not have taken it.
I like Resourcefulness, as my traps only have a 24 second cooldown, and Freezing Trap costs a whopping 40 mana, while Frost trap costs 24 mana! Rough indeed.
I do lose the large bonus damage from Multi-Shot, but I do sit at 35.58% unbuffed critical strike rating. And that is still wearing a PvE helm, and Season 1 Gloves and Shoulders. Having Surefooted will be nice for PvE, as I can use Legacy instead of my Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe since my hit rating is covered by that extra 3%. In fact, I can even swap out some other hit gear if I wanted for something else with more raw stats.
If I was speccing for pure PvE Survival, I would drop 3 points in Improved Stings in favor of Thrill of the Hunt.
The real test will be in the Arena. I am very hesitant in trying it, as I have become familiar and comfortable with Marksmanship and I am still trying to make the ratings climb. I would hate to butcher our ratings because I tried an untested and refined spec. I guess we shall see. I am interested in trying this spec in a raid, such as Gruul’s, ZA, or Karazhan.
Oh, and I have seen the rumors about the legendary bow. I will probably make a post on that later. It’s late. I am going to sleep now. :)
I’d love to try out full Survival some day but as my agility is still sitting at about… 550ish…? Can’t remember and Armory isn’t working… anyway, even though I could possibly pull it off I’d rather wait until I had more agi.
I’m one of those crazy non-Scattershot using hunters, even when I was spec’d full Marks I always forgot Scattershot existed and never used it. Feel free to whack me upside the head and call me insane ^_^
Well, in my PvP gear, I only sit at 550 or so. In my PvE gear I hit 700. The problem is that PvP gear has such little agility on it, comparatively speaking.
In PvE situations, it’s easy to forget Scatter Shot. Unless you are chain-trapping, you usually don’t squeeze Scatter in to your rotations. If you forgot it in PvP, that’s a different story. ;)
I’m at 659 agi with my normal gear, as Survival. I’ve got a few key upgrades I should be making in the next couple of weeks that will push me closer to 700.
I couldn’t give up Scatter Shot for the longest time when I switched to Survival. It was just too valuable. I was 0/21/40. But this weekend I switched to 0/20/41 and tried out Readiness. Wow! It’s gonna take some getting used to, but man is that handy. I think I’m going to like it a lot. Maybe I’ll be able to live without Scatter Shot after all.
I could definitely see living without Scatter Shot for pure PvE purposes. I think it would be hard to give up Scatter on a 20 second cooldown though. And after a long discussion with another Hunter in our guild, and we might try a 4-DPS 5 man team, with double Hunter double Warrior and resto Druid. The other Hunter would have TSA, and I with EW, so we shall see how that works with 2 Warriors molesting our primary target.