Well, if you’ve been reading for a bit (and if you haven’t, welcome to the site!), you’ve seen that we’ve been trying to put up some guides on how we play our classes. Now it’s my turn, as a Survival Hunter.
I’ve really struggled with what to write about here. The rotation (or rather, the priority system) is really important to a Survival Hunter, but there are some other things that make playing the class better–some as simple as the addons that you use. I’ve decided that this will be a multi-part series, with the following breakdown:
- Part 1 – The rotation
- Part 2 – The spec
- Part 3 – Addons and macros
- Part 4 – Miscellaneous (like buffs, food, etc.)
Much of what I’ve learned about my spec I learned from elitistjerks.com–I’d be a little ungrateful if I didn’t mention that up front. The rest comes from practice, some random articles on wow.com, and chatting with my buddies.
As I’ve alluded to previously, we don’t really use a rotation–we use a priority system. The reason is that there are so many things that change our rotation during a fight (random occurrences of things like Lock and Load , etc.), that you can’t just hit 1212121212… and win. It’ll take a bit more finesse than that. In the priority scheme, you use the highest priority shot that isn’t on cooldown. The only exception to that is the Serpent Sting, which you just make sure to keep up the entire time. So, without further ado, here’s the priority:
This doesn’t really represent everything you need, though–you also need to keep Hunter’s Mark up, hit Kill Command at every opportunity, and use Rapid Fire when it’s appropriate.
So that’s a lot of buttons…let’s see if we can talk through the phases of a generic dungeon/raid single target fight–we’ll call the three phases Setup, Plinking Away, and Kill!
Setup
OK…time to get the fight started. Hit your target with a Hunter’s Mark and make sure you have your focus set to the tank. As the tank moves toward the target, hit your misdirect button to make sure to dump your threat for the first four seconds of your attack. Because of the funky way the cooldown works, don’t do this too soon, or you’ll end up waiting even longer to use your MD. (Huntard* tip: Misdirect and then fire on the target when the tank isn’t looking! Hilarity ensues! Or, even better, misdirect to the healer!) Hit your Kill Command button. Open with Explosive Shot, and then hit Black Arrow and Serpent Sting. Hit your Aimed Shot, and then follow with a Steady Shot.
Plinking Away
This phase is actually pretty basic–you’re going to hit Steady Shot a lot, and any time a shot of higher priority comes up, you’ll hit that one. Keep Serpent Sting up, and hit Kill Command at every opportunity. This phase continues until your target is at 20%.
Kill!
This one introduces Kill Shot to the mix. You’ll basically do everything you did in Plinking Away, but every time Kill Shot is up, you make room in your rotation for it.
Complications
There are a lot of things that can complicate what may appear to be a rotation above. For example, Lock and Load. Since it gives you 2 free explosive shots (with no mana cost and no cooldown), you’re going to be tempted to just push those out ASAP, which is totally wrong. You need to wait for the 2 seconds after you shoot to hit the next Explosive Shot, or you’ll lose those extra 2 seconds of damage (the reason for 2 seconds after the shot is that the game accounts for projectile travel time). And what if Kill Shot comes up in between? Follow the priority, hit the kill shot, and then go back to Explosive Shot. This works well sometimes because you needed to wait for the extra damage anyway. If you’re shooting really fast (as a result of a Heroism hit or a Rapid Fire, or both), you may even be able to get a Steady Shot off in between Explosive Shots, further increasing your damage output.
Other things that might complicate your priorities are things like a tank that’s having a hard time keeping threat (either because of you, or because of someone else), so you might want/need to do another misdirect.
When to use Rapid Fire
This is also a little bit tricky. If you’re in a very solid group, you can use this as often as you like–if you’re in a PuG or a group whose dps tend to do…er…risky things, you may want to hold it in reserve, so if someone should die during the fight, you can add a little oomph to the group’s dps at the end (this used to be pretty important on Emalon in VoA, because of the inherent timers to group wipe if the dps wasn’t up to snuff). Back to the solid groups, if you’re in a battle that lasts longer than 5 minutes, use it early in the fight and then again later, since the cooldown will come back around. A word of caution–remember that you’re going to generate more threat when you’re shooting faster–you may even want to open with a misdirect, rapid fire, and then explosive shot–you’ll transfer a lot of threat to the tank in that four seconds.
Hopefully that helps a bit. Hunters actually stand to be changed pretty significantly during Cataclysm with the move away from mana, but time will tell. At that point, we’ll all be learning the class over again. For the time being, if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a comment below!
Happy Hunting!
* Please don’t do this. I’ve seen people do the first because they’re impatient. This kind of behavior will (and should) get you kicked from the group.
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