JM Van Horn
Changes to Expect for Survival Hunters in World of Warcraft Cataclysm
October 4th 2010 03:39
While we have seen several changes to the Hunters specialization and mastery, it appears Blizzard has finally decided on the following for the Hunters who choose the Survival tree.
Bonus Ability – Explosive Shot
Specialization – Into the Wilderness (Results in a 15% increase to your Agility)
Mastery – Essence of Viper (Increases Elemental Damage by 20% and 1.5% per point of mastery)
Reminder - When it comes to Survival hunters, the key to your success lies in your ability to react and be able to adapt.
This means even though you have a set rotation of your attacks, you will need to adjust your next attack according to what does or doesn’t stick on your opponent.
The biggest change to Survival Hunters in Cataclysm is that they will be using Focus to activate their special shots instead of a mana pool. Also it is important to remember that Haste will help increase the regeneration of our base focus.
Ideally you never want to be at full focus.
This means you are not using your resources to their fullest potential and you are losing out on the new focus you could be adding.
When you begin your shot rotation, you will start out with applying your Aspect of Hawk followed by Hunter’s Mark. If you do not think you need Hunter’s Mark, you are mistaken. On the public test realms, the Hunter’s Mark has been supplying 1,500 attack power for a level 83 Hunter.
The first two shots for every opponent should be Scorpid Venom and Serpent Sting. Once these are applied, you can begin the following rotation.
Black Arrow – While this shot has experienced less critical hit rates than the rest, it does remain a damage over time which will help activate your Lock and Load. This shot costs less focus to activate than some of your others.
Explosive Shot - This is the signature shot of the Survival Hunter so it does cost a decent amount of focus. Every time you have a chance to let this one fly, you need to make sure you do. The only exception would be if your Black Arrow is still available.
Arcane Shot - The one thing to remember is the cooldown for Arcane Shot is no longer tied to the Explosive shot. This change makes it the ideal Focus dump especially if your Thrill of the Hunt is filling up your Focus pool quickly.
Cobra Shot - When you reach level 81 one, Cobra Shot will become available to your Hunter. You can use this to replace Aimed Shot because it will benefit from the elemental damage bonus and it will help extend the life of your Serpent Sting shot.
Lock and Load - The changes made in Cataclysm makes the Lock and Load process a tad more complex than it used to be. When this was activated before Survival Hunters were able to use an Arcane shot among the 2 Explosive Shots.
Now the problem now is your Arcane shot will count as one of the free Lock and Load shots and it will not reduce your focus.
This means lost damage.
To help avoid this, Survival Hunters should keep their Kill Command for your Pet free to make sure it is available when Lock & Load procs.
By doing so, this can keep you out of danger from maxing out your Focus.
Survival Hunters will find they need to be able to react either one way or another when their Lock and Load activates in a Boss battle.
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