Survival SV Hunter Patch 4.0.1 Talents, Rotation, and Glyphs
Patch 4.0.1 as gone live, bringing the massive 4.0.1 hunter changes from focus to the new talent trees to mastery and specializations. We’re going to go over the key survival hunter 4.0.1 changes here, including the best SV hunter talent builds, rotations, and best SV hunter glyphs for patch 4.0.1.
Patch 4.0.1 is still relatively new, and these guides are being updated as fast as we can discover new hunter data.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Talents
As always, we’re focusing on boss fight dps with our talents. Note that in particular we skipped our 2nd rank of Serpent Spread, which will increase your AoE dps — but we skipped it ’cause we don’t care about trash, we care about bosses. I went for Go for the Throat because for the brief period between 4.0.1 and Cataclysm we will have crazy, ridiculously high crit chances — the highest crit chances we will every have again, in fact.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Rotation
All hunter rotations are priority-based in patch 4.0.1. You never want to be sitting at 100 focus — when you are that means that any focus you gain is lost, rather than converted into better dps.
* Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
* Refresh Serpent Sting when needed.
* Always hit Explosive Shot when it’s available if you can — this means you’ll need to try to have the focus saved up for it.
* Fire Black Arrow when it’s available.
* Use Arcane Shot to bleed of excess focus. This probably won’t happen often.
* Use Steady Shot to regen focus.
SV is in an interesting situation in the patch 4.0.1 build. We don’t yet have Cobra Shot to refresh our Serpent Sting, which blows. We have to waste focus to refresh our Serpent Sting, which can leave us focus starved.
At level 80, you’re likely to experience chaotic swings from being focus starved, to having too much focus, but mostly you’ll be focus starved.
Note that serpent sting actually does more damage total than explosive shot (because of imp serpent sting) thus it’s better to delay explosive to fire serpent sting.
During Lock & Load Procs you’ll want to weave shots in between your explosive shot. Hunters now have a 1 second global cooldown, meaning we have a lot more time to work extra shots in between our Explosive Shots during Lock & Load procs. You can use Steady Shot in here, but this is also a fantastic time to refresh your Serpent Sting, even if it has some time left on it. If you’re full on focus, you can use Kill Command to bleed some off in between Explosive Shots.
Survival SV Patch 4.0.1 Glyphs
SV Prime Glyphs
The prime glyphs are our heavy-hitters. These are the ones that are actually going to impact our dps. Currently it’s looking like the following are going to be the best choices:
* Glyph of Kill Shot
* Glyph of Steady Shot
* Glyph of Explosive Shot
Note that you won’t want the Serpent Sting glyph once you have access to Cobra Shot — but at level 80 it’s a huge focus-saver.
SV Major Glyphs
Most of the major glyphs are not going to have a direct impact on your dps. They are oriented around pvp, quality of life, or leveling (Glyph of Misdirection is phenomenal for soloing). Personally I’m a huge proponent of using Disengage to minimize time wasted on movement, thus I think that the Disengage glyph is potentially a dps-increasing glyph. Everything else is really up to you.
* Glyph of Disengage
* …whatever else you’d like
SV Minor Glyphs
Similar to major glyphs, the minor glyphs aren’t going to increase our dps. However there are few enough choices that I do think the following three are the best choices.
* Glyph of Mend Pet
* Glyph of Feign Death
* Glyph of Revive Pet