Zenith of Alonsus

No excuses for the wall of text. Kill Shot crit to the eyes.

Quite a few 80’s hunter’s around these days, so I thought I’d share some of the ways i use to work around the awful “priority” rotation that comes with being Survival. I’ve called it a “Guide to being a NOOB Survival hunter”. Min maxer’s and EJ would laugh their socks off at some of the things I’ve done. But having said that, anytime I do VoA10 or 25, even against hunter’s that clearly have better gear and ranged weapons than me, it’s not often that another hunter out dps’s me. (Although it’s maybe more a reflection on the type of people that run these things ). This may not be for you, and it’s just another way of playing the game, but it allows me to enjoy it without staring at a bunch of cooldowns all night.

Anyway, this is the Priority rotation for a survival Hunter

1) Kill Shot – Cooldown 15 secs
2) Explosive Shot - Cooldown 6 secs
3) Black Arrow - Cooldown 24 secs (Talented)
4) Aimed or Multi Shot – Cooldown 10 secs
5) Serpent Sting – Ticks for 15 Secs, 21 with Glyph
6) Steady Shot – No CD, circa 1.6 secs cast time depending on your haste.

The idea is that you shoot/cast each of the above 6 abilities, choosing the one with the highest priority that is currently off cooldown. Secondly, every 20-30 secs, when LocknLoad procs, you get two cooldown free Explosive shots which should be shot at 2 sec intervals ( Explosive is a 2 sec dot and you do not want to overwrite the previous one). So 6 keybinds, a bunch of cooldown and proc watching together with pet management, trinket’s and setting traps if required. For a hunter that had just spent the last 2 years spamming a steady shot macro button in Burning Crusade, it took me about one rotation to decide that this had to be consolidated big time.

Before I go on, I’ll just comment on the Aimed Shot/Multishot choice. Personally, I didn’t spec for Aimed. Most, if not all Survival hunters do spec for this , however imo they are just copycatting specs from the top raiding guilds and EJ posters. I’ve spent a lot of time using the EJ DPS spreadsheets and it was quite obvious to me that putting an extra point in “Go For the throat” gave an immediate 60+ DPS to my pet through having more available focus. Secondly, and it’s not obvious when you read all these EJ posts, most of these guys run 25 man which basically means limitless mana. It’s very common to run out of mana in a 10 man, and in which case using Aimed or Multi, which use 8% or 9% base mana, gimps you big time as you run out faster and end up running in Aspect of the Viper for longer. In fact, spreadsheet rotation tests with and without Aimed/Multi return identical DPS over a 6 min fight if you have minimal mana regen. The extra damage is mitigated by having to run in Viper for longer. Just to close this, when you start having around 55% crit raid buffed, the benefit of having that extra point in GffT gets close to zero. With part Tier 9, I’m at 50%+ crit raid buffed, and it’s getting to the stage where I could safely spec out of it. I’ll comment on another benefit later.

Right, back to Noob Survival Huntering.

Forgetting about Kill shot for now, you can see that Black Arrow and your Serpent sting refresh have near identical cooldowns. In fact if you stick in an extra shot between the two you have a nice little rotation of Black Arrow, Multi Shot/Aimed, Serpent sting which can be repeated every 24 secs. Bingo – macro that baby up.

/Castsequence reset=12 Black Arrow, Multi-Shot, Serpent Sting

I have that bound to button 1.

That leaves you with Explosive shot and Steady Shot. ES has a 6 sec cooldown. Macro that up.

/Castsequence Reset=3 Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

Steady has a circa 1.6 sec cooldown so 1.5+1.6+1.6+1.6=6.3 secs – Pretty much perfect with ES off cooldown everytime the macro comes around. Getting a bit of haste to get it down to 6 secs exactly is a good idea.

I have that bound to button 4

In practice then (after sending pet and all that malarkey) all you need to do is spam button one until BA, MS and SS are shot off, then spam the ES macro for 3 rotations (around 19 secs) till BA is off cooldown then it’s back to button 1 to get the dot’s up again. You’ll find that BA comes off cooldown just as the 3rd ES macro rotation is finished. If you wish, you can keep spamming the macro for another Explosive Shot before switching to the BA macro. These sort of decisions can be made on the fly. Easy money  2 Button Survival Hunter.

That’s perfect for a Patchework type fight, but has a couple of practical issues and flaws which as long as you are aware of them, can be worked around most of the time.

A – it’s not a min max dps solution.
You are only using Aimed/Multi every 20secs instead of 10 secs. That’s about 600 damage every 20secs. Ie around 30 dps fight. As I said above, it’s pretty much mitigated by the gain on the mana/viper issue in a 10 man and all things considered for ease of rotation I can live with that.

You lose a potential Serpent Sting tick. – Not really a full loss, as you are filling the gap with Black Arrow, Multi-Shot which are higher on the priority list anyway but it should be noted that the DoT is not up 100% of the time.

Multiple target switching can be a problem, especially if it takes a few secs to switch targets. Seconds wasted retargeting are essentially just added into the time taken for the castsequence and delay the firing of next Explosive shot. Fortunately most retargeting can be done without missing a beat if you position correctly although there are fights where this is it can be a problem. E.g. Thorim Area, Lord jax. More on this later.

B – The practicalities of working around the Castsequence Macro.

Castsequence Macro’s are fine, but the downside is that the Macro has to be completed in full before it will go back to the beginning again. This can be a bit of a bind in high movement fights. E.g. You spam the Explosive Shot macro, it fires Explosive then Steady Shot, then say you have to move. Most movements out of the fire take one or two seconds. During that time you can’t cast, but when you go back to the Macro, it still has to cast the remaining Steady Shots and will delay your Explosive Shot by the amount of time it took you to move. This can appear to look like a fundamental flaw, however in practice it doesn’t happen exactly like that more than two or 3 times in a fight. So you miss or delay, maybe two Explosive shots over a fight, but it can be caught up in several ways.

First I have the reset on the macro at 3 secs. So in the above case, I’d move, chuck in “Manual” steady shot and by that time the Macro has reset, ES is off cooldown and I’m back to spamming the macro again without missing a beat.

Secondly, I try and plan or take advantage of repositioning around either the Black Arrow Macro, or my LocknLoad procs.

- This is where using Aimed over Multi is a Win. Black Arrow, Aimed, Serpent are all instants so it’s a real nice combo to spam the BA Macro giving you 4.5 secs of free repositioning time while still doing max DPS. As I’m so near to the acceptable crit rate, I’ll be respeccing shortly to enable me to do this.

-During LocknLoad procs, you have 4-6 secs of free movement where you can run/reposition while “casting” Explosive Shot every 2 secs.

So every 30 secs you have two, 5 or 6 secs periods of free movement while keeping up full DPS. Use them wisely. The remaining 20 secs is where you would be spamming the 3 rotations of the ES macro so you can see that at worst you are going to be reseting the Castsequence every 2 or 3 Explosive shot rotations, catch up on any lost time and ensure that Explosive is still being cast every 6 secs with minimal delay.

After running this for a few weeks, compensating for any macro deficiencies becomes easier. For Ultra Hi movement or multiple target fights, I have a backup ES,SS,SS (one SS removed) castsequence macro, so that I can move every 6 secs without worrying about trying to compensate. I rarely use this and any time I’ve felt as though I should give it a go, (Eg. Thorim Arena) I’m not completely sure if delivered a lot more for me.

Kill Shot – Final flaw with the castsequence is when you have to use Kill Shot. It’s an additional cooldown you have to use every 15 secs. Personally, I just cast it every time it’s up and forget about it’s effect on adding an extra shot in the time of the castsequence and delaying my ES. You get 2 or 3 Kill shots in a fight. So potentially a 6+ secs delay overall, but again between kill shots you will usually have had to move or use the Black Arrow Macro or had a LockNLoad proc and if any of these things happen, the castsequence macro has time to rest and any delaying effect gets cancelled out.

Finally, Add Ons.

Three things are important –

LocknLoad procs – I use Event Alert
2 sec cast time on Explosive Shot under LocknLoad – Power Aura
Black Arrow Cooldown and Serpent sting refresh – Watcher.

Below is a screenshot with everything running.



Event Alert can be seen bottom left with the amount of time left for me still to use any remaining procs.
The Power Aura Countdown timer is in hundredths of a second and I fire the next one before it rolls off (at about 0.2 secs, as there is travel time to the boss)
Watcher is superb, you get a real visual feel of when Black arrow/Serpet sting is coming up off cooldown as the icon’s travel from right to left.

Using Bartender, I have a row of abilities right underneath Watcher with OmniCC so that I can visually seethe time left on my ES and Black Arrow cooldowns. I can manually click them while Macro spamming. I also have Explosive Shot bound to left click of the mousewheel for LocknLoad procs.

These addons could be used to the same effect, even if you didn’t want to go the macro route.

Obviously how I’ve set all this up is completely personal, and a legacy of the way i have played my Hunter over the last few years. It may not suit anyone else, but it may give some ideas to play around with. Against a straight dummy, I don’t think there are many ways to top it as macro’s can handle spellcasting much better than any clicker or keybinding player, especially if you have lag issues. The trick to playing like this is how you best manage the downsides of the castsequence Macro’s under movement. As a Survival Hunter, staying still is necessary to keep the Sniper Training buff up.

Have fun fellow Huntards

Edit – Forgot to mention Glyphs

Recommended Glyphs are Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting and Kill Shot.

Again I’m a bit unusual having the Steady Shot Glyph instead of the Kill Shot Glyph.

3 reason for that.
1 – It was in there for BM and I couldn’t be arsed changing it when I first changed to Survival.
2 – My reliance on Steady Shot within the Macro’s – average of + 200 damage every shot.
3 – I just didn’t feel comfortable buffing an ability that relies on certain mob conditions to be applicable. I’m usually dead by the time the boss is > 20%.

Looking at it again though, I should really change to the Kill Shot Glyph.