Hunter Raid DPS specs

[Tillna]

Trying to find the best spec...

Have no good leads..so far survival looks to be the best....

Raiding hunters?

[Carrowyn]

I raid as survival, and my rotation is a very tight and hectic rotation that I've recently found to put out surprisingly large amounts of damage due to the amount of haste I have. This is the link to my spec in armory. (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Twisting+Nether&n=Carrowyn&group=1) If you're curious about my gear and rotation I can share that with you too.

I do world pvp and battleground as Marksmen, and so knowing both trees, as well as being Beast Master for the last several years leveling 2 different hunters, I feel survival does the most damage and is more efficient on mana for raiding and raid bosses. With Thrill of the hunt and Hunting party you will gain mana back, not always having to rely on another class being there with some sort of mana regen. With survival you will want to enchant and gem for Agility (THIS IS YOUR TOP PRIORITY) and then crit strike, attack power, and haste.

Any other questions, feel free to send me a pm and I hope this helped!

Edit: A note to the other posters here who do not play hunter *looks at Illisade* You can no longer map your rotation to a macro and spam it, timing is too crucial. >.>

[Selash]

Here's my own build, along with my glyphs. The pet I use for raiding is a wolf, primarily for it's howl, as it's a signifigant AP boost.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Twisting+Nether&n=Selash&group=1

My survival build is pretty similar to Carrowyn's. The main difference is that I have a full 5 points in improved tracking and I spend the points I could spend on replenishment (Hunting Party) instead on Wyvern Sting and Noxious Stings, which, while it may not sound like a huge damage increase, is. Aimed Shot is also nice to add to your rotation, as it's another good burst shot with the added MS effect that can help on mobs that have the capacity to heal. The only major drawback to this build is that unless you are in a raid with good mana regeneration as part of it's composition, you're going to be running out of mana very quickly and will be needing to switch to AotV at some point during longer fights.

I also know that with the way T8/8.5 sets are itemized, they tend to favor marksmanship specs instead of survival, but I have yet to find a good marks build to try in a raid. So, once you get some T8, try experimenting with marksmanship. If I find a good build for it, I'll post it.

[Nymare]

Elitist Jerks has a very useful thread (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t42519-best_possible_dps_shandaras_wotlk_spreadsheet/) which lists the current maxDPS specs for each tree, as well as pet spec and shot priority for each spec right in the first post! It's been active since Wrath dropped, so you'll need to wade through the last few pages of posts if you want to find the gear which results in the max DPS for the specs listed, but the stuff in the first post has been updated over time to reflect what's been buried in pages of discussion.

In addition, they provide links to normal and hardmode spreadsheets, so you can download them then plug in what gear you have and get the right spec to match as well as upgrade ideas, etc.


From personal experience, there wasn't enough of a DPS difference between the marks spec and the survival spec for me to decide to stick with the marks spec. If you're min/maxxing right down to race and profession, there's less than 100dps difference (in non-hardmode gear, anyway). If not you're not min/maxxing like that and you're not geared to the teeth, then it's sort of your call.

In regard to 6/14/51 - I hate multishot, especially in crowd control situations, when I end up just staring at it like the useless button it is. From my own personal experience, Aimed shot serves me better and in more ways. Unf.

This (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZ0eVooZx0ci0cIhedAhsd:NAfz0M) is the spec I used for most of Naxx and Ulduar. Very mana efficient (I didn't realize how much of a difference my own replenishment made until I dropped it), beneficial to the rest of the raid, and a viable max DPS alternative to the elitist jerks suggestion. I chose 5/5 improved tracking over putting points into Hawk Eye just because there just aren't enough fights to justify the need for range over the extra couple of percent of doom. Trouble is, slow weapon is slow and the improved aspect of the hawk from the 6/14/51 spec is handy.

Regardless of what you pick, you will probably want to spend some time in front of a practice dummy getting used to the timing of the cooldowns in order to prioritize efficiently. Otherwise.... yeah. Not much difference between marks and surv to really concern yourself with which is better vs. which you actually prefer, unlike BM... which is right out. For now, at least. What will make the difference is your gear/gem/enchants and sticking to the most beneficial shot priority.

Enjoy!

[Selash]

Also of note, with hunter shots running more on shot priority than on facerolling now (lol, illisade), it would be to your benefit to pickup and configure Power Auras to track your cooldowns so you know when your shots are up in addition to making a few stopcasting macros for your two top priority shots, which are Kill Shot and Explosive shot if you're Survival or Chimera Shot and Kill Shot if you're Marksmanship. Bigredkitty did have a very good video demonstrating how to set up Power Auras prior to the launch of 3.1, I just can't seem to find it anywhere on the net now...