But I find it extremely wired to play.
How did you find your feet in playing SV?
Leveling is incredibly fast now, so I just leveled 2 hunters from 1-50; one marksman and one survival.
Being handed abilities over time makes it a little less jarring to see your entire toolkit vomited at you at once, and lets you play with a limited amount of abilities and get to know their usage and limitations.
It is a weird spec though, it’s hard to tell what the correct way to play it is without looking up a guide. Do you throw bombs as often as possible? Do you prioritize mongoose bite stacks over everything else? What combination of kill command and mongoose grants you the most big hits? Etc etc etc.
I feel like SV has way less focus on building/spending and more focus on situational use of abilities, which is pretty fun!
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It takes a little time and some fiddling around to get what you feel is most comfortable. Don’t feel like you have to follow a basic build, only one skill is actually mandatory for SV and it’s mongoose.
How I personally like to run it, Build up focus to max and wait till I have 2 KC, Pop my cd SWING LIKE CRAZY Pop both your pet’s kc to get more focus, RAPID FIRE YOUR MONGOOSE BITES! ALL IN BOYS!
But as Pepperpew said, SV is very situational, there’s no way to perfectly optimise the build. Just do what you feel comfortable, and you’ll very rarely be starved for a button to press.
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That’s because it is! It’s cooler than Samuel L. Jackson in a Quentin Tarantino movie!
A way to approach it is while most classes have rules, SV Hunter has guidelines. Optimally, you’ll want to be in melee ofcourse, but we don’t have to be in melee, this is a great strength in PvP and fights with a lot of crap on the ground and you can play it more like a BM hunter as you close the distance or wait to.
Also like stated above, unlike many other classes you don’t necessarily want to use everything as soon as it’s up! While i think you shouldn’t worry about that while getting a feel for all the skills, the goal with mongoose bite is to get as many hits in as possible with 5 stacks of mongoose fury. To do that is to a) Start using mongoose bite when you have a decent amount of Focus and weave in Kill Command between attacks and b) at 4 stacks, Mongoose Bite takes priority over everything besides your wife giving birth.
As you play, you’ll get a feel of when to “break the rules” and when to use what, so don’t worry about playing it “right” straight away. Just play around with it and have fun. When you don’t have to think much about what button you’re pressing you can spend your energy on optimizing.
Also a tip is get a Feathermane pet if you can tame them(you learn that from the Legion orderhall), it has a skill that let’s you cast Featherfall whenever you feel like it.
“That’s good i guess, like if I fall of a cliff or something”, maybe you’re thinking.
WRONG! Well no, you’re right, but that’s not the only reason you want it! This puppy let’s you fly further with disingeage, and then if you Harpoon someone, you can cover a distance that will make Ryan Air look like a friggin rickshaw company.
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How? I mean I have a Feathermane, but I don’t see how it allows me to cover more distance with Disengage and Harpoon. The Feathermane abilities don’t mention anything of the sorts.
The featherfall from the Feathermane skill let’s you stay in air longer so you’ll disengage further, and if you do that from an elevation like a hill, a staircase or even a damn rock? Man, you’re like a little hunter rocket.
The bit with Harpoon is a type O, what i ment is disengage + Harpoon, so first you disengage and then harpoon an enemy far away.
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Got it. Ok that makes sense. I have been faithful to my good old owl, but man I am tempted to start taking my feathermane with me now… It even matches my mount.
I still like the slow and “trinket” that the owl provides, but that featherfall is tempting too…
Edit: Also just did a macro to summon the feathermane and cast Updraft in the same button, for situations where I’m falling unexpectadly and without the pet summoned, like falling from the flying mount or something similar.
True & Lovely description.
Thx for this.
Really fun read 
I switched to the no brain BM spec because MM was ruined and that are the only two specs we have.
MM is fun again now in pre-patch though.
You say MM is fun again, but before you say you switched to BM because those are the only 2 specs we have, so you are saying SV doesn’t exist because it isn’t good? So you switched to the stronger option? I guess what you care about is the DPS meter not how fun a spec is or isn’t, because SV is by far more fun than the other 2.
So, reformulate to “MM is strong again”, I guess.
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I’m saying what does not exist?
I care about how fun a spec feels in sync with the damage it can deal. since MM was bottom tier and very lacking, the only option left was BM.
We hunters only have BM or MM to choose from, what is it you are trying to say is far more fun?
I find the hate on SV amusing, I don’t really get it. But as I usually say, whatever floats your boat buddy.
Have fun.
SV is really fun imo. But the other specs bring more to the table.
Many are of the opinion “why play surv when mm and bm have equal or better damage + range advantage?”
It’s a mindset I can sympathize with. Will still try to main SV though because it’s plain interesting.
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Tried it today in a bg, me and another SV hunter on our team.
They had 37 KBs 1 death, with almost top overall damage.
I had 2 KBs 3 deaths, with bottom overall damage for my team.
I really suck at SV man.
16% haste 70% mastery 5 % vers .
your stats are completely wrong for play "well " SV.
Haste > vers > crit > mastery in pvp
Haste > crit-vers > mastery in pve
start/try to change this if you want to give it a real try.
wildness survival trait: reduction cd bomb don’t stack. one is enough.
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I seem to recall Dilly saying Versatility is king in pvp so it would be: Versatility > Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike.
depend on scenario : Arena 2v2/ 3v3 or Bg or outdoor.
two options : Vers > Haste or Haste > vers i think.
I prefer Haste>Vers in random-bg.
Just my taste ^^
Sur in rangink games Vers > Haste is a better choice specialy in 2v2.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
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I don’t know where it looks cool. When your pet is running god know friking where and you can’t use kill command cause pet is slower than you are or maybe when it dies in secons because mend pet heals very little and then you loose your only focus regen source or when even if your pet catch up with you, you are doing little to no DMG? Survival sucks balls right now and will continue info news exp because Blizzard made too many clasess and can’t even magane half of them properly.
Sorry I’m really frustrated :x