WoW Forever Survival Hunter Guide - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Primary Stats

• Agility - your best stat. It increases both your melee and ranged attack power, gives you critical strike chance, and is modified by your Lightning Reflexes.
• Intellect - Your second highest baste stat since you get one to one Attack Power scaling from Careful Aim.
• Spirit - The way you maintain your mana without having to drink because of Resourcefulness.
• Stamina - Directly increases your survivability but does not add any benefit to doing damage. In fights where there's heavy damage taken survival > all else so being full glass cannon 0 health as a class that spends a lot of time in melee range could be detrimental.

Secondary Stats

• Hit Rating - Your best secondary stat until you read 9%. Surefooted gives you 3% innately so aim to get 6% more from gear. If you are hitting a target your same level, you only need 5%
• Critical Strike Rating - Mortal Shots and Predator's Edge both give you massive modifiers on your critical strikes in both melee and range. Because of this you critical strike rating is an incredibly potent stat for you.
• Attack Power - A linear damage increase for both you and your pet. You don't have any modifiers in your talents for Attack Power so think of it as a worse form of agility.

Flasks: One of

• Flask of Natural Aggression: It seems like Blizzard is adding flasks that are unique to raids so it's possible more get added in future patches. In the event they do, they will be better than the original classic flasks below.
• Flask of the Titans: Flat HP, your best option for survivability but provides no damage increase at all.
• Flask of Distilled Wisdom: Your best option on fights that are long and you have the potential for going oom. It's essentially drinking a mana potion without using a potion cooldown on a fight.

Elixirs: Can use several and stack with flasks

• Elixir of the Mongoose: Your best elixir, it provides your two best stats
• Elixir of the Grizzly: Unsure if this stacks with Mongoose since it's new to Forever, but if it does it's going to be your second best elixir
• Elixir of Greater Fortitude: A purely defensive elixir making you tankier in raids
• Distilled Firewater: A flat attack power bonus, great for all sources of damage

Potions

• Major Frenzy Potion: On fights where mana isn't an issue your best offensive potion option.
• Major Mana Potion: Typically the best potion for speed runners so you spend no time drinking. Use in conjunction with Dark Rune and Demonic Rune to minimize time spent drinking and maximize time attacking.
• Free Action Potion: A utility potion which makes you immune to stuns and slows for 30 seconds. Since uptime is king on packs where you would be getting stunned this will sometimes be your best option for damage

Other

• Dark Rune or Demonic Rune: Both of these trade your health for mana and don't share cooldowns with potions. A great way for you to ensure you don't go oom to maximize damage if you can afford using them.
• Rumsey Rum Black Label: A flat health increase which is very useful as someone who spends a lot of time in melee
• Filet o' Flank: A flat agility increase you want to try and maintain
• Ground Scorpok Assay: similar to the food above, increases your agility. You can pre-pop one before raid and have a second one in your bags in the event you die or a raid takes longer than 60 minutes.
• Elemental Sharpening Stone: 2% crit on your attacks is a great source of damage since you can have Windfury Totem effect while also having a Sharpening Stone in Forever.
• Goblin Sapper Charge: The most powerful explosive you have available to you as an engineer. Has a 5 minute cooldown and puts other explosives on a 1 minute cooldown. Use when there's large AoE packs
• Dense Dynamite: An explosive on a one minute cooldown, it does less damage than Goblin Sapper Charge but can be used more often, use between your Sapper windows.
• Masterwork Target Dummy: An incredibly powerful tool in raids and dungeons. Target dummys function as a Challenging Shout, forcing all mobs around it to attack it until it dies. If things get scary in dungeons and raids having this on you can be a lifesaver.

Engineering

Engineering is by far the best profession in the game for PvE. Things like Goblin Sapper Charge, Goblin Mortar Dense Dynamite add lots of damage that you otherwise wouldn't have in a raid. Also Goblin Rocket Boots for speed runners can be mandatory for raids like Molten Core if you are speed running and running from Major Domo to Ragnaros.

Enchanting

Blizzard mentioned the addition to Ring Enchants potentially makes Enchanting the second best profession for doing damage in a raid. Though we don't know much about endgame professions so lots of things are up in the air as to how good professions will be for raids.

First Aid is secondary profession so you can get it along side primary professions. Since Hunter has no form of self healing or utility, First Aid offers lots of tools such as Heavy Runecloth Bandage and Strong Anti-Venom to help you when others can't.

Alliance

Night Elf

The best hunter option by far for both factions.

• Elune's Light is all we have to talk about here. You can think of 10% crit as ten talent points for 15 seconds given it's giving the stats of Lethal Attacks. As Beast Mastery, this also increases your pet's chance to crit as well.
• Shadowmeld is something you can use to get mobs off you in the event you pull threat and Feign Death resists or is on cooldown.
• Quickness movement speed stacks with things like Aspect of the Cheetah. Since you are spending so much time moving in raids, moving faster will directly lead to more damage.
• Wisp Spirit useless in a raid.

Human

Jack of All Trades, Master of None:

• Will to Survive Useful in both PvE and PvP. Fairly self explanatory if you get stunned use this to get out of it.
• Perception is more PvP focussed as a way to find rogues and druids who are stealthed, this stacks with Track Hidden. You can use this to find stealthed mobs while questing to make it a bit faster.
• Ruthless is good, 1% crit is the same as 1 talent point put into Lethal Attacks
• The Human Spirit 10% spirit is something that will scale incredibly hard into the late game in raids. As mentioned above, spending less time drinking directly means more damage overall in a raid. Since Resourcefulness is based on spirit having 10% scaling on it is very strong

Dwarf

A bit lackluster given other options

• Stoneform Very useful in PvP and a bit lackluster in PvE. Use it to remove bleeds and poisons when mobs overwhelm you.
• Find Treasure A bit of a meme racial, but makes looting chests a bit more of a dopamine hit
• Big Game Hunter The best racial dwarves have while leveling. a 5% flat damage bonus against. In the event you're attacking a beast in a raid, this is going to be one of the best racials out there.
• @artisan's precision 1% hit is very very good especially at low gear levels. You need 5% hit to never miss against mobs of your own level and 9% to never miss on a boss. Between Surefooted and this racial you have 4/9 innately.

Skyborne

The new WoW Forever race, with strong base stat buffs, utility and mobility. It is the most unproven and with only +3% haste and dependency on fighting elementals for +5% it is unclear how strong they will be.

• 3% Haste from Wind Blessed is nice but not amazing.
• Elemental Insight for +5% damage against elementals, though it is unclear how often we will face elementals. In the event there is a lot of elementals in a raid or a dungeon, this racial will be very powerful!
• Read Leyline Is nice to sustain your mana while in a raid. For people playing for overall damage this talent can be quite useful over the course of an entire raid.
• Walk on Air allowing for jumping off cliffs and getting around the world.

Horde

Orc

The only option on Horde in my opinion, bringing strong offensive damage passives:

• Blood Fury increases both you and your pet's damage since it gives you a flat 10% attack power increase.
• @Command gives you a flat 5% increased pet damage which is quite good since so much of your damage comes from your pet when you unlock it at level 10.
• Shatter Curse is mostly a pvp racial, though has its uses when you fight bosses which put nasty curses on you in raids without needing mages or druids to waste a global on you.
• Hardiness Also mostly a PvP racial, in the event you are targetted by a mob that stuns you in the world, it will be helpful but not amazing.

Troll

A decent race but doesn't excel at anything really except longevity while leveling early.

• Berserking Is good when you are able to stand still and shoot or melee, Too much haste makes weaving feel incredibly awkward though given how big the deadzone range is for hunters.
• Beast Slaying similar to dwarf, is nice while attacking anything that's a beat and will be quite powerful in those scenarios.
• Rapid Regeneration Think of this as a very powerful bandage on a 3 minute cooldown. Decent utility in raids when you take heavy damage and you need to help your healers but doesn't directly increase the damage you do since you have to channel this instead of doing damage.
• Regeneration Not much to talk about while in raid, you don't have enough health spirit regen to ever notice this in or out of combat.

Tauren

If you want to do as much damage as possible in raid, DO NOT PLAY TAUREN.

• Plainsrunning Realistically offers no benefit in raid unless you can maintain the speed while you're going between melee and range consistently.
• Endurance is a flat health increase making you and your pet more tanky, a decent option but not the best.
• War Stomp On big AoE pulls offers some utility if the mobs aren't immune to stun, but most mobs in raids can't be crowd controlled. More of a dungeon racial.
• Cultivation is entirely for making gold and has no direct benefit in raids.

Skybourne

The new WoW Forever race, with strong base stat buffs, utility and mobility. It is the most unproven and with only +3% haste and dependency on fighting elementals for +5% it is unclear how strong they will be.

• 3% Haste from Wind Blessed is nice but not amazing.
• Elemental Insight for +5% damage against elementals, though it is unclear how often we will face elementals
• Skysight Is a good way to maximize the damage you're doing on boss fights by giving you more movement speed.
• Walk on Air allowing for jumping off cliffs and getting around the world

Cat

Currently the highest dps pet in the game. While a cat has no direct utility, it has Faster Attack VII Claw Bite and later on gets access to Dash.

Carrion Bird

Most Hunters who have played classic will tell you the importance of Demoralizing Screech in raids. It would stack with Demoralizing Shout and wasn't a huge DPS loss over using a cat. In the event this is still true, or in the event a hunter using a Carrion Bird is less of a DPS decrease than a warrior pressing Demoralizing Shout, this is a solid option for raids. It still has acces to Claw Bite and Dive.

Keep in mind Faster Attack I through Faster Attack VII can't be taught to your pets via Pet Training, so looking for Cats or Carrion Birds with the highest possible version of Faster Attack will lead to more damage.

When most people think of classic raid DPS rotations they think of Warlock only hitting Shadow Bolt or Mage only pressing Fireball, where only Warrior has a lot of buttons. Survival most certainly has some of the most buttons in the game which would make it relatively "difficult" for how people think of skill expression in a classic game.