INCOMPLETE! This guide is not finished. I will make an official release on the Blizzard forums and on the hunting lodge when it is ready.

Survival
The first and foremost rule of Survival: There can only be one. Expose Weakness (EW) is the one and only reason for you to spec survival (SV) over Beast Mastery (BM). The EW debuff does not stack however, which means that the SV hunter with the lower agility core will be rendered useless. Almost every end game raid composition will gain a noticeable damage increase by using an SV hunter but will actually nerf overall raid DPS by using 2 SV hunters as opposed to 1 SV and 1 BM.
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Base Agility
To be considered viable for SV you need to be able to do more overall damage than you would as BM. In an average TBC raid, this means that you need around 650 agility (before respec) to compensate for the loss in personal DPS. This figure is the average benchmark used but it can vary. EW relies on many variables; if these variables are in your favour then you can afford to start with an SV build at an earlier stage.

Remember that when I talk about agility scores, I refer to natural agility. This simply means that the agility should not be forced. If you are at 640 agility and then give up 100 attack power in order to hit 650 then you are forcing your agility just so you can say you are ready for SV. This is a fairly common practice among new SV hunters and even among a few older ones that still don’t understand the tree.

This leads us to the point of survival. Many people make the mistake of thinking that BM is about DPS and SV is about debuffing. The simple fact is that both trees are about DPS but draw from different sources. BM draws from 2 sides, personal DPS and pet DPS. SV draws from 3 sides, personal DPS, pet DPS and EW DPS. The only thing that truly matters is your overall damage score. The mistake that is made by debuff junkies is that “personal DPS doesn’t matter, as long as EW is up”. They end up giving up 100-200 points of their personal DPS for a minor gain on EW that doesn’t properly compensate for it. They are the SV hunters that end up being a detriment to their raids. Don’t fall into the trap. Consider all sides of your over DPS score for the best results.
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Essential Point Distribution.

Marksman Tree
5/5 Lethal Shots
5/5 Improved Hunters Mark or Efficiency
1/1 Aimed Shot
2/2 Rapid Killing
2/2 Go for the Throat
5/5 Mortal Shots

Survival Tree
3/3 Humanoid Slaying
3/3 Hawk Eye
3/3 Surefooted
3/3 Killer Instinct
2/2 Survival instincts
5/5 Lightning Reflexes
3/3 Expose Weakness
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iHM and Efficiency
I’ll start this section by saying that this is a choice that you will have to make. Every raid needs an iHM hunter but if you end up taking it then efficiency is no longer an option for you. It is not acceptable in true SV raiding builds to take both iHM and efficiency as it is a waste of points to bloat the 2nd tier in the tree. Personally I put iHM in all of my recommended builds and have never had a problem with mana even without a retribution paladin. 110 extra AP to melee should be the obvious choice unless you are having serious mana problems. The sad thing is that too many hunters complain about mana when they don’t have the talent yet they don’t utilities even simple mana gain techniques like the ones mentioned on this site.

Now onto the advantages of efficiency that are too often unrealised. Efficiency is often described as “10% extra mana” or “10% more shots before going OOM”. Although it is true that the talent will benefit you by letting your mana bar last longer, the value of the talent isn’t that simple. You have to see the practical side of the talent when on low mana. Reducing the mana cost of shots is a huge bonus when you’re low on mana and your mana restores are on cooldown. It means you’re required to rely on less mana regen when OOM to continue steady shot spam in a loose rotation. This equates to a small DPS boost that you would not have in that situation. That being said however, you should rarely get to that point if you’re doing everything you can to help your mana efficiency through items. See the Mana Efficiency Page for more details.
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Expose Weakness
This is possibly the most controversial topic that SV hunters have to deal with. It is rife with fallacy, bad theory and pure fiction on many forums just so people can justify their specs.

3/3 EW is essential for every spec and thankfully most hunters seem to have gathered that now. EW is the sole reason for you to spec SV in a raid situation. Withi, we would all be cookie cutter beast mastery. For the sake of saving 1 or 2 points in this talent you gain a small amount of DPS while giving up a chunk of EW uptime. The uptime itself is the controversial part of the topic. I have run dozens of practical tests over the last year in raids and static solo situations. Even with 50% static crit and a solid rotation with no mana issues, 100% uptime is impossible. This comes down to a occurrence I call “crit streaming”. Crit streaming refers to how crits and hits end up appearing in chains within shot rotations due to the random number generator (RNG). In statistical theory, 33% crit looks like this:

Hit, Hit, Crit, Hit, Hit, Crit, Hit, Hit, Crit, etc.

In reality crits and hits “stream” as well as having linear moments similar to this:

Hit, Hit, Crit, Crit, Hit, Hit, Hit, Hit, Crit, etc

Crits do not appear evenly within a rotation and more importantly don’t always even out to your paper doll crit over time. A good example to use for a mental image is the chance theory example used when explaining a coin toss. If you toss a coin 10 times and get 10 heads, does it increase the chance of the 11th toss being a tail? Of course it doesn’t. Every single shot is independent of every other shot in terms of crit percentages. Now imagine that you get a stream that involves 24 hits and 1 crit. Now imagine how much EW uptime you would loose for your physical DPS in the raid if that crit didn’t apply EW to the target.

In raids you need to be able to rely on your abilities and skills as well as any personal talent. You need to eliminate as many of the effects of the RNG as possible to maximise yourself to your full potential. 3/3 EW is an essential part of any SV raid build.
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Deterrence
Deterrence is often shunned as a talent because it is associated with threat pulls and melee hunters. Although I completely agree that if you are getting deterrence for those reasons then you should probably just roll a rogue and be done with it. The talent actually has a few uses in current content that are perfectly acceptable.

The first is for emergency tanking. This is not a strategy and should not be planned in any way, it is purely for those “OSHT” situations. Occasionally in a raid, tanks have been known to take large amounts of damage that cannot be healed through that usually result in a tank death. This is usually down to the gearing of the tank as well as individual boss mechanics and is generally nobody’s fault. If this happens during the last 2-10% (depending on the boss) then the emergency tanks bust out their on-use abilities to put off the wipe long enough to finish the boss. There have been literally hundreds of reports of hunters finishing bosses with deterrence, myself included. That being said, it is risky and messy. It should only be attempted in a true emergency boss kill.

The second reason comes down to the mechanics of certain boss fights themselves. I’m of course referring to Bloodboil and RoS. There are 2 fights that you may find you are needed to tank. I’m not going to run through full fight mechanics in this guide but I’ll give a quick overview.

RoS requires 1-2 evasion tanks during the first phase. Evasion tanks are generally druids, rogues or hunters. The classes you use depend completely on your raid composition but SV hunters are generally chosen before rogues as they usually have a higher evasion rating. Now onto Bloodboil, he will target a random member of the raid in every off phase. That raid member becomes the tank until the phase changes back. Deterrence is not “necessary” here but it will make matters a lot easier on your healers if you get picked.

Finally you come down to the choice of whether to take deterrence or not. The alternative in raiding builds is the max out of the survivalist talent. In an average end game raiding set, hunters have around 10K health. The 2% from 1 point in survivalist equates to around 200 health. Both choices are viable for raiding, the choice is yours. No matter which you pick, no one can say that you made the wrong choice.
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Trapping Talents
The two trapping talents, clever traps and trap mastery, are as situational as the traps they control. If you are running 5-10 mans then they are worth picking up. Keep in mind that you will not need more than 1 point in trap mastery to avoid resists on trash. Also frost traps will activate whether they get resisted or not so resist talents are not needed at all in end game content. It’s up to you whether you sacrifice 4% health for longer traps in MH and Illidan but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything past Karazhan.
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Improved Feign Death
Improved feign death is a highly debated topic. Many hunters say that it’s useless. I can say now that in my experience, 90% of the hunters that claim FD to be useless are in early content. If you can afford to get feign resists in end game content and not get threat capped, then you are low on DPS. If you’re pushing 1800-2500 TPS from the start of a fight and get 1 or more resists in the first 2 minutes then you’re going to have some form of threat problem, plain and simple. I recommend feign death for every raiding SV build, it is the more optimal placement of points for maximum DPS.
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Monster Slaying
People say that this talent is useless since it is never used in instances. That is a complete fallacy. It does depend on the instance you are progressing through however. Monster slaying isn’t worth using after SSC but is perfectly viable during and before-hand as shown here. Below is a list of all mobs affected by Monster Slaying in current content.

KZ
Netherspite - Boss Fight
Hyakiss the Lurker - Boss Fight
Roar - Boss Fight
Shadikith the Glider - Boss Fight
Tito - Boss Fight
Coldmist Stalker
Coldmist Widow
Greater Shadowbat
Mana Feeder
Shadowbat
Syphoner
Vampiric Shadowbat

ZA
Amani Dragonhawk Spirit - Boss Fight
Amani Bear Spirit - Boss Fight
Amani Eagle Spirit - Boss Fight
Amani Lynx Spirit - Boss Fight
Spirit of the Lynx - Boss Fight
Lord Raadan - Boss Fight
Slither - Boss Fight
Amani Bear
Amani Bear Mount
Amani Crocolisk
Amani Dragonhawk
Amani Dragonhawk Hatchling
Amani Eagle
Amani Elder Lynx
Amani Lynx
Amani Lynx Cub
Amani Snake
Tamed Amani Crocolisk

SSC
Toxic Spore Bat - Boss Fight
Morogrim Tidewalker - Boss Fight
The Lurker Below - Boss Fight
Coilfang Strider - Boss Fight
Underbog Colossus
Coilfang Frenzy
Fathom Sporebat
Serpentshrine Parasite
Serpentshrine Sporebat

TK
Phoenix-Hawk
Phoenix-Hawk Hatchling

MH
Nil.
BT
Dragon Turtle
Giant Surf Glider
Leviathan
Mutant War Hound
Shadowmoon Riding Hound
Shadowmoon War Hound

SWP
Kalecgos - Boss Fight
Sunblade Dragonhawk
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