Survival of the Fittest

So I like DPS. I really like being the lead DPS. It's an epeen thing. Damage meters have been my friend for quite some time as I nearly always pumped out the most damage in 5 and 10-man instances. DPS not being the only thing, I do consider my self an accomplished trapper as well and can consistently trap up to three times without fail... well if I don't get resists or early breaks. On a typical heroic I will have 2-4 resist and 1-3 early breaks during the whole instance. This, I would venture, is fairly normal for most hunters. I had no points in survival and no set bonus so my traps were as baseline as they come.

This has now changed with my new Survival Spec. Buru had hounded me for quite some time to put some points in survival so that I could CC in Kara. Taking points out of Marks and putting them into Survival significantly weakens BM's DPS with the loss of 5% more crits, 15% more damage on crits, additional pet focus on crits, and increased AP for melee from Improved Mark. I had tried to respec Survival to see how I like it for solo'ing and pet threat was an issue. My cat was just not keeping up with my threat at all with the new spec. Having to jump shot during solo PVE is pretty lame so it was back to BM.

Since then, I still had a hankering to try something different. I have finally spec'd back to Survival and it seems like it is here to stay. I learned recently that range = threat mitigation. Stand far away and I gain less threat than standing close up. That being said, for the first time as a hunter I dropped 3/3 points into Hawk Eye. I have railed a lot of ppl that have this in their spec. Never a Survival hunter but every BM hunter for sure. What a waste these three points are sitting in longer range when they are much better spent in the marks tree. And I won't take the threat reduction argument from BM hunter. They have less threat issues than Marks or Survival because less of their damage comes from their bow. I have put out a lot of damage in raids and only once do I recall cresting the tank on a boss. Feign death is your friend. Hit the dirt for no apparent reason 1 minute into a fight and you're probably set for the rest of the fight, depending on aggro resets and length of fight.

So now, instead of topping the charts on DPS I have to imagine the usefulness of buffs and debuffs. In this respect, I bring four things to the table: Expose Weakness, Improved Hunter's Mark, Scorpid Sting, and Screech. Expose Weakness and IHM work in tandem to raise melee attackers AP against my debuffed target by nearly 300 currently (and EW will continue to scale with increased AGI), Scorpid Sting drops the chance a melee attack will land by 5% and screech reduces target's AP by 210. On top of those things, I still get to put out a lot of damage, especially in the form of crits, nearing 45% crit chance while raid buffed.

Did I mention I can trap like a champ? I have points to improve the longevity, damage and animal content of my traps by 30%. That puts Freezing Trap at 26 sec. I took 2/3 points to reduce the cost and casting time of traps. The reduction in time of 4 sec brings my trap cooldown to 26 sec. Isn't that neat? 26 sec trap, given no early break that I can recast in 26 sec. And what about those early breakers? If I'm in trouble I pop Readiness and all my Hunter Abil's come off of cooldown. This also comes in handy for multiple trapping, making it possible to freeze trap 2 mobs at the onset (3 actually if it is allowed)

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy to put my full on DPS whore days behind me and look forward to my new utility spec.