Survival DPS for noobs?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Just a quick question: of those of you that run survival hunters, are you seeing ezmode DPS on them? I ask because I've been playing my BM hunter for quite a while at 80 as my basic mining/farmer for normal stuff and as the one I use to help friends complete elite quests/lowbie instances. Long story short, he's at about 3300ish gearscore (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&n=Bwana) and it's a rare moment when he will break 1k DPS on the level 80 target dummies. Granted, the pet is doing 500 DPS so the total is OK for basically crafted blues/epics with a few quest greens/blues but I've never felt he was doing very well on DPS.

Segue to last night. My 2nd hunter just hit 74 (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&cn=Doncardinali&gn=Forseti+Hel) and I bought dual-spec on him. Set him up with Survival and a minimal sting -->ES -->Aimed -->Steady -->ES -->Steady-->Steady macro and he is ALREADY breaking 1k DPS (pet only contributed about 100dps after that). And this doesn't even include any Lock n Load procs or AoE or Black Arrow.

Is this right? Is it really this stupidly easy to DPS as survival? For those of you who have run enough heroics to gear up a bit with your hunters, does this scale?

Just wondering if I'm seeing a blip or if it really is this easy. If so, I'll have to reconsider having shelved my hunter group. :P

[Fuzzyboy]

My hunter is doing significantly more dps as marksman, but yes, hunters fit in great with /click macros. If only they would remove the melee range and allow me to shoot at point blank I'd have a full hunter team :-D

[accretion]

As a relatively new lvl 80, I was getting around 1900dps as SV, and around 1750 as BM, iirc. I couldn't ever find a Marks spec that could beat either of those.

My BM hunter can do 3.2K now with a gear score of around 4500.

[Gormand]

My hunters are only at 68 and I did have 2x BM and 1x MM. The BM were trouncing my MM in terms of DPS on short fights and even on longer fights they were doing enough damage over the MM for me to justify switching the MM to BM even though I lose trueshot aura.

When i hit 80 I will prob switch things up a bit, new spells and macros will be needed to be in the rotation. I will the likely spec one of each spec and thump away at a training dummy to see which spec gives me the best DPS then switch them all to that :)

But BM is a lot easier to get some DPS out of with minimal effort in the macro.

[Fuzzyboy]

As a relatively new lvl 80, I was getting around 1900dps as SV, and around 1750 as BM, iirc. I couldn't ever find a Marks spec that could beat either of those.

My BM hunter can do 3.2K now with a gear score of around 4500.

Not sure what kind of damage I was doing at 4500, but at my current (5450 GS) as MM, I'm getting anywhere from 5k to 9k depending on rng on heroic bosses.

[Lyonheart]

Surv is better DPS than MM until you reach 400ArP and 4k AP on gear alone ( no enchant/gems etc ) and have a ranged weapon that is item lvl 226 or better.( for a solo/raiding hunter) MM is way easier to macro.. it has no "proc" dependent DPS cool downs. Even though a solo surv hunter can out dps a MM hunter at lower gear levels, i found that MM is easier to box, due to the reliable/simple rotation.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Heh, so with no gear change, my 80 went from 1k DPS as BM to 1600-1800 as SV. Very nice improvement. I haven't found a rotation that works with MM as easily as the SV one does but I'll keep looking as I would really, REALLY like to have improved volley for farming.

[crowdx]

I have always been struggling with my hunters, both are currently specced BM, the highest GS is 4600 and yet I rarely break 2500dps in an heroic. I used the click macros posted here. I adjusted the commas etc but still always seems really low for his gear.
Here is his armory link:http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&cn=Divinehunter

[Saithe]

The MM /click macros are insanely easy, and if I ever get around to boxing Hunters (I've been wanting to for forever...), I would go MM as soon as possible.
Your priority/rotation is simply Silencing Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, Aimed/Multi, Steady (at 400 ArP+).
You could technically make a simple /castsequence macro for moderate DPS, because Chimera and Aimed/Multi both have a 10 second cooldown, so usually it works out to Chimera, Aimed, then Steady X3ish.
Silencing Shot is off the GCD, so you don't have to make a separate macro for it, so you really only need like 4 /clicks.

It's less buttons than Survival and you don't have to worry about LnL, Black Arrow, or refreshing Serpent Sting. Though admittedly it is less DPS when you're starting out.

Also, Crowdx, unless BM has something different when it comes to Hit Rating, you are WAY over the hit cap and can drop most if not all of your Hit gems for Agility/ArP/AP, whichever is best for you. And correct me if I'm wrong, but BM Hunters already hit the soft cap for Haste (Steady Shot cast = GCD) don't they? Meaning you don't need to gem for Haste either. Though I could be wrong, I haven't played BM since BC (go go 1 button Macro spam).

[Ualaa]

Does anyone have a Survival click macro?
Something which will approximate the procs.
Doesn't have to catch them all, but if the click has the proc built in, you can get quite a few of them.
Just like an arcane mage goes Arcane Blast x4, Arcane Missiles (and has a 91% chance of having the proc up by the time they reach the AM).

[Saithe]

Well you could always use Freezing Arrow/Ice Trap every time it's up, which would get you the LnL proc pretty reliably every 30 seconds or so...Otherwise it's pretty random when LnL procs...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

As a follow-up, I've been fairly happy with DPS output as survival. Decent mana conservation, things die quick, and target dummy DPS is about 1250ish on my 76 and 1600-1800 on my poorly-geared 80.

Going to switch to MM and see how that goes for a while. So far, the 80's DPS went up to about 1900-2200 and the 76 went up about 100 dps to about 1300-1400. As I mentioned, I'm only sitting at about 25-27% crit on them, zero armor pen and basically zero +hit. The biggest thing I'll complain about with MM is it is a mana hog. Even popping rapid fire, I cannot sustain much of a rotation. I suspect a lot of that is just my crappy quest gear, so I'll give it a few weeks as they build up some gear and we'll see how it goes.

[Saithe]

MM is always a mana hog, I sometimes switch to Survival if there is no other person with Replenishment in the raid, just because it sucks having to switch to Viper every 3 minutes during a fight... Gear at 80 will help a ton though, once you start piling that Intellect on.