WotLK Why don't I see many survival PVP hunters?

[Giwl21]

I've been going for survival PVP spec, and I am astonished as to how little representation we have. In the top 100 leaderboard in the armory, I was only able to find a single team that had a Survival hunter. When I look at guides of arena combos, rotations, and matchups, it pretty much always addresses MM hunters (BM hunter guides are generally labeled). Why is MM the default hunter spec for PVP?

[skiethels]

well this is not retail so things are not so retaily... if you know what i mean ; )

[Kapii]

I'm extremely new to hunter myself so I followed some more generic guides and went mm for both pvp and pve.

If we assume warmane was blizzlike, why would survival be played more?

[TutellaF]

Explosive shot doesn't benefit from their pve armpen as much (if at all) as chimera does.
Why play tactically when you can wtf omg burst one oponent under 5s using pve gear. Rest of the match is then much easier as 2v1 or 3v2.

[HomerjayAT]

That Survival is so rarely seen in PvP has nothing to do with Warmane not being blizzlike enough or the main abilities of sv and mm (Explosive and Chimera Shot) scaling differently with arp. In fact none of the main abilities scale with arp. Explosive Shot does fire damage and Chimera Shot does Nature damage. The difference lies within the weapon scaling. Chimera Shot directly scales with your weapon damage while Explosive Shot does not.

During 264 meta sv was viable in niche situations where you would face either teams without dispel for Black Arrow or teams with high armor values where Aimed Shot damage wouldn't be as high. Additionally in an average fight sv would do more damage than mm and I think still does than mm in arena, especially vs Serpent Sting dispelling teams. So why not play sv? The sv damage is a lot more streamlined than mm. You have your Explosive Shot every 6 seconds but still have to wait for it to fully tick through. You don't win games by streamlined damage in most cases, you win by short intervalls of burst and hence forcing cds, that's why mm is better. The support of mm to his mates is also greater. As the strongest combs in 3s for a hunter are melee cleaves every ret/war/dk/druid/rogue will thankfully take the Trueshot Aura granted by mm; sv in return has nothing to offer really as your healer doesn't even get the Refreshment mana buff.

Another point is the cc. Mm has the absolutely vital Silencing Shot on a 20 seconds cd while sv only has Wyvern Sting that can easily be dispelled by 3/4 healers and also instantly tremored as it's a sleep effect and it's on a hefty 60 seconds cd. On top of that you can reset all your cds with Readiness every 3 minutes. With this you kind of have an emergency peel button. You can not only reset all your abilities, your disarm from Chimera Shot in combination with Scorpid Sting is also reset.

Last but not least the survivability, contrary to the name, of sv is far worse than mm as you don't have access to Readiness.

[manqkalek]

Survival is definitely better for RBG,MM for arena.

[Drunkuser]

That Survival is so rarely seen in PvP has nothing to do with Warmane not being blizzlike enough or the main abilities of sv and mm (Explosive and Chimera Shot) scaling differently with arp. In fact none of the main abilities scale with arp. Explosive Shot does fire damage and Chimera Shot does Nature damage. The difference lies within the weapon scaling. Chimera Shot directly scales with your weapon damage while Explosive Shot does not.

During 264 meta sv was viable in niche situations where you would face either teams without dispel for Black Arrow or teams with high armor values where Aimed Shot damage wouldn't be as high. Additionally in an average fight sv would do more damage than mm and I think still does than mm in arena, especially vs Serpent Sting dispelling teams. So why not play sv? The sv damage is a lot more streamlined than mm. You have your Explosive Shot every 6 seconds but still have to wait for it to fully tick through. You don't win games by streamlined damage in most cases, you win by short intervalls of burst and hence forcing cds, that's why mm is better. The support of mm to his mates is also greater. As the strongest combs in 3s for a hunter are melee cleaves every ret/war/dk/druid/rogue will thankfully take the Trueshot Aura granted by mm; sv in return has nothing to offer really as your healer doesn't even get the Refreshment mana buff.

Another point is the cc. Mm has the absolutely vital Silencing Shot on a 20 seconds cd while sv only has Wyvern Sting that can easily be dispelled by 3/4 healers and also instantly tremored as it's a sleep effect and it's on a hefty 60 seconds cd. On top of that you can reset all your cds with Readiness every 3 minutes. With this you kind of have an emergency peel button. You can not only reset all your abilities, your disarm from Chimera Shot in combination with Scorpid Sting is also reset.

Last but not least the survivability, contrary to the name, of sv is far worse than mm as you don't have access to Readiness.

Hey Homerjay what do you think about BM? Is it bugged on Warmane, or it is how it's supposed to be and simply inferior to MM in 284 meta? I've seen someone playing it without a full 51 talents dip, with a normal wolf pet, how would you play that ?

[HomerjayAT]

Don't think it's bugged on Warmane. It's just bad. It only does sick damage on the entry burst really. After that it doesn't do anything really. Super streamlined damage with the pet, no cc really, barely any peels, not even ros for your mates mostly. It's great with Enhance Sham as you get the 10% Atp aura but that's it. On top of that most teams can easily counter the bm mechanic. Every hunter team with ros or a paladin team with big sac in it can just press that on the target that the bm hunter is attacking n gg.