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My hunter is 6.1k gearscore with many bis items such as weapons...
How viable would Survival spec be in pve content for such as ICC 25s etc? And how much of a difference (in damage) from Marksmanship? I've never seen anyone run Survival. Just need your thoughts, cheers.
To answer this after plenty of raids: it's viable, but obviously falls short in terms of DPS compared to MM. It's also pretty fun.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hybrider
You've more or less answered it yourself. I'll add a few things.
There are definitely people running Survival even in full BiS raids on Warmane Icecrown:
https://uwu-logs.xyz/character?name=...cecrown&spec=3
https://uwu-logs.xyz/character?name=...cecrown&spec=3
"Difference in damage" is also a more abstract question than it seems. Specs differ in how their damage is distributed across single target and cleave, and results vary depending on kill time, movement, and encounter type.
In logs, MM can look like it clearly overperforms, but you have to account for the context. Survival rarely receives externals like Hysteria, while MM often does. MM has much larger sample sizes, tends to go to better raids, and arguably scales better with the faster kill times those raids produce.
The actual gap is not as large as raw log comparisons suggest, and unless you're competing directly against the best hunters on the server, you can absolutely outperform MM as Survival. Your damage in either spec is heavily dependent on how much and how well you melee weave, and melee weave is arguably stronger for Survival both in absolute and relative terms.