What Is A Hunter? What is A Spec? Why Does It Matter? – Survival Hunters Explained
Yesterday, we defined What is a Hunter is and What our role a Hunter’s role is-
“A Ranged Fighter with a Pet. Their job is to remain at a distance and with the help of their pet provide high amounts of damage, while helping to maintain agro and mob control.”
But even in our discussions, we didn’t really tackle “What is a Spec?” or “Why Does it Matter?” So today, we’re going to start looking at what Blizzard has to say about what Specs are for Hunters and how they can help you achieve your goals as a hunter.
So to get an idea of what specs are let’s revisit what Blizzard said about Hunters again-
“Hunters are deadly marksmen, capable of bringing their enemies down from a distance with bows or rifles. Skilled survivalists, they can track enemies or lay traps to damage and entrap their foes. Hunters also possess a primal connection to the beasts of Azeroth, capable of taming and training them to keep as loyal guardians. Wearing light to medium armor, hunters can also dual wield weapons in combat, fighting beside their pets in battle.
The Hunter is a vicious damage dealer. With their ability to pull extremely well and hit monsters hard from far away, they certainly help take down monsters more quickly. Their pets add to the damage count and can aid somewhat in managing monster aggro. The variety of traps allows the Hunter to control crowds to an extent, as well. The combination of their extreme range, decent damage, and trap capability, Hunters are the perfect pullers for any group.”
Right off one can see how they broke hunters into some basic descriptions
- Marksman – “Hunters are deadly marksmen…”
- Survivalist – “Skilled survivalists…”
- Beast Master – “Hunters also possess a primal connection to the beasts…”
To me, these give a simplistic, but solid overview of what each spec is. It doesn’t go into detail, nor does it help explain how we achieve our roles, but it does give the essense of each Hunter Spec.
The next few days we’ll take each one of these and disect them a bit. Determine what they truly are, and maybe answer the question, “Why does it matter?”
Today, we’ll talk about the Survival Hunter. If you want to go get a detailed description of every Survival Talent feel free to check out many of the different survival Hunter blogs out there like Less QQ, More Pew Pew or WTF, Are You Surivival?, or even WoWHead among others.
As for how a detailed guide on playing Survival, I’d suggest you check out Xumio’s Guide, check out The Lodge Forums or your favorite place.
What I will try to explain, is What is the Survival Hunter, and help you better understand Why Survival Hunters Matter, and How Survival Hunters can fulfill their role in a raid.
So let’s look at “What” is a Survival Hunter.
We already know that this is the Survivalist tree. Contrary to many misguided belief, it is NOT the Hunter Melee tree to help create “Hunter Tanks” Hunters DO NOT TANK, our pets can off-tank or help tank, but we Hunters aren’t geared nor designed for tanking. Yes, I know there is the off-occasion player that does something unusual or not part of the plan like Gweryc. And while I give him a TON of credit for being able to be a melee hunter and tank and off tank instances. He is playing his own game, not what the Hunter role is meant to be. This isn’t elitist, it’s just truth.
Hunters are to provide range damage. But if you look at the Survival Tree you’ll see a ton of Melee or close quarter’s attacks. Well, let’s go back to the Blizz description again, but this time focus on what seems to relate to Survival.
Skilled survivalists, they can track enemies or lay traps to damage and entrap their foes.
…
The variety of traps allows the Hunter to control crowds to an extent, as well. The combination of their extreme range, decent damage, and trap capability, Hunters are the perfect pullers for any group.
And if we look at the different talents of the Survival Hunter you’ll notice that this class is more of a Utility or Buff Hunter. Yes, they may or may not provide the top DPS (and as of 3.08 they seem to be the top DPS), their job is to help direct, control, and buff the raid.
See with talents like, Improved Tracking, HawkEye they’re able to find the mob and keep themselves at a distance to pew-pew away. Yes, we see that they have talents like Savage Strikes, Improved Wing Clip, Surefooted, Entrapment or Deflection that hint at melee or close quarters, but these are just a few.
Look at it this way. Entrapment, Scatter Shots, and the melee attacks are all defensive. Meaning if the mob get’s too close the Survival Hunter is truly a Survivalist, has tools and abilities to help themselves out of a tight spot.
But also, we can use those tools to help with mob control. Using traps to slow down or entrap mobs (albeit not as reliable as some other classes) gives us the ability to help direct the flow of battle.
But our real strengths come in with our buffs and abilities to increase damage while at the same time helping replinish the raid. This is what’s meant by being a Utility Spec. It doesn’t demean you, heck! Some of our most needed specs are truly Utility Specs.. Think of the Priest complete utility (if you don’t think those buffs and healing is providing a service, then you need to go give your resident healer a HUGE /HUG!!! and /Sorry)
So why back to the quesition at hand, “What are Hunters”, “What’s a spec?”, and
“Why is it important?” Let’s summarize it this way.
“A Survival Hunter is a Ranged Fighter with Defensive abilities, Group and Spell Buffs, and a Pet. Their job is to remain at a distance and with the help of their traps, buffs and pet provide high amounts of damage, while helping to maintain agro and mob control and replenishing the raid.”
See this is what a survival hunter is. They provide an EXTREMELY important service to any raid party. They help with mob control, maintain agro, and most important provide buffs and replinishment. And they do all of this while still being able to put out solid damage
