First thing’s first:
I’ve got the bear necessities on my druidling. /bow
I haven’t had much of a chance at all to mess around with the bear form yet, suffice to say that I’m rather enjoying it thus far and yes, I am one of those level 10 newbies who runs around doing everything in bear form and jumps all over Thunder Bluff and exudes “Wheee, I’m a bear!!” We’ve all seen them, and now I’m one of them. /shame
So the druid has gone from level 1 to level 10. Not bad. How goes the rest of The Project?
Meet Ralaenia Dexton. She’s spunky and upbeat and she likes kittens and walks in the rain.
She also likes blowing things up.
Yesterday she was level 19, now she is level 21. She has been leveling almost exclusively in Deadmines, with the help of a bunch of lowbie guild alts. We’ve all been having a blast running Deadmines with an appropriately leveled group of characters, all of us playing different classes (and even different group roles) than our 70s, which results in a lot of panic and laughter all around. Drives me nuts when there’s a hunter in the group though. The sounds of the firing guns and bows make me horrifically homesick.
BUT! She has Polymorph. And Blink. And Evocation. Evocation is one of the best inventions in the history of WoW, by the way. Just in case ya didn’t know.
So I now have a level 10 druid and a level 21 mage.
I have a confession to make though. Those aren’t the only alts I’ve been playing.
I also have a troll…
…hunter.
I have a valid excuse for this one though! I’m going to level this character Survival. Because it occurred to me that Tawyn leveled Marksmanship (she didn’t “officially” respec to Beast Mastery until level 57) and Lunapike is currently leveling Beast Mastery… but what kinda hunter am I if I’ve left an entire third talent tree untouched? So yes. Shantizar is going Survival. …at least, she will be when I get the money to respec. (I started this character a little while ago and she’s got a couple points in BM.)
If Lienna can do it and Trackhoof has a how-to for it… and Mirshalak makes it sound so fun and interesting… then there’s no way I’m going to be left out of this.
Well, that ends our special report. Coming up after a word from our sponsors: Hogger: horrible killer, or misunderstood defender of his people? Stay tuned!
Hey Pike,
I noticed the kitty in that troll’s photo. They’re fine low level, but when your crit picks up you’re really going to want a boar, due to the initial aggro boost with Charge. Hawk Eye and Savage Strikes should also be the initial Survival talents, in my blatantly narcissistic opinion. 😉
What server is your troll on? 🙂
Gal’s troll twin? Yay!
I love your druid. They’re kinda the best of every class, which confuses me, but is still fun to mess around with anyways! Keep it up!
Have to say my first charector was a druid, I figured it was the best way to sample several classes at once, kept her going for a long time and she had a few adventures in Molten core, but thats a story for another day!
I agree with Mirshalak, if it weren’t that I’d rather rip my eyes out with a rusty spoon I would have taken a boar too, thier aggro generation is very usefull when your playing someone as crit-happy as a survival hunter!
I suppose I should level up a marksman hunter too now since I’ve allready played a BM hunter up to level 60…
The troll is one of my few Horde on Silver Hand, at the moment though I’m considering re-rolling her for a variety of reasons (well, she’ll still be around, but my “survival hunter” I’ll reroll, and nab a boar for I think.)
Mirshalak’s right. I just put up my guide as a loose approximation of what’d do well for a beginning Survival Hunter, and what skills’d help out where.
And CONGRATULATIONS!!!
I’m happy you took on the challenge. 😀
(now you just have to figure out how you’re going to slog through those early levels without Steady Shot. :\)
Hey you’re doing well 🙂 I got my new shaman to level 2 yesterday :p Admittedly I started right before dinner was called (that’s my excuse anyway).
Trackhoof, the answer(s) to coping without Steady Shot are Immolation Trap and Serpent Sting.
Measure out max range, move to half way in, drop Immolation Trap, go back to max range, fire Serpent as pull shot, send boar when mob gets to trap, then simply use Auto Shot.
Slow, yes…but nice, regulated threat so you don’t pull it from the boar, and Hawk Eye means you’re safely a long distance away from danger, as well. If somehow you do manage to pull aggro, as the mob is coming towards you, fire Conc Shot, jump back a few times, then fire either Arcane or Multi to kill the mob before it gets to you.
The feedback I’ve read on some survival hunter blogs is, “Stick with BM spec for leveling until at least level 35. And maybe later”.
Although I’m finding 0/0/19 a lot of fun for lvl29 PvPing.
If your worried about getting to 70 and starting to do end game raiding as a survival hunter, then yes the advice is to level as BM, when 40% of your damage is in your pet it makes things that much faster to level.
*However* if you are interested in having fun as you level up then survival is great, sure maybe your pet can’t tank that elite which it could if you were BM, but hey, who needs a tank, with survival spec you can kite and kill things with trapping that much easier! Personally I enjoy things occasionaly being more of a challange than /petattack /cast mend pet /cast !auto shot
One thing you could do, if you really wanted to put effort into it, is actually be a demi-melee hunter, I’m sure with some abusing of the auto-attack and auto-shot timers you could end up doing a lot of damage, and since most of your shots are instants, this should be effective untill you get steady shot. The downside of course being that melee means its easier to pull threat, especially with improved traps and crit on raptor strike.
That and everyone will call you a melee huntard even if you find some zen-like movements that allow your dps to double!
Going survival is fine in later levels(practically endgame) and for pvp twinks but as a leveling spec its horrible.