Survival Hunter Opening Guide

[winged wren]

I was reading through the Wowhead SV opener and trying to make sure I understood it properly.

1. Cast Wildfire Bomb (makes sense, puts it on cooldown) + Harpoon to enemy
2. Raptor Strike for Serpent Sting (Makes sense for single target, but would it also be useful in an AOE situation?
3. Cast butchery for Merciless Blow (Wouldn't you want to cast the 2nd wildfire bomb before this so you don't overcap if there are multiple enemies?)
4. Cast Wildfire Bomb.
   (Would we want to use explosive shot somewhere above before coordinated assault to put it on cooldown?)
5. Cast Coordinated Assault (3 tip stacks)
6. Cast Wildfire Bomb (now 2 tip stacks)
7. Cast Explosive Shot (Would we also not want to throw our second wildfire bomb instead of explosive shot assuming we used explosive shot above?) (now 1 tip stack)
8. Cast Flanking Strike (now 2 tip stacks, but would we not want to use flanking strike after Fury of the Eagle to avoid overcapping on tip stacks generated? Is there a reason to use flanking strike before fury of the eagle?)
9. Fury of the Eagle

Thank you everyone!
@chilly lichen (just tagging in case you had any insights on this!)

[chilly lichen]

im in a meeting at work i will read soon

tho I know for point 3 the rotation on the page is accurate if you have bombardier checked since that's what refunds your bombs with CA

[winged wren]

No worries and no rush on this, just trying to make sure I understand the rationale behind it. I definitely know we are supposed to send out both bombs before CA because of bombardier, just that butchery gives up to 15 seconds of cooldown back, so would you want both bombs gone before using it, or is just one okay?

[chilly lichen]

this is just the opener so you want to make sure all your important stuff is on cooldown asap

@ripe bronze may have more responsive insight while im at work and she does write the APL as well

[ripe bronze]

but would it also be useful in an AOE situation? part of it is also to dump focus, in AoE it is drastically less useful or even completely unimportant starting at ~3 targets.

Wouldn't you want to cast the 2nd wildfire bomb before this so you don't overcap if there are multiple enemies? for 5t+ aoe, yes. on 3 targets and below it doesnt really matter. getting the butchery cd rolling sooner is better at this point.

will answer the other thingies later

[winged wren]

Gotcha, I think I am understanding more - basically you can adjust parts of the opener for single vs. 3 vs. 5 targets at once. I mainly do mythic so more focused on aoe but knowing single target stuff is helpful.

Fighting a pack I’d be less concerned about applying serpent sting to one cresture but one of the bosses it’d be good to get that dot up, etc

[ripe bronze]

ya correct

in pure aoe scenarios, Serpent Sting is of very little concern really

and there is also a difference between "Raw output" vs "Useful output"

for instance, Raptor striking some irrelevant add to apply serpent sting can be a raw damage output increase

but what it will typically do is just make it die a little faster than the other irrelevant adds in the pack, while the big mob in the pack ends up living longer

on top of that, it "steals" the damage wildfire bomb and other AoEs from your party would have done entirely passively.

this can be much much harder to gauge

and sims are generally built to optimise output vs efficiency

[winged wren]

I see, yes, the pack's not done until all are done (there's chain pulling but I get what you mean). And you might have killed it anyways with your AOE attacks. I was thinking of using raptor strikes over a couple targets when dumping focus to try and spread out the serpent stings to take advanatge of outland venom, but wasn't sure how much of an actual benefit that would be vs. effort.

[ripe bronze]

fwiw the apl does this

but its just extremely low prio even from a raw output perspective

i think as far as the wowh opener is concerned i will probably edit the line to be marked as a single target part of the opener since that is probably less confusing

even though it technically is worth doing outside of strictly st in some situations such as on 2t cleave