Survival Hunter Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

In Battleground Blitz, Survival Hunter is a versatile melee DPS that has decent single-target damage but is also capable of outputting a huge amount of cleave damage when there are closely positioned enemies in a chaotic team fight. With its toolkit of traps, high mobility, and strong burst potential, Survival Hunters can adapt to various roles in a battleground and provide significant disruption to the enemy team.

The role of a Survival Hunter in Battleground Blitz is to disrupt enemies, secure kills on key targets, and provide utility through crowd control and traps. Their ability to quickly switch between targets and apply consistent pressure makes them invaluable in chaotic team fights and skirmishes.

Unlike traditional melee specialisations, Survival is a hybrid between ranged and melee DPS, where much of the rotation can be done from range and getting into melee range is only required to use Butchery, dump focus with Raptor Strike/ Mongoose Bite and for to use Muzzle, although with the new Mastery effect Mastery: Spirit Bond you should be aware of the distance between yourself and your pet if you ever play at a long distance for a prolonged period.

Survival Hunters can also grant the Primal Rage buff if required (although as many classes in the game are able to apply this, it is usually better to just use a Cunning or Tenacity pet).

Whilst not traditionally known as a flag carrier or defender, the new mobility and defensive tools in the Hunter talent tree give Survival the ability to defend or flag carry for a decent amount of time until it is able to pass the flag or base to a more durable DPS teammate. With the faster flag capture speed in Battleground Blitz, being able to interrupt enemies using a pet while crowd controlled also gives Hunters an advantage when defending.

Survival is an excellent specialisation for hunting down flag carriers as well as defending them on flag carry maps and is able to carry team fights with its area of effect burst damage and crowd control on resource race maps.

Unlike in Arena, all Hunter specialisations are able to dismiss their pet during Battleground Blitz. This means that you can swap pets at any time, depending on whether you need more mobility or survivability, or even just change to a Cunning pet whenever Fortitude of the Bear is on cooldown and swap back afterward.

Because of the number of players in a Battleground Blitz, it is dangerous to stand in melee range of enemies for too long, and you should only stand in melee range when it is safe to do so, when using Butchery or dumping focus with Mongoose Bite. Ideally, during the opener of a fight, you would set up your damage with Coordinated Assault and Spearhead followed by Butchery then get some distance and use your Wildfire Bombs and Explosive Shot from range (buffing their damage with Tip of the Spear from Kill Command), and then when you need to dump focus, use Aspect of the Eagle for your Mongoose Bites so you can maintain that safe distance, only moving back into melee range briefly when using Butchery.

If you are playing Sentinel, you should play around your Lunar Storm windows and try to make sure your first Wildfire Bomb of a fight hits as many enemies as possible.

When you need to dump focus with Raptor Strike and do not have Aspect of the Eagle available, it is a good idea to prioritise cloth-wearing targets such as Mages and Warlocks, as when fighting toe-to-toe with other melee specialisations, Survival Hunter is not very durable, and you will not be able to survive for long.

Switching targets whenever they use defensive cooldowns is always something you should look to do as Survival because you do not need to apply damage over time effects before being able to do meaningful damage and have relative freedom between who you attack, as most of your abilities can be used from range.

In the unlikely event that your team does not have a Heroism effect, you can provide one by playing with a Ferocity pet and using Primal Rage. This comes with a low opportunity cost because, unlike in Arenas, you are able to freely dismiss and re-summon pets in Battleground Blitz. You can swap back to a Cunning or Tenacity pet whenever Primal Rage is on cooldown to gain mobility or durability as needed.

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Survival has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Intimidation
• Binding Shot
• Freezing Trap
• Scatter Shot
• Entrapment
• Implosive Trap (to lock targets down) or
• High Explosive Trap (to keep targets away)

You should look to use your Intimidation and Freezing Trap combination on enemy healers whenever they are available and as early in the fight as possible. When Intimidation isn't available, you can also use Harpoon, Binding Shot or Scatter Shot to set up your own traps. If your team is already dealing significant damage on a key target, you can choose to crowd control both healers at once by using Intimidation into Freezing Trap on one whilst using Binding Shot into Scatter Shot on the other.

When playing against several melee specialisations, you can help your team stay alive using your Sticky Tar Bomb to disrupt their damage.

In The War Within, Hunters gained Kodo Tranquilizer, a powerful new utility talent that becomes very powerful when you are able to hit three targets with it. You should use Tranquilizing Shot on cooldown during team fights, particularly as it generates focus through Disruptive Rounds.

You should also be using Roar of Sacrifice on your teammates as early in the fight as possible. A macro is included at the bottom of this page, which should make this much less mechanically difficult.

Whenever you are supporting a flag carrier that is kiting enemies, you should also be using your Master's Call, Tar Trap and High Explosive Trap to support them.

Whenever you know that a Rogue or Feral Druid is in stealth and nearby, you should be dropping Flare to try to catch them out.

Against teams with Assassination Rogues or Feral Druids, it can be good to take Mending Bandage to negate their damage on stunned teammates, particularly if your teammate is carrying a flag.

Survival has also received several significant boosts to its survivability in the War Within that will make it a better defensive spec than it has been in previous expansions.

You have a number of defensive cooldowns which can be used to carry flags or stall while waiting for help from teammates.

• Survival Tactics (if you are flag-carrying, be aware that using Feign Death will drop the flag, and you will need to immediately pick it up again!)
• Survival of the Fittest (combined with Padded Armor and Lone Survivor)
• Fortitude of the Bear (comes with Endurance Training)
• Roar of Sacrifice
• Exhilaration (combined with Rejuvenating Wind and Natural Mending)
• Don't Look Back
• Aspect of the Turtle (note that this is your only defensive that cannot be used while carrying flags)

As a general rule when rotating your cooldowns as Hunter, you want to use your first charge of Survival of the Fittest as soon as you start (or are about to start) taking damage. This is because you have two charges through Padded Armor and keeping a charge on cooldown at all times will allow you to use Survival of the Fittest more frequently.

Your second priority defensive is Exhilaration which you should use whenever it's available and you need health, because the cooldown is relatively short through Rejuvenating Wind. If you are not in combat, you can save Exhilaration and use Camouflage to heal between fights instead.

Feign Death should be used on cooldown either to interrupt casts or whenever you're anticipating a big hit of damage to activate the Survival Tactics damage reduction.

To get the most value from Aspect of the Turtle, you ideally want to use it when you wouldn't be able to do damage anyway (for example fighting a Rogue during Evasion, Havoc Demon Hunter during Blur, or Windwalker Monk during Touch of Karma), although, if you are going to die you should use Aspect of the Turtle regardless.

Remember that during Aspect of the Turtle, you aren't able to attack but are still able to contribute to the fight by throwing any available traps or other non-damaging abilities such as Flare.

Importantly, Hunters are not able to use Feign Death or Aspect of the Turtle while carrying a flag in Warsong Gulch/Twin Peaks, or carrying an orb in Temple of Kotmogu. On these maps you should be liberal with your defensive cooldown usage and where possible, pass the flag to teammates when you don't have usable defensive cooldowns available.

It is worth pointing out that Survival does have weak self-healing and struggles to survive a prolonged period without a healer available more than other DPS specialisations, so when you see enemies coming, you should call it out in the battleground chat!

Survival Hunters can be slippery flag carriers and have some niche mobility talents in the War Within that are not played often in Arena but can be excellent if you need to move a flag quickly or kite enemies away.

• Disengage (and Posthaste)
• Scout's Instincts
• Pathfinding
• Trailblazer
• Moment of Opportunity
• Born To Be Wild
• Master's Call

An important advantage Hunters have over other classes in Battleground Blitz is the ability to immediately leave combat using Feign Death. This allows the Hunter to quickly move between objectives with their mount when they are no longer needed at an objective, or to quickly respond to a new objective. For example, if a flag carrier is running across the other side of the map from the teamfight you are in, you can immediately mount and catch the flag carrier whilst the enemy healers are still trapped in combat in the teamfight.

At the start of a Capture the Flag map, you should either:

1. Identify who the likely enemy flag carrier is and move to slow/crowd control/kill them to delay their push to your base for as long as possible
2. Join the team fight, crowd-controlling an enemy healer as soon as possible and getting your burst damage rotation off

Survival is great at fulfilling both of these roles.

On both Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, if you are defending your own flag carrier, you should encourage them to take high ground on the upstairs ledges so you can protect them with High Explosive Trap (and Bursting Shot if you choose to take that as well).

Similarly, when attacking enemy bases, you should look to knock players off the high ground. You can do that either to make sure that your teammates can attack the enemy flag carrier or to separate the flag carrier from their healers.

When nobody is available to take the enemy flag, and it is nearby, you should take advantage of your mobility and defensive cooldowns to bring the enemy flag back to your team as soon as you can and, if possible, pass it to a more durable specialisation when it is safe to do so.

Whenever you are defending a flag and not already in combat, you should be pre-emptively placing traps on chokepoints so the enemy team are immediately crowd controlled when they arrive.

If you are running with a flag, you can use a Cunning Pet for additional speed and the Master's Call effect, but if you are still holding the flag in your own base, you may be better off swapping to a Tenacity pet to gain Fortitude of the Bear, which will make you more likely to survive stuns. In either case, if you are next to your teammates you should pass the flag to one of them where possible as you aren't able to use your most important defensive cooldown Feign Death or immunity Aspect of the Turtle while carrying a flag.

Resource Race Battlegrounds work differently in Battleground Blitz compared to regular Battlegrounds and this substantially changes the way they are played. The differences are as follows:

1. Assaulting a node takes six seconds of not being interrupted once you click the flag.
2. Once a node has been assaulted, the node will be contested for only 30 seconds (meaning, the enemy team only has 30 seconds to stop your team from capturing that node).
3. After that 30 second window, the base will be controlled by your team for 45 seconds and cannot be assaulted by the other team.
4. After this 45 seconds, the base is inactive for 5 seconds, at which point it can be assaulted again by either team.

Whenever you are in combat at a base in a Resource Race Battleground:

• If there is an enemy healer at the base you are assigned to, then you should crowd control them as soon as possible and use your burst cooldowns to kill their teammates.
• If there is no healer but there is more than one DPS enemy, you should use your crowd control on the one who your team is less likely to attack (as they would break your crowd control).
• If there is only one enemy and they are a DPS, you should use both Wildfire Bomb charges, then Coordinated Assault and stun them with Intimidation. If they use their trinket, you should immediately use Freezing Trap and attempt to capture the base. If they don't trinket, proceed with your burst damage rotation.

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first to avoid having too many players at any node (or your team missing a node entirely).

In all 1v1 fights or combat where you do not have a healer with you, you should be very liberal with your defensive cooldowns to reduce the damage you take as much as possible, because the tools you have for recovering health are limited.

When you are defending a flag and use Camouflage, you should dismiss and re-summon your pet then position it near the flag (but away from you). This will allow you to attack with your pet while staying in Camouflage yourself. By doing this, you will also be able to build Tip of the Spear stacks using Kill Command on any enemy that approaches the base. This will help you get a stronger opener when you decide to attack, and in the meantime prevent enemies from capturing the node. You can also heal your pet with Mend Pet while doing this and use Revive Pet if it dies, whilst still being in Camouflage.

You are also able to use Freezing, High Explosive and Tar Trap while in Camouflage without it breaking. An example of using this would be to interrupt a Rogue who is trying to capture your node, they will Kidney Shot your pet and try to capture it again, and you can throw a Freezing Trap at them to interrupt the cast while remaining in stealth and continuing to interrupt them with your pet when the trap ends. This can be extremely effective to stall when defending a base solo against one or more players because you only need to defend for a short period of time before the base is captured. You don't actually need to win the fight, as long as you don't let the other team assault the flag for 30 seconds.

Whenever a node has been captured by your team or is about to be captured by your team, (or if a base has been assaulted and you know that no players on the enemy team will be able to arrive in time to contest it) you should check whether are any other bases that you may be able to assault, and if so, leave combat with Feign Death and mount to get there as soon as possible, because the base does not need to be defended for 45 seconds once captured, and with the increased mount speed you can cross the map very quickly.

Whether defending or attacking, whenever you are in Arathi Basin at Lumber Mill, you should try to get value from your High Explosive Trap. Using Intimidation or Binding Shot beforehand will make it easier to land a good knockback on enemies.

Survival Hunters can excel at attacking and defending bases or controlling the fight in the centre map, and during the game, you can choose whichever your team needs most. Usually, you will aim to assault the opposing base as soon as possible, using your burst damage to get an early kill, whilst crowd controlling any enemy healers. If nobody on your team is going to take and defend the base on your side when the Battleground starts, you should focus on that instead.

Bases are a lot more important than the centre flag in the Battleground Blitz version of Eye of the Storm because capturing a flag "resets" the bases. It is generally not worth capturing the flag unless your team only holds one base and is about to lose that base, or as a last resort when you are very close to losing a game. Capturing the flag is particularly risky for your team when you currently hold two bases. In that situation, both bases would be deactivated and your team would need to capture the opposite bases again, and it is more difficult to simultaneously attack two bases than to simultaneously defend two bases.

During any large teamfight, you want to always make sure that the whole of the enemy team is in front of you, as if you end up positioned between the enemy melee DPS and their ranged/healers, you will likely get isolated/focused and die.

When none of your team are attempting to pick up the flag at mid and you are able to, it can be worth picking up the flag yourself and carrying it near to a friendly base so you are able to capture it if the base is going to be lost. Be very cautious of Death Knights, who may deliberately Death Grip you into the base node to capture the flag and reset the bases at a bad time.

If your team controls both bases, it is usually better for your team to have more players at the base closer to the enemy respawn point, as that is the base that the enemy team will be likely to attack in greater numbers.

Ranged DPS specialisations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so as a Survival Hunter, at the start of a game, you should avoid taking an orb unless there is one that the rest of your team hasn't picked up.

During the game, if an orb is near you and none of your teammates are taking it, you should pick it up and then try to keep a safe distance from the team fight while contributing as much damage as you can. If it is dangerous to push a healer for crowd control while you're holding an orb, you shouldn't do it; staying alive is more important.

Once the team fight is won, you should move to the center of the map. Your team gains victory points faster when they are holding orbs towards the center, and if you are standing away from your team, you will be line of sighting your healers and at risk of being isolated or killed by the enemy team.

Whenever you are holding an orb, your goal is to always have friendly players between yourself and wherever the opposing team is grouping up. This makes it more difficult for enemy players to reach you.

Your default talents will be:

1. Survival Tactics (mandatory)
2. Chimaeral Sting
3. Diamond Ice

Even though it reduces the duration of your traps, playing with Diamond Ice means that you do not have to worry about your own cleave or other teammates breaking your traps on healers. You can also use Diamond Ice to delay flag carriers or to counter their defensive cooldowns (for example a, Druid uses Survival Instincts at low health, you can use Freezing Trap, and at the end of the trap, they will lose the damage reduction and still be at low health).

Against teams with many DPS specialisations that are vulnerable to disarm effects, Sticky Tar Bomb can be a powerful tool to protect your team.

Against teams with Assassination Rogues or Feral Druids, it can be good to take Mending Bandage to negate their damage on stunned teammates, particularly if your teammate is carrying a flag.

If you are going to be either flag-carrying or supporting a flag carrier for a whole game, it can be worth taking Hunting Pack to boost the flag carrier's speed.

1. Agility;
2. Versatility around 20%;
3. Haste to 20%;
4. Mastery;
5. Critical Strike.

The stat priority for Survival Hunter is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena.

In Battleground Blitz, the strongest Embellished gear bonus is Elemental Focusing Lens. The increase to your throughput per embellishment in PvP is in the region of 1.5-2% per lens.

The Nerubian weapon embellishment Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension (and related embellishment Writhing Armor Banding) can be powerful in a very long duration fight for some classes, but with current tuning, even at 10 stacks this provides less overall damage than using two Elemental Focusing Lens's for all Hunter specializations.

You can also play the defensive Embellishment option for a slight defensive boost. This embellishment gives a small absorb shield when your health gets low (but has a relatively long cooldown):

• Captured Starlight

You should be aware that you can dismiss and swap Pets during Battleground Blitz, so whenever Primal Rage or Fortitude of the Bear are on cooldown, you can swap to a different Pet and swap back when that ability is ready again.

The most important consideration with pets is whether they have a Mortal Strike ability (also known as Mortal Wounds). You may have teammates with Mortal Strike effects, but they are not guaranteed to be with you at all times, and if they are, it's not guaranteed that they will apply Mortal Strike to your target.

The second consideration is whether your team has a Heroism effect. If there is nobody on your team that is able to provide Heroism, you should start the game using a Ferocity Pet so you are able to provide Primal Rage on the first fight.

The choice you have is in the Pet Family, you will want to have Pets with the Cunning, Tenacity, and Ferocity specialisations, from Families that provide the Mortal Strike effect. Suggested Pets for each of the three specialisations are below:

• Undead Raptor or Rodent (default)
• Riverbeast (when defending a base)
• Wasp (so that you can use Primal Rage)

If you are looking for further information on which Pets to use, there is a seperate page on this guide going over Pets in detail.

Macros are expanded on separately in this guide on the Survival Hunter PvP Useful Macros page, although here are some macros that are particularly useful in Blitz:

• #showtooltip Roar of Sacrifice
• /cast [help] [@targettarget] Roar of Sacrifice

This Macro will cast Roar of Sacrifice on your target if they are friendly, and if your target is hostile, it will cast Roar of Sacrifice on your target's target.

This is useful because when your teammate is being focused, you can use defensives on that teammate without having to change target or use a mouseover macro on their frame.

You should use this early in every fight when Roar of Sacrifice is available, especially at the start of the game, as the other team is likely to have already decided who their preferred target in the team fight is and will target them first.

Make sure you are targeting an enemy DPS player and that you are aware of who they are targeting when you use the Macro.

You can use a similar macro with Master's Call, and then whenever your target is focusing your team's flag carrier, use the Macro to help them escape.

• #showtooltip [known:scatter shot]scatter shot;[known:bursting shot]bursting shot
• /cancelqueuedspell
• /stopcasting
• /cancelaura aspect of the turtle
• /Cast [@mouseover, exists, harm] scatter shot; scatter shot
• /cast [known:bursting shot]bursting shot

This Macro will cast Scatter Shot at your mouseover if they exist, which is useful in BGs to crowd control healers without having to manually target them or set them as your focus.

The Macro will cast Scatter Shot at your target if you aren't mousing over an enemy.

If you have Bursting Shot talented instead of Scatter Shot, it will cast Bursting Shot.

This Macro is useful for Battleground Blitz specifically because mouseover macros make crowd controlling in battlegrounds a lot easier, and because you may swap between Scatter Shot and Bursting shot depending on whether you get a Capture the Flag map.

• #showtooltip Chimaeral Sting(PvP Talent)
• /cast [mod:alt,@focus,harm,nodead] [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [] Chimaeral Sting(PvP Talent)

This Macro will cast Chimaeral Sting on your mouseover if you are holding your mouse over an enemy unit or frame, your target if you don't have a mouseover, or your focus target if you press alt at the same time as the Macro.

I recommend also having a macro like this for utility spells such as Concussive Shot and Tranquilizing Shot. Using these macros, it is easy to swap between which targets you're using your utility spells on in Battlegrounds (for example, if you already have one healer on focus but want to silence the other without swapping focus targets).

• #showtooltip
• /cancelaura aspect of the turtle
• /cast [@mouseover,exists] Kill Command; Kill Command
• /stopattack [stealth]
• /petattack

This Macro allows you to use Kill Command whilst in Camouflage as long as you summoned your pet after entering Camouflage.

Use this macro to interrupt enemies assaulting your base or to build Tip of the Spear stacks using Kill Command without enabling your auto-attack (which would break Camouflage).

• /cancelaura Alliance Flag
• /cancelaura Horde Flag
• /cancelaura Netherstorm Flag
• /y FLAG DROPPED

This Macro will drop a flag if you are carrying one on a capture-the-flag map.