Best Covenant for Survival Hunter In Dragonflight Pre-Patch

By DoolB Updated: 2022/11/28

Best Covenants for Survival Hunter

Best Survival Hunter Covenants and Soulbinds for Single Target/ Low AoE

Best Survival Hunter Covenants and Soulbinds for High AoE / Mythic+

Covenant Choice for Survival Hunter During Dragonflight Pre-PatchMad BombardierMad BombardierKill CommandPheromone BombKill ShotRangerFlayed ShotPouch of Razor FragmentsNoteSoothing ShadeParty FavorsNadjiahereResonating ArrowEffusive Anima AcceleratorEnfeebled MarkHammer of GenesisBest Survival Hunter Covenants for Single Target / Low AoE: Venthyr

Covenant Ability: Flayed Shot - This gives you a reasonably strong DoT and more importantly free and empowered Kill Shot. This is good due to the power of Kill Shot as well as the legendary Pouch of Razor Fragments slapping on even more free damage that cleaves.

Signature Ability: Door of Shadows - A targeted blink— its un-hasted cast time typically makes it slightly slower than Harpoon. It's still pretty okay since it does not require an enemy target, and as a true teleport it can even be used to avoid some mechanics like Painsmith Raznal's intermission spikes.

Best Survival Hunter Raid Soulbind -Theotar** (As mentioned above, if you don't want to play around Theotar, you can use Nadjia.)

Best Survival Hunter Covenants for Mythic+: Kyrian

Covenant Ability: Resonating Arrow - Briefly increases your Critical Strike chance to targets in the area as well as ignores line of sight. A lot of the power comes from the soulbind and turns this into a very frequent very powerful damage amplifier with enhancements such as Effusive Anima Accelerator and Enfeebled Mark.

Signature Ability: Summon Steward - Mostly gives you access to an emergency Phial of Serenity to heal you and clear a whole lot of nasty debuffs on you .

Best Survival Hunter High AoE / Mythic+ Soulbind - Mikanikos

Survival Hunter Covenant Popularity

Comments

Comment by Scaryfox

I admittedly bought a Spires of Ascension run from PvPBoost run because that's the only difficulty I could find in the Dungeon Finder for the Kyrian campaign. I, however, played all covenants as a casual player except Necrolords because I didn't see a benefit. So, I can see why they would be ahead of the Venthyr in terms of AOE at least.

Speaking of the Venthyr, I would think that Flayed Shot still retained its buff. Considering I've had that proc several times against a boss, your words seem a bit harsh to me.

That said, I found your comments on the Kyrian and Night Fae interesting. That's because I ended up joining the Kyrian since there were more beneficial soulbind traits. Also, I've noticed that Field of Blossoms isn't always visible and I can't always afford to just stand there. And one more thing: I just found out that Podtender will no longer activate if you're mindcontrolled. Since that used to help me out quite a bit, I think that's kind of dumb.

Comment by yusuf

I tried all covenants on my Survival Hunter, just for the cosmetic gear sets, and as a result, got to test all covenants in very similar situations and with the same gear iLvls. My findings were shocking in that the Necrolord covenant gave me up to 50% extra DPS in Mythic+ dungeons sometimes! And fortunately, a Survival Hunter guildie of mine had a similar experience, where we played the same Mythic+ with him as Kyrian because "that's what Wowhead and Icy Veins told him to use in Mythic+," and he asked about my Explosive Shot after the run because it was doing my highest damage percentage, so I explained its relationship to the Necrolord Hunter covenant ability. A while later, he also switched from Kyrian to Necrolord, and I saw with my own eyes on the Details! addon his DPS increasing by about 30% with nothing changing for him other than switching from Kyrian to Necrolord.

Necrolord is described as the weakest covenant in the Icy Veins guide and is not recommended in this Wowhead guide, and yet it outdamaged both Kyrian and Night Fae by shocking margins in my and my guildie's experience. Of course, we are not Mythic raiders or geared for Mythic raids yet, but then again, are Icy Veins and Wowhead writing these guides for Mythic raiders? Of course not, Mythic raiders can probably write their own guides and receive more than enough solid advice and coaching from their own guildies. It is people like us, who don't have access to information about optimal class setups from anywhere else, who need these guides the most.

And I can't say that I'm happy with these findings, because I'm not a theorycrafter or a guide writer, and I like to think that the guide writers of Wowhead, Icy Veins, and other sources know much more about the game and its various mechanics than me, so I like to feel that I can trust what I read on those guides. However, this discovery is making me question this. And the most annoying point for me is that I don't have time to do this testing with every class I'd want to try in the future just to make sure that what I read on the guides is accurate.

And I understand that some of the expected responses to this comment are going to be along the lines of, "Maybe you were not playing the Kyrian and Night Fae covenant abilities correctly? Maybe your setup or parties weren't working well with those abilities?" Yes, maybe, and yes, the tank had to drag the mobs outside the Kyrian and Night Fae circles sometimes, wasting the relatively long cooldown for me. Sometimes tanks don't even seem to care about trying to keep mobs inside those circles, at least in PuGs. However, all of this shouldn't mean that my DPS goes down by up to 33% sometimes in an M+! In other words, it shouldn't mean that I can raise my DPS by up to 50% if I switch from Kyrian or Night Fae to Necrolord as a Survival Hunter running M+. It also sure as hell shouldn't mean that our community experts make a blanket statement about Necrolord being the weakest covenant and that it shouldn't be used in any setting, like the Icy Veins guide says at the time of this comment! This Wowhead guide doesn't make such a blanket statement, and it justified its recommendation against the Necrolord covenant with some reasoning, which is commendable, but clearly something is wrong with this reasoning, at least partially and in some circumstances. Something is seriously wrong here, and I have a strong feeling that it is wrong with the community experts' view, not the skills, gear levels, or application of end-users like myself and my guildie, for example.

Best Covenant for Survival Hunter In Dragonflight Pre-Patch

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