Weapon options for Survival Hunters in patch 7.0

If you’re interested in playing Survival when patch 7.0 drops, you may be wondering what the heck you’re supposed to use for a weapon since you probably only own ranged weapons at the moment. Sure, you will be getting your Talonclaw on day one of Legion, but for the 4-5 weeks in the interim you will need something to poke demons with. Thankfully, Blizzard will be sending you a melee weapon to get started with. If that’s not enough, there are several other options to tide you over until Legion.

Option 1: Blizzard’s Weapon Insurance

All Hunters who login to patch 7.0 will receive an in-game mail from Blizzard informing them of the weapon change for Survival. Attached to the message is a Survivalist’s Hunting Spear polearm.  Its item level will be different depending on your raiding progress in Hellfire Citadel:

• No raid experience, or only LFR experience: ilvl 655
• Normal HFC raid experience: ilvl 690
• Heroic HFC raid experience: ilvl 705
• Mythic HFC raid experience: ilvl 720

I am not sure what the threshold is for Blizzard thinking that you have the experience, but if I had to guess it would be something similar to how the raid caches from the ship yard work. So if you’re currently getting heroic raid caches from the ship yard, you can probably expect an ilvl 705 polearm. This is just an educated guess, they may have different requirements.

Option 2: Baleful weapon tokens

Baleful Armaments will create a Baleful Polearm for Survival Hunters, which range in ilvl from 650 to 695. You can also use an Empowered Apexis Fragment to upgrade the polearm to ilvl 695.

If you’ve got either of these items, just hang onto them until the patch. If you have neither, it will cost 10k Apexis for the armament and 20k for the upgrade token, so start farming those Apexis now. I wouldn’t worry too much about fishing for specific secondary stats (unless you’ve got a bunch of apexis to burn) as you won’t be using this long.

Option 3: Beg your raid for some melee weapons

If your team is still running HFC, you could always ask your raid for leftover 2H weapons with Agility on them. These will soon be Hunter weapons once again!

• Rune Infused Spear from Kormrok
• Xu’tenash, Glaive of Ruin from Mannoroth
• Bite of the Bleeding Hollow from Kilrogg Deadeye

You obviously won’t be able to get these with personal loot or bonus rolls until Patch 7.0.

Option 4: Buy a PVP weapon now

Honor points are going away, so if you have some to burn you could do so on a Survival weapon. Go to the PVP vendor in Stormshield or Warspear, and use the drop down menu at the top of the vendor’s window to view non-Hunter items. Each of the following costs 3500 honor points. It’s important you buy this before the patch hits:

• Warmongering Combatant’s Pike (ilvl 700)
• Warmongering Combatant’s Staff (ilvl 700)

And obviously if you have the conquest points to do it, you could buy the ilvl 710 versions from that vendor.

In patch 7.0 you will be able to purchase the ilvl 710 versions with Marks of Honor. These will drop in the boxes from arena and battleground victories.

Option 5: Inscription-crafted staff

Scribes are able to craft a 2H staff with agility, the Etched-Blade Warstaff. Like all crafted weapons, it can be upgraded all the way to ilvl 705 at stage 6.

Any other crafted 2H weapons will have strength or intellect and will be of little use to you.

Option 6: Legion Invasion weapons

Once the Legion invasions begin (supposedly these will start some time after patch day), you will have a chance of obtaining one of these ilvl 700 weapons from Large Legion Chests. These chests drop every time you complete the final stage of an invasion event.

• Fel Barbed Spear
• Eredar Battle Staff

You can upgrade these weapons to ilvl 725 with Coalesced Fel, which has a chance to drop from the same chests, or can be purchased with Nethershards, the currency earned from completing invasions.

Bonus: New heirloom polearm

Interested in leveling a new Survival Hunter? In patch 7.0, there’s a new polearm heirloom called the Eagletalon Spear, purchased from the regular heirloom vendor in Undercity or Ironforge. If you already own the Burnished Warden Staff heirloom, you can also use that for Survival leveling.