Survival weapon comparisons

Some might say I'm pilfering BRK's content, here. My apologies, BRK...but you have provided me with fodder for a post of my own. Think of it as an annotation to what you've stated, from the Survival side of the fence.

Someone wrote to BRK and asked which bow they should go with, out of one that dropped from the Shattered Halls, and Valanos' Longbow.

Valanos' Longbow
130 - 242 Damage Speed 2.80
(66.4 damage per second)
+10 Intellect
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 10.
Equip: Increases attack power by 22.

Skyfire Hawk-Bow
108 - 202 Damage Speed 2.40
(64.6 damage per second)
Equip: Improves hit rating by 14.
Equip: Increases attack power by 26.

As BRK stated, out of the two of these, I feel that for Survival, Valanos' is the better choice, for a couple of reasons.

• +Crit.
  
  Although at first glance, this one might seem obvious, it deserves a slightly closer look. While I've said in the past that I believe it's true that Agility should be Survival's single highest priority, my own experimentation with Cheeky's spreadsheet suggested that Agility alone isn't going to get you much higher than 28-30% (prolly 35% max) base crit. If you want to keep going up from there, (and of course we do ;)) that's when crit rating enters the picture.
  


• Intellect.
  
  I may not have said it directly before, but I feel that Intellect is probably the single lowest priority stat for Survival. Yes, we do use mana, and a lot of it, but Efficiency from the Marks tree and our own Thrill of the Hunt massively reduces real mana consumption. Not only that, but you'll likely hear about Marks Hunters with a mana pool the size of the Sigsbee Deep who still end up needing to pot during long instances.
  
  The moral of the story is thus that if we come across gear which throws us some Int on top of stats that are a lot more important, (like Agility) it's icing on the cake, and by all means, take it and enjoy it. Just don't go out of your way for it.


• Higher Base Damage.
  
  2.2 base DPS might not seem like much, but as I've said before, for damage, Survival isn't a free lunch. We get crit bonuses, yes, and 4% ap from Survival Instincts, but the rest has to come from gear. More noteworthy is Valanos' extra 40 damage on the high end. Higher base damage means higher damage crits. 'Nuff said.
  


• Slower attack speed.
  
  BM is going to want the faster attack speed to capitalise on Serpents' Swiftness. We on the other hand tend to want slower weapons in order to try and compensate for lag when performing a 1:1.5 rotation. BM usually only does a 1:1, or Steady, Auto rotation with some extra shots situationally, so for them having a fast weapon is a plus in pretty much every regard. For us on the other hand, a fast weapon makes it more difficult to time our shots, when then translates to less damage overall.

This might also offer people an idea of why developing good instincts for gear selection is also very important for Surv. At times you'll come across pieces of gear in your travels which you'll think looks cooler, and that you can also slap on interchangeably without too much of a problem. For Beast Mastery, that to some extent might be true...but for us, it generally pays to look a little deeper.