Farming for 3.0.

One of my incoming referrals this morning, listed by feedburner, was from someone using WotLK farming as keywords on Google. So in the interests of giving the people what they want, I thought I'd write a post about that. These two specs, of course, are for farming only. Although I can't speak at all for raiding, a hybrid burst setup with TSA and Lock and Load will likely be wanted for 5 mans, (something on the order of this) and I use something very similar to that 5 man spec for battlegrounds myself as well.

At 70, this spec is what I would recommend for farming, at least where Survival is concerned.

Although I'm not entirely sure yet either, this is also what I suspect I will be aiming for at 80, as well.

This may at first seem a little counter-intuitive, so I will explain. This spec is built primarily around Improved/Noxious Stings, Hunter Vs. Wild, Trap Mastery, and Resourcefulness. The 80 spec also adds ToTH, Sniper Training, Readiness, and 2/3 Focused Aim. You generally won't need to be hit capped while farming, I don't think, but a little more hit never hurts. Note the inclusion of Survival Tactics in both specs, as well. When soloing instances in particular, trap and feign resists need to be minimised.

I will admit that in a farming build, I virtually never take Improved Tracking, and I generally never took the old Imp Slaying talents, either. Hawk Eye in my own mind is one of the single greatest Survival talents, and Savage Strikes for me has always been mandatory as well. I find that when my back is against a wall and I have something large and horrible bearing down on me, the 20% melee crit is of great value. It also has a use when I make the occasional raptor swipe at someone while kiting in PvP.

As utterly glorious as I still do find it for PvP, I also can't recommend Lock and Load for farming. The reason for that, quite simply, is threat. Three Arcane Shots with only the GCD between them generates ~1.5k, and that's assuming you don't crit. If a mob is dead after that, well and good, but if it is not, you're likely to have serious problems, especially against groups. That may not be a problem for doing dailies, but going into Ramparts with it, I suspect, would be suicidal.

I've already done numbers here for the extreme mana efficiency of using trapping and Serpent for farming in TBC. The damage:mana ratio back then was around 2.5-3:1. If anything, that ratio would now be even higher; I suspect edging past 4:1 or thereabouts, (with Glyph of Immolation Trap) since while Serpent's cumulative damage is up by 33% with the above build, the mana cost has remained constant.

I also strongly recommend obtaining the relevant glyphs, particularly the Glyph of Immolation Trap which boosts its' damage by 100%. This is a real boon for non-Survival users as well, since it far exceeds the 30% damage bonus offered by Trap Mastery. This might otherwise introduce the danger of making Immolation Trap almost a little bursty, which of course has bad threat implications, but the upside is that you can of course only use Immolation Trap against a single target anyway, so that won't be a problem.