Corrected by Mako below. Posting too early in the morning.

1% more of 1500 agility would only translate into 15 more agility, which is worth 30 AP in the item budget.

Even accounting for the 10 and 15% multipliers, one point in IMH is probably a higher personal DPS gain than one point in hunting party if no other hunter is already providing improved mark and replenishment is covered by other classes.

At 1500 Agility 1% increase is 15 AP (150 would be 10%). Fully talented, at 1500 agility you would be gaining 45 AP and 1% Crit.
Even though these aren't huge numbers they do affect all of your abilities, as opposed to serpent sting, which is only a small % of our damage. You also contribute, "backup" replenishment should you lose a Ret/SP during a fight.

1 Agility = 1 Attack power.

True, but mako said "item budget" so he was correct in what he said.

I just went back to SV and have a question:

Is there any point to run to melee range/drop trap/backup for the LnL procs with the new Sniper Training talent? Or is the 6% proc+sniper buff better?

I can't find it in the OP or in the last few pages.

Bosses are immune to frost traps, trap dancing for boss fights is now dead except in very specific situations where you might get more damage from Explosive on adds than you would from Black Arrow.

It's totally fight-dependent. I do it all the time on Y-S, for example, because there's nearly allways a handy corruptor tentacle on which I can stand on and drop the trap. The spreadsheet says I get 13.2k damage for explosive and 5.1k damage for black arrow, so the 6% damage buff isn't really missed either.

So if I can drop an explosive trap either on an add or on a predictable boss (i.e. Phase 2 Mimiron), I will. If not? Black arrow. It's definitely not critical for DPS like trap dancing once was, and you do need to keep in mind sniper training (usually not a problem, but still), although the mana usage works out - sure, the explosive trap is 383 mana (and black arrow 120) but those LnL proc'ed shots don't use mana.

Got a simple question my my shot ques. Ive gotten a bit confused as the normal shot que is 1)KS 2)ES 3)BA 4)Aimed/multi 5)Serpent sting 6)steady shot. What confuses me is how all those skills are above serpent sting wont i want to be applying serpent sting every time it wears off regaurdless of what else is on cd? Other than this have no problems following the shot priorty as listed just confused to as if im doing something wrong with serpent sting? Thanks.

The idea is when you have a lineup of ES/AS CD's coming upand Serpent about to fade. This rule says spam your ES and AS first before reapplying your sting. So no you don't want to be reapplying your sting or BA right away if their timers correspond with those of ES and AS.

This is true, but every Survival hunter worth a damn will have Lightning Reflexes, which increases agility by 15%, therefore 1 Agility = 1.15 AP, modified by Expose Weakness in combat, which adds another 25%, therefore we can conclude that in combat situations, 1 Agility = ~1.44 AP, and not 1.

This might be a stupid question, but doesn't Lock and Load only proc off black arrow damage and immolation trap damage, along with the guaranteed proc off freezing trap, freezing arrow, and frost trap? Why would it proc off explosive trap?

Maybe I'm missing something, but looking at the tooltip in the sv tree, I see nothing about explosive trap generating procs.

Even though the tooltip does not state it, it does proc off Explosive Trap.

I see, does this mean the 100% proc or the 6% chance on damage?

Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

This is from the upcoming 3.2 patch. Does this mean that it will proc every 22 sec regardless of BA? I don't understand it.
As it is, I go 4-5 miuntes sometimes without a single proc and get 2 procs in a row on a trash pull.


Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

This is also in the patch notes. Awesome change imo.

And the following are listed as buf fixes.

# Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
# The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
# T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

*Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

Okay. So black arrow can't proc multiple lnl's anymore. I'm certainly seeing trap dancing with explosive trap as a considerably better option for DPS whereever possible, which I didn't believe Blizz wanted. Am I missing something?

If they don't significantly increase the proc rate on Black Arrow, this would seem to be a pretty big hit to Survival DPS.

I suspect that they may have and it was either omitted from the patch notes, or hasn't been implemented yet. That is, of course, assuming that 3.2 will be similar to 3.1 in that it will see multiple iterations/additions across it's time on the PTR.

If the proc rate on Black Arrow hasn't been increased to essentially guarantee a proc off of a full duration Black Arrow DoT... then there's some serious doublespeak happening at Blizzard.

The upcoming 22 second ICD on LNL procs immediately made me question whether Resourcefulness would need to be re-examined due to anti-synergistic effects.

Whether specced 0/3 Resourcefulness (henceforth 0R) or 3/3 Resourcefulness (3R), the probabilities of proccing LNL on each tick of Black Arrow are the same for the first application of Black Arrow. The first tick has a 6% chance of LNL, as the tooltip indicates. But if that proc occurs, the next tick cannot proc due to ICD; it's chance to proc is 0.06 * (1 - 0.06) = 0.0564. This math can be extrapolated to provide the chance for an LNL proc for each tick in the initial round of the dot. The final tick has the lowest chance of proccing due to suppression via ICD, at a hair over 4.78%.

But the next application of Black Arrow sees the math diverge. For the 0R build, procs from the last two ticks of Black Arrow (at time t=9, t=12) still suppress procs for the first tick of the second application (t=30). This first tick thus only has a ~5.39% LNL proc chance. The same derivation can be continued for the other ticks of this cycle.

On the other hand, the first tick of the 3R build's second Black Arrow (at t=24) is still suppressed by procs from four of the previous cycle's ticks (t=3, t=6, t=9, t=12). There is only a ~4.85% proc chance at that time.

Conveniently for the math, the third round of Black Arrow (and all subsequent rounds) have the same probabilities of LNL procs as does the second, assuming a flawless rotation execution and no trapdancing silliness. Handwaving past the multiplication here, 0R has a 23.48% LNL proc chance per Black Arrow. 3R has a 22.19% LNL proc chance per Black Arrow. However, in order to meaningfully compare them, this needs to be examined from a procs-per-minute perspective due to the difference in cycle time.

0R's 23.48% proc rate is based on a 30 second cycle. 0.2348 / 30 * 60 = 0.47 PPM, on average.
3R's 22.19% proc rate is based on a 24 second cycle. 0.2219 / 24 * 60 = 0.55 PPM, on average.

TL;DR: An ICD on LNL does weaken Resourcefulness, but you still get more LNLs with it than without. You don't get more than one LNL every couple minutes, though. Ouch.

I'm interpreting the re-addition of an ICD for LnL to correspond to the trap changes. Resourcefulness 3/3 takes you down to 24 secs on all traps and BA. The new ICD comes in just below that, so for 100% proccing things you still have a 100% proc for the CD you just used, and etc for the BA and Immo procs.

Also, it's tied directly to PVP and PVE abuse of the trap procs (i.e. Frost + LnL, Explosive Trap + LnL). Or what is perceived as potential abuse. That is my surmise.

Just based on the sheer amount of damage you could surprise someone with (in PVP), even with the new ICD on LnL I just don't see how the trap thing is going to make it past the first few days on the PTR if it makes it that far.

While a nerf to black arrow, the changes make trap dancing "look" extremely viable and should result in a dps increase on fights where dancing is possible.

Ok this may have been answerd but call me crazy for not sifting through 117 pages of replies, is there a point to Wyvern sting in raids or is this purely fr soloing/CC on mobs, or is it used with noxious poison talent as when you use it they dispell it straight away and it procs, or does the 3% dmg increase on serpent sting always have effect, its not to clear on that one.

Serpent's Choice: Don't forget, that Black Arrow also does damage by itself and it increases your damage done to the target by 6% for it's duration. So you shouldn't decide if you spec Resourcefulness only on the LnL procs.