It looks like they re-added the minimum range on Kill Shot again. During 3.2.1 there was no minimum range on it.

Confirmed. I took the training dummy below 20% and ran up in melee range - was not able to use within 5 yards.

*edit* rest of my post pertains to MM. Swapping that information to the appropriate thread

While I'm not particularly bothered by KS having a minimum range again, I was under the impression that they intended to remove it in the first place. Probably last minute developments on the PVP balance front again, I guess, and a blue acknowledgment post should clarify things.

I'm not even sure it is a PvP change since Hunters aren't exactly ruling the boards. And I believe there was a blue that once said something like they wanted it to be more dangerous to hug the Hunter. But, I'm not bothered since I don't PvP. I just think this was a 'streamlining' of skills since it wasn't mentioned and given previous intentions. I wouldn't be too surprised to see a reverse of this or something else added/changed.

I guess us PvE Hunters will lose an occational Kill Shot on bosses like Ignis or Auriaya, but that's about it.

Also, anecdotal information, but I'm noticing less frequency on the Lock N Load procs.

Each Black Arrow cooldown would usually garner me one LnL proc typically, but now it seems like every other one.

Anyone else noticing it too?

5 procs in 10 applications. Don't really have the patience to test it further right now - will be a shame if all the testing to determine procrate for 3.2 needs to be done again.

Ran ten man TOC on tuesday, and LnL seemd to be procing less often, likely even slightly below 50% of black arrows.

Did not do further testing, as we are still working (wiping) on heroic 25 and that is keeping me busy.

I checked my logs for just boss data from the last two raid nights and I'm see 137 LnL procs from 966 BA ticks which is a 14% effective proc rate (obviously not correcting for the cooldown). Both of those include some Faction Champs kills where I get some extra LnL procs from slow traps, but they're not a significant portion of the data so it shouldn't be significantly off. I looked at my logs from the previous week and I don't have as much good data there (since we spent a good chunk of the week wiping on Freya 3) but from our 10 man I see 41 LnL procs out of 360 BA ticks, which is an 11.3% effective proc rate. So it could be I'm just having a good week, but I'm guessing that the rate hasn't changed. My simulations that I ran on the new LnL procrate when we were testing after 3.2 came out predicted effective LnL rates of 11-13% so these numbers are about what I'd expect.

On a side note, with the better version of the T9 2pc bonus equipped it looks like serpent sting priority should be above BA, at least with my current spec and gear setup.

I too did a comparison of LnL procs per Black Arrow ticks pre- and post-patch. I used my own stats from this week's ToC and Ulduar runs, and last week's ToC runs, but did not include any Faction Champions fights, only the fights where just BA could have procced LnL. Got the following numbers:

Pre-3.2.2: total number of BA ticks: 1643, LnL procs: 211. Gives me a 12,8% effective proc rate.
Post-3.2.2: total number of BA ticks: 925, LnL procs: 106. 11,5% effective proc rate.

The results are same as Rivkah's, there seems to be no change in proc rate after 3.2.2. The difference is small enough to be just random luck.

I was actually testing the LnL proc rate about a month ago, when I was still considering speccing Survival (again!). Given that I have actually written down the results, I tested BA again today. The results are fairly consistent with my IF dummy tests (5 sessions of 8 minutes of just spamming Autoshot and BA every cooldown, for simplicity).
Pre 3.2.2 I had an approximate of 13.2% LnL proc rate (66 procs out of 500 ticks)
Post 3.2.2 I had roughly 12.4% LnL proc rate (62 procs out of 500 ticks)

I didn't actually save the number of ticks for the first batch, just the proc rates tracked via an external addon and saved to notepad, so I decided to ignore the number of ticks today as well. However, if I remember correctly, it ticks every 3 seconds, so by reverse engineering. it should give me 500 ticks (give or take a couple) each test. The numbers are rounded to the nearest decimal, which probably means I didn't squeeze in exactly 500 ticks either time. Don't hold it against me, I wasn't sure I'd do it for posterity.

this has always been the case, but with 2piece t9 its a bigger deal now, especially since the hotfix to the crit multiplier:

if you're fighting multiple mobs (worms in northrend beasts, anubarak adds etc), you should be applying serpent stings to targets other than the primary one whenever everything but steady is down, rather than steady shotting(assuming they need a refresh). With 2piece t9, serpent sting can do 2 to 4 times the damage of steady or more, depending on other things.

This can take some getting used to, but the damage difference is significant if you can get it down.

edit: while you're at it, you can target swap explosive shots during LnL to maximize every global, fulfilling the explosive shot spam wetdream that LnL always wanted to be. ;p

Excellent advice, I've been doing this since some time back as well when I got my hands on t9.

You can use a /cast [target=mouseover] Serpent Sting or Explosive Shot macro. To streamline this further, you can set your OT as focus and use the mouseover macro on your focustarget frame as well so you won't miss on fights like Anub'Arak where the mosueover area for the boss often blocks out the mouseover area for the adds.

Kill Shot does indeed have a minimum range again. The good news is that it now properly matches the tooltip and is actually 5 yards as opposed to when it read 5, but was functionally 8 yards.

Regarding LnL procs, it does feel like it procs much less often but that is purely anecdotal at this point. The above stated math doesn't seem very conclusive either. 1% lower procrate? That doesn't seem like an intentional change. I feel like it has more to do with the cooldown.

I noticed that a trap proccing LnL still seems to be on a separate initial cooldown as Black Arrow ticks, but only if the trap procs first. For example, if a trap procs LnL, a Black Arrow tick can proc LnL again before the 22 second cooldown.

However, it still seems that Black Arrow's tick procs apply the cooldown to a trap proc, meaning if a Black Arrow procs LnL and I try to trap within 22 seconds, LnL will not proc.. With this in mind it may be advantageous to start a fight like FC with a Freezing Arrow placed near the mobs (this is what I do, anyway).

Can anyone else confirm this behavior?

Now that I have 2pc t9 I did some minimal testing on 1 pt in expose weakness and with my UB crit at a little over 46% this does seem viable. Once it procs after first few shots it seems to rarely go down for more than 1 sec. I'm sure with full raid buffs it will stay up since my crit will be over 50% +10% when master tactician procs. Didn't realize I was wasting the point. TY for the tip. Now to run numbers on the 0/18/53 spec.

So after reading a bunch of the beginning talk about survival and the main stats that are required it seems to be that i have notice people using spell penetration gems. I thought that ArP was mainly for hunters like warriors and dks....am i mistaken? I did also notice that the gems were used in a mm spec as well, which to me doesnt sound proper. right now i am sitting at 40% crit and 5194 AP with AoTD. I am well over hitcap and have been geming mostly agility and crit/stam for socket bonuses. Did i miss something?

Hunters only use Spell Pen for their PvP sets to get around resistances provided by GotW, Auras, etc. due to the majority of their damage coming from Explosive Shot or Chimera Shot.

I can. Tonight on heroic faction champs I was noticing it a few times. I got a few back to back procs of it with trap then BA, but one time when I noticed a BA LnL proc go off I went in to put a trap down to get one a few seconds after. LnL didn't proc then. So, what you suggested is most likely true.

Hi I'm just wondering about what the optimal time spent in Viper is for a Sv hunter. I haven't managed to plow through all the posts yet, but so far I haven't found anything that is specific enough for what I'd like to know. My question is really about whether it is better to switch to Viper until I've recovered 100% mana, or to some other percentage such as 50%, 70%, 80% max mana etc, in a 10 man raid and to a lesser degree, in a 25 man (I almost never OOM in a 25 man except of really loooong fights).

I was thinking that in longer fights (maybe XT Hard mode), staying in viper til 100% mana is possibly better, and for shorter fights (erm...XT normal?) going to <100% is better in terms of efficiency, but that's just what I hypothesize. Does anyone happen to have experiences to share to validate/invalidate this hypothesis?

Furthermore, is it viable to switch back to Dhawk for Es ticks, then back to viper for mana regen, and back to Dhawk again every time Es cd is up? Or is that unnecessary or even counter-productive?

I'm inclined to do an experiment to simulate long and short fights with using viper to various percentages of max mana as well as for switching back and forth for Es ticks, but I want to be sure I'm not needlessly replicating previous findings. Hope you guys can shed some light on this topic for me =)

Given that you'll ideally end a fight at or close to 0 mana, it's about timing things correctly more than hitting certain percentages, in my opinion. In long, fairly drawn-out fights, like XT hard mode, then there's no real drawback to going into Viper up to 100% if you find yourself going dry quickly (and assuming you're not on spark duty). Other fights are a little trickier. In Twins or Jaraxxus hardmode, for example, you know you need to be able to deal burst damage at certain times so it's obviously better to Viper right before these windows instead of worrying about hitting X%. It's more significant to line up your Viper time around fight-based events and yours various CDs.

That depends. If you're in a fight where you go OOM when the boss at 40% HP, that means your mana has lasted the first 60%. Assuming mana consumption stays the same throughout the fight, you'd only need roughly 70% (40/60) of your mana to be able to finish him off. This way you'll spend as little time as possible in Viper.

That's absolutely viable - switching aspects is instant, so you're not missing out on any cooldowns. It can however make for an awkward rotation. You might consider just staying in Viper to get your mana back ASAP so you can basically forget about that afterwards and focus on your shots again - unless you get a LNL proc, in which case switching to Dragonhawk is the only sensible thing to do.

On fights where the boss is close to his demise, you'd be popping a mana-potions, of course... ;-)

Just happened to noticed a recent post about Spell Penetration for Survival Hunter. I wouldn't think you would need any for PVE/Raid type situations. I am getting my gear together now to start focusing on Arena/PVP situations. What is the right total, if anyone has had any testing? I am also setting my macros to the following combination's.

/castsequence reset=1 Explosive Shot, Tranquilizing Shot. This seems to work pretty good because it resets if I don't spam it. Was also wondering if I added just Kill Shot, or Scatter Shot at the end just for continuation.

/castsequence reset=1 Serpent Sting, Aimed Shot

/castsequence Frost Trap, Snake Trap, Disengage

I also have a Hunter's Mark, shoot off my trinkets, pet abilities macro

I have Freezing Trap, Rapid Fire, Kill Shot, Disengage, W. Sting, Scatter Shot, Steady Shot, all on separate buttons.

I have not tried a mouse over macro, or any cast random macros.

Any kind of help would be appreciated.

The last time I looked at the top Arena hunters, they had two or three +20 Spell Penetration gems. Some had two, some had three. It might be personal preference more than anything else. Also, that previous poster who said he saw someone with all Spell Penetration probably confused it with Armor Penetration. Nobody in their right mind would gem all Spell Penetration.