RangeDisplay is simple and also works very well for checking your range.

Couple quick questions.

1. Multi-shot and Aimed shot are on the same cool down. My current spec which I think I'll go when the patch hits is 5/15/51 which includes Aimed shot. My question is should I take Aimed shot even though multi-shot is the same? (only difference i see is mana cost and obviously what the shots do but most bosses you don't have to worry about hitting adds)

2. I have a cat and a scorpid to level 80 now. I'm trying to get ready for the patch and get other pets to 80 that I might need. I've read countless threads but can't find anything really about SV most people are still focusing on BM. So in addition to cat and scorpid, what other pets should I tame to be ready for the patch?

On Four Horsemen you can actually stand outside Meteor range and DPS on Thane.

Wasps were looking like strong candidates for a raid without a minor armor debuff, as their damage was very close to cats while not depending on Mangle, and bringing Sting; however the newest numbers from the PTR for Rake may put cats way out in front of Wasps again. I have not yet seen the numbers crunched based on the new info, and I'm not sure if their scaling changed for a third time, as well, (which is most likely why I haven't seen those numbers).

In any event, you won't be in a bad place with a cat.

I think the Trap-proc part of LnL has a PvE aspect as well; it rewards a deep SV spec'ed hunter with a dps boost in a pull that requires trapping; in the least it let him/her to catch up in dps for the time they spend peeling the mob off the tank and waiting for it to get trapped.

Hi,

I have a little question:
I thought wielding Aimed Shot should improve my overall DPS, but after testing SV on the PTR it didn't seem to be true.
I wield SrS when it's not Up, Aimed/Expl on CD and SS to fill up.

Any Idea on this issue?

On the second talent spec are you weaving Multi-shot instead of aimed?

I've been using your first talent spec on test and seeing average of 2800-3k depending on RNG. The only difference is i have a couple points in Hunting party instead of sniper training. I'm trap dancing of course...

I think any raid SV build should have some points in hunting party.
If your raid is guaranteed to have 2 ret/sp (I'm assuming at least 5 ppl in your 25 man raid don't use mana), I suppose you can just skip hunting party to max expose weakness or something and ignore this post.

In light of this talent, I figured I should do some math to help decide how many points to put in, since I don't remember seeing such post in this thread (This is a crude estimation).

In optimal dps rotation, you cast ES every 4, Aimed every 7, Serpent every 14 gcds (assuming serpent sting glyph). So one gcd is made up of 1/4 ES, 1/7 Aimed, 1/14 Serpent, and 15/28 SS. However, explosive shot has 3 ticks, so you get 3/4 ES ticks per gcd, thus in total, 9/7 hunting party relevant shots per gcd, or 6/7 shots per sec.
Raid buffed, SV spec can easily get 45% crit, and ES and SS have shot specific crit talents, so just for the simplicity's sake, say we have 50% crit chance, so, we have 3/7 crits per sec. Since Hunting party has 15 sec duration, you get 45/7 crits on average during a hunting party proc.
Now the uptime of hunting party is 1 - (1 - n*.2)^(45/7), where n is number of talent points you have in the talent.
This gives uptime of
1 pt in HP: 76.18%
2 pt in HP: 96.25%
3 pt in HP: 99.72%
4 pt in HP: 99.997%

1 pt in HP seems pretty good, and 2pt appears to be sufficient enough.
It seems that you might be able to get away with just 1 pt.

With Noxious Stings providing up to 3% increased personal damage on all targets affected by stings, is it worth prioritizing Serpent Sting over Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, and Aimed Shot at the risk of delaying one of those shots or will it still be most beneficial to just prioritize it before Steady Shot?

Seen all the extra damage you can get from a stinged target (+3% damage from noxious stings, +10% damage on Steady Shot, chances on LnL) I'd say prio Serpent Sting on all times. You might choose differently when the boss has like 5% HP left tho, I'd prio any other shot over Serpent Sting when bosses are going to die in 10 seconds.

Also, don't refresh it before it runs out, otherwise you'd loose a bit of DPS.

So, Noxious stings give an increase of 3% damage if your SerS is on. So, if your ES does, on average, 6000 damage across all 3 ticks, or 2000 a tick, that would be a 210 damage increase assuming with the PTR Glyph of SerS. By prioritizing SerS before ES however, you will be shorting how many ES you might fire during a fight. For instance, starting with SerS instead of ES on a boss fight, you lose essentially 1 potential tick of ES, since you delay its cast by 1.5 secs. Going with the above example, you would lose 2k damage. So, in order for SerS to become worthwhile in this instance you need to make sure that the extra 3% damage outweighs the 2k loss from that tick of ES you placed later. So:

2000/210 = 9.5238

In other words, you would need to make sure that for every ES that you clip even one tick from, you've cast another successful 10 ES without clipping any. 10 ES is of course a minute, which is more than 1 SerS. So on average, you'd really end up clipping every third to fourth ES, delaying it by an extra 1.5 secs, which will start adding up very quickly to more than that extra 3% damage. My own priorities are always ES -> SerS -> Aimed -> SS; every other shot can more easily benefit from the 3% extra damage, but since ES is our main damage dealer, it does not seem to make sense to delay its casting for such a minor increase in damage.

It should be noted that I trapdance; therefore, by placing my 3 instant casts at the beginning of my rotation, I can continue moving to get into position without having any wasted GCD time while closing with the boss, laying a trap as the 4th GCD and immediately opening with a LnL; this way, I don't have to spend extra time delaying the LnL by making sure SerS is applied beforehand.

Most reasonable, but I undrstood Rezdan's question as a more general rotation one, not just pertaining to opening of combat. I don't see, unfortunately, how you would have all cooldowns match the same "three instants on my way towards the boss" pattern on 2nd, 3d, etc iterations, although, granted, that would have been perfect.

It doesn't work quite perfectly, unfortunately; I don't have my haste to the soft-cap, so my SS are somewhere around 1.7s instead of 1.5s, and Aimed is of course on a 10s cooldown; it usually gets fired every 10.5s or so, depending on how mobile the fight is. Still, it has been a good rotation thus far that has gotten me top dps on the majority of my runs into 5- and 10-mans, even before the SV buff we're expecting. However, point that I was simply trying to make was that SerS is worthwhile to keep up, but don't gimp your instant CDs since it does relatively small damage in relation to the instant shots.

In a high end raiding guild, it seems to me that its very unlikely you will ever not already have 2 replenishment buffs. For 10 mans you might want hunting party, but if you have two replenishment buffs in a 25 man the points become almost completely useless. It depends on what you're guild normally runs, so for me it ends up being useless.

It would make the wording of L&L a bit complicated, but it could be cool if it worked as such:

Serpent procs 1 free ES every time it expires. Traps proc it as usual. Can't have more than 2 free ES's per 30 secs.

Though I still don't like resourcefulness not benefiting L&L in PVP, and this would make serpent glyph bad.

Would using spell damage pieces be viable for survival hunters, especially with the buff to explosive shot in the upcoming patch? Not full spell gear but maybe some pieces to buff over all damage on explosive and ticks from serpent?

Explosive Shot scales with Attack Power. So does Serpent Sting.

I was just wondering what a basic shot rotation macro would be for survival. I am specced survival now down to explosive shot and have picked up aimed shot from MM as well.

Prioritise ES > AS (if you have it and think its a reasonable dmg/mana trade-off) > SS

Keep Serpent Sting up as much as possible, but don't throw your rotation off to do it, i.e. if Serpent sting falls of with less than a GCD or so before ES is of cool down, fire the ES first.

There is a search option, however, I'm sure the EJ moderators will let you know that soon enough.

I will answer the question though. On live, you want to use Explosive Shot (ES)->Serpent Sting (SerpS)->Steady Shot (SS)->Steady Shot->Steady Shot->Explosive Shot. Then using Serpent Sting in place a Steady Shot whenever it falls off. In the case of a Lock and Load proc, you want to ES->SS->ES->SS->ES

Once the patch goes live:

ES->SerpS->Aimed Shot (AS)->SS->SS->ES, using an Aimed Shot in place of a Steady Shot when its off CD, as well as Serpent Sting in place of a Steady Shot when it falls off.
In the case of a Lock and load proc, ES->AS->ES->SS->ES.

can freezing arrow proc LnL(including boss fights aswell as normal mobs)? if so would it be viable to put points in sniper training?