With the upcoming changes to LnL and the forced internal cool down of 22s I fear that SV is going to fall even further behind MM in terms of viable spec for raiding. If possible could we get some of our pro number crunchers to run the proc rate numbers taking into consideration the new cool down and the time in between Black Arrow applications?


After thinking about this for a bit I am beginning to think that this change is going to force SV hunter back to trap dancing in order to get forced proc’s using Explosive Trap. This of course will result in reduced dmg as you are replacing black arrow with explosive trap. Depending on the length of the fight and how easy it is to trap dance we may be looking at SV spec’s for PvE that do not included LnL at all. 3 Talent points for a proc that happens one to 3 times over the course of a fight may not be worth it.

I'd be more fine with the 22 second cooldown if black arrow didn't have such a horrifyingly low proc rate. Every time I have a fight when I get only 1 or sometimes 0 LnL procs it makes me want to spend 3 talent points elsewhere, but then I will get a cool lucky streak where I'll get 2 or 3 LnL procs in a row and it makes it more worth it. But that will be gone now. The majority of fights is still going to be 1 LnL proc... are 3 talent points worth 2 explosive shots per fight? Cause I can think of a long list of times where I wished I had the extra range on hawk eye.

Hawk Eye will be a very tempting choice now for SV hunter's in the current content. I have not gone on the PTR to try out the next tier of content however since it is in the coliseum I wonder if the extended range will be as significant of a benefit.

Depending on what you need to grab in the lower part of the SV tree the points you pull out of LnL could be placed in improved aspect of the hawk or if you run multiple hunters you could become the one who buff's with Hunting Party and Improved hunters mark, letting your MM hunter go full on dps.

In terms of the rotation.

shouldnt it be
Black Arrow, Serpent, Explosive, aimed, steady, steady, explosive, steady, steady, serpent, explosive, aimed. repeat from first explosive. throwing in black arrow as soon as it comes off CD?

instead of multi. especially on single target.
for survival of course

You don't use the Serpent Sting Glyph as Survival? If you do, then firing Black Arrow followed by serpent will let your Black Arrow Cooldown be up right before the last tick of Serpent, making the "rotation" (read; priority) even simpler. And otherwise, just prioritize as mentioned by kraxis.

After playing around with the latest version of the spreadsheet last night I discovered a few very interesting things.

First, the average proc rate with the change to LnL is now 119s which means in a 5 minute fight you may get anywhere from 2 to 3 LnL procs.

Second, if you drop LnL, and hunting party and take Hawkeye and Improved Aspect of the Hawk you only get a 48dps loss.

Third, AiS proved a DPS increase if used ahead of SrS.

What I have not been able to determine is whether or not Explosive trap still proc's a LnL in 3.2 like it does currently. Could someone on the PTR confirm if it does?

This is in the Bug Fixes section of the latest PTR Patch Notes for 3.2:
"Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap."

That is a good point. I made the assumption that it is currently working as intended and Blizzard will simply be updating the tooltip to reflect that.

Originally Posted by tarus After thinking about this for a bit I am beginning to think that this change is going to force SV hunter back to trap dancing

I highly doubt this will happen.
1. SV hunters are still going to, probably, get the same amount of LnL procs during fights. Maybe reduced by one, but to me anyway, it's not that big of a deal.
2. SV hunters won't Trap Dance because of the change to Sniper Training in 3.1 requiring us to stand still to get the 6% dmg buff. I haven't crunched the numbers, but Black Arrow + Sniper Training just seems like more dps than Trap Dancing. I know my biggest challenge in Ulduar is being able to stand still as long as possible. Hodir, Vezax, Freya, and even Yogg. I'm trying to find ways to keep my Sniper Training up longer.

Marks will definitely be a little better now than SV. I had been debating on it for a long time and stuck with SV primarily because my ArP rating is still pretty low. Now I think Marks has a slight, but clear advantage.

Just my opinion. Been a long time reader of these posts and I felt I had to respond to this.

I have to disagree regarding sniper training and trap dancing. To keep sniper training up all you need to do is stand still for 6 seconds out of 15. For those who were successfully trap dancing prior to 3.1 you only wanted to spend 2 gcd's to get your trap placed and get back into position to stand still. You would fill one GCD with a raptor strike to keep your dps up. If you moved after your sniper training refreshed you would be back in place with enough time to keep it up.

I am not saying trap dancing will be the one and only way but if LnL proc's off Explosive Trap procs and not the periodic damage AND the fight allows you to stay at 5.1 yard without a lot of movement then trap dancing will once again in my opinion produce the highest dps for SV.

Only the spreadsheet can effectively answer that question for you, although the max DPS thread has had an ArP-heavy MM build on top for some time now. For me in my current gear, MM gives 200+dps increase in the 3.2 based spreadsheet (91b currently), so I will at least be trying an MM build once the servers come up today.