Yes, but only if the mob is not immune to freeze traps. Since bosses are immune, you'll need to drop a different trap.

Hmm, I wonder if snakes wandering over to the boss would count...

I have a question, and I am not sure exactly where it should go, here, or in the PTR stuff or in the spread sheet, so apologies in advance.

Just like a lot of other hunters, I have been doing a lot of research and number crunching with the SV build that is in the PTR now, and trying to decide if I should switch from MM to SV.

In my particular case, as well as the case of quite a few MM hunters that I have spoken with these past few weeks, I am the only source of TSA to the raid. That guarantees the 10% buff has a 100% uptime. How important is that uptime? Does the combination of Abomination's might and Unleashed Rage cover the raid for the duration of most if not all boss encounters?

Using the current version of the spread sheet(81f), I see a 10% increase in dps by changing to SV, keeping the same gear, and just changing out gems, with TSA or any 10% attack power buff. Take away the 10% bonus from SV, and it falls just short, less than 1%. If the uptime is not 100% it would also affect every one else, making things even murkier for me.

If some one could help me out with their thoughts and perspectives, and if there is a solid idea of how much uptime DKs and Shamans have on their 10% buffs it would be a great help.

They do, but someone would have to trigger them first, obviously. At which point you already have your LnL procs.

Again, the search function can show you that this question has already been discussed and answered in another thread.

NO, freezing arrow will not proc LnL on bosses, though it will on most normal mobs; it is treated like a Freeze Trap, and bosses are immune to those. The enemy must set off the effect of the trap, so Explosive, Immolate and Snake traps all work equally well for bosses. But if you want to trapdance, you need to close fairly close.

I've been considering this and at a certian gear level wouldn't ES scale enough so that using ES,ES,ES would be the highest dps for a LnL Proc? You would only get 7/9 ticks of the three Explosive Shots but you would start the cooldown for ES three seconds faster than using ES,AS,ES,SS,ES. Doing this for two LnL procs would give you an "Extra" ES over the other rotation offsetting the loss to 1 Tick every two LnL procs.

Do you think this would result in more dps?

3.0.8 PTR Changes

Look Ma, answers! Seriously, start reading that particular thread at the link, as we have already discussed this quite a bit.

Most of the PTR dummy dps tests I've seen with survival spec hunters have the pet in the 350-450 dps range. At that point, would it be productive to go with Focused Aim and sacrifice some hit for more stats? My thinking is that the chunk taken out of our pet's dps would be a good deal less than the current 50/21/0 setup and the individual dps gain would outstrip the pet loss.

I haven't seen any argument yet that would point me in the direction of not maxing FA. Seems obvious to me that I'd gain more stats (esp crit) by banking +hit items and wearing high crit/ap/haste items when it's very easy to get the +hit from salmon/draenei/FA (and wearing only 3% from gear). I assume it all depends on what gear you have at your disposal, or maybe the 1-3 talents spent elsewhere really would be more dps (aimed/imp ss(lol)/imp aoth)? I dont see it.

The major issue is that the FA +hit does not transfer to your pet. This might seem minor for SV, especially as so little of our dps is concentrated in the pets, but at higher levels it truly is easy to get hit-capped through purple gear and buffs, etc. Also, why spend talent points on something you can max through gear? Shifting those three points over to IAotH and/or making sure Improved Stings is maxed out provide more benefit in virtually every spreadsheet iteration I come up with.

When testing on a dummy, you and your pet have no outside buffs. In a raid setting, your pet's numbers will likely be doubled. Missing 3% or so from your pet's DPS if he's only doing 350-450 doesn't seem like much, but when he's doing more like 900-1000, it's a bigger deal and very hard to justify the loss. The only way I've found with the spreadsheet for FA to be worth it as Surv instead of using possibly lesser gear with hit rating is if the hit rating you lose is going from a blue weapon to like a Nerubian Conquerer.

EDIT: Will post spreadsheet data shortly.

Argument works both ways. i.e. Why spend the time gearing for it when you can max it easily through talents. On the spreadsheets, are you taking into account that when you max FA you then need to change gear for best in slot items. I'm sure the numbers favor the talents if your wearing the same gear (going over hit cap).


Edit: Also, I'm still under the impression that Blizz is considering FA not transferring to pet a bug, along with the rounding issue of our hit %.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - [BUG] Focused Aim and Pet HR - 2 issues

If your pet could do roughly 1000dps in a raid as MM/Surv (perfectly normal number), if you are missing on 3% of those attempts, then you would be losing about 10dps overall per point spent in Focused Aim, plus you would be short 3 talent points that would otherwise go into damage talents.

The thing about hit is that it is so damned cheap to increase through hit rating. For example, its only 32.79 rating to get 1% hit as opposed to say crit, where its 45.91 rating to get 1% crit. Now 1% hit isn't significantly better than 1% crit, but hit rating is significantly better than crit rating. To elaborate, compare Focused Aim to Lethal Shots. 3 points in FA is basically 98.37 hit rating while LS is 137.73 crit rating, even though hit rating is budgeted on gear the same as crit rating.

That's why hit rating is such a good stat to gear/gem for - its cheap! Better to spend talent points on direct damage related talents than on supplementing your cheapest costing stat if you can avoid it. Now sometimes it may be better to spend on FA depending on gear situations - thats what the spreadsheet is for - but generally speaking, if you can get capped with non-gimped gear, it is likely your best bet.

Let's just assume they fix FA to allow pets to gain the +hit.

Hit rating may be "cheap" in terms of using less points per %, but if you gain 32.79 hit on an item, how much of it's item budget could of been spent on crit rating or haste or more AP? I think the weight is equal even tho the rating raw numbers are different in scale.

For this Example:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
vs
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

How much crit would I have to substitute out (and/or could I) to equal the dps gained by 2pts in imp aoth and 1 FF? If we went for subbing straight crit, wouldnt it be like 2-3%?

Well, thats really a personal discussion between you, your gear, your spreadsheet and a test dummy (and possibly your doctor). The more haste you have and the fewer steadies we end up with in rotations (very likely) will diminish the value of IAotH. You could probably hamburger 1 point in FF and say its worth about the same as 1% hit or 1% crit, but its all very gear specific.

I've specced FA before, I'll probably spec FA again at some point (especially if T9 mirrors T6). No one is saying you should never spend points there, but if you had a full set of level 213 gear options, your best choice is almost certainly going to be hit on gear over spending talents.

delete me plz

I am just wondering one simple question which has been asked by many and not been answered it seems. (in favor of the LnL discussion)

Is it benefitial to use Aimed shot or Multishot on a single target 25 man encounter?

Further more I wonder what would be considered the "haste cap" with AotH glyph and speecc(maybe fewer points?) i have 400 haste on my hunter if that helps at all with the calculations ^^.

Also a combined question of those 2: Viabale to use 2 points in Go For Throat?, Rapid killing?, AS?, Imp. stings?
Those are to me the alternatives to imp. AotH. With 1 point manadotry in GFT, I like raid killing alot, since it simply gives a nice dmg inc, although if this is lower then any gained by these others the tell me so


And on latest patch notes i saw a deacrease in ES dmg, although many have spoken of a increase on PTR? please explain ^^

1.Aimed, less mana. If there is more than 1 target up, Multishot.
2.You have enough haste to get SS at 1.5 secs. everything over that is an auto shot dps increase
3. It is of my opinion and most here, that only 1 point into GFT is needed to keep up with the pet's focus demands. As far as Imp AS/Imp Stings/Rapid Killing, it really depends on your spec, but if you are survival (you are posting here), I would use that last point in Imp Stings, but Rapid fire is ok as well.

I don't get why you are wasting a point in scatter instead of maxing out EW or a point in HP, not to mention TM if you come to realize trap dancing on some(if not many) fights will be a dps increase.

Is it possible to be competitive on a dps meter without trap dancing? To me it seems there are a variety of boss fights that would make trap dancing very time consuming and costly. But is there a setup that allows you to not trap dance but produce good numbers? If so does this include using multi shot arcane shot and so forth?

I think that really depends on what is competitive in your run. My guild is not pulling the crazy numbers that I read with people doing 6-8k dps.

In a 25-man patchwerk last night while trapdancing (on Live) I was pulling about 4200 dps until I caught a hateful strike.
I was top until I died. That wound up to be a wipe, so on the next go I stayed at range.

With 1/3 in Sniper Training and standing at 30-35 yds per RangeDisplay I wound up at 4036 dps. The next 2 highest were both Shadow Priests at 3379 and 3226 dps. Also, since I switched to dual wield my skill is too low to hit with a raptor strike while dropping the trap. edit: I only got 1 LnL proc from Serpent Sting in 4 mins 35 secs.

3/3 Sniper ...should... have gotten me pretty close to trap dancing.



Self-buffed only, and ignoring LnL procs on PTR I saw consistently higher dps numbers weaving Aimed into my rotation. I think others have seen the opposite, so it bears more testing IMO.

Shandara's Spreadsheet will show a marked increase in DPS taking 2/2 GftT over 1/2. In a 25-man setting my pet's focus bar rarely moves off 100 focus with 2/2, so next respec or when patch hits, I'll drop 1 for Aimed.

AS shares a cooldown with ES, so you'll almost never use arcane.

Rapid Killing - I'm tempted by this, but I'm not really convinced. I'm soft haste capped with 1/5 ImpAotH + glyph when Quick Shots procs. Usually between that proc'ing and Heroism I'm haste capped much of the time. It is tempting though because I don't usually get to use a second Rapid Killing in any boss fights.

This is my problem with trap dancing at the moment, some fights the risk just outweighs the DPS boost.

Haglen: That just seems to dangerous to be running around with melee trying to get in and out of the golden range as the tank drags him around

Patchwerk: Hateful Strike is a pain, and its hard to convince and remind you healers not to heal you, it's is hard enough to remind them not to heal melee sometimes lol.

KT: I just don't wanna run in and wipe half the melee with a bad timed frost blast.

Gluth: Depends if they want you to be on trap duty

I will probably try and hedge my bets with my SV build drop HP and go ST and TM.

Trap dancing will happen, but I see it only being a pure dps increase on "risk free" fights.