I've only been using Black Arrow to get LnL procs. However Explosive returns to pre-patch numbers with stacked mastery. That requires reforging hit (easy) and crit. For Black Arrow I've been really focus starved and I've been dropping Black Arrow when starved or delaying it till I can afford the focus without delaying explosive for more than a second. Not having Cobra Shot to refresh Serpent Sting really hurts since the damage from serpent sting and the bonus to all other damage by 10% (Noxious Stings) makes it worth keeping up.

From Sindragosa with 20.05 mastery (40% total bonus elmental dmg): Sindragosa Parse
Normal Tick - 35 4847.8 169673
Crit Tick - 99 10390.2 1028629

Black Arrow appears to me to be awful. It scales with only 17%~ of our attack power while Explosive Trap scales with about 80%~. It does less damage on a single target, let alone multiple targets, and it costs 35 focus vs. 0-10 focus. It also ticks less often and thus results in less LnL ticks. However, I guess it is important to mention that Explosive Trap doesn't stack at all, so only one hunter can use it at a time. We used to be able to get around this by having each hunter use a different rank of the spell, but that is no longer possible.

Edit: Anyone else notice that the initial tick of damage from Explosive Trap does way less than the tooltip says it should? Sometimes our abilities make no sense.

I'll probably try that this next week. I was trying to use Black Arrow this week to see if it was possible to do a rotation with it for movement heavy fights (Marrowgar, Putricide, etc) where explosive trap isn't as useful. But I think you're right that even if the damage isn't worth it, 10 ticks versus 5 chances for LnL procs and at a lower focus cost (though clunkier to use since it requires 2 key presses) makes it explosive trap the better option in the rotation. I need to find a good keybind combination to work trap launcher + explosive trap into my rotation.

I've been doing a castsequence macro for Trap Launcher -> Explosive Trap. I'm not sure if there is a less clunky way to do it though. One thing I like is that Trap Launcher lasts 15 seconds, so as long as the trap cooldown has less than 15 seconds on it you can press Trap Launcher whenever it's most convenient.

On Serpent + Saurfang adds: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

It was our first run with the new talens and I sure messed up a lot - but with talented Serpent+Multi I was rankend No 2 in Dmg done to beasts without even moving or re-targeting (Multi on Saurfang, Steady for Focus woven in)

The second Hunter did not spec into it and came very close behind me - so it seems that the talent might not be a big dmg boost but it definatly makes this fight a lot easier (if your on beast-duty as a hunter)

And while we all know that trash is not relevant...same report has me on no 1 in trash dmg - mostly due to serpent talented

The traps, in general, seem to have really awful damage output. Immolation is still horrible, Explosive got the AoE treatment so it's horrible, and Snake Trap is Snake Trap and thus has no reason for existing. Black Arrow is a horrible joke of an ability that costs too much Focus and does too little damage to be worth it, save for the fact that it's not stupid like traps and thus is a bit (and only just a bit) more reliable for proccing LnL than launching a (terrible) trap. Explosive Shot, meanwhile, costs way too much and scales way too poorly to justify using UNLESS you stack the hell out of mastery. If you can't do that, it's absolute garbage outside of LnL, which is so wrong that it sort of makes my eyes bleed.

I really think Survival could benefit from Thrill of the Hunt being made into a proper focus generation talent a la Combat Potency, Black Arrow being either straight-up removed or at the very least reworked to not be bad AND cost less (25 Focus at most), as well as traps finally getting a much needed revamp that Blizzard seems completely unwilling to ever do. (Why they're so in love with ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE TRAP MECHANICS I'll never understand. They're so bad that they're honestly pathetic and shouldn't even exist at this point. They're an embarrassment when viewed in context with all the really nice changes they've done to pets, Focus in general, etc.)

Explosive Shot (and, by extension, Chimera) needs to have its scaling reworked so that it's always worth casting, regardless of gear. If you're speccing into Survival (or, respectively, Marks), you should ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS want to hit that button when it comes up, even if you're in the worst greens ever. Right now, that is not really true. The whole idea that your signature ability is really only desirable vis a vis Arcane Shot (sans specific procs) at high gear/mastery levels is completely retarded. Period.

Basically, outside of Serpent Spread being awesome (and that being possibly due to a bug), Survival's probably in the worst shape in my mind. SEVERE Focus issues (even with Cobra Shot), SEVERE scaling issues on its primary shot, SEVERE issues with LnL because Black Arrow is just an awful ability and traps are absolutely worse in every way except cost, and SEVERELY outdated talents. It's like they forgot that the tree existed.

Did some testing today, Black Arrow seems to be correct at 11.5% RAP + 2765, Explosive trap seems to be 175-225 (Initial explosion, no scaling, as mentioned) plus 54.5% RAP + 260. This would make the break-point 5360 AP, above which Explosive Trap will out-damage Black Arrow, in addition to the 10 vs. 5 tics for proccing LnL. With their respective focus costs, yeah, Black Arrow seems like a wasted talent point right now.

So I tried out trap launcher with Explosive trap last night as a replacement for black arrow and it made for a much more focus stable rotation. The only fights I still had to use black arrow on were Princes and Putricide. The rest were movement stable enough to use explosive trap to trigger LnL (didn't do LK). It made a world of difference with the focus starvation problems on fights that didn't have a lot of movement.

Has anyone else seen the following bug with Trap Launcher?

Two hunters are in a raid. Hunter A hits trap launcher then immediately afterward hunter B hits trap launcher. Hunter B fires his trap. Hunter A's UI stays lit up but cannot fire a trap until the internal cooldowns wear off.

If anyone has seen this, have you also found any sort of workaround other than calling over voice chat? We have 2 SV hunters in our raid group and we may both be in the raid at the same time. If Trap Launcher is preferred to Black Arrow, this could impact our DPS unless we can find a workaround.

Tested out the new explosive shot, I'm coming up with (0.22 AP + (699 to 799)) * 3 now (From 0.18 AP + (417 to 501)). It's almost comparable to Arcane Shot for damage-per-focus now.

As a nice un-announced change, Black Arrow was seemingly increased, as well, to 0.178 AP + 3593 (From 0.115 AP + 2765). It now out-does Explosive Trap for damage until 8537 AP.

That might explain why I saw this multiple times last night with two Survival hunters in our ICC 10 man runs. It did this every single time I tried to use it to launch a frost trap on Blood Beasts... So yes, I saw this last night as well.

I saw it on other bosses too, but Blood Beasts was the one that I noticed it most due to trying to toss the trap 5 seconds before the beasts came out. The other hunter did say he was tossing his trap at 5 seconds as well.