sorry for not offering enough information. here's something to clarify:

"standard cat dps build" I referred was this: Pet Calculator - Wowhead
I also like to calculate my pets dps to my own so yes, that also is relevant.
My rotation (as calculated with Shandera's spreadsheet) is Rapid Fire -> Kill Shot -> Explosive Shot ->
Aimed Shot / Multishot -> Serpent Sting -> Steady Shot on paper. In reality I seldom get to open with Kill Shot,
but you get the drift.
I'm hit-capped. I'm not haste-capped. My UB crit is 36.03% according to armory 51.10% fully raidbuffed.
Armory link: The World of Warcraft Armory
I don't trap-dance unless I can do that with minimal movement without dps loss.

Also don't ignore the fact that since you're running with a Paladin Main Tank you are missing the Sunder Armor Debuff if your DPS warriors are slacking. One of your 3 Warriors was applying Sunder 6 Times in the patchwerk fight but he died somewhere in the middle of the fight, so you were missing the important Sunder Armor Debuff for quite some time!

With your 10% haste sof cap it allows for a rotaion of ES-SS-SS-SS-ES or

0.00.00 ES
0.01.50 SS
0.03.00 SS
0.04.50 SS
0.06.00 ES

Short of the 10% soft cap and you cant get that 3rd SS in between your ES. There is debat that MS is better dps than AS, but again test it, prove it and run with what produces best for you. I can tell you that trap dancing is a great way to produce more damage and dps if used properly. Ill get in trouble for not producing numbers here I can feel it.

In theroy the more you can use the most damaging shot you have the better. The way to use ES more often is either allow the 6% chance LnL will proc with SuS, or the 100% chance it will proc with trap dancing. If you have been a BM most of your hunting life then trap dancing will be a little tricky at first. Practice. AS is perfect when trap dancing. You raise the concern of "I don't trap-dance unless I can do that with minimal movement without dps loss.[/quote]"

You cant trap dance and have minimal movenemnt. Trap dancing requires movement. So, utilizing AS as an instant while moving ability, will not hamper your dps and thus increasing your dps due to the additional ES's available. Keep in mind, allow ES to finish its last tick before applying additional ES. It may seem like your not or cant be doing anything by waiting to fire another shot, but you are. Here is an example:

ES-SS-SS-SS-ES then you decide to trap dance so on the way in you AS and set ET. CLICK CLICK (if you use this add on) and now LnL has proced leaving you with 3 ES to use with no mana cost and no ammo cost. Your AS is on CD so your rotation is..... ES-----ES----ES if LnL were to proc and you had AS ready you could use ES-AS-ES. Make sure you allow ES to tick all the way to the completion of the last tick. There are add ons like DOT Timers that can aide this this. Or give about .5 second before applying the next ES. I hope this helps and if I get a little warning, sorry. I know this is riddle through out these threads, but Im trying to simplify.

Has anyone tried throwing a steady shot into the shot rotation when LnL is proc'd?

So you shoot out your first explosive shot, and once the GCD is up shooting a steady shot while waiting for the ticks to land.. Then when the GCD is up again going back to your ES..

It slows getting your ES out by .5 seconds (if your haste is soft-capped) but it seems like a better option than standing there waiting for the ticks to expire.

LNL shot weaving has been discussed at length in this thread. The highest DPS option, as has been proven many times, is to wait exactly 2 seconds after firing Explosive Shot, or an extra .5 seconds after the GCD, before firing again. Any sort of weaving, no matter the shot, will wind up as lower DPS but is a better option if you can't manage the timing for whatever reason.

I know we have beaten this horse to death here regarding Aimed Shot, but I wanted to post our last Patchwerk Kill to validate Aimed Shot vs Steady.

Wow Web Stats

Avg Aimed was 2091 with a max of 5210. Avg Steady was 1371 with a max of 3623. Not being haste capped I also have the advantage of GCD vs cast time savings, and although this fight is stand and shoot, other movement oriented fights NOT having Aimed is a huge loss of DPS.

Any arguments about Mana consumption on Aimed should be posted on the Marksman forums, since they struggle with Mana. As SV we are incredibly mana efficient and at the end of this fight (using a haste pot instead of a mana pot and never going into Viper) I still had well over half mana.

The argument about trap dancing is also misinformed. It is actually ANOTHER reason to spec into Aimed if you trap dance. Many bosses you can utilize adds for LnL procs but for the ones you have to run into their hit box and back out having an additional instant is a DPS increase.

Last, the comment about using another special in between Explosives in LnL procs, it is my opinion and supported throughout this thread that it is better to pause for .5s.

*Note, I posted this WWS feeling a tad bit embarrased. We took a sub par group of new raiders and guild applicants. We usually one shot everything in a night but wiping on patchy twice is sad. As for my 5431 dps I was missing a couple buffs (namely LotP from a Feral Druid) and our kill time was a bit longer than norm (3.19s).

Aimed is affected by Sniper Training. That's why you see it as better than Multi.
Of course it is hardly easy to utilize in reality.

GftT might not really need 2 points. I haven't checked to be certain, but it really feels like Explosive crits all work towards GftT, so in effect you get three highly critable shots (remember 13% extra crit on ES) in one go. I have certainly not seen any problems in that regard.

And you don't even have to take a point from GftT. 1/16/52 + 2 points where you want. 1 points taken from Imp Stings isn't going to hit very hard, and chances are that the Aimed is quite equal for damage overall, while providing great mobile utility.

Heigan really proves it as it almost feels like constant shooting on the run. ES is up... Aimed is up... sting... AH!! LnL procced. And so on.
And when we get the new changed Sniper Training Aimed will definately be great. 6% more on standing still, and a great instant on the move. Definately worthwhile then.

hey, i have a question regarding the "rapid killing" talent...

why don't i ever see this talent in any specs? i mean two points in it would bring it down to the same cooldown as berserking (troll racial). and when i start off a fight and pop both of those, i am dishing out a huge amount of dps...and i imagine it'd help on trash too since i'm an aimed shot guy.

another question, is there anything i can read about whether points in improved stings would be better than putting points into IAotH? right now im at 5 in IAotH and none in improved stings.

Spreadsheet-wise though, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is a better spec than that, and can't lose a point to get aimed without losing overall DPS (with trapdancing you may profit more from a spec involving resourcefulness, but that wouldn't affect what you need to lose to get aimed). You only have one point in GftT so can't give it up, you don't have any in Imp Stings, so you're forced to give up either the one point in Focussed Fire (which beyond the flat average damage increase in the spreadsheet is even better for increasing the chance you raptor will get a savage proc on savage rend), or careful aim.

I'm wondering if anyone has recently seen a significant increase in LnL procs from serpent sting. Tuesday night I wasn't able to get in on the main raid naxx 25 we ran, but for maly and sarth 3 25, it seemed like I was getting quite a bit more procs. Probably closer to 1 per 45 sec or so, considering my usual proc rate on patchwerk is a miserable 1-2 per fight it felt like I was in heaven. I was wondering if anyone else had seen an increase in their number of procs or if its just one of those things that happens with procs.

I think you just switched from poor to good luck. Procs have been the same for me this week.

I'm not sure how well it might synergize with your racial, but overall it just isn't worth the points in comparison to other choices. And on it's 5min CD it matches Call of the Wild pretty well.

I have been getting an increased amount of LnL procs from Serpent Sting too after the patch. I was just going through my shots on the target dummies and monitoring my buffs. Before I could go up and drop a trap, LnL procced and I didn't have to trap at all. This happened for about 6 procs in a row so yeah, I would guess that the proc rate has been majorly buffed. Will try to get a WWS up with no trap dancing soon.

After looking through the WWS of the last two evenings I don't see any hint for an increased proc rate of LnL.
But I doubt those being staistically relevant in any form. I think the proc rate from Serpent Sting should be increased if Blizzard doesn't want us to trap dance, but I guess if they did that in a real patch (unlike the ES nerf) they would adjust the tooltip too.

Unless I really have to use it in Viper to fill up mana (does usually not happen), I use it just before or after Heroism (depends on whether Heroism is called at the beginning or rather the end of the fight). I use CotW during Heroism. When Heroism has run out, and the Boss has enough life left, I pop my pocket heroism (speed pot) and down he goes.

Yes, the spreadsheet does say that, but it s marginal.
A lot of people don't have the option to actually drop Hunting Party. That alone kills Focused Fire because of the realiability of 1 point in HP. With it lost there is no need to stay at 5 Imp Hawk (though I would never drop the last point in it).

Further, the Raptor comes out ahead because it's bonus is evened out. It is far too unsteady to be a better pet. It is close enough that I would never tell anyone to not go with it, it's base damage is high enough and there is the odd crit. But so many fights are fast enough that the Raptor doesn't statictically get much of a chance of proccing. And remember it can proc 5 seconds from a death, and your gain will be minimal. Procs are generally worth less than steady values unless they are highly common or their averaged value is significantly more. In this case it is neither.

If it weren't for that one point in FF to get a pet crit buff synched with every savage rend, I don't think I'd ever use a raptor Right now I just use a cat for most fights because of how short they are (the Spore Loser achievement is the only one that comes to mind as being long enough for gambling on a raptor to be worth it, and even that turned out to be fairly short :S Gone are the days of 25 minute C'thun kills I guess).

And FWIW, yeah, Aimed does fit into the alternative builds much better than the 6/14/51 one. HP on the other hand you can get one point in as 6/14/51 at very minimal DPS loss (~6 dps I think in situations where you're at full mana anyway), and still gain sizable DPS if it's the only replenishment in the raid (30ish dps for you, and probably a few hundred raid-wide).

Picking up Aimed wouldn't cause you to lose the first point in Gfft. If you meant a second point in Gfft, running 50%+ crit seems like a waste to have 2 points into it. Careful Aim is always 3/3. But I see your point for Aimed vs Focus Fire in a 6/14/51 build. I think that build is based off of giving up Aimed for it, so i thought it is assumed.

*edit, typo

Good catch. We normally don't have a DPS warrior however have a Feral Druid. I forgot one of our Mages decided to hop on his Alt and come in on his Fury Warrior. Didn't bother to check the log for the buffs.

As for Mana/ JoW on Surv vs Marks I don't mean we are mana efficient without JoW. JoW is now a necessity as Ghostcrawler has stated several times. However with or without JoW Marks is just less efficient than Surv, partly due to Chimera's high cost plus our (I spec Marks 50% of the time) shot rotation. RR and efficiency are not specced into for marks for raiding so we don't have talents to help us like SV has Thrill of the Hunt and LnL that give us reduced shot costs.

As for my comment of having more than half mana left, I don't recall how much I had left at the end of the fight... as SV I rarely pay attention to my mana. My addon signals when I dip below 35%. I could of well been completely full.

I meant that in a 6/14/51 build the only points you *can* shift to spare one for Aimed are Gftt, CA or FF - I didn't say you had to remove any specific one, just that one of the 3 would be down a point (their only point for Gftt and FF) if you wanted to pick up Aimed, since those are the only points allocated in any tree which aren't required for some deeper talent (well you could drop the point in ES too I guess...).

As acknowledged in posts after the one you're replying to, this is a specific concern of the 6/14/51 build, since that's the theoretical optimal build for a stable fight.

The original post was a reply to a discussion of aimed being better than multishot without any reference to builds, so explaining why it can't be used at all in the most common build seemed relevant.

I understand you, and yes you are correct, 6/14/51 is a build in which you give up Aimed for FF. I didn't know that 6/14/51 however was the most common build. I thought it was 2nd to 2/18/51. I armory a great deal of Hunters in more predominant guilds and I see that more often. And in which case I would think that Aimed would be talented, although I see many without it. In our last Patchy kill Aimed was a 2.3% DPS increase over using Steady in place of it. Although obviously it would've been replaced with Multi if I wasn't specced into Aimed which unfortunately I don't know how it would've compared. I felt naked, however, without Aimed while trying 6/14/51 on movement fights but I will try it again and see how it compares on the next Patchwerk kill.

Thanks to everyone for this excellent Survival Hunter thread (and others on EJ). They allowed me to transition to SV from BM and stay atop the DPS meters for my guild.

I'm stuck on how to improve my hunter. I was hoping you could take a look and let me know, if I wanted to improve by say 10%, what would be the easiest areas to improve? I'm pretty clear about rotations, trap dancing, and the like, having practiced a lot in raids and on target dummies.

The World of Warcraft Armory

I'm wondering if I'm missing something in my spec, gear setup, etc. that could help me make a significant improvement in DPS.

Thanks,

Sahn