Basically laid an immo trap before pull and put one down on CD
Messed up a couple of trap dances and may have clipped a few autoshots.
Used a 1/16/54 build that included 3/3 resourcefulness
I think Survival dps is already pretty competitive with trap weaving and I feel like it will definitely be a lot more viable after the patch. I also think macroing in a raptor strike with immolation trap and disengage would increase dps as well.
On training dummies I've also consistently found my dmg breakdown as 30%/30%/30% steady/auto/explosive. This may be enough to pull survival over marks after the steady shot nerf as marks steady shot dmg % is a lot higher than 30% of total hunter dmg.
Korvek, just looking at the damage breakdown, the talent point in trap mastery looks like it's giving you less than .8% extra damage for the investment. This of course is only on a fight where you can use trap dancing in the first place (although I suppose it provides other utility as well). Will that really give a better benefit than investing it elsewhere? I guess the most logical alternative is imp hawk, not sure how much dmg that provides per talent point.
Also wondering why you have 3 pts in EW, wouldn't 2 give you relatively the same uptime?
There really isn't much else to put the points in which is why I put the last few points in expose weakness and trap mastery. I suppose I could do a 6/14/51 build but during the raid, I wasn't at the hit cap so I couldn't pull any points out of focused aim to put in the BM tree.
It was also my first time as survival + trap dancing and I definitely messed parts of my rotation up and used immolation trap to probably only 70% effectiveness.
Just wanted to test the rotation today with a survival build in general and I think its looking fairly decently for the tree in the upcoming patch. BM and MM are much more reliant on Steady Shot as the bulk of their damage % and after the explosive shot buff blizzard announced, I'd imagine explosive shot could contribute to 35-40%+ of hunter dmg.
Just wanted to test the rotation today with a survival build in general and I think its looking fairly decently for the tree in the upcoming patch. BM and MM are much more reliant on Steady Shot as the bulk of their damage % and after the explosive shot buff blizzard announced, I'd imagine explosive shot could contribute to 35-40%+ of hunter dmg.
Don't forget that a large percentage of BM damage comes from pets so although a greater percentage of their personal damage is steady, they actually get a pretty similar amount of total damage from steady. Just a rough example:
- BM hunter is 50% hunter/50% pet * steady is 50% of hunter damage = 25% of total damage is steady
- Survival hunter is 85% hunter/15% pet * steady is 30% of hunter damage = 25.5% of total damage is steady
I'm not familiar enough with marks damage splits to do the breakdown there- I think their steady is higher than ours but I don't know how much higher.
I also wanted to know what Damage 3/3 Improved Stings would add for me. Well it's quite disapointing and far away from 2% DPS per talentpoint, which Blizzard once said is their goal for a damagetalent. Let's assume Serpent Sting is about 4,5 % of your personal DPS. So for your 3 points in Improved Stings you get 1,35 % DPS, or 0,45 % DPS per talentpoint.
To compare this to other Talents: Let's say Autoshot is about 25 % of your personal damage and iaoth uptime is about 50 %. If you have enough haste for the GCD-steady-cap and iaoth only improves your autoshot-damage you'll get 1,88 % DPS or 0,375 % DPS.
As you can see Improved Stings is not much better than iaoth in the case you got the gcd-cap for steady.
I don't know which glyphs you use, but most likely you'll use steady, serpent and a random one. So if you use this glyph-slot for the iaoth-glyph, put one point into iaoth: Assuming about 30 % of your damage is done by steadyshot and taking your 242 haste rating:
For this point you get the full amount of additional damage for autoshot: 1,125 % DPS
You'll get about 7,97 % haste for steadyshot: 1,196 % DPS
So this single point (together with the glyph) let you do 2,321 % more DPS which is more Imp. Stings can give you.
My advice is: Drop imp. stings unless you really want it for pvp and move one point into iaoth, one into gftt and the last one into aimed which is useful for movement-fights.
I opted for a 7/13/51 build with no explosive shot. [snipped discussion] Just wanting some more experienced Survival Hunters opinions.
I know some people have played around with ES-less SV builds. While there's an outside chance that those could be viable at the moment, their day, unquestionably, is ending. The Steady Shot nerf punishes this sort of thing, and the only correction for SV is being bundled into ES. Even with what we know now, if you want a non-BM spec post-3.0.8, you must get the 51 point shot in one of the other two trees.
Originally Posted by Korvek
I think Survival dps is already pretty competitive with trap weaving and I feel like it will definitely be a lot more viable after the patch. I also think macroing in a raptor strike with immolation trap and disengage would increase dps as well.
Sadly, I think trapdancing looks to be the future of SV. I think it is a profoundly wrong approach for Blizzard to take, but we work with what we've got. I believe I would recommend this 0/18/52 +1build. 3/3 Resourcefulness is simply going to be required to offset the substantial mana load of trapdancing and to push to a 24 second rotation over a 30 second one. The two points in Savage Strikes are deeply suboptimal, but they are competing with 2 more points in Hawk Eye ... on a build that is intended to spend as close to 100% of the time at minimum range as possible. Bad talents with synergy outweigh good talents that never get used, I guess.
This build has an unspent discretionary point. Improved Aspect of the Hawk is probably the best place for it, especially if you dedicate the third glyph slot to Glyph of iAotH and are under the haste cap. Other options are Trap Mastery (less than 1% dps gain, but the +30% Frost Trap duration is useful in some circumstances), GFTT 2/2 (if you are still having focus problems), or Rapid Killing 1/2 (to bring Rapid Fire into resonance with activated trinkets). At hit cap, the 3 points can come out of FA, also, and be spent more or less as desired in the above marginal talents.
Because this build will, at times, step forward into melee, it slightly prefers a 2h weapon to dual wielding on face value, although this may be mitigated somewhat by the insanity that is 2x [Formula: Enchant Weapon - Accuracy]. Conceivably, something like [Black Ice] could be used, but better 2h choices are probably [Betrayer of Humanity] and the post-3.0.8 revision of [Journey's End]. Does a 2h weapon's better Raptor Strike (and better hit %) on trapdance cycles win out over, say [Calamity's Grasp] / [Sinister Revenge] with dual Accuracy? Too early to tell and simple mathematical modeling is not going to give us a good picture of how this trapdance silliness performs.
Personally, I hope they realize that they are forcing SV down this path and provide a more sensible alternative. As it stands, I think trapdance SV dps will be competitive on those fights which allow it and quite a bit further back elsewhere.
My advice is: Drop imp. stings unless you really want it for pvp and move one point into iaoth, one into gftt and the last one into aimed which is useful for movement-fights.
I'd respecced again before coming back here, and replaced the three points into IAotH. The stings were doing considerably more damage, however, Wyvern Sting was only affecting a baseline of the the mobs in Naxx, and I was completely unable to affect the bosses with the sting. Overall, I found the effect to be nulled by the fact that you can't even hit the bosses with your most powerful sting.
My pet's focus seemed to, for the most part, hold out in the absence of GftT, although he was definitely hitting dry spells. Overall, I think my DPS may benefit more from the 9% attack speed than the addition of another shot. I'm still fairly iffy on trap dancing in a fight such as Patchwerk, where often my health will put me in danger of eating a hateful strike.
Have you thought about taking the iaoth-glyph and put only one point into iaoth ? Glyph of Steadyshot and Glyph of Serpent Sting seem to be no-brainers but for the last slot Glyph of iaoth is a real option i think. The Glyph-designers don't seem do like SV-Hunters i think. Or can you think about better options for the 3rd Glyph-Slot ?
I put in 1p in scatter to have some chanse in pvp and also since i didnt think that Wyurm sting was viable in pve.
The points in Focus aim will be moved to imo stings soon, when i get a bit more hit.
Atm my rotation is something like: ES, AS, Sting, Shot, ES, Shot, AS and so on and so forth.
Last night we did 10 man naxx and i actually did some really good numbers and i was nr 1 on alot of fights, whitch supriced me a bit But im not complaining!
But: What is the best rotation(+spec ofc)? I think i saw somewhere that WS was weaved in every CD (1 min?) and was giving more then the sting rotation? True/false? Since i have seen alot of specs with WS > NS > TM.
Also, is trapdancing something that we need to do, to sustain a high nr?
About the points I am also searching where to place them, as I am 3 points of hit cap so i dont use FA, and i am trying with the for me new way of iAoTH (to get your steady to 1.5 instead of putting it 5/5).
That ment 5 points I had to spent only no idea where.
Has anyone seen any official discussion on allowing ES dots to stack for LnL procs? Seems a no-brainer to help bump SV damage up some, but I haven't seen a blue post on that topic.
I tried this spec out last night in Naxx 10 to get a feel for the damage output. Although I spec'd like I would be trap dancing, I decided not to do it and see how the DPS stacked up; my rotation was the typical SSting->EShot->SSx3->EShot, with EShot->SS weaving on LnL procs.
I didn't keep a WWS, but here are some observations:
- 3800 DPS on Patchwerk with Major/Minor Armor, 10% AP, Battle Shout, and Kings. So, I was almost fully buffed.
- Based on that number, I would say that a decent BM kit (2 piece T7 plus the hit/crit off pieces) would also be decent for Survival, minus the AP gems versus AGI gems issue. My haste is relatively low, but my other stats are well-balanced to work with Surv's crit/AP procs.
- Lock and Load is really lackluster for single-target DPS if you're not trap dancing because of how infrequently it procs. I didn't get Sniper Training but I can also imagine that being a wash given that you will almost surely have to be out of range of some raid buffs provided by melee.
- Conversely, Lock and Load is great for AOE (I tried not to use Volley at all); drop an Explosive Trap and tab-target Explosive Shot the mobs. It's unfortunate they are removing the AOE component of EShot.
- I didn't "feel" the reported mana efficiency of this spec. Even with a Replenishment source (myself) I found myself going OOM somewhat often, and unable to get back up while in Viper as quickly as when I am BM. I think this is where Haste really shines for Survival.
Overall, I had fun playing around with it, and I wouldn't mind going full-time Surv if BM really takes it in the knees. I tend to agree that trap dancing isn't how this spec was meant to be played in a raid, and I probably won't try it unless I get more comfortable with all of the timing issues; that said, I can see how, if you trap dance well, your DPS will be very competitive and even on par with current MM hunters. The buffs next patch will only make this better.
Centrius, in your original spec, just an FYI, there is not a single viable hunter spec that does not include 5 points in lethal shots. It's a critical dps talent and one of the best bangs for your talent buck you can get. Mortal shots is much weaker than it used to be due to it not affecting autoshot, so it's more popular to take points out of although it depends what you're speccing as to where the points are best to go.
The new spec you listed is missing a 5th point in MT, which is probably still a pretty decent dps gain, and has 3 pts in EW where 2 is probably sufficient (1 if you have enough crit) and 2 pts is probably fine for hunting party as well. Your gear is pretty solid (except why are you still wearing that BC badge ring? there are blue rings from quests that are better) so you can also probably get away with only putting 1 pt in GftT, since your crit rate should be high enough that the 2nd pt wouldn't give you a substantial dps gain.
This is the spec I've been running with of late after futzing with the spreadsheet some. It seems to put out pretty good numbers (current best on Patchwerk is 4464 in 25 man and 4002 in 10 man). I experiemented a little with trap dancing last night, and on some fights it seems like it might be worthwhile, but I'm not yet convinced it gives me enough gain to make it worth adjusting my spec specifically to take advantage of it. I haven't tried it on Patchwerk yet.
I have been reading about "Trap Dancing" alot lately and I kind of understand what its suppose to do, but I don't get how it's done. Can anyone fill me in on a post where I can read about this? I have searched the forms but can't find much about exactly what I'm suppose to do and how I'm supposed to spec for it.
How to specc? Serpents Choice has posted an example a few posts above this one, I liked it. You can also take one of the speccs from the first page that you like most and remove Sniper Training and take Resourcefullness for instance.
What to do? Use an Immolation Trap at every cooldown and when L&L procs weave Explosive Shots and shots like Serpent/Aimed and Steady to prevent the overwriting of the last DoT of the Explosive Shot by the new shot. The dancing part refers to the moving between trapactivationrange (setting the trap under the Boss) and the minimum range for raged attacks. You have to follow the Boss if it moves and use instants when forced to or use disengage to good effect.
On Bosses that move too much, the use of traps in your rotation is useless, you'd lose more dps than you'd gain. When DualSpecc is here we may actually want to respecc between Traps and Sniper Training for different Bosses...
I did a quick review of the raid bosses currently out and their trap dancing viability, this is what I came up with:
Anub- probably not a good idea, but slow traps on the corpses will proc when corpse explosion hits
Faerlina- stand on an add and lay traps on them
Maexxna- explosive traps for the spider spawns probably best
Noth- explosive traps on the adds
Heigan- not viable, but lay a trap during phase 2 (and maybe on the pull) to be tripped
Loatheb- works (will have to move for spores anyhow)
Razuvious- works
Gothik- phase 1 slow traps as the adds come out, phase 2 lay traps in his port spot inbetween ports
4 Horsemen- should work, just careful of the cleaving mob
Patchwerk- works, careful at the start of the fight
Grobbulus- not viable (although you can prelay one trap at the start)
Gluth- slow traps on the adds
Thaddius- works
Sapphiron- could work but probably not worth the risk between blizzard and cleave
KT- not viable (could use it a little in phase 1 but doesn't provide much benefit)
Sartharion- works but careful of position
Malygos- works in phase 1 (but might be dangerous to do it outside of dropping from vortex due to breath chains), phase 2 explosive traps on ground mobs
Archavon- could work but he moves a lot and there is often dangerous stuff in melee range so probably not worth it
I, and I'm sure many others, would prefer if the 41pt talent was changed to "ranged traps" and let you throw all traps from range. It would give SV a distinctly different playstyle than the other 2 specs and alleviate all of this range dancing nonsense that's (theoretically) necessary for maximum DPS. I'd also lobby for Point of No Escape to work with all traps; added at the same time and giving SV an extra little DPS boost that it needs. I've posted about this on SA and I'm surely not the first person to think of it, either.
We could potentially get a much more useful/interesting level 80 skill out of it, too.
I, and I'm sure many others, would prefer if the 41pt talent was changed to "ranged traps" and let you throw all traps from range. It would give SV a distinctly different playstyle than the other 2 specs and alleviate all of this range dancing nonsense that's (theoretically) necessary for maximum DPS. I'd also lobby for Point of No Escape to work with all traps; added at the same time and giving SV an extra little DPS boost that it needs. I've posted about this on SA and I'm surely not the first person to think of it, either.
We could potentially get a much more useful/interesting level 80 skill out of it, too.
The risk here is that it might effectively turn survival into exactly what they said they didn't want it to be -- the "trap spec". Being able to use any trap at range is so much better than the default that BM and MM hunters might as well not have them. Ranged frost traps with entrapment would be too enticing to pass up for PvP, for example.
And the "more interesting" level 80 skill would have to be mighty interesting to fly for non-SV hunters that have been bothering to use Freezing Arrow. I know it's fashionable to dump on FA, but I like using it better than a regular freezing trap in a large number of situations, and I'm BM.
Rank 4: You fire an explosive charge into the enemy target, dealing [ 18% of RAP + 476 ] Fire damage. The charge will blast the target every second for an additional 2 sec.
Unreal... I figure we'd be looking at a boost from like 8% per tick to 10% or maybe 12%. 18% makes Survival look very interesting indeed.
It's hard to evaluate and compare the scaling from Marks to Survival with Marks having attacks that are based on weapon damage as well as attacks based on attack power, but as someone who used to very much enjoy the Survival tree (leveled my Hunter SV) it will be nice to try it out again. Though I have grown to love Marksmanship quite a lot lately. Could never bring myself to enjoy BM though.
Just been doing some testing on heroic dummy in PTR. Wearing identical gear (4885 AP constant for both) and with all talents increasing explosive shot dmg from top of MM tree and survival, I got these (100 shots fired):
So it looks like the damage really has been doubled, should have huge implications for survival DPS if it goes live, aswell as a major effect on arena viability.
Also checked out arcane shot, not done a proper test yet but it costs the same mana as steady and appears to do significantly more damage, thats with glyph+serpent on target (clearly not as issue for surv as shared CD with explosive but significant for other specs no doubt.
12/16/08, 5:28 PM
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