I've had the opposite experience; my trapdancing outstrips every other hunter in my guild in terms of DPS; several of the others do Sniper range instead, but I'm always anywhere from 200 to 1000 dps higher; and we're all similarly geared. Depending on skill level and equipment, results will vary from both trapdancing and ST, but neither is conclusively better since so much depends on the skill of the player involved.

What formula do you use to calculate the casting-time of steady shot? Is it not (2 second cast - 2 second cast*(speed from haste+speed from quiver))/60?
i.e. 120-(120*(haste+quiver))/60?

No, haste stacking is multiplicative. If you have a quiver and 10% haste from gear, as an example, the formula would be 2/(1.15*1.1).

As a general rule, you can find commonly accepted formulas for many things in the Calculations tab of the spreadsheet.

Could you link a parse for me to look at? The difference in DPS is likely not related to Trap Dancing vs Sniper Training, and probably more to do with not keeping a tight shot queue. All the top hunter parses I've seen on Patchwerk do not involve Trap Dancing.

With the TNT change, we'll be using Immolation trap every time, and the glyph will likely be an incredible DPS boost.

Yeah I typed that before it was known that Explosive Immolation refresh was back in the game.

If I understand your math right you haven't considerd the lost shots due to trapdancing, right?
But assuming you are laying down the trap in a good timing the loss in damage should ba areound 4 k max, and you could swing in melee instead.
So it would still be a benefit of 'round 150 dps.

Not right, I tried to consider the lost shots actually (if I hadn't I'd have claimed something like 26k instead of 19k). I believe I counted it as follows - for each LnL proc:

+ gained 2 explosives
- lost 2 steadies (this may be more accurately 2.5 steadies, since you wait 2s per ES cast instead of your normal StS cast time (1.6s?))

Additionally, while moving to trapdance in that LnL proc:

- lost 2 autos
- lost 1 steady
+ gained one melee hit

Now, this led to math in my head without the spreadsheet average damage for each shot being handy, so the result of "around 19k damage gained per trapdance" isn't necessarily a good estimate. As luck would have it, I'm again posting from work and can't improve it, but will do so when I get home. Although I have no idea how I'm going to work out my average melee hit with raid buffs/debuffs.

I'll also try frapsing a bit to see long the movement actually takes to work out how correct the shots lost during movement is.

Given the huge difference is damage gained though, I don't think the end result will be different - 6% damage on just 3 shots (only 2 of which a lot of SV hunters even use) isn't a very large increase in damage, especially when accompanied by a risk of losing buffs while doing so.

Is that change up on the current PTR build?

Not even that as far as I know, it could even be no more than a mistake by some Blizzard employee who accidentally put it back in the patchnotes.

Well, lemme give a short comparison here....

All numbers given are averages based on this WWStats (Sorry, wasn't there for the whole raid, or even the Patch kill, and can't find an older Patch kill record). Wow Web Stats

Explosive: avg. hit:2006 crit:4672 crit rate: 58%
Auto: avg. hit:1572 crit:3336 crit rate: 46%
Steady: avg. hit:1280 crit:3225 crit rate: 51%
Melee: avg. hit: 1039 crit:2508 crit rate: 14%

Let's round that to 60% for explosive (I'm working on my gear, don't lynch meh please) so, roughly 2/3 ticks should be crits, totalling 11350 damage for a explosive on average, counting 2 total from a LnL proc, total 22700 damage on average from Explosive.

Lets assume that all of the 'missed' shots for trapdancing would be crits for sake of ease of math. obviously the numbers will differ by a larger margin if they wouldn't have been. let's also subtract the damage from the melee hit, non-crit, to show bonus damage from running into melee.

6672 auto (2 auto crits) + 3225 (steady) - 1039 = 8858 damage, additional reduction of two steady shots = 6450; average differential of 22700 - 15308 = 7392 damage per trapdance if all non-explosives are crits and all explosives tick a crit twice and tick a hit once.

Showing even in a worst case scenario for the lost shots (them all having been crits should they have been cast), you're gaining more damage with trapdancing than you would with four auto shots and three steady shots. Please by all means correct me if I'm wrong.

I'd love to use said spreadsheet, however I do not have Microsoft Office, nor am I willing to shill out over 200 bucks for a program I'd use for a single spreadsheet program. Sorry.

That said, I pulled the averages from the WWStats because it's a viable average number, showcasing true numbers, rather than hypotheticals (though I did throw in a hypothetical in the form of the crit rate for a bad scenario setup). And with the changes coming to Sniper Training, it really won't matter, so it's all fluff now anyways. :3

To the previous poster I say that there are as many ways to open spreadsheets as there are to skin cats. I suggest you look up a program called Open Office and refrain from QQ'n about 200 programs that you need not purchase.

I can't wait for more info on the loot tables for ulduar. So far it seems like 10man isn't going to have much by way of ranged weapons for those of us who're lucky enough to get the Envoy. I wonder if the final boss'll drop a higher-level item akin to how Kel does in naxx.

Problem is: Most (all?) of the macros won't work on OOo.
Someone is converting the Spreadsheet thou, but I don't know much about it.

@alienangel
Ok. but now there isn't listet the Kill Shot Critchance.
according to the spreadsheet the talent does 2k per killshot extradmg average.
The benefit of this is of course highly dependeble on the boss fight. Last Patchwerk kill it would have been about 4k, so Trapdancing is nevertheless better.

I wasn't talking about Trap Dancing in 3.1 though, this was all for live servers - most of what I said wouldn't make any sense in 3.1 anyway. Afaik on live servers now the Kill Shot crit chance applies whether you're standing at sniper training range, or trapdancing from 5 yards away (although you actually need to move out a bit further <20% to be in range to killshot).

Avalanche will drop off of Hodir in 10-man.

Like Kel'thuzad i would assume Yoggsaron will drop a best in slot dps 1 hander, a ranged weapon, a 2h weapon, caster weapon, dagger ect...

Yea, they kind of only have two ways to handle endboss loots.
Quite a patterh through Vashj+Kael'Thas, Illidan+Archi, Kil'jaeden, Kel'Thuzad. Tier endbosses always drop weapons, those are just the most rewarding loot you can offer to players. Like you said, there has to be 2 caster (spirit / no spirit), a 2hander, a ranged, slow mainhand, dagger etc, so every specc can at least use one of the loots, else the forums would be quite 'active' I'd say

Avalanche is an upgrade to Nerubian Conqueror and Veranus' Bane is an upgrade to Envoy. So there is for sure a mid-raid upgrade in 10 man Ulduar from 10 man Naxx. Seeing how every instance end boss had a ranged weapon, it seems very likely Yogg-Saron will have a ranged weapon upgrade from the mid-raid upgrade.

It will be interesting to see if the weapons drop off Yogg Saron or Algalon.

I did some futzing with the PTR spreadsheet (not sure really how up to date it is) and with my current gear I was kind of surprised to see the spec results. 6/14/51 turned out the best dps by a reasonable margin, but it was showing that the best dps output in survival comes from taking resourcefulness and leaving out sniper training and hunting party entirely (I was getting 6740.04 dps with that spec).

The best dps I could get out of a hunting party spec was 6722.23, which came from a 0/14/57 spec with hunting party, sniper training and resourcefulness.

I couldn't find any imp stings/aimed shot build that could compete. Are other folks finding different results with their gear setups?

After farming Naxx for a few weeks now, and slowly moving to a successful Maly run, I am looking to head towards a 6/14/51 spec. I know I'll need a lot more hit gear for that to happen, I'm saving up pieces so I can get hit-capped in one shot, rather than slowly working towards that dropping a point out of FA one at a time.
Anyway, my question is on IAotH. I see the 6/14/51 build favors 5 points in that talent. What glyph replaces the AotH glyph at that point? I'm also using a quiver, and I don't see myself needing all that Haste.
Slowly grasping the spreadsheet as well, numbers still confuse me from a delta perspective, some of the options for more dps don't make sense. May have to do with my, unintentional, 4 piece bonus, that'll change once I get better pieces in two of those slots.

No glyph. It still increases your autoshot rate of fire enough to be superior to other glyphs.