No need to worry, as you can't get both explosive shot and readiness....

It won't get kicked in the shorts. Readiness and Explosive Shot can never exist in the same build at 80.

I am sure ES will get nerfed before it hits live if Blizzard cares anything about balance. The question is when it gets nerfed will it still be able to keep up with BM/MM DPS? I am starting to like MM a lot more than I did BM and I am interested in trying out survival again (haven't been survival since early BC). I do think survival talents need a looking over though to get it in-line with the rest of the talent trees.

Yeh, it has been a long Friday. Sorry, I am to used to ignoring the BM 51 point talent to realize there are even 51 points to put into a tree.

Ok, carry on, there is nothing to see her

Trap dancing was a moderate dps gain (I experienced 150-200 dps increase on patch) yet was extremely situational. Now we will be in a situation where the loss of those 2 autos and that steady (possibly 2) will have to be weighed against the gains of LnL.

What sucks is that having a "melee" component to our rotation will mean those depending on LnL for their damage will have it rough on bosses like Grob or Saph.

Also, it wouldn't surprise me to see LnL reduced to compensate or the damage it can generate. In an arena setup it is definately a recipe for a quick "gib" on an opposing member.

Also, is there any word on whether or not Spore Cloud auto casts?

I cannot fathom they will ever balance hunter DPS output around having to drop immolation traps under bosses regardless of any number crunching being done on the PTR. Everything is in flux and things will normalize.

That isn't too good of an analogy. 'Trap Dancing' makes about as much sense as giving mages a melee strike ability key to their sustained raid damage (and actually that is even less nonsensical since there is no dead zone at all for mage spells). If it does yield higher damage, I have to believe it will be corrected in relatively short order.

By the way, it's actually unnecessary to move to "trap dance" if the boss is stable. You can position yourself 8 yards away and drop a trap when it's up. If you're facing the boss when you do that, the boss will trigger the trap, so the total cost is 1 GCD in exchange for ESx2 instead of SSx2.

Is this true for mobs with hitboxes that are larger/smaller than their graphical model?

The problem, though, is the fact that you have 7 PURE DPS players coming in behind a TG Fury Warrior, 5 pure DPS coming in behind a DK, and 3 pure DPS coming in behind a Feral Druid on the Patchwork fight. Granted, 2 of those players are Rogues and we all know that they're kind of screwed up right now. And none of this speaks of player skill or gear. But that is god awful and a shame to think that we, along with Rogues, Mages, and Warlocks, have to work this freaking hard to hang with "off spec" capable classes. Hell, one fo the Warlocks and Rogues got out DPSed by a freaking Ele Shaman.

This thread's got some great information coming out, but I'm curious about a few things since I'm behind a ridiculous firewall that hates P2P over the holidays and thus can't PTR.

Are we truly saying that Survival could be a possibly new top spec due to the new ES? Or are we just excited that a lackluster tree got some love? Like someone said earlier, the tree is basically a race to ES, and doen't seem like it would shine at all in raiding.

The BM parses from that Naxx on page 2 seem to still be putting out some decent numbers, but it's still odd to see hunters relatively on top there. That DPS looks ridiculously poor even based on a mid-level guild's WWS. There's barely a person breaking 4,000 on that parse, which just seems sad. Does anyone have some more recent parses on BM DPS?

Has anyone tried MM in a 25 man now that Glyph of Steady Shot is working again? I've been rooting for MM since around 3.0 when I put out some real good numbers with it in Sunwell, but with all the talk in this thread about Surv vs BM, I don't know what's going to become viable with the steady shot nerf.

ES is pretty crazy atm. I just don't know if it'll actually make it to live in its current state, since its scaling would be pretty awesome as well (until of course it got hit with the nerf bat)

Same character's doing about 500 dps more with my survival build + cat and using freezing arrow to trigger extra LnL's than with a BM build + scorpid on the boss target dummy. Both rotations done by hand, until OOM, no cooldowns (2000 dps versus 1500 dps.)

For comparison, BM build + scorpid on live ran at around 1750 dps with a hand rotation. Looks like survival's in my future if nothing changes.

It'd be interesting to see if LnL triggers if the boss is immune to freezing traps.

Do Serpent Sting ticks trigger Aspect of the Viper on live? Because they do on the PTR. I'm pretty sure it's only the application that triggers Viper on live atm.

On live, Serpent Sting applications proc Aspect of the Viper mana regen. Serpent Sting ticks do not.

Doesnt trap dance have a conflict with sniper training ?

Also , does anyone have any numbers about IaotH+Focused Fire Vs 3/3 Improved Stings/Aimed Shot

Use Freezing Arrow?

Will Freezing Arrow cause a Lock and Load effect to be activated on an obviously immuned boss?
Personally I find it not only unlikely, but also quite powerful..

But then again, the whole concept of "Trapdancing" is too bizzare for me to grasp. Sure, on paper, it seems wonderful but then I think of all the melee allready crowding the boss' proximity, bosses that cleave or tailswipe (if not both) are too much to handle on top of keeping the pet alive, and what about a shouting raid-leader that sees a Hunter in melee range...

No, even if I get convinced by Math and calculations that indeed this whole "Trapdancing" is a DPS boost, I'll still claim this is not where the Hunter class belongs, and there should be some alternative solution to deploy traps or inflict more damage via those.

- Too hard to grasp? I'll try and clear things up: you stand the closest you can to a target while still being able to fire everything(except Kill Shot), and lay traps every CD for the awesome-blossom two extra ES.
- You obviously can't do this for all fights, it's very situational but profitable once you master it.
- Shouting raid leader? You should know where you should be standing on some fights. Kel'thuzad for example, your raid leader and everyone else should shout at you so you get the hell out. Now, for a fight like Noth or something of the sort you should shout back at your raid leader and tell him you're not stupid and know what you are doing.
- It's a dps boost, tested by myself and others. It gave me a few hundred DPS(~300-400) boost. Explosive was doing 50% of my damage, being fired almost as much as auto shot.

You aren't becoming a melee class if you trap dance by any means. This may not be what Blizz envisioned when they implemented LnL, but it is certainly creative use of traps in a raid environment(which I certainly am excited for, I have been trying to find more uses for traps in raids) to up DPS. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't want to trap dance? Don't have to, no one is forcing you. Go with the counterpart(Sniper Training) instead if long-range shooting suits you better. Trap dancing isn't making or breaking DPS in the slightest.

I agree that there should be a trap cast for Immolation as there is Freezing, but we'll have to wait and see how Blizz reacts to the new ES. Right now, one can play Survival in two different ways: the short-range-up-close-and-personal hunter, or the hunter who likes chillin' at the back of the raid blowing stuff up. When it comes down to it, there's no better spec, it's just personal preference. Go with what you like, but saying that this isn't where the Hunter class belongs is a bit extreme seeing as you've only read about this.

"We want to lay traps on boss mobs".

Of course we do, hence my question, one which I was hoping a PTR fella be kind enough to answer, will Freezing Arrow activate the Lock and Load effect, when used on a boss?

As replied already - we do not know if it will have any effect. I could go pesimistic and say "I don't think so", but I will refrain myself from it and wait for some PTR data. It would be fantastic if Freezing Arrow would work, but we don't know if it does, and my first statement was based on assumption that it doesn't.

With ES's current (PTR) scaling, sacrificing a zero-damage GCD for a LnL proc may seem like a no-brainer... but I'd be very surprised if that scaling made it to live. Besides, using FA to proc LnL feels very "side-effecty", and with hitbox and mobility issues, current incarnations of trap-dancing seem to involve a disproportionate amount of micro-management.

If Blizzard intends for trap-driven LnL procs to become a staple of raid DPS rotations, I'd prefer to see a more 'natural' way of doing it (via an Immolation-launching arrow as our 41-point talent or something silimar).