Completely agree here.

Only if the stars align badly will they nerf the traps. Firstly Survival will been to do OP on DPS, at least as 'badly' as BM now ('s indicate the less than stellar support for the OPness). And then they have to pass over a nerf for Explosive Shot in favour of traps. And then they have to work out a way to make traps non-useless on bosses and not make LnL worthless in PvP (making the synergy remain). That can only happen if LnL only procced on the two frost traps. A doable situation.

But I really doubt it. While Blizzard has a record to reacting to unexpected DPS increasers, they won't do it unless it is blatantly overpowering. They never did anything to stop the 3:2 macros in TBC, it was better, but didn't make Hunters blatantly OP. Hunters weren't stacked like Shamans because of it. So there seems to be a buffer, and it seems to be pretty large for Survival.

If we want to trap-dance is another matter entirely. I don't like the idea, but anything that isn't broken or abusing a glitch/bug is fine by me.

i think that's what most people dislike, but if it's the max way to do damage, then so be it. i will find it annoying but i want my LnL procs!

i think blizzard will be more likely to fix the situation in a positive way by implementing a solution that gives us LnL procs without having to get melee range every 30 seconds, rather than just taking out traps on boss encounters.

Inc Internal LnL CD + Increased chance to proc from stings.

They have said in the past that they are not happy with traps and have toyed around with ideas on how to change them (there was a post at some point during beta, I don't recall the exact wording) yet haven't been satisfied enough with any of them to implement any of them. You are downing trap dancing as if it is an OP mechanic, when it is actually 2 ES/AS with no CD, No Ammo Usage, and No mana/ammo cost. Comparing it to something that increases your pets damage by 50% and your damage by 10% (not to even mention the immunity aspect of the ability). Apples are not Oranges. The free shots still trigger GCD and firing them back to back lessens the benefit as you miss out on the additional ticks. The trap timer restriction would keep this ability in check, I wouldn't be surprised to see a more formal form of trap dancing implemented.

It would almost seem as if the ability was designed with the idea that we would be using traps more often from a different form of deployment possibly that didn't make the time table or wasn't done being tested so they tossed the sting portion of the ability on there.

When we started naxx 25, I had to go survival, and it really sucked trying to use that spec outside of a raid (mm/bm pets have so much more threat gen, I wish the Surv tree did a bit more for pets), and it really sucked being last as a dpser on Patchwerk. Unlike BM, though, the more complex the encounter, the better the dps ranking survival did, to the point where I could be #1 on Heigan because of all the dancing, while BM has been just the opposite -- most encounters I was in the average far from #1 slot. Complex encounters naturally lend themselves to trapping and Survival's strength as a dot class, while being detrimental to BM substantially. Honestly, on the few encounters that are hard, BM is frustrating and difficult to work with, Marks is the most reliable, and Survival provides the most opportunity to play around and improve. The skill tree, though, is utter trash compared to almost every other tree in the game, with lots of wasted talents, and the good stuff unevenly spread along the tree, no other tree has left me with so many points to spend with negligible dps talents to choose from.

No. This is complete and total rationalization at its worst. Blizzard wants us, and every other class, to be able to utilize all of our tools in given situations. They do NOT want us to abuse our tools to min/max the class. Trap dancing is abusing the mechanics through the use of an unforeseen loophole. LnL was intended to give PvP Hunter specced in SV a means to apply burst damage and to add some additional usage in limited PvE scale. The primary PvE use of LnL was keyed in on the Serpent Sting tics. Running back and forth in melee range dropping an Immolation Trap just to get LnL to proc is not what they want. And quite frankly, it isn't what we should want either. Though, I'm personally annoyed at the legions of SV floppers that are looking at the spec as an upgrade to BM because of this whole issue. But personal feelings aside, this isn't going to last long if it even makes it out of the PTR.

As I said, my gutt tells me that they'll make it so that bosses no longer trigger traps just to ensure that LnL's mechanics are maintained for their original intent.

I don't believe they'll make boss mobs immune to traps. They are not immune now, they are immune to slowing and CC. Using traps on bosses is usefull ( Thaddius while running by, Heigan when running back to the platform after the dance, Sartharion when avoiding the right-side waves and lots of older boses whose names I can't recall ) and should not be made impossible because of 1 emerging mechanic.

If it's too good I hope they just nerf the dmg from the free shots instead of turning it into the new casino game in SV tree...

It seems to me that the only reason we, the players, need to consider whether trap-dancing is intended, an exploit, or somewhere in between is because if it is an obvious exploit we can opt to not consider it too much because it is extremely unlikely to make it past the PTR. If it's at all likely to make it live, it's worth looking into how to play with it. To be fair, people have made some interesting arguments - but arguing over Blizzard's intention strikes me as being as irrelevant as people giving their own opinion as to how much they will like or dislike the playstyle.

Im not convinced that trap dancing was totally unintentional from blizz. Point of no escape specifies the traps which cant be used on bosses, so that we cant just add 6% crit for the raid, which suggests to me they considered the idea of using traps on bosses. LnL on the other hand is all traps, even though immo traps arent really used in arenas.

Personally Id like it if the three specs performance was situational - a hunter with the same gear/skill of each spec goes on a naxx raid, the BM wins patch etc, MM wins haigan etc and SV wins the fights involving adds. This means you can play the spec you want, and be able to justify it.

If LnL was intended only for PvP burst, then they would have restricted it procs to freezing/frost/snake trap.

Remember what the devs said in the Lich King development video: they consider Death Knight design a huge success because the trees don't define WHAT you do so much as the define HOW you do it. Their goal was to make each tree capable of tanking or DPS, but in different ways. They kind of succeeded with Unholy and Frost but flopped on Blood, yet they're still trying to rectify that and apply that same philosophy to other classes.

We're witnessing the death of "the DPS spec, the PVP spec, etc." And I'm happy to see it. There are DPS and PVP talents strewn throughout high and low Marks, BM, and SV. A lot of people have called this "disjointed," but it provides a lot of potential if Blizzard is willing to come through on their stated objectives. Honestly, I believe they are. I don't see Blizzard trying to make BM the top-DPS spec, MM the raid-buff spec, and Survival the Forest Gump spec. It's clear from these changes and the communicatin they've given us that they would rather the DPS difference be within the single-digit percentage points rather than SV doing 80% of the DPS that BM does, as it is now.

Currently, when evaluating the specs, you have to maintain a running total of the utility inherent in every tree--not just DPS.

BM:
+3% damage for the raid
-5% less tank damage with a tenacity pet vs. any other spec

MM:
+10% raid AP

Surv:
Replenishment

(This isn't counting pet debuffs like a worm's sunder armor or a sporebat's faerie fire, assuming you don't have the "real" classes available.)

For the sake of argument, let's ignore BM's beefier RoS since most prefer ferocity pets. So we're looking at 1 buff for each spec. Which of those 3 is the most valuable?

That question can't be answered. In a raid with nothing but physical DPS, with acceptable levels of AP, MM's buff will provide the most raid benefit. In a raid without pure physical DPS or perhaps low AP levels, BM's buff takes the lead. In a pure-caster raid or healer-intensive fight, Replenishment could be the most valuable.

Thus, if each buff is equally situational (hence, equally valuable), you can't say that any spec should be "the top DPS spec" hands down, because you can't rely on the spec buff making up for the DPS discrepencies. As a result, we need to see sub-10% differences in DPS potential across all three specs, assuming you take the raid-relevant talents. It's safe to predict that Blizzard will continue to adjust the specs until we see something along these lines.

I, for one, welcome the day that neither Survival nor BM is "the best" DPS.