Rotation
The survival rotation is pretty straight forward although does require a bit closer attention than that of other specs due to Lock and Load procs.
Serpent Sting (Serp) > Explosive Shot (ES) > Steady Shot x3 (SS) – repeat.
Every ~3rd rotation you will have to reapply serpent sting with the glyph that adds 6 seconds to it’s duration come 3.08. Other than that it is an easy rotation and you’ll find yourself watching for Lock and Load procs. When LnL does proc you get 2 free explosive shots with no mana, no ammo, and no cooldown.
What to do on a LnL Proc
ES > SS > ES > SS > ES > original rotation continues.
At any point in the rotation you can drop a steady shot to reapply serpent sting, hunters mark, mend pet, rapid fire, or anything on the GCD.
Due to the potential damage output of ES you should avoid replacing it with anything unless you absolutely have to. Addons such as PowerAura or Class Timers can help you identify LnL procs if you hate staring at your buffs and needs something to pop up on your screen.
The closer you are to 1.5sec Steady Shots the smoother your rotation will be and as such the higher your dps because you are firing off more explosive shots compared to base 1.7sec Steady shots which delays your ES by almost a full second.
At NO TIME during a LnL proc should you use one of the charges to cast Arcane shot. Its damage is pitiful, especially compared to the new explosive shot.
3.08 Update
With the nerf to Steady shot making Aimed shot look and perform better, a new LnL rotation might be in the works.
ES > Aimed shot > ES > WAAAIT for the 3 ticks to hit > ES > regular rotation.
Early tests are showing better results than weaving ES/SS or staggering/waiting for each ES to give full duration of ticks. Here is the logic behind how and why this works.
Explosive shot functions like this.
0 seconds = Explosive shot hits the target mob and applies the debuff “Explosive Shot”
.5 seconds = 1st tick
1 second = 2nd tick
1.5 second = 3rd tick
Now, this LOOKS like it should line up to the GCD just fine however Explosive Shot also has a travel time to the target mob before this ~1.5sec cycle can run it’s course. If you are standing at ~30+ yards it takes just over .5 sec for your shot to reach the target so you are not actually sitting there for a full 1.5 seconds in between shots during a LnL proc. This travel time combined with the 1.5sec long tick makes Explosive shot effectively a 2 second long event if you are at ~30+ yards. The main goal of this modified LnL rotation is to get through the LnL proc faster and get to your next Explosive shot as soon as possible. If done well this LnL rotation puts you to your next Explosive shot a full 1sec earlier than weaving Explosive Shot and Steady Shot. While this does not seem like much over the course of a fight and multiple LnL procs you will end up with more Explosive Shots.
For players with high latency issues or who do not want to use addons to try and “time” this you can just replace this “wait time” with a steady shot and only suffer marginal dps loss. The ES > Aimed > ES > wait .5sec > ES is an absolute min/max rotation and is not absolutely ESSENTIAL to amazing dps but it certainly helps if you can pull it off.
Potential Rotation including Aimed Shot
With the nerf to Steady shot, Aimed shot becomes a potentially viable damage alternative in the rotation.
The only reservation of adding Aimed shot comes that it is a 10 sec cool down trying to fit into a rotation built around multiples of 6sec. As such you will either have to skip a steady and wait 1sec to cast a Aimed every rotation or cast that steady and cast Aimed shot late every rotation. Using Aimed shot in your regular rotation will also cut down on your LnL rotation damage since it may not be off cooldown when LnL procs.
Doing this gives Aimed Shot a cool down around ~11-12 seconds and reduces it’s long term damage output.
Trap Dancing
Trap Dancing is a different play style that has been in discussion on the EJ Forums for some time now. It revolves around standing at the ~5yrd dead zone and dropping an Immolation trap every cool down possible. While this spec and approach does yield slightly higher dps thru an increased number of LnL procs and subsequently Explosive shots, there are numerous issues that make difficult to implement in a live raid situation.
1) Boss Hit Box versus Trap Activation -
Many bosses have large hit boxes in this current raid content. Traps however, need to be at or near the center of a mobs hit box to activate. Bosses such as Malygos, Sartharion, Sapphiron, Gluth, Grobbulus, etc all have large hit boxes that require you to run to the center of the boss, drop your trap and get back out. While the EJ forums have proposed using Raptor strike / Mongoose bite to fill this dead time running in, it still is a major problem facing this spec.
2) High Mobility Fights
Not every fight in WotLK right now is like Patchwerk and allows you to stand and nuke and run in to drop your traps fear free. While bosses with predictable movement patterns are somewhat beneficial to trap dancing they also present an issue of staying at range and dropping when you can or constantly moving and trying to drop every trap cool down.
3) Survivability
I know that most healers and raid leaders alike do not want any more melee in on a boss than necessary on alot of fights. Positioning issues like Tail Swipes, Cleaves, Ice Tombs, all put a hunter trap dancing at risk for taking damage which in turn creates yet another person that healers have to worry about. In many cases you can get yourself swiped/cleaved/etc because you are running into the boss. The risks are higher than standing at range and most healers don’t like healing hunters as it is.
4) 30 Sec CD on LnL Procs
The latest ptr patch has added a 30 sec internal cool down to LnL procs through either stings or traps (no info has arisen proving these timers are separate). This discourages taking Resourcefulness for a reduced trap cool down time although in many cases promotes trap dancing because of the already low proc rate from serpent sting.
Overall thoughts on Trap Dancing
There will be a select few hunters who master this playstyle and post great results with it. In most other cases, the general hunter population as well as healers and raid leaders everywhere will find themselves more at ease at range dpsing like hunters have always done in the past.
It looks like a solid play style when you look at the math on EJ but successfully implementing it into a raid situation will be a great deal more difficult than the potential dps boost it provides.
All the ideas of the spec however are not terrible. Any fight where you KNOW where a boss or add will be feel free to toss a trap down and get as many LnL procs as possible.
There is no denying that LnL is a powerful tool towards boosting survival hunter dps but it comes at a risky cost to go as far as Trap Dancing to maximize it.
McGyver is looking for the Trueaim Long rifle. It’s the next gun upgrade after the 4000. It drops in 5 man Heroic ToC. It’s in the Black Knight’s loot table. Excellent gun, I used it for a long time until I got the crossbow out of PoS.
If you are pursuing a soft ArP build the gun is better than the crossbow until you get more ArP on other items to get you to the soft cap(Marksmanship). I do think he said he was survival though.
cool idea….maybe a wall in the Stonefire where we can mount our prizes
I just posted the calculations for the total BM hunter dps gain from the changes using top BM raid parses for a baseline. The total was a bit less than 1% net dps gain. You can see the numbers here: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/02/bm-changes-math/
wheee!!!
Had to go find this, since I heard parts of Dae’s side … I’m the night elf priest that disarmed a pally partway through.
Frostheim, your math is elitist and will not be tolerated!
True believers will embrace the 11% and never be swayed!
OMG WTH is that “Scottish” accent…I am offended!!
/nightelf bounce
Your mistake in the calculation is assuming that ammo is “damage”, not “DPS”.
Every entry of “91.5″ in your calculations should be “(91.5 * 2.80)”.
Gem your gear slacker!
I would do a 10 man Raid PUG if it is set up like LFD. That would be cool and I would then get into raiding. The hardest thing would be making sure lockouts always match up.
Addons I use enhance my playing. I can’t say that I could not play without them. I use DBM, but honestly like the Mike Tyson eye twitch, there are signals in game when something is going to happen. However, with all of the magic that gets thrown around making a players screen look like the 4th of July, DBM can come in handy.
An example that I know of is HoR. The rifleman uses a frost trap that at times will cover the mages fire AOE so that a player will not notice it until maybe it’s to late. When that fire is under the frost trap you can’t see it. That’s a slight design flaw, maybe a bug even.
If 10 man Raids become full fledged LFD PUGs everyone will not have vent. Addons such as DBM will save some frustration in that regards.
PUGs don’t really communicate much. When LFD first started people talked a lot. Nowadays, people just go. Hi, thanks for the great run, goodbye.
Viper Notify is a must have for me. Sometimes I forget with the switching I have to do in and out of it, and the tank’s pace. I played without DBM from the time I started in late TBC until about Jan. of this year. I wanted an edge when facing fresh bosses. DBM was the edge needed.
Like Daewin, I play off of sounds also. It actually made switching from a gun to a crossbow hard. I had to readjust again.
If you want a small dinosaur get a raptor Brig.
Yeah, but see these are the things I’m talking about. Maybe think of it this way.
When WoW started, the games UI was one of the best, if not the best, out there. Everyone was talking about how easy it was compared to many others.
Now though, it seems they’re getting lazy and letting the add-on devs take the lead in showing improvement.
As someone in IT, I understand why. It’s more cost effective and software companies have always done this.
But look at the specs now and see how much you “need.”
Think of Lock-n-Load or a thousand other Procs that are easily missed in the game w/o using an add-on b/c of the buff only appearing in the top-right corner or somewhere out of site?
Or the cast/cooldowns only being a simple sweep of the icon and not as noticeable? These small things are what makes people switch to special addons like Power Auras or Quarts. All these just because we “need” to see the info and can’t with the default UI.
So is it REALLY a need? Nah. We can play without them. But how many actually do?
Also, please understand I’m not bashing those that do. I’m actually, more upset at Blizzard for not improving the games UI or spell effects so we don’t “have” to.
I don’t think you’re bashing those that use addons. Heck I changed my whole UI by going with SpartanUI instead of the default (used default for almost 2yrs).
I don’t have other MMO experience to compare WoW’s UI to something. I can only compare WoW to WoW. I was a console only player prior.
I will agree to some degree Blizz has dropped the ball on continuously making the UI better. I say to some degree because at this point it seems they are being very careful as to what they integrate. A type of careful respect for the community of free developers.
Playing w/o SpartanUI at this point would be a pain to me. I did go back to the default UI right after 3.3.2 dropped for couple of days, but it was really odd and felt wrong. As soon as SUI was updated, I went back to it. Muscle memory was way to far off to use the standard UI.
I only play with 2 hunter specific addons. They are Viper Notify and Track-o-Matique. The first keeps me from remaining in Viper by mistake (Blizz should have built that in knowing that it was a temp aspect), and the second changes my tracking for improved tracking to give me my DPS boost (Blizz could have done this, but then they would have to do it for all classes).
Blizz helped to birth an outside developer community. Is Blizz prepared to step on lots of toes in said community to make its current UI better? They’ve smashed a finger or two, but seem to really drag so in doing it.
I think healers have it worst than us to be honest. I may find out how bad if I give my baby shaman a secondary healing spec.
I agree, when WoW first came out the UI was the s*#t! But I’m also a converted user of Spartan UI and am very add-on sparse as well. I use auctioneer, omnicc, DBM and omen. While you can play fairly competently without a host of add-ons, independent developers have done what Blizz should have been doing all along with each patch, and that’s improving some of the core elements of their own UI to make cooldowns, dots, procs, etc more visible and customizable. My comment for the show in an email was that if there is an add on that will help me get an edge and help my team why wouldn’t I use it. Even the little mistakes can mean the difference between a wipe and a dead boss.
One of the sites I found has a great deal great information on herbal teas and was really helpful. Its really difficult to find good info
Brig, is it true that you got Starcaller as SV and not as BM?
Heya Prolix,
Yeppers. It’s true. I switched to SV a while ago.
I hadn’t played SV since way back when I first started and felt it was only right to learn that one and see how it played.
Just curious though, why are you asking? I’ve always said I’d play any spec and that I’m not tied to any one in particular. (Well I did say I’m partial to Marks personally, but that’s just me.)
I’m happy that you can find the love for all hunter specs. I myself raid as MM but will always be BM outside of raids and have spent many hours getting 4 spirit beasts and then dumping one of them for the challenge of taming King Krush.
I just thought that you had become more partial to raiding as BM as the flavor of your posts the last few weeks have indicated. You’ve been assuring everyone that the BM spec is fully able to raid all current content content. Now that you’re raiding as SV I wonder if your opinions of the last few weeks have changed. Yes, you’ve previously been familiar with all three hunter specs but you’ve only recently been raiding WotLK content, correct? From what I understand, when you were defending BM as a raid viable spec all your level 80 raiding experience has been BM. Now that you’re trying something new I’d love to hear your thoughts on BM if they’ve changed all. Even if your thoughts on the matter haven’t changed, I don’t think the lodge has recently had any of your thoughts on SV or MM for raiding. I’m not talking about any sort EJ theorycrafting or advice on rotations either because we can always go to 100 other sources for that. I’m talking about your general opinion on the feel of SV or MM maybe even as a comparison to BM.
Anyways Brig, thanks for the lodge and the podcast.
Awesome! I’ll be able to listen before I have to leave for the Doctors
Thanks guys! I know it was just for me lol