CATA: Black Arrow, Lock and Load, and Trap-Launched Frost Traps

[Corby]

So I'm looking at the talent trees a bit ago and I notice something: Black Arrow isn't listed in the Lock and Load tooltip anymore. Further digging on Wowhead shows the same information. Lock and Load, in its current beta state (at least from the tooltips I can see from outside of the beta I haven't been able to get into), only procs upon activation of the frost-based traps now.

So my concerns are:
A) What's the point of Black Arrow, then? It's just a dot? A crittable dot? That only last half as long as its cooldown? It does Shadow damage, and it scales probably pretty well, but... seriously the Survival 31-point talent is a dot, a dot that keeps us from having to toss an Immo. Trap out every thirty seconds? That doesn't seem particularly interesting at all. I know it's beta and all, but... To take AWAY the function of the spell that made it interesting isn't exactly the best way to go about it, you know?

B) To proc L&L (the Surv. special, mind) on a boss fight, you need to... activate Trap Launcher, and launch a non-damaging trap at the ground under your target. When the trap activates you get L&L, so theoretically you L&L every 30 seconds. This makes Point of No Escape significantly less crappy. But, am I the only one who finds this sequence pretty clumsy? I mean, you have to do this: 1) Hit Keybind 1, 2) Hit Keybind 2, 3) Click under the Boss, 4) Hit Keybind 3 twice, but not so fast that your Explosive ticks are wasted, 5) Wait around 30 secs, then repeat. Not impossible, no, but... awkward, I think.

I feel like I'm missing something here, and if I am, please point it out to me. I haven't seen any other threads addressing this but since search is disabled, I didn't look too hard.

[Souma]

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=.9mn.hunter is the most recent tree. Lock and Load is needed for T.N.T. Now read the description of T.N.T.

You're welcome!

[Corby]

Well frell me dead, I knew I had to be missing something. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.

[unillenium]

So I'm looking at the talent trees a bit ago and I notice something: Black Arrow isn't listed in the Lock and Load tooltip anymore. Further digging on Wowhead shows the same information. Lock and Load, in its current beta state (at least from the tooltips I can see from outside of the beta I haven't been able to get into), only procs upon activation of the frost-based traps now.

So my concerns are:
A) What's the point of Black Arrow, then? It's just a dot? A crittable dot? That only last half as long as its cooldown? It does Shadow damage, and it scales probably pretty well, but... seriously the Survival 31-point talent is a dot, a dot that keeps us from having to toss an Immo. Trap out every thirty seconds? That doesn't seem particularly interesting at all. I know it's beta and all, but... To take AWAY the function of the spell that made it interesting isn't exactly the best way to go about it, you know?

B) To proc L&L (the Surv. special, mind) on a boss fight, you need to... activate Trap Launcher, and launch a non-damaging trap at the ground under your target. When the trap activates you get L&L, so theoretically you L&L every 30 seconds. This makes Point of No Escape significantly less crappy. But, am I the only one who finds this sequence pretty clumsy? I mean, you have to do this: 1) Hit Keybind 1, 2) Hit Keybind 2, 3) Click under the Boss, 4) Hit Keybind 3 twice, but not so fast that your Explosive ticks are wasted, 5) Wait around 30 secs, then repeat. Not impossible, no, but... awkward, I think.

I feel like I'm missing something here, and if I am, please point it out to me. I haven't seen any other threads addressing this but since search is disabled, I didn't look too hard.

The talent trees are far from final, chances are Survival will maintain a lot of it's talents that play off of having black arrow on the target. As far as crittable dots goes; blizzard stated nearly a year ago, and numerous times since that all dots will become crittable/hastable (with haste adding extra ticks instead of reducing the duration.). So I think it's quite likely that blizz. is carving out Surv's gear niche as haste, by making black arrow's primary function a proccer for LnL. Not to mention that 12% chance to proc LnL with talents (T.N.T.) (which also allows you to proc LnL with explosive/immo trap) is a lot higher than your current chances of proccing LnL outside of freezing the target.

Using the gauranteed procs from the freezing traps is a pvp mechanic and not so much a pve mechanic. Lock and Load is kinda like Maelstrom Weapon in that it will generally proc a predictable number of times per minute and be an addition to your rotation instead of being the center of your rotation. The fact is short of a few scenarios (i.e. dropping frost traps ontop of spiderlings on maxxena) going out of your way to gauranteed proc lock and load will actually lose you a lot of dps. Kind of like wasting too much time chasing orbs on twin valkyr.

As far as using trap launcher goes; they stated that they plan to remove it from global cooldown. So you could actually make a fairly simple macro to use it in the context of a raid encounter, and infact work it into your main action bar rotation.

Something to the effect of
"/cast Trap Launcher
/cast Explosive Trap"

That way you just mouse-over the boss, hit your macro and click, I'd be able to give you moar on that if blizz would give me teh beta.

So I think trap launcher is likely to move explosive/immolation trap out of the min/maxing category and into the "If you don't do this you are a nub because its part of your rotation." (except I imagine survival might want to stick with black arrow.)

To be honest I know blizzard doesn't want Surv. to become the dot hunter but they are really going to have to do something about the shared cooldown between black/arrow and explosive trap, otherwise they are screwing Survival out of being able to actually make good use out of trap launcher.

But yeah, at 12% chance of LnL talented for Black Arrow I think chances are you will get 1 lock and load per black arrow, but if you stacked loads of haste I wouldn't doube you would be able to get 1.25 per black arrow, assuming that they remove the ICD on lock and load to account for reducing the proc options for it.

[Kimbald]

What bothers me about the talents LnL and TNT, is that you need effectively SIX talent points just to make LnL proc from BA.
Because basically that is what you do in a raid: you get LnL only from BA.

Unless they unlink BA from traps, as described above, than you get a different use for it, but than still you need 6 points to proc LnL from your explosive trap as well.

6 points for one usage of a proc is too much.
Those 2 talents (TNT and LnL) need to be merged.

As long as LnL has a 100% procchance from ice traps (wich it SHOULD keep always), they will never again remove the internal cooldown of LnL
Put BA up, wait till proc, launch frost trap (that is triggered by bosses but doesn't effect them) and double LnL...

[Rivin]

As long as LnL has a 100% procchance from ice traps (wich it SHOULD keep always), they will never again remove the internal cooldown of LnL
Put BA up, wait till proc, launch frost trap (that is triggered by bosses but doesn't effect them) and double LnL...

Frost Trap doesn't trigger on enemies that are immune to it, like bosses.

[Kimbald]

Frost Trap doesn't trigger on enemies that are immune to it, like bosses.

probably you are right, can't say I tested it since that would be silly at this point without a launcher and BA proccing LnL every cd anyway.
When using a frost trap, it means I'm having adds and those trigger it I suppose.

There was a discusion about this held by Ghostcrawler in a few blue posts, he even asked hunters which they preferred.
I thought we came out of that with the 'triggering but not effected', instead of 'not triggering at all when not effected'.
Probably I was assuming too much out of that. Can't say that I know if and how this mechanic was changed after this discusion.

[Rivin]

probably you are right, can't say I tested it since that would be silly at this point without a launcher and BA proccing LnL every cd anyway.
When using a frost trap, it means I'm having adds and those trigger it I suppose.

There was a discusion about this held by Ghostcrawler in a few blue posts, he even asked hunters which they preferred.
I thought we came out of that with the 'triggering but not effected', instead of 'not triggering at all when not effected'.
Probably I was assuming too much out of that. Can't say that I know if and how this mechanic was changed after this discusion.

You're right, they did change it to still go off on immune targets, but it won't proc Lock and Load on immune targets.

Patch 3.2.0 (2009-08-04): Will no longer "fizzle" on targets immune to snare effects, however Lock and Load will not succeed when using Frost Trap if the target is immune to snare effects.

[Kimbald]

Jeezes, if you expect me to read second half of sentences too.
I thought we were having a friendly discusion here, not an exam.

oh, and thanks.

[Rivin]

Jeezes, if you expect me to read second half of sentences too.
I thought we were having a friendly discusion here, not an exam.

oh, and thanks.

Ha, I actually wasn't aware of that change until you brought it up. I wasn't playing a hunter at the time they did that. :P