For those of you who have played a Survival Hunter prior to WoW’s 3.1 patch, you are familiar with Lock and Load and how it used to be connected to Serpent Sting. Back before Black Arrow was announced, hunters were happy with Lock and Load. It increased DPS significantly and it was the one proc you always waited for. Then 3.1 announced Black Arrow and Lock and Load was changed to rely on that skill instead. Hunters thought they were screwed and that it wouldn’t proc as often as it did with Serpent Sting. But perhaps they were wrong. I don’t know about you, but it sure seems like Lock and Load procs a lot more now than it ever did before. Join me as we take a look at the theory of hidden proc rate changes and the future of Lock and Load.
The Old Lock and Load
Lock and Load used to rely on Serpent Sting and the tooltip for the talent reported 3, 7, and 10% chances to proc from periodic damage depending on how many points you put into the talent. Considering Serpent Sting had a cooldown shorter than how long it lasted, it only made sense that you should have more of a chance to cause Lock and Load to proc right? 15 seconds of damage, each with up to a 10% chance to proc the talent? It almost seemed impossible to not have the skill proc Lock and Load, but I rarely saw it. I may have seen the proc once or twice in boss fight and on occassions it would of course proc as I killed a mob. It wasn’t enough to truly rely on it, but it provided nice burst damage during any given fight.
The New Lock and Load
The new Lock and Load from 3.1 is reliant on Black Arrow. Any Survival hunter is aware of this change and probably has adjusted their shot rotation accordingly. Many hunters began complaining because the 3.1 patch notes mentioned that the proc rate was reduced to 2, 4, and 6% for periodic damage on top of the fact that Black Arrow doesn’t have the capability to have 100% uptime like Serpent Sting does. It seemed like a nerf, but then the in-game tooltips showed the 3, 7, and 10% proc chances anyway and it didn’t seem as bad even though we still had to put up with Black Arrow not having that 100% uptime. Here’s where things begin to get interesting. Lock and Load appears to proc more often than it used to. Theoretically that’s impossible of course, seeing as you have less time with periodic damage and the same proc rate (according to the tooltip). So how do we explain this change in proc? Undocumented changes to game mechanics? It’s plausible.
Discussions
A guild mate of mine from Burning Legion – US began talking to me about Black Arrow the day that 3.1 came out. This guild mate, named Jibily, began by telling me that Survival hunters could basically no longer function as well as they used to because of the changes to Lock and Load. He was entirely convinced our DPS would drop and we would fail miserably in raids. That is until he actually went to the Heroic Training Dummy for a little while. Within 20 minutes of his previous statements, he had whispered me about the posibility of undocumented changes to the proc rate, or some form of game mechanics changes. I thought he was crazy, but then again, as he was complaining before, I was already at the Heroic Training Dummy and my Lock and Load procced twice in a short amount of time. Of course, its entirely possible even if the proc rate is 1%, but it was strange for me as well. That was when we began talking about the skill in depth and now we discuss it every so often. As it stands now, we’re both firmly convinced that Lock and Load procs more now than it used to, even though the two skills that Lock and Load has relied on work in two completely different ways. We’ve both since a drastic increase in DPS as well, which is entirely opposite of what Jibily originally said would happen.
Conclusion
Overall I truly feel that there is something different about Lock and Load now that it relies on Black Arrow. Whatever that something is, it makes Lock and Load have an observable increase in procs. On bosses now, I clearly see it occur more often than it used to and I don’t have to make sure my buff is up 100% of the time, although I still have to make sure Black Arrow is on the boss as much as possible. I’d like to mark this “theory” as PLAUSIBLE because there’s no real proof other than a few hunters who pay attention to procs to try and prove each other wrong (in a friendly, competitive way) all the time.
Future of Lock and Load
Lock and Load is being changed again in the 3.1.2 patch. According to the 3.1.2 patch notes, 3.1.2 is only fixing the tooltip of Lock and Load to display the originally intended proc rates of 2, 4 and 6% when periodic damage is dealt. The question really is whether or not it’s a tooltip change or if they also forgot to change the skill. If they never changed the proc rate, it could explain why there appears to be a higher uptime of Lock and Load. Maybe something about Lock and Load actually requires a lower proc chance for it to work the same as it used to with Serpent Sting. We all know Theorycrafting is great for this kind of thing, but I don’t believe there’s ever been a true proc rate formula given out. Not to mention, percentages are percentages and it would require some strange code for a percentage to not be correct. However, considering the cooldown on Black Arrow, I also wouldn’t put it past Blizzard to add a modifier into the formula to make up for it. This is, of course, speculation on my part seeing as I like working with code, but I’d like to get some of your input on this as well. The forums are a great place for a discussion on a topic like this one, and we’d love to hear from you all.
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Prior 3.1. L&L had an internal cooldown of 30 seconds and now it hasn’t. Now sometimes proc two times in a row or you dont see it in the whole fight. Overall, I think the chance to proc was better before 3.1.
Sorry for my english
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While I applaud your desire to investigate issues such as this, there’s too much anecdotal and not enough (any?) hard data to support your conclusion. To perform an analysis with teeth, we need real, measurable data. Did you or your friend track the target dummy tests with WWS/Recount/some other tool? Anecdotal analysis isn’t really valuable when reviewing the viability of a given spec’s potential dps output.
Please don’t misunderstand; this is not a troll post. It’s an encouragement to continue to investigate issues like this, but to avoid the “I feel like” anecdotal analysis and move towards a real, data driven analysis of the talent.
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@hawkhawkmoön
I wasn’t aware of the internal cooldown, but even so I dont remember seeing it go off that often before either. While testing it last night in Naxx 25 (off night for raiding), I saw Lock and Load go off multiple times in the longer boss fights (like KT). It’s all observational data, but I didn’t ever see it go off that much before 3.1 came out
@Ridjeckgron
We were using Recount to track overall DPS. We were doing two things at once though, testing DPS with Black Arrow in our rotations, and testing pet DPS because I often feel that theres something I’m missing to boost myself up a little higher. Like I said, I wish I had some theorycrafting…I love numbers and I love code, so I’ll have to see if I can find anything else.
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Oh and one last thin, it’s not a post saying “I’m right” but more of a speculative one based on my own curiosity and my own observations. I do welcome all of your ideas, and I think this topic is great for debate because of all the factors and such.
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I’ve noticed a lot more lock and load procs myself. I had 3 proc back to back on Patchwerk (10m) a couple of nights ago.
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I’m truly surprised to hear people saying they feel that it procs “more” now. I rarely get this proc now as opposed to prior 3.1. In fact, after a guildy told me to keep track of my procs one evening, I realized that in one entire quarter of Naxx, I only had 2 L&L procs. I’ve been rather vigilant in my attention to L&L now. The timing of this post is humorous to me because I was seriously debating whether or not to even drop the talent points there; that’s how low of a proc rate I’m imagining for myself. Of course, I’m still churning out the dps, and since I don’t care to rigorously test the rate, I guess I’ll just hang tight.
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I have to agree with ieatkittens. I feel L&L is more luck nowadays than it was before. sometimes i dont get a proc for ages and on some occasions i get them close together.
I wish they would change it back to how it was.
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I agree with ieatkittens. To take it further, LnL is now a toss of the RNG game and the game mechanic seems really forced to me. The merging of traps and a ranged dot.. the effect that a dot can cause a buff to me rather than a debuff to the dotted mob, etc.
That said, previously, I had been a trap-dancer. And yes, I also used frost trap on bosses in combo with my serpent stings. So I could get a LnL with EVERY trap cooldown, plus one or two from the SrS. For this case, LnL is an order of magnitude lesser in proc rate. But beyond that it’s much more random now. (“Yay, I proc’d LnL when it’s not useful!”)
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@ieatkittens
I went purely based on myself, Jibily and another guildy named Tallel. We all proc LnL all the time now. I dont think I can get less than 4-5 procs in a quarter, and Science of War (the guild I’m in) can burn bosses down insanely fast in Naxxramas. Keep trying it out, I’m curious to see if you just had a bad night for the proc
@Jaylene
Any proc is ALWAYS luck, just like a drop is luck. Percentages are per attack, mob, etc and they are as random as we can make them. But again, I was using my own observations from the past few weeks where I proc LnL on trash mobs all the time, and proccing it multiple times on a boss is the norm for me
@Kheldul
Well if youre a trap dancer its a different story…and you can still proc 100% of the time with traps. Ive never been a trap dancer because it causes me to run in, and running in gets you hit by AoEs and such on some fights. Not to mention, Survial hunters work best standing still now, and previously we had to stay 30 yards back. Running in would actually have gimped you and it wasn’t worth the LnL proc.
What I can do for all of you guys is take myself and a few other hunters to a training dummy, record number of shots and how many procs we get. If you all wanna do the same, that would be great. Basically it wouldnt be to test DPS, just to take the time to actually check it. Like I said to Jaylene though, its all random chance, so I may not proc it in 5000 shots and then proc it 3 times in 200 shots. Oh how I wish there was solid code/evidence to look at :/
Oh and keep up the discussion, I’m enjoying reading what your experiences are. This article is entirely opinionated with minimal solid proof, so it’s great to see what other people think.
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@Ridjeckgron and @Euripides — While we can all appreciate the value of hard numbers, I think the purpose of this post was primarily to get the discussion ball rolling based on speculation in order to poll the community for their experiences with the changes to Lock and Load and how it now interacts with Black Arrow. I foresee a continuation of this post that will include highlights from the discussion in comments here as well as more factual evidence to support one side of the coin or the other.
After all, each Hunter sees Lock and Load behave differently (thanks to the RNG) and it’s impossible for any one of us to know how it behaves for someone else in a combat environment, unless we ask, which is what’s being done here.
Once we have more anecdotal information, we can better develop a framework for testing and collecting hard data, which is what Atkallen’s intent here seems to be.
I, for one, am enjoying reading the differing experiences people are seeing (after all, I can’t be there to look over your shoulder and compare your procs to mine) and look forward to seeing how testing plays out. As with anything based on the RNG, results will surely vary widely.
There’s currently a thread up on the forums for posting Black Arrow/Lock and Load testing results, here.
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Nice discussion.
I have been playing survival for a year now. And doing pretty decent progress in 2-3 guilds.
For me its clear that L&L procs more seldom now. I have even left out the Resourcefulness, for more AGI(+3%) in hunting party. Ididnt see any nebefit form the relatively small damage from Black Arrrow, and definitely not more proccs.
But… im raiding Ulduar, and u r discussing Naxx. Maybe u are actually try to compare apples and pears? Dunno really, but it seems odd that some feels L&L proccs more often now…
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@Islandwind
I raid Ulduar. I’m in a top 20 guild for progression, but I was basing my comments on Naxx and such because I had done Naxx on Tuesday night, whereas I havent been to Ulduar in a week or so because I’ve been sitting out to allow others in. Whatever raid you’re in though wont change proc rates, that much I can assure you. To be honest, if I did Ulduar, I wouldnt have time to pay attention to procs in a fight like XT though, simply because of having to focus on running away when I have a bomb, burning the heart, and then destroying adds. Plus I tend to not be able to use Black Arrow on a fight like XT because I have to save for my traps when the scrap bots come out.
Now, as for the damage you mentioned. I use Dr.Damage and I know it can often be off on the amount it predicts, but it’s clocking my Black Arrow at 3k damage. Again, I don’t fully trust Dr.Damage because it creates an average based on crits and such, but assuming its even 2k isnt bad considering you can proc LnL, and when you do, you get 2 free Explosive Shots. If you get it at the end of the fight, you can easily go Explosive -> Kill Shot -> Explosive -> Steady Shot -> Explosive and deal out a hefty amount of damage.
Again this is all somewhat opinionated based on how I play, and not everyone will play that way. I just don’t see where 2% more AGI will help me (I have 1 point in Hunting Party). What…20 agi per 1000? Thats 20 AP and almost no crit. Not to mention that I can still get Replenishment up almost 100% of the time, and tbh Replenishment isn’t good enough to put 3 points into Hunting Party. If I’m not in a 25man raid with multiple mana regen buffs, then I go OOM all the time sadly :/
Now I do have to bring up the point that you did mention that you don’t have points in Resourcefulness. When I think about it, that might just be why I proc so much. With a lower cooldown on Black Arrow, I can keep it up more. If Black Arrow is up more, I have more chances to proc LnL. I honestly can’t believe that I hadn’t thought of that before…Also, take a look at the damage. I mentioned Black Arrow before being clocked at 3k. We’ll assume Dr.Damage is right and do some math:
Black Arrow normally has a 30 second cooldown. This means you can shoot it off twice a minute. Let’s assume a fight lasts 5 minutes.
5 minutes, twice a minute, you get 10 shots of Black Arrow. Assuming all of the damage gets to the target before the end of the fight, you would hit for 30k damage.
Now, assume you have 3 points in Resourcefulness. This means you can shoot off Black Arrow almost 3 times a minute. We wont assume that for the math, but we will still assume a 5 minute fight. Now, in the first 4 minutes (240 seconds), you’ve already shot Black Arrow the 10 times that the previous example had. On top of that, you still have a minute left, and that means we get TWO more shots off (the third would require slightly more time). So you get 12 shots off in 5 minutes. 36k damage. Sure it’s only a net gain of 6k, but that’s assuming a 5 minute fight. The longer the fight, the more you get to use Black Arrow (and vice versa). Plus, with more uptime, you have more chances to proc LnL. Let’s do some math there as well.
In a 30 second CD of Black Arrow, you have an uptime of 15 seconds. That means you only have 50% of the time to actually have a chance to proc LnL.
In a 24 second CD of Black Arrow, you also have the uptime of 15 seconds. This means you have 62.5% of the entire Black Arrow Time (including CD) to proc LnL. 12.5% increase in uptime essentially.
Now taking the increase in time AND the already increased damage, you have the potential to proc LnL more often which would increase damage on its own. With that increased damage and the damage from more Black Arrows, there’s no reason to NOT decrease cooldown time. Essentially you could be bringing an extra 5k+ for each LnL proc on top of the 6k Black Arrow damage increase. If we assume that you do bring 5k extra and you proc LnL twice, thats 10k extra per fight, for a total of 16k extra in a 5min fight. It doesn’t seem like much, but in a fight where almost everyone is dead at 1% (or even 0% before the boss dies), that 16k could make all the difference.
God I love this discussion ^^
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Ah crap, I left out a major point.
Without resourcefulness, it’s logical that LnL WOULD proc less because it used to rely on Serpent Sting which had a 100% uptime if you kept it up like you should, whereas without Resourcefulness you only have that 50% uptime. By bringin it up to the 62.5% uptime I mentioned, you’re getting closer to the original 100%. Not to mention, it depends on Glyphs too. Serpent Sting can go up for 21 seconds with a glyph, whereas Black Arrow is stuck at 15 seconds no matter what
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Well, we ran Naxx last weekend. Mind you, I just started playing my hunter again for the first time since BM was the ultimate 1 click spec in the game. I added my dual spec and have a pretty standard (if there’s any such critter) survival spec for raiding.
Mind you, again, this is the first time I’ve ever RUN Naxx and was still learning the bosses. However, I did raid quite a bit before I stopped playing a year and a half ago, and I’ve done quite a bit of heroics in order to get geared up for the raiding. Unbuffed I was at about 3800 ap, 27% crit, 215 hit (and now I’m close to 260 hit).
Here’s the breakdown of my lock and load procs for all bosses in Naxx (again, my first time at Heigan dancing, and I caught one so I won’t include that fight) Also note that although the majority of the people in my guild have done Naxx many times, this is the first time we’ve done it as a guild:
- Noth – 3:29, 2 procs
- Loatheb – 5:19, 1 proc
- Razuvious – 2:27, 1 proc
- Gothik – 6:01 (my time 3:16), 1 proc
- Four Horsemen – 4:28, 3 procs
- Anub’Rekhan – 2:28, 0 procs
- Faerlina – 2:38, 0 procs
- Maexnna – 2:25, 2 procs
- Patchwerk – 3:27, 3 procs
- Grobbulus – 3:33, 0 procs
- Gluth – 5:12, 3 procs
- Thaddius – 3:33, 5 procs
- Sapphiron – 6:40, 1 proc (88% dps time)
- KT – 5:28, 2 procs
Given that lock and load is really a “helper” proc, it appears to not be overly “helpful”, at least in the raid I attended. These numbers are from WWS. I’ve looked at other hunters in WWS, and I’m seeing about the same thing for all hunters. Unless you’re *very* lucky, the average proc rate appears to be once every 1:20s or so. Which really begs the question: Is it *really* that helpful in boss fights?
I know you have to put points somewhere in order to get through the tree, and there really aren’t any true alternatives at that level of the tree, but based on what I’m seeing, I could likely just put 2 points in it and save a point to put in another skill. The math for hunting party says if you’re over 30% crit, 2/3 points in it will keep it up 90% of the time, so that’s probably not an option (I’m at 29% crit unbuffed now after the raid and after adding some other gear.) There are definitely options in other trees, but it would require a bit of planning to get them to levels where they’d make a significant difference.
Anyway, that’s 1 raid, and it points to a whole lot of RNG chance. I hate basing my damage output on the RNG (always have, dating back to the mc/bwl days) so it sort of pains me to see things coming down to it now.
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Here’s the numbers for my guild’s Ulduar for the last 2 weeks.
http://forums.thehuntersmark.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&p=646#p646
It shows an average uptime of 2% of the raid, but we do have a lot of idle time because it’s progression. Each raid is 4 hours long. Like I said in that thread, considering the uptime of at least 2-3 minutes per raid, it’s not bad. You get, what, 30 seconds to use it? And it never even stays up that long if you use it properly. Theres cases where theres 16 minutes of uptime which is crazy…but also random. Sadly I dont have any numbers available from pre 3.1 so I have nothing to compare to…but it seems the average is 2% of a raid, so lemme know if you guys have numbers similar to that.
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I reviewed about 75 different pre-3.1 Naxx raids with survival specced hunters on WWS, and the proc rate appears to be very consistent in those fights as it is now. As I said above, the proc is not consistent (due to the low proc rate) and nobody should really rely on it. If you get a lock and load proc, all the better, the next 2 explosive shots are free.
Granted, I still don’t have a sure-fire shot rotation that works for me (still new to the survival spec, after all) and my DPS suffers from this, but overall I find that the survival build is much more interactive than the BM spec, regardless of the lock and load proc rate, so I’m going to stick with it. BM was just boring to play. At least with a survival spec I can watch for lock and load and adapt as I see it (or don’t see it, depending on the situation.)
Thanks for the comments about this. I ended up here on a Google search specifically looking for the lock and load proc rates, and lo and behold I others that were interested.
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The lock and load for me has become so irrelevant that I have no point on lock and load, trap mastery or resourcefulness.
Putting some of those points on marksmanship’s improved stings (together with the glyphs of serpent sting) is working wonders.
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L&L had it’s internal CD removed, which could be one reason you see it proc more. Not because of some hidden proc percentage mechanic.
However, the fact that you hardly ever seen it proc pre 3.1 seems simply like bad luck. Personally, L&L proc’d ALL the time for me pre 3.1, almost every 30 seconds. Meaning it would proc sometime around every other SS refresh.
Now I feel starved on L&L procs even though there is no internal CD. I’ll see it proc once every 1 1/2 minutes on average(note that is w/ 3/3 Resourcefulness). However every once in a blue moon I will see 2 procs within 15 seconds of each other; while nice, it’s not dependable.
However, Blizz achieved on doing what they wanted too I belive. They made L&L random. Where as pre 3.1 it was very easy to predict when it would proc and thus made it easier to work into my rotation w/o skipping or waiting for any abilities. Now, it’s totally random and is very hard to predict when it will proc as there are now multiple factors to take into account.
Also note that L&L’s proc chance is currently 2, 4, and 6%, but the tooltip never got changed. Read that in blue post somewhere, will try to find it and link it up here when I get home.
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Yeah I was aware of that change to 2,4,6%, but like I said in my post, without actually seeing code there isnt a way to truly confirm it. They can tell us all they want that 3.1.2 is a “tooltip fix” when they could be actually readjusting the percentages to what they should be internally. It’s along the lines of a conspiracy theory XD
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Well, if you put it like that, then everything in WoW is more or less a conspiracy theory; which I guess is what your trying to get at. But I don’t see blizz doing that and they really don’t have any reason to do it other than laughing at the number crunchers out there which they said they really enjoy anyhow, so I don’t see them doing that either.
One could try to figure out the precentage the old fashoned way through hours at the training dummy shooting off who knows how many black arrows, take the L&L procs, devide by how many total ticks BL had and…well, you get the point, no bodies going to do that.
I guess we really just have to trust Blizz on their word…or swear up and down that there is another factor at work here, but that is something no one will be able to prove.
Which brings me back to saying Blizz has (whatever the method) succeeded in making L&L procs truly random; while at the same time melting the rotation factor of the SV hunter and simply turning it into a priority system like most other classes.
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