First, to explain the situation we're dealing with. Occasionally, with the tier 16 4 piece set bonus, an SV hunter can get an obscene number of Explosive Shots in a row. So the question is, during this chain of explosive shots, what should you do if your Serpent Sting falls off?
Before you click through the break, here's a small disclaimer. I'm going to look as purely at the numbers as I can, and I'm going to compare different situations using the best judgement I can, but I may not come up with the answer you wanted; that's always the problem with numbers.
Attempt 1:
One solution which some hunters have suggested, is that Serpent Sting, over it's entire duration, does more damage than one Explosive Shot, so we should reapply it immediately. From World of Logs, the top significant parse for 25 player heroic Iron Juggernaut; this hunter averaged 403,360.7 damage per Explosive Shot (initial damage plus DoT damage), and averaged 534,642.7 damage per Serpent Sting (Improved Serpent Sting initial damage plus 5 ticks of DoT damage).
This makes some amount of sense, and I like how easy of a solution it is. However, to me it feels inaccurate to compare the entire duration of SS with one ES, because continuing to hit Explosive shots until the the LnL chain runs out doesn't cost you the entire duration of the SS, it merely costs you the missed ticks, since you can then re-apply it as soon as you're out of LnL charges.
Attempt 2:
Other hunters say that our goal is to get as many Explosive Shots as possible, because ES does more damage than one Improved SS and x ticks of SS. In this example there's also an easy solution as to when it's better to refresh serpent sting, And that's at 8 Explosive Shots (that is, 1 ES is worth less than 1 ISS plus 3 ticks of the DoT damage). Since you have less than 2% chance of getting 8 ES, you're best off always spamming explosive shot, and never refreshing serpent sting.
This is much closer to how I would approach it; however, I don't think that snapshot is quite complete enough. The problem with it is, only at 12 ES in a row would you lose an entire Explosive Shot, anything less than that and it would just be delaying the ES by one gcd, not losing it completely. And because your ES gcd is going to be reset (seemingly) randomly throughout the fight when LnL procs, I think it's really worth looking into whether or not pushing ES back 1 gcd is as big of an impact as people might be making it out to be.
Getting Out the Spreadsheets:
If we knew exactly how many ES we would get from each LnL proc, we'd be able to determine if it's a DPS loss or gain to reapply serpent sting, and we'd be able to figure out exactly how much of a DPS loss or gain there would be.
So let's start there, and just look at several different possibilities. Using the numbers from the parse I mentioned above, we can start to get a good idea. That hunter averaged 111,538.5 damage from ISS (the initial damage), and averaged 84,620.84 damage per tick of SS. Since SS ticks every 3 seconds, we can start our comparison from the point where SS falls off.
In these next examples, I'm going to take a little chunk of time out from a fight, and assume that everything else in the fight will be done exactly the same regardless of which choice you make. For one example, let's say SS falls off on our very first tick, and we get all 12 free ES from the LnL proc. By the end, disregarding any other damage, we'd have done 5,243,689 damage. Which would look something like this (this ignores the separate DoT and Initial damage from ES, but just trust me it would add up to the same):
| ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 403360.7 | 403360.7 |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 806721.4 |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1210082 |
| +3 | 403360.7 | 1613443 |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 2016804 |
| +5 | 403360.7 | 2420164 |
| +6 | 403360.7 | 2823525 |
| +7 | 403360.7 | 3226886 |
| +8 | 403360.7 | 3630246 |
| +9 | 403360.7 | 4033607 |
| +10 | 403360.7 | 4436968 |
| +11 | 403360.7 | 4840328 |
| +12 | 403360.7 | 5243689 |
If instead you replaced your first ES with an SS, your damage will look like this:
| SS dam. | ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 196159.3 | 196159.3 | |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 599520 | |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1002881 | |
| +3 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 1490862 |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 1894223 | |
| +5 | 403360.7 | 2297584 | |
| +6 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 2785565 |
| +7 | 403360.7 | 3188926 | |
| +8 | 403360.7 | 3592287 | |
| +9 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 4080268 |
| +10 | 403360.7 | 4483629 | |
| +11 | 403360.7 | 4886990 | |
| +12 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 5374971 |
So in this situation you lose the entire damage from one ES (since the proc only lasts 12 seconds), but you still end up doing more damage.
In another situation, we might end up getting only 6 ES after SS falls off.
| SS dam. | ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 403360.7 | 403360.7 | |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 806721.4 | |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1210082 | |
| +3 | 403360.7 | 1613443 | |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 2016804 | |
| +5 | 403360.7 | 2420164 | |
| +6 | 196159.3 | 2616324 |
Which compares to:
| SS dam. | ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 196159.3 | 196159.3 | |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 599520 | |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1002881 | |
| +3 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 1490862 |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 1894223 | |
| +5 | 403360.7 | 2297584 | |
| +6 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 2785565 |
In this situation we do a couple hundred thousand more Damage refreshing SS immediately; however, we also push back the CD cycle of ES by one GCD. You might start to think "well that's the worst thing possible, we don't want to push back the CD of our signature shot", and while generally I completely agree, with the seemingly total randomness of getting LnL procs, there's just no way to know whether or not you'll be affecting how many total ES you get. Furthermore, It's actually not until you push it back by 2 gcds that you even have a chance affecting whether or not you can squeeze in one more ES before the next LnL, because LnL only has a 20% chance to proc every 2 seconds (not every gcd).
It could be that you don't want to take that chance. And you want a way to compare the two situations accounting for pushing back the ES cd. We could average it out and say that the total where we used serpent sting should be 403360.7 / 6 less, which is 67226.78; still not enough to to make up the difference in damage.
It could be that you don't want to take that chance. And you want a way to compare the two situations accounting for pushing back the ES cd. We could average it out and say that the total where we used serpent sting should be 403360.7 / 6 less, which is 67226.78; still not enough to to make up the difference in damage.
Now you may realize that I've been somewhat skewing the data by choosing times which fit into 1+3x which get us nice well rounded ticks of SS. If we only get 5 ES after SS falls off, instead of 6, our numbers look like this:
| SS dam. | ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 403360.7 | 403360.7 | |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 806721.4 | |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1210082 | |
| +3 | 403360.7 | 1613443 | |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 2016804 | |
| +5 | 196159.3 | 2212963 |
| SS dam. | ES Dam. | Total Damage | |
| SS Falls off | 196159.3 | 196159.3 | |
| +1 | 403360.7 | 599520 | |
| +2 | 403360.7 | 1002881 | |
| +3 | 84620.84 | 403360.7 | 1490862 |
| +4 | 403360.7 | 1894223 | |
| +5 | 403360.7 | 2297584 |
Which is still more than an ES's damage / 6 (since we'll again push our ES back by a sixth of its CD).
Another thing that might make this math a little off, is we've been looking at this somewhat strangely again, because if you're playing well, your SS won't fall off at the very beginning of an LnL chain. It will generally fall off toward the end. If you only have 1 or 2 ES left, this is the point where you'll definitely be doing better by simply spamming out the last couple of ES before reapplying.
As far as I can tell, only when you will get 2 or less Explosive Shots while SS is not applied will you gain DPS from letting it fall off. Though the reality is, taking 1/6th the damage from ES off isn't accurate. Sometimes you won't lose that damage and sometimes you may lose the damage of an entire Explosive Shot, it just depends on when the fight ends.
Considerations:
Note that these calculations were all made from the parse of a hunter with about a 580 item level. It is however still applicable to anyone with heroic level gear. Because of the RAP multipliers for Explosive Shot and Serpent Sting and the secondary stat amounts for any given hunter, the results will be slightly different at different gear levels. Click here for some varied results. As you'll see toward the end of those charts, with lower item levels spamming ES starts to overtake reapplying Serpent Sting.
For those with 570+ item levels, if you're looking to do consistent damage, you'll want to spam ES whenever you're on an LnL chain, no matter what. If on the other hand, you perhaps have a boss on farm, and you want to gamble a little bit, hope for some luck so you can get a top parse, then you'll want to refresh SS immediately, so that if your lnl chain keeps going (which is what you need for a top parse) you won't be losing damage to your lost SS.
Unfortunately, that's what it comes down to, whether or not you're willing to gamble. Refreshing SS has the highest potential for damage. But for all you know you'll refresh it, use your two charges of LnL and never see another proc the rest of the fight. SV is completely RNG dependent right now. Hopefully this can help you make a better informed gamble, however.
If you're interested in more, data with varying strength of player and gear, check this out.
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