Hunters

• Hunter Aspects are now off the Global Cooldown again. They still have a shared 1 second cooldown.

Nifty. Makes our lives a little easier.

• All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.

Perhaps Rabid will now go off automatically? I’ll be testing this, and if it’s the case, it may be a better choice than Heart of the Phoenix if you can control your pet well enough.

• Arcane Shot: Mana cost lowered to match the cost of Steady Shot.

Fantastic. Now we won’t run out of mana as quickly! If you were ever not using Arcane because of mana consumption, now’s your chance to start using it, and hopefully put talents into it as well. No changes to Aimed Shot yet, so it will still consume a relatively high amount of mana.

• Aspect of the Wild – This aspect is now raid-wide.

Useful, if only we ever needed it for something…but we’re not the only ones with Nature resist buffs.

• Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.

Just as it states, it’s all you. Still good enough to continue getting the talent, but others might miss your little buff.

• Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to “deflect” spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 seconds and has a 90 second cooldown.

Strictly PvP, unless someone thinks it’s wise to let you evasion-tank something. That someone might not have all his wits intact. But it could be fun.

• Explosive Shot: Damage increased substantially, and additional scaling added to compensate Survival Hunters for the decrease in power of Steady Shot. No longer deals damage to secondary targets.

Doesn’t change anything for MM, but congratulations on your buff, Survivalists. =)

• Ferocious Inspiration: This talent now also increase the damage the Hunter does with Arcane Shot by 3/6/9%.

A poor trade for Steady Shot damage if you ask me, but at least now using Arcane Shot is more useful for BM hunters.

• Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.

This is very nice. It really simplifies the use of these talent points. No more mods or macros, just set your tracking to Humanoids and forget about it. You still can’t get the damage buff if you’re tracking herbs or fish or mines, but you can remember that pretty easily. If you weren’t taking Improved Tracking before, now’s a good time to change, especially with the nerfs on Unleashed Fury, which I’ll discuss below.

• Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.

This is my favorite part of the changes. Now I don’t have to burn my Readiness for extra Kill Shots unless I’ve got nothing better to do. You’ll see a decent damage increase on longer fights, as tonight I used Kill Shot 4 times on Patchwerk without using Readiness.

• Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.

Doesn’t apply to MM.

• Lock and Load: Now has a 30 second cooldown.

Also doesn’t apply to MM.

• Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.

=)  That’s a tiny smirk. Just a tiny one. Deep down, I feel really bad for you. Deep, deep down.

• Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.

This is our main nerf. Fortunately, we’re using far fewer Steady Shots in our rotation than the other two specs. Make sure you pick up your Steady Shot glyph (functional now?) and it won’t be too bad for us. Kill Shot crits could make up some of the damage on those longer fights.

• Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.

Doesn’t apply to MM.

• Tranquilizing Shot (Hunter): Cooldown increased to 8 sec, up from 6. Mana cost reduced to 8%, down from 12%.

Wording is funky – by “up from 6″ they actually mean that it was 6 in the PTR but was changed to 8, which is a much faster CD than what we had before. I can’t believe I fudged that….fixed.

• Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.

This makes Nass a sad panda. All the math I did the other day now gets changed, and the damage is not as significant, meaning you’d be better off taking Improved Tracking if you have to choose between the two. The good news is that the changes to Improved Tracking make it much more user-friendly, so I don’t mind switching talents at all.

• Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.

I have yet to look at the actual percentage, but it simply means that it will be just as useful as you get more mana, instead of it beginning to go stale as your intellect increases. You may find Viper could be useful on more than a few longer battles. Give it a try.

• Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).

Don’t worry – it sounds awful, but Volley is still a decent AoE spell. I used it tonight, and my crits were hitting for 2300-ish, which, let’s face it, still isn’t half bad. At least we are still allowed a viable AoE, as opposed to our pitiful Volley back in TBC. Be grateful. It could be worse.

• Pets
  • All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.

  Already went over this.

  • The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Poison (Scorpid) has been lowered.
  • Rake: This hunter pet ability has had its damage adjusted to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.
  • Scorpid Poison: No longer stacks. The damage has been adjusted to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.

             Eidan still managed decent DPS, and this nerf is no reason to scramble around for new pets. They’re simply creating a more equal playing field.

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  • Spirit Strike (hunter pet ability) now has an initial attack (which can crit) and then a single dot. Damage overall is higher.

             Doesn’t apply to the MM hunters, but grats, BM. =)

On another note, the lag in Naxxramas has been getting worse and worse. Between disconnects, 3-second instant casts, and screen freezes, <Explicit> has been struggling to do anything successfully. This is the third night in a row that we’ve had to take a vote to opt out of raiding due to lag. I’m told it’s a network issue, and that it could take a long time to fix. Blizzard is stating that it’s simply Wintergrasp causing these issues, but many of us have experienced odd lag in the old worlds as well. Until they get this fixed, it will be nearly impossible for me to see how any of these changes REALLY affect our damage. However, do note that Elemental Shamans have been fixed, and fixed well. You may see many of them contending with your hunter damage. I’m glad they’re beginning to fix certain things, but first and foremost, they MUST FIX THIS LAG! Not being able to raid has made me extremely frustrated, and the one fun thing I love doing most in the evenings is now a tiresome struggle instead.

Because of this awful problem, testing certain things will be very uninformative. Until I have time without lag and disconnects, I won’t be running damage tests, and my WWS most likely won’t help much in the way of personal improvement, especially when the person who’s logging us is continually disconnecting himself. I’ll still be writing all I can in my blog, but without actually experiencing certain things, finding new spec changes will be difficult. After the patch, and after recieving enough +Hit gear to get rid of Focused Aim, I’m now testing/running with this spec. This is for my 25-man Naxx and OS runs. Note that I’ve taken Improved Hunter’s Mark in place of Focused Aim – think of it as getting a piece of gear that has 90 attack power on it. However (and if someone knows this for certain, please share your data), I’m not sure whether or not the bonus from Hunter’s Mark is calculated into your 10% bonus from Trueshot Aura. I also want to do some calculations to determine if two of those points are better placed in Survival Tactics than IHM. More to follow.

Good luck with Laggramas, and happy hunting!

<3 Nass

**EDIT**

• Chimera Shot: The secondary effects of this shot will now still be triggered even when the target dies from the ability’s damage.
• Cower: Now longer shares a cooldown with Growl, but has its own separate cooldown.
• Marked for Death: Now works properly for Steady Shot and Glyph of Steady Shot.
• Prowl: This ability will no longer sometimes turn autocast on by itself.

Therefore, yes – Glyph of Steady Shot is now working properly. Please pick it up if you haven’t already, it’s a wonderful Glyph.