Imaginary Hunter Talents in WotLK

Lots of buzz around the community as leaks of Death Knight and Warrior and a handful of other WotLK talent specs are coming out.

Then I read a posting over at The Mystic Hunter with some ideas for what would be fun Hunter talents. Got me thinking.

Using my minimal imagination, here's a few strange ideas. Long-ish post, but its filled with gems, so pls stick with it :-)

Start off with a new Aspect...

Aspect of the Bison - The hunter's health and armor increase by 20% and agility reduces by 10%. Useful for when trap resists and you've got to kite/tank a mob for a few seconds.

Aspect of the (Vampire) Bat - mana regen based upon pet damage. Not as powerful as Shadow Priest mana battery, but some portion of pet damage returning to you as mana.

Then some lovin' for the three trees...

Beast Master

5 Point Talent called "Respect Meh Authoritah". Click it and your Pet's next three attacks will be one-shots of whatever they're targeted at, including lvl 83 Elite boss mobs or other PvP players. Oh, and also you and your pet will become big and red for a little while. 7 second cooldown.

Ok, i joos keeeding.

No seriously, that would be cool.

Ok, back to imaginary reality...My view of this spec is one that really stresses the pet, even more than what we see in TBC. I'd like them to make the DPS output be even closer to 50/50 between hunter and pet, maybe even more lopsided towards the pet. Really make the Raid love this guy's pet, so much more than today.

• Raging Beast - To make the damage output more balanced between pet and hunter, make a high-level talent that hardcore gimps the damage output of the Hunter and massively buffs the pet. I'm talking 50/50 split, or even better, make the whole story about the pet and the Hunter is basically a handler who does a little damage. And not a proc, a permanent transfer. Of course, I'm just floating ideas here, so Blizz, you go figure out how to make it work, I'm just listing requirements :-P Call the talent "I'm with Stupid" and the pet gets to wear a T-Shirt with that printed on it.


• Improved Growl - If they don't balance the damage output, then definitely want to see a talent that'll boost Pet threat generation either through better growl or through increased threat from damage dealt by the pet.


• Porcupine Quills - Perhaps a talent that'll make your pet do something like what Prot Pallies do. Not consecrate, but the thing where they cause threat on any enemies who do damage to them. So not a completely ez mode AoE tank, but makes it a drop easier to AoE tank with your pet.


• Improved Aspect of the (Vampire) Bat - Extends Aot(V)B effect to all party members.


• Soothing Cuddles -or- Pet Meh Belleh -or- Lick Wounds. Pets IRL are sometimes used in hospitals to help the spirit of the patients and help them get better. Go pet his belly and you get healed. A second tier talent could let a raid member cuddle your pet and get healed. Could function like a Lightwell, where players just need to walk up to your pet and right click to pet his belly. I know it sounds a tad silly, but I kinda like the idea. They are pets after all.


• Hump Leg - the pet goes up to a friendly player and humps his leg, applying an Embarrassing Debuff causing the player to be unable to herb, mine, or skin for 10 seconds. This would be the Player vs Faction ninja ability to use when some coconut tries to steal your flowers.

Marksman

We need to make this guy more of an archer/rifleman than he is currently. I'd like to see these guys do an equal amount of damage as the BM/Pet combo, but the difference is that MM does nearly all the damage himself, with the pet mostly being a buddy who costs money to feed. Again, we kinda have this in TBC, but I want to take it further.

• Automatic Fire - put an even better improvement to Rapid Fire deeper in the MM tree and give them 18 seconds or so of true and utter machine gun auto-shots. Would need to be calibrated such that a similarly geared BM using Bestial Wrath would do roughly the same damage during this proc, only difference is that the MM is using auto only, so mana regen is going on.


• Sniper Shot - A special shot that if used as the opening shot of bringing a mob into combat, does massive damage, or has a special effect (stun).


• Tracer Rounds - Although it currently exists in the Survival tree, I would think that MM should have the talent that reduces chance to miss. I mean, come on. They're marksmen for g0d sake. They should have pretty good aim. And this should give every fifth shot a really cool visual effect. Provide a second tier of the talent that applies the effect to the whole party.


• Duh - oh yeah, and make Trueshot Aura scale with Hunter AP.

Survival

Continuing with the concept we have today, Survival would have a little less DPS than BM or MM, but continue with raid utility and a general inability to die. Think Davey Crockett. King of the Wild Frontier.

• Stealth - Come on ppl. Hunters IRL hide, and then surprise their prey. Let us do the Rogue Nasty.


• First Aid Mastery - Davey Crockett didn't have a doctor nearby, so he had to rely upon his own skills to dress battle wounds. This should double or triple the healing received from a bandage. Or maybe remove the first aid cooldown. Could have another tier of the talent that allows the improved bandage benefit apply to when you put a bandaid on someone else.


• Gnaw Off Limb - Animals in the wild have been known to gnaw off their own limbs to escape a trap. Some lizards can split off their tails to escape from a bird's beak. I've even heard of some guy who chopped down a tree and it fell on him, pinning him to the ground. After a few days being trapped there, he used a swiss army knife to cut off his own leg and limp miles home. Give survivalists a talent where they can sacrifice some health in order to escape a movement impairing effect. Like above, could have a second tier talent that allows the SV Hunter to take some damage and free another player from a movement impairing effect.


• Skinning Master - This one is a little strange, but fits with the whole trapping frontiersman image. Gives the hunter +25 skinning. Then put some mobs in the game that require 475 skinning skill, thus making them only skinnable by these guys. Probably not a raiding talent, but if the skinnables were valuable enough, would be worth the cost of a respec to take this then spec back to your raid setup.


• Soothing Cuddles/Pet Meh Belleh/Lick Wounds might fit better over here, as its more consistent with the idea of having SV be a raid utility guy much more than the other specs.

So I admit, I know the least about MM and SV, being a cookie cutter BRK Raid BM spec user, but I'd like to see a bigger difference between BM and MM, while keeping DPS more evenly balanced between the two (some might argue that it already is, but w/e), and make the SV hunter a more unique type of spec.

What do you think? Hump Leg, FTW!!!!!