Dealing with your Hunter after the Patch

Patch hits. Managing hunter abilities is totally different.

What's a girl to do?

Start with BRK's wow insider post about hunter talents. Unfortunately, his post seemed to be aimed at leveling spec for 70-80, not so much for raiding at 70. So I went out on my own.

Largely modeled after what I was using back when 41 was the deepest you could go, with some tweaks since some talents changed. Lemme know if you're interested in seeing the spec, I'll try to figure out how to post it, but lets not go there because I quickly became unhappy with the situation.

I went 51/10/0 because I want those 4 extra pet points. I love Beast Mastery tree because I originally became a hunter because I liked the idea of a pet. So I've always liked making the pet be the best it can be, thus 4 extra points. Exotic pets? Maybe. But I'm thinking more along the lines of a wolf or wasp for raiding and a gorilla or bear for solo / running babies through dungeons.

As written earlier, I messed up and forgot to take any pet focus regeneration talents, which must be corrected tonight.


So your talent points are more or less set. Why not head out into the field and give it a whirl.

Misdirection

First thing to note: MD on 30 second cooldown. You can use it basically on every pull or every other pull depending upon how fast you're going. Verah nice.

Also, seemed like casting MD would turn my auto-shot off, which is kinda nice if you have any need for carefully choosing which mob you need to misdirect.

Mana

Second thing to note: Mana. Its GONE. Quickly.

I used to use Aspect of the Viper for pretty much all solo work. Now, not so much. With my 1 point in Aspect Mastery, its a 40% nerf to damage output. Although I don't really min/max during my solo work, 40% is large enough to cause issue, so...

So Hawk it is. Mana gone, very quickly. Next pull, slap on Viper, auto shot through the pull. Mana full.

Kinda cool. Will work easily for solo work, will require much consideration for a raid environment.

Auto-shot

Nice thing I found in the Interface configuration menu. You can set it up so Auto-shot turns off when you switch mobs. Me likey. Much less accidental CC breakage, much less accidentally pulling a mob from across the room. Big Fan!

Just plain weird how auto is unlinked from the special shots.

Use Steady Shot to your heart's content. Use Arcane Shot when its cooldown is available. I didn't go for Aimed Shot yet, but if you got it, use it.

I'm going to have to (A) wait for the theorycrafters to give us a new macro to use, or (B) get better at managing the Steady Shot, Arcane Shot cooldowns. Honestly, I have little interest in adding additional cooldowns to my thought process during a raid, so I'll do what I can for (B) until (A) comes out.

One thing I'm not overly happy with regarding this is with misdirection.

Cast MD. Auto shot turns off. Distracting Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot.

But, Auto Shot comes back on, so you'll probably have the autoshot be one of the misdirected shots, resulting in a smidge less threat MD'ed.

But I think Distracting Shot is a taunt now, and not a threat building shot, so might be fine in the end.

I'm probably over analyzing.

Deterrence

I visited the Hunter Trainer and she gave me Deterrence. Increased dodge and such for a little while. KK, thx. Probably save this for when a trap breaks and I have to kite temporarily tank the mob.

Insanity

I have little knowledge of how Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, and stings will all work together. Seems like life gets pretty complicated with those puppies. And gets even crazier when you bring glyphs and intra-raid interactions and refreshing stings and whatnot into the picture. I think I'll generally stay way from all that for now and just get the hang of pew pew pew basics.



I suppose that's it for my thoughts on what my Hunter looks like. Mana management is totally different, but will be fine once we get used to it. Shot rotations will be fine also, just gotta play with them in a raid situation.