Just a quick post to address some things that need to be tweaked in beta right now for Hunters and what I think of them so far.

After testing the class a bit in duels it seems to be designed very well by blizzard even though it’s early beta right now; the fact that every spec can have Silencing Shot & Readiness strengthens the class as a whole.

What this does is it basically makes Survival better than Marksmanship by default – who wouldn’t pick a purely magic damage specialization that comes with the best of Cataclysm/WotLK Marksmanship tree (Silence shot and Readiness) and the ever important entrapment passive bonus that ONLY Survival gets. Beast Mastery with the Kill Command change to 25 yard range also removes the clunkyness of the ability and Readiness also resets the cooldown of Beastial Wrath now – I predict that Survival will be competing with Beast Mastery in terms of PvP viability.

As for Marksmanship, what’s left of it? There’s no selling point; rumour has it blizzard wants to make Marksmanship redundant in MoP as it’s been the main spec for the entire lifespan of Hunters in World of Warcraft.

Re-work of our main snare

There was one thing, however, that I do not like at all – which is the removal of Concussive Shot which got baked into Arcane Shot, Cost: 25 Focus 65% weapon damage +3500 as Arcane damage. Now I feel that with the removal of Raptor Strike, Wing Clip & Concussive Shot, blizzard wanted to free up some of our bar space thus baking our snare into Arcane Shot. I have mixed feelings about this as we have to save 25 focus to snare people which only lasts 6 seconds, and right now in Cataclysm I use Concussive Shot a lot on focus targets such as priests to prolong them fearing or to prevent it. I feel, although this may be an attempt for blizzard to free up bar space, it is not a good thing for competitive PvP and feels like a somewhat careless and rash decision on Blizzards part. It also decreases the flexibility of the Hunter class but the positive is that it potentially frees up one global but does cost a nice chunk of focus considering its duration is only 6 seconds long (you also have to use a glyph slot to get this slow – not good!)

I hope Concussive Shot is brought back as it feels like it’s the only thing missing to make the class feel fluid and good right now in Mists of Pandaria!

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.