Hello my fellow hunters out there, As you are all aware there have been massive changes particularly for the hunter class in the most recent major content patch. Most I've talked to do not like these, and I can sympathize with you to a certain degree. My opinions aside however, I thought I'd put together a little guide for how to deal with hunter changes in this very new World of Warcraft.
First of all, you may remember that in 3.3.2 I think It was Beast Mastery got hit hard with the Nerf bat, and we have seen both Survival and Marksmanship compete for top dog specs since. There is as far as I can tell no Top DPS hunter tree at the moment, rumors are that MM is having a little trouble but that is it. I'm not going to tell you how to spec, thats your call, remember that no-one can tell you how to play the game, so don't worry about that. Have fun with the new talent trees and experiment, that's what I did.
Rotations however are a little interesting with Focus instead of Mana, with mana we could just hit abilities as soon as they came off Cool-down, now we need to think, what is more important, as SV myself I always open up with Explosive and Black Arrow, then serpent, that's my preference, however i don't have enough focus so I have to decide whether its more important to reapply Serpent Sting or cast more steady Shots so I can put Black arrow or fire Explosive again. Work out what is more important at the time, as a hunter you are more than a DPS machine, you offer unique abilities for crowd control and utility. On my recent (successful) Lich King attempt as a hunter I had to swap targets to tranq. the shambling horror, I couldn't do this if I didn't have enough focus, so I had to decide do I use focus to refresh Black arrow or put explosive down again on Arthas, or do I keep casting steady so when DBM tells me that the Shambling Horror is enraged I can Tranq. it, if you also play a rogue you will know exactly what I'm talking about hopefully. A good hunter, albeit Good DPS'er/Raider in general pays attention to the fight mechanics and the environment and acts accordingly, we can't just mindlessly run through our priority lists/rotations now. There's only one way to get rid of the 'Huntard' label.
Another change is that we don't have Volley anymore, instead Multishot got re-vamped to hit as many targets in it's frontal cone Area of Effect. I believe that this offers us more utility, we can use this in conjunction with Misdirect to pull multiple mobs onto the Tank. However be careful, watch to see if there are any sheep or MC's in the vicinity of your frontal cone, I've killed enough team-mates on Lady Deathwhisper 25 to know that a badly timed Multi shot can cause disaster.
I said I wasn't going to be telling you how to spec, but on the matter of 'optimum specs' or 'best builds' I find to be against Blizzard's policy which they are trying to implement, I'll give you a link to a post made by everyone's favorite lead Designer/Developer Ghostcrawler on choice and flexibility within a class. you will most likely find that there are one or two points left over after you've filled out your primary tree, put these wherever you want, I've been asked how to spec enough times that I die a little inside every time now, and we've only had the patch for a few days so... I chose less focus cost for core abilities and more crit for Kill Command because I still like to think that my pet is an integral part of my gameplay. However this is not law, and I made my spec myself, and I am only doing up to 7/8 maybe 9k DPS when I raid half the time so I am in no way the right person to designate a build for everyone. End QQ.
on a more personal note, Thankyou blizzard for Trap Launcher, once we can tame our own mounts, and Druids we will have all we want
Ghostcrawler Blue Post:
http://www.nihilum.eu/blue/us/26859148934-Free_talent_points_are_a_mythSorry for rambling.
