Your right about the BW/Readiness as well. Most BM hunters dont’ use it, even if they dont think much of exotic pets, purely because they prefer to spend 51+ points in the BM tree on Invgoration, Cobra Strikes, Kindred Spirits, etc.
I’d of liked to have tried it for PvP/arena, though I still suspect that an MM build would still have been better.

Oh well, lets see how things pan out and what makes it through the PTR.

Non-critting Volley would probably solve the Volley issue. Increasing the mana cost wouldn’t change anything.

The BW/Readiness thing was OP but losing it is not a huge deal as so many Hunters didn’t use it anyway and it wasn’t in test/beta.

@menglor
you can apply this thinkin to all ranged classes. plus there are many fights that favor melee over ranged, lol Go run CoT: Strat with a good pally and see if you can compete. Thadius also favors melee as they move around less. A lot of bosses require ranged to pick off adds, etc (ie malygos) while melee can go all out. Also heavy aoe bosses can kill pets far too quick, and the wintergrasp boss is even bugged against pets (mine has got “stuck” every time in there) Like I said I have cleared the current content and seen several classes competing with and besting BM hunters.

@beathooven
Blizzard has acknowledged hunter survivability and performance as aweful for several seasons now. they always claim they are looking into it. As for the best drain spell…yes drain teams were great fun back in s4….40 minute fights in 2v2 with a druid…

Yes it is easy to get good dps as an average BM hunter (and great dps with some effort). Its the benefit / curse (huntards) of the class. doesnt mean that other classes arent capable of it.

I did normal VH last night as a 75 ret paladin, pushing around 1200 dps. There was a 77 BM hunter with a Devilsaur pushing 2100 dps on most of the fights (I lost quite a bit of dps to running around everywhere). His Devilsaur tanked the last boss, and did as much damage as I did. And he wasn’t trying all that hard.

@Beaker: “Hunter survivability in Arena is a hot issue but blizzard say they want to wait a full season to analyse this”. The deterence change is Blizz actively acknowledging that Hunter survival in arena is pretty awful, and they’re looking at possible solutions. Admittedly it doesn’t seem like an awesome solution, but there are suspicions that once people become resilience capped that Hunters may well become a stronger arena choice (for 2v2 and 3v3 anyway), owing to having the best drain spell.

Bear-wise, just fyi (I understand your reasons entirely, I’m not trying to change your mind)… its been awesome. Bears are tanking it up like rockstars!!!! its a fantastic romp through 10/25 mans these last 2 weeks, tons of gear flowing thick and fast. The announced changes were very carefully worded to allow us to make intelligent gear choices in the meantime, and dont make a massive difference to the gear priorities. Sure it could all be very different in the end… but I dont care, I’m having too much fun.

Fights are much more about strat than they are about gear (apart from obvious examples like heroic patchwerk), and the strats are all wonderful & fun. I think the days of merciless wipe-fests like teron gorefiend, lady vashj, even shade of aran are over.

It’s also important to note that the haste change for Serpents Swiftness is only for the pet, BM hunters still won’t be looking for haste if this goes live as is.

Your kidding right?

Hunters have the ability to stand in a corner and “bring it” while the tank and melee have to do run around Dance.

I am not saying hunters are OP or not, but I just want to point out that their are certain aspects of the class that make you better then others.

sustained DPS has more value then just high dps.

I’ve raided and cleared all current content. Yes hunters are often top (someone has to be and why not the class that brings little else to raids besides dps and is quite frankly less than stellar in PvP) but hardly by the margins everyone seems to be quoting. Ret pallies, mages and boomkins for example have all been giving us a run for our money. And the different types of boss fights favour different classes, so we arent always top.

I agree that volley needed to be nerfed..it was a bit OTT and was one of the reasons why we can rack up the damage in a raid where AOE trashing clearing seems to rule the roost.

But the changes to serpent swiftness is quite obviously blizzard trying to force Haste onto us. While changing readiness to not affect Beastial Wrath is hardly required when the vast majority of hunters dont take it preferring to go for the 51 point talent in BM. Would it have been beneficial to PvP? who knows since it was removed before we even got to try it. Also we get a half thought out change to Deterence. Doesnt look like it removes snares or stuns and only works when facing a target…sigh…i preferred the old version which at least had the chance to proc the Monkey Glyph.

Also remember that different classes scale at different rates with better gear. Who knows what things will look like in Ulduar.

Sorry maybe i seem like im QQ and ranting but I love the class and have stuck with it through all the crap that blizz has sent our way….seems they haven’t learnt anything.