I'm kinda sad about the readiness change, I was really starting to enjoy having it, especially when soloing elites for the double MD/FD so my pathetic pet could hold agro long enough for me to kill something. It also allowed me to use 2 rapid fires in pretty much every combat- I suppose I can still get the 3 min rapid fire now from marks but that requires even more points invested there. Not sure whether it's worth it and on shorter fights it won't come into play. Scatter shot as survival is cool but fitting everything I want in survival hasn't been easy as it is so we'll see if I can spare any points for it with a raiding spec.

I'm a bit worried about the AotV thing- I love the current AotV but with my gear and spec it definitely feels a bit crazy (with explosive shot I could regen my mana in just a few seconds usually), and I understand the PvP concerns. I really don't want to have to spend a lot of time and GCDs on it though so I hope they find a good balance. But in comparison to other classes, hunters really don't have gear itemized for mana regen or much int and our mana pools can be dumped pretty quickly- even with thrill of the hunt and hunting party I still am using AotV on pretty much every longer boss fight and I am having to drink more than most people in my party on trash pulls (fixable if I want to use AotV I suppose on trash but typically I try to drink between pulls instead of waiting for the pull to regen my mana if we have a pause).

Edit: Oops!

How is it redundant? Use Rapid Fire, use Readiness, use Rapid Fire, wait 3 minutes and repeat. You get more uses out of Rapid Fire than before.

Ok, off hand that seems like great news for arena hunters.

That means explosive shot, scatter and wyvern will be available within the same specc.

Also means you can have a 51 pt BM build with scatter shot. Which is good, personally I was thinking I had to go 50/21 BM/MM.

Aimed Shot is going to balance things for arena. But I have a hard time imagining that it will not be nerfed.


Edit: I see they have moved surefooted too now. 51 pt BM with surefooted and scatter shot will be very interesting as a BM specc.

However, I'm too unsure about the effectiveness of Chimera shot and Explosive shot to declare a pvp winner for either speccs yet.

Edit2: I made a boo boo - for some reason I thought Aimed Shot was trainable again. Well, that leaves out 51pt bm with scatter, because I won't miss aimed shot either.

Now you can get extra rapid fires.
0:00 rapid fire
0:15 readiness, rapid fire again
3:15 rapid fire recharges, use it
3:30 readiness recharges, use it
6:30 rapid fire recharges, use it.

So you went from 5 minute rapid fire to 3 minute to basically 97.5 second (2 / 3:15)

I agree, I fear these changes take with one hand, give too much with the other and then take it all back. Instant cast Aimed with a healing debuff just seems like it will draw the ire of all.

I don't know, but if I lose my 39 second Frost Traps I will be upset.

You know, these changes make me really curious about Blizz's dev process. Outside of "Make Aimed more like MS" I don't think anyone was even remotely considering these changes.

I think it involves a company suggestion box and a dart board.

The main question on my mind is if Aimed will still reset the auto-shot timer.

Well, I really do hope it does, or they've just smacked themselves in the back of the head really hard.
The changed to Aimed shot, that I'm still going to be amazed if they keep, only makes sense if it resets auto shot. It makes it lackluster for pve, while it's great for arena.

It's a great way to increase hunters damage in arenas without affecting pve.

It could possibly affect PvE in the way Slam does it for warriors - timing Aimed to fire right after autoshot. Question is how it would look like rotation wise - if it would be worth it.

If Aimed Shot is the thing to balance arenas, then 51-point BM builds can't have Scatter Shot.

Hunter dpsing really needs more flavor, I'd much rather keep it as instant with a short cooldown(if not 6 seconds than no more than 10 or 15), and reduce the healing debuff. I don't think it would be a poor talent for either pvp or pve if it was a 20 or 30% healing debuff.

Yeah, I just realised I made a boo boo there. It will be a 49/11/11 build or something similar. For some reason I was thinking Aimed Shot was made trainable.

Can you explain how ES 24%? I just don't get the math on it. Some of that comes from the hitting of extra targets, right? So on solo pulls, would Arcane be better then?

If they are fine with us having Aimed Shot in rotations, I think it should be an "on next ranged attack" thing rather than instant or its current implementation. But in that case, they should probably just make it a base skill, and put a healing debuff shot in its slot in the Marksmanship tree (removing that effect from Aimed Shot). Or at least, that's what I would've done.

I must say these are some...confusing...changes. On the other hand, hey maybe with 3-minute cooldown Rapid Fires with Readiness, Rapid Recuperation might be worth taking! ...I dunno. I'm trying dammit.

Making it "on next attack" would defeat it's purpose for pvp. And I can not imagine anything else that this is a change for pvp (or rather arena). As said, this would make our damage in pvp/arena alright, while not having huge implications for pve.

You keep mentioning that, but I can't find a single direct RAP-scaling talent other than Master Marksman (which requires 35 points in MM, and is not used by any level 70 end game raiding Hunter) that has been removed, nor can I find any non-scaling beta talents (unless maybe you count Wyvern Sting). Can you elaborate on what you're referring to?

Except that it seems to share a cooldown with Arcane Shot, something which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere but noticed when testing on beta. It does do more damage than Arcane, though, especially when it can splash multiple targets.

If Aimed Shot really is "instant cast" and has no other changes, then yes, that does seem to have huge implications for PvE--unless I'm missing something, tell me if I am.

I meant besides that. 8% + 2% + 2% on a single target, right? I'm just wondering where the 24% comes from.

No, it'd be 8% + 8% + 8% on a single target. 8%x3 = 24%.

The 2% is for secondary targets.

No, Explosive Shot is 8% + 8% + 8% on the primary target and 2% + 2% on splash.

Survival Instincts was rAP scaling and is now crit scaling. Not sure if that's what was intended with this particular discussion thread, however.