That can't be right. Pets will use it when attacking test dummies.

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It worked fine a build or two ago. Why would they change its behavior? The ability did recently change for some reason to separate it into two separate buffs, but I don't understand why that would necessitate changing the auto-cast function to only work if the pet was being attacked.

Well, why is rapid fire now on the GCD? Why is arcane shot damage still low? (it's simply not worth using now unless we're on the move, depriving BM of a second rotational shot, and it's improvement talent is both weak and in MM*) I can't answer those either, but they make no sense to me.

There is no real coherent vision I can see to the changes. They say early on they want to move Survival away from PvP and traps, but then later move it back, patch by patch. And so on.

I know I've had a lot of difficulty deciding if a lot of things I've found on the PTR are intended or bugs...

(*Replace Cobra Strikes with: Arcane Resonance. Arcane Shot causes the pet to do (2 points, 1/2) 50/100+4/8% of Hunter's AP arcane damage on its next melee attack)

Wow... I really hope that answer was not meant as 'WAI, pet needs to be attacked.' But more like an explaination as to why it is so hard to get off at this time, but the blue managed to bungle up the post and forgot to add the 'we are looking into it' part.

In fact I will assume that is the case for the moment, the other possiblity is just downright too strange.
If so then Rabid is going to be a very limited ability, and one has to wonder if the target needs to target the pet, or AoE is enough. If WAI then this is a huge nerf to pet DPS, and consequently BM DPS. And personally I would feel better if they just removed it and added something else in it's place instead of something this ponderous (it could even be a survivability talent since it comes of Avoidance for all I care), I just want the end talents to be pretty good in most situations. This obviously isn't.

Oh and Ketari, while I agree that the Cobra Strikes proc would be nicely tuned with Arcane Shot, it would need to be a lot better than than the current Cobra Strikes, something like 100% chance for three points. My problem with that would be that it would make that talent line so deadset on 3 points, anything less would be rather worthless given the weakness of Arcane Shot and the cooldown. Maybe raise the damage of Arcane Shot in complement to the pet special crits (maybe the Imp Arcane Shot value)? Something should be done to make Arcane Shot more than a shot people would grudgingly use to get a fairly weak proc, to something that can match Steady and then give fairly nice proc where the limiting factor would be the cooldown.

[EDIT] DOH! Mananged to completely overlook the * line. My excuses. But that isn't a lot of damage (though scaling and directly added unmitigated damage). But it removes the synergy with Invigoration that needs all the help it can get to be anything near worthwhile.

I've tested Rabid on beta and even against the target dummies it will never auto-cost.

That said, we can just macro it with Steady Shot (since it costs 0 focus), but that can't be Blizzard's intention after they changed Kill Command precisely because we macro'ed it.

Well, they changed Kill Command because it wasn't the reactionary 'Kill' ability they had envisioned. They understood the macroing of it though. And the change doesn't make Kill Command that bad to macro still (or does it incur a GCD making it completely worthless?). Now it is just a more seldom thing. And with other CDs on odd timers holding back on it might not be perfect, nor even better.

The intention, I believe, is that noting should be on a spam macro, but that doesn't mean they can't be put there, or the intention isn't that they can't be done with the blessing of Blizzard. I still believe Rabid is somehow out of tune with the intended function. And that is why it is acting up.

On the PTR while fiddling with a Longevity/Glyph of BW build I just macro'd Kill Command in with BW and my trinkets since the cooldown was so close to BW's that I didn't want to have to keep track of yet another CD. (And I don't much care about waiting 20 seconds after the CD is up to hit KC. If I hadn't macro'd it in I doubt I'd use it at all. -_- ) It works fine being macro'd in with BW and a trinket, but I don't recall if it invokes a GCD on it's own.

You can macro it but Rabid seems to be acting odd regardless, I've just been testing it macroed and at times it will say ability not ready even when it's not on cooldown, it happens even if I try to manually activate it.

I can't fathom the reason behind this change, especially since all it does is make us micromanage the skill instead of limit the use of it.

I don't see how it can't be a bug, or else a change we got half-way through.

While that wasn't exactly what I meant in my post it perfectly sums it up.
They took an ability that was too good to ever let slip, so it was macroed, and weakened it to the point that manually activating it is pointless, generating another macro situation. Maybe Kill Command is indeed intended to be sort of macroed to various other stuff? Seems odd though.

But with Longevity isn't Kill Command on a 42 sec timer?

It has to be a bug considering it can be set to auto cast, and the fact it stacks. It makes no sense if they expect us to micromanage it and only use it for burst dps.

Invigoration is a dead loss in my eyes, so I'm not worrying about it.

It's effectively changing the scaling on arcane shot to RAP*0.23+592, which makes it worth using. That was my concern for "how it should work".

I think ignoring Invigoration is a mistake. As BM, when I lose my pet (or can't attack with it for whatever reason) I definitely notice my mana go down a lot faster without the Invigoration procs.

I wouldn't want to lose Cobra Strikes' synergy with it...I think the defining feature of the BM tree should be the 51 point talent, as it is with Survival and MM.

The issue is what you give up for Invigoration. Heck, efficiency is a better choice afaik - it gives a reliable reduction.

And well, there's no current situation in which I can see myself taking 51-BM...

Given the large number of hunters walking around with exotic pets on the PTR, it won't be you taking BM, it won't be me, but it will be all the fellows behind the tree -- and they are happy as can be.

On a more serious note: I'm still seeing that survival has by far the best mana retention rate of the three builds. It's taking me more than 4 minutes to go OOM with an ES/SS/Frost Trap rotation, and it takes me about 8 seconds to get back to full mana (if you time it right with a forced L&L proc.) Yes, the sustained dps is less than with a MM build (at level 70, self buffed, on a lvl 70 training dummy with about the same set of debuffs, I'm seeing about 250 dps less.) We'll see how that changes when we gear up.

Given the current numbers, my levelling build for LK will be MM. SS, Chim, Arc, Multi is a very powerful opener and has been taking down lvl 72 warrior-type NPC's on the PTR in just these 4 shots (plus the interposed autos.) I also kill the Soulreaper 70-71 elite that patrols the hills above Shattrath faster on the PTR than on live with my BM build.

Hopefully Blizzard focuses on getting all the bugs fixed by next week's predicted release -- I just want the talents and skills working the way they intend them to (here's looking at you, Master's Call, Rabid, and Disengage!) I'm really looking forward to the patch.

Marks seems like a very solid leveling build because of the sheer power behind Chimera/SS Chimera. Rapid Killing also helps take the edge off of the large mana consumption of Chimera. It's a shame that the only time you'll see the buff during a raid is on trash that you land the killing blow on.

Survival isn't doing as bad as it was a few patches ago now that ES crits for double damage, works with Mortal Shots, and will proc both TotH and Hunting Party. I'm not completely sure that it's worth leveling with over Mark's ability to kill mobs within the first few seconds of combat or BM pets that can actually hold aggro, though.

Since leveling builds have come up, I know marks seems very good so far, but how does survival with ES and, say, a gorilla tank for AEing compare to that? Can a gorilla hold enough aggro on multiple mobs against ES's AE damage?

Also, since druid swipe is now unlimited targets, does anyone know if the same be applied to pet swipe? WoWhead still shows it as only 3 targets.

Invigoration leaves me feeling underwhelmed.
With a Cat pet and Recount showing a crit rate of roughly 52%, I regained on average of 3900 mana over 5 minutes. Mind you this is with Badge gear on the PTR and not a lvl 80 mana pool.

I think those 2 pts could be better spent elsewhere, I'm just trying to figure out where.

While I'm not as impressed by the 51 point BM talent as I'd like, is mocking people who like the exotic pets really a productive thing to do?

The AE damage of ES is negectable, so when tanking multiple mobs with your "gorilladin" just use volley. It has no cd anymore and its damage is quite nice for such things.

I agree that Invigoration seems pretty weak. I'm really not sure why they nerfed it in the first place.

Putting Mark's terrible mana problems aside, it would be nice if BM could be even half as good as Survival is at mana retention. Though, I suppose it helps that a very large part of BM's DPS is pet-based and not largely effected by the hunter going OOM (even when the hunter is forced to go into AotV, they still get crits to trigger GftT and Cobra Strikes).

It's more a "I'm just a little sad that it dosn't work out", than anything mocking.

Kaejin - That's pretty much exactly my reasoning too. (And GfFT is an amazingly important DPS talent for BM..)