You two are splitting hairs over steadyshot formulae btw, I'm pretty sure you both know exactly how it's calculated. Yes, a normalized damage range is effectively the same as normalized DPS, but only effectively - i.e. on average. In practice, the fact that the damage range and not the DPS is normalized is important to state since otherwise people ask "but why does my steadyshot hit for different values if it just scales with DPS and RAP?"

I was kind of hoping the 45 point talent would be some variation of hit and/or expertise for a pet. As it stands now, that would probably be a lot better than Aspect Mastery.

Here's to hoping someone important reads this forum.

I remember reading a blue post that hinted at the possibility of expanding our stable slots. They didn't make any promises though. I can't seem to dig it up.

Less steady shot, more exciting talk about these new pets and trees!

I too am slightly unhappy at the lack of +hit in Ferocity.

Also not happy with the Great Resistance talent: 3 points for 9%? Not that great to me. I was quite happy to spec my specific pets for each type of raid (ie: Fire/Shadow for MH). This blanket-resistance talent seems to be a nerf in the long run, "jack of all resistances and master of none".

Cunning seems to be an odd tree, it is utility in the latter stages but look at Tier4! Pure DPS!

Blizzard seems somewhat confused, in my opinion. While they're struggling to make each tree "viable", I believe they might just make each tree as bland as the other with only a few sprinkles on top to give the illusion of "choice".

Lick Your Wounds - a healing talent - in the Ferocity tree? I don't agree. If I want survivability, let me spec Cunning. If I want to pump out massive numbers, then thats my choice if I want to be a glass cannon.

It was mentioned above, but all pets now get a base resist rate for ALL resists. I believe it's 120 @ level 70.

I personally like how they did all 3 trees. Do you really want a clear-cut obvious trees for maximum DPS? A lot of fun in this game is playing with things and finding what's best for your playstyle. I really like that there is 2 viable DPS trees, and I can even see some use for the Tenacity tree in PvP (on top of it's solo'ing and potential tanking applications). I can't wait to try them all out.

It makes it much harder to balance, though.

The problem is that unless you're the top DPS spec or allow others to exceed the difference between the top and your spec, you're kind of worthless in a PvE environment as a DPS class.

Playstyle aside, optimizing your ability to perform your intended roll should be the priority.

The overall changes to the Hunter talents (among other changes in Wrath) appear to be closing the gap considerably and I do hope to be able to raid as MM, BM, or Survival viably in Wrath. Any spec +/-3% DPS of another would easily be considered even and if Blizzard can achieve this balance, more power to them.

That said, most people will probably go marks/survival as not to have to babysit their pets :x

For those in beta, you said that pets at level 70 have 120 in all resistances, is this increasing as you level up? If so how much is it increasing by per level?

Here are a few changes I would make to the talent trees:

• Move Charge to the Cunning tree, as that suits its style better.
• Perhaps move Improved Cower to another tree, as Ferocity shouldn't get it, and it already has a pet healing talent to help it stay alive
• Lick Your Wounds should become a passive ability, and changed to be "Your pet becomes immune to all damage for <X>s after being resurrected by Heart of the Phoenix, but damage done is reduced by <Y>%" (say 5s and 50%?)
• Increase cooldown of Rapid to 20 seconds, since you only need to cast it once every 30s this will save focus or prevent too much focus management. 20s helps ensure your pet has the focus to spent to recast it before the 5 stack drops off.
• Add new talent to Ferocity that reduces the global cooldown of pets to 1.0 (same as rogues and cat druids). They're still limited to focus.
• Add a new talent linked before Last Stand, whereby your ranged crits have a chance to reset the duration of Mend Pet on your pet.
• Add to Last Stand that any hit that would kill your pet, its master takes instead but reduced by <X>%.
• Reduce focus cost of Roar of Fortitude to 80 or 85 so there is at least enough focus for a Growl if used initially when sending pet in.

Could it be that cunning have more focus regen? Thats the only explanation I could come up with.

Something isn't right there. Cunning is only getting a 10% boost to stats while the other 2 trees are getting 25% each?

Let's hope that's a bug.

I'd implement it as:

Tree_______Health_____Armor___ Damage
Cunning_____+5%______+5%_____+5%
Ferocity_____+0%______+0%_____+10%
Tenacity____+10%______+5%_____+0%

This is starting to bug me. Is it inability to do basic math or what?

You can do a 51/15/5 build, get BMT, all the important low-tier MM talents, AND Improved Tracking. There's no need to sacrifice Aspect Mastery or BMT for Improved Tracking, Careful Aim, Go For The Throat, or Mortal Shots.

You're right, you can sacrifice Longevity and Cobra Strikes instead - which are still better than Aspect Mastery.

Beyond the first 5 rows (25 points) of BM, there are exactly 31 points of useful DPS talents. There is no way to pick up more than 26 of them while going 51/15/5. The worst 5 of those 31 points are probably Aspect Mastery. There's your math.

He means to improve Aspect Mastery so it'd be worth spending 5 points in it (which would come out of imp. Tracking according to his reasoning). In my eyes, if Aspect Mastery was improved sufficiently I'd probably take points out of GffT/Longevity first.

BM tree aside, the other trees have bigger problems really. Looking at MM, I'm confused why the procs benefit shots so randomly. Piercing Shots only affects Steady/Aim, but not Multi-shot/Kill-shot. Improved Steady Shot also doesn't affect Multi-shot, but does Kill-shot. Marked for Death the same again. Rapid Killing has been that way as well.

Rapid Recuperation, on the other hand, does affect everything. It does make Barrage (and imp. Barrage) almost useless.

None of which has anything to do with Beast Mastery (the Talent).

Although I don't think Longevity will be that useful for raids, and it might be possible to down-dial Cobra Strikes or Invigoration without suffering too badly. If you can, the extra 150 RAP and 10% less damage on damage-intensive fights may well be worth the 5 talent points spent in Aspect Mastery instead.

I'm not saying I wouldn't mind an improvement to Aspect Mastery, I just think some talents people are considering "Must-Haves" may not end up quite so important.

This is my feelings also about MM tree. Some of the talents look great but there is no synergy with the procs and what shot are effected by those procs. Why would Imp steadyshot proc not effect steadyshot, anyone else think that is just strange?

Cunning now has +15%, Tenacity +15%, but leaves Ferocity behind at +10%.

I'd personally stick +5% to Ferocity's Armour and each has +15% leaving no calls of lack of balancing.

Exactly. Take a look at the Death Knight, probably the best example. Each of its three trees are intended to be viable for Tanking, DPS, and PvP. When you try to nerf the DPS of Blood, you're also nerfing their tanking! Frost, the intended tanking tree, actually sucks for tanking. I feel that the separation of roles between trees is a good thing. Hybrids are already screwed by this. How do you nerf Resto without gimping Feral? etc.

The problem start when they take well-specialized trees and start to 'patch' them into PvP viability (or dps/utility for that matter). It just muddles the whole issue by trying to serve everyone. (Take a look at the Being Everything to Everyone (trying to make all talent specs raid/pvp viable) thread for instance.

It's needed to get all the final skills of any tree. What more could you want? You can't even get Heart of the Phoenix without sacrificing dps if you don't have it.

What are you going to do if you need IHM? Say 'sorry guys I'm not sacrificing my DPS to help the melee'? Seriously, there are other situations than perfect setups. I dare say they are more common than otherwise. Personally I am often the only hunter, hence I need to carry that talent, I doubt that will change with another class incoming.

So I need to drop three points somewhere, that is going to be Aspect Mastery and Beast Mastery. Beast Mastery might be a quite good talent, but so far it looks like you can do more than well enough without it. Longevity I want for the pet talent CD lowering, but looking at the trinkets from the beta it seems 1.5 min trinkets might get more common (but that is speculation as of yet), so a lowered CD on BW is not certain to be a bad thing for trinket synergy. And it isn't yet decided if Kill Command is a pet special or hunter special, a lowered CD on that, to 3.5 secs, would be something as well.

So the choice really is a tough one. Improved Tracking/GftT and another point or Aspect Mastery and Beast Mastery? I have already dropped a point in Cobra Strikes as it appears that 60% is more than enough from what reports we have had. Invigoration doesn't appear to be so incredibly overpowered as we thought, so two points might indeed be needed. If not, then it is first place I will cut obviously. GftT is likely to be even more important this time around as there will be more and more focus intensive skills this time. Combined with Cobra Strikes can we afford to get too much downtime on the specials? So far I think not.

It might be that Aspect Mastery is easy to quantify compared to these other things, and as such easier to dismiss. But I really doubt it is a better choice than most of the others, and while Beast Mastery migh be good it would be much like the problem many Surv have now, getting an expensive lackluster talent to get a good one.

IHM is 110 ap at 70, it's really not as significant as people make it out to be. Maybe you should go SV since your raid needs EW too? >_>