If they did that they could justify the 60% change, but I doubt they will.

Yeah, I was going over it with Vul after I got my head torn off when I posted in the BB about it being lackluster.

Point for point, it's effectively more powerful then Lethal Shots, now, though. Maybe something along these lines;

Three points in Focused Aim, two in Lethal Shots.

Three points in Master Tactician.

Five points in iAotH for all that hasted goodness.

Or some funky jazz like that. We're all just so used to taking five in Lethal Shots to get on to the second tier, it's a gut reaction when we hit the new MM trees.

*edit*
Just tried to get up to Sniper Training/Readiness/PoNE etc with only three points in MT. It doesn't work. Unless you want to put more points into Wyven Sting or Survivalist, it's not happening. Have a looksee.

With the critrates of Survs a 60% chance to proc HT is not going to be heavy a nerf when it has 8 sec CD. It would be nasty if it was without CD.

I don't think Focused Aim is going to be a big deal in PvE at all. In TBC, we saw, what, 1 phase of 1 fight (RoS) where it would make a significant difference? How useful this is will depend a lot on the encounters, and we know nothing about them yet. It will of course be a strongly required PvP talent.

I also don't think Imp Hawk is a big deal in wotlk for Survival specs. If we get Windfury*, then we'll have steady shot capped below 1.5s without any haste at all, so all Imp Hawk will do is provide an average of 8% haste (or something like that) to autoshot only, which looks to be about 1/3rd or less of our total dps.

* Windfury: I don't think anyone has discussed this yet. It seems like we'll only get Windfury if (A.) we move within 20 yards of the enhancement shaman (forfeiting Sniper Training) or (B.) 2 non-enhance shamans are in the raid, so one of them can be dropping Windfury at range, where the hunters are (the first non-enhance shaman drops wrath of air).

Here's a discussion topic: which would a melee group rather have: Trueshot Aura (0/31/40) or Hunting Party (0/20/51)?

Pretty disappointing that the 51 point BM talent is basically fluff and doesn't really add any power to the class, unless they add more/better talents that make the extra 5 points worthwhile. I know they said they are adding a happiness talent to the Tenacity tree.

With the addition of Blood Knights, the massive DPS increases of Ret Paladins, and Rogues still being around -- You're probably going to be spending much more time in caster groups if you're not able to get a hunter group.

Either way, I'll bite: The answer is most likely Trueshot Aura. Hunting Party will only be 5-6 PPM as it stands. 50-60 extra energy per minute or 225 extra AP to all your attacks? The answer is pretty obvious

I don't see much fuss about the Hunting Party "nerf". We're going to be critting enough, especially since auto-shot is unlinked. So if it takes us 2 seconds after each effect cooldown of Hunting Party to trigger it again, we can expect a cool average of 6 procs a minute. On a 10k mana pool that's 1200 mana. On a 14k mana pool that's 1680 mana. If we add it up with all other sources of mana regen (including TotH) it's nothing to sniff at. If we expand our ego to include the group boost, it's a far greater talent to max out in terms of synergy and teamwork.

If you're worried about mana, then you can spec into the mana-giving SV talents and be better off. Or you can downrank. If you're worried about DPS, then you're going to max-rank and spec how you feel you'll deliver the most amount of sustainable damage. Both should be taken into consideration, IMO. I don't downrank and I do look for ways to recoup mana while maxing DPS.

Wyvern sting has limited use in raids, but greater use for questing or 5-mans. Going 51pt SV, I would take Wyvern since I wouldn't have access to scatter and a clutch-ability is always nice. Otherwise, it's probably better as a PVP talent for those SV hunters who do so.. combined with Imp. Stings to resist dispelling. Dispells/cleanse/etc still use a GCD to perform, and we can shoot on the run while most healers can't heal on the run.

They're not going to make Scatter Shot trainable. Simply put.

Barrage and Imp. Barrage are more for PVP, it seems, unless a raiding hunter loves to bust CC with extra glory.

Piercing Shots is perfect. Those who question the value of ArP should go check out some threads and sites about it. There are no diminishing returns on ArP UNTIL you hit the cap, which is the target's armor less all the debuffs. Past that point you don't need any more ArP, yet Piercing Shots gives you 462 ArP on a 7700 armor mob. That frees up having to stack ArP on gear (not unlike how SV hunters can spec Surefooted to reach the hit cap without forcing more +hit on gear.. it's greater gear options).

MT has been improved quite well, but the points dumped into the talent are variable depending on the hunter's crit level. I am sure that as we approach 80 our effective stats are going to diminish until we start picking up end-game gear. During that time I am sure MT will prove to be useful to maintain EW & HP.

Deterrence is not going to be made trainable. It's wishful thinking, much like Scatter Shot. You have to choice into it.



If Blizz made the DoTs from our stings be able to crit at our ranged crit rate.. that wouldn't be too shabby. Though I am sure all other DoT-dealing classes would want the same.. and if we had a talent for sting crits, they'd cry for the same.. even though all of theirs are great to use as-is. >.<

I had posted before that Explosive Shot does not, on any hit, trigger Thrill or Hunting Party - so I was a bit confused about some of the posts here and went back to test it myself yet again.

To confirm - Explosive Shot does not trigger Thrill of the Hunt nor Hunting Party at all. The initial hit Critting on the primary target does not trigger it, subsequent crits do not trigger it, not a single possible crit of Explosive Shot on any mob will currently trigger those two effects.

Likewise, it does not proc Expose Weakness either.

Sounds like a bug really (but this happens all the time when they introduce new skills, they 'forget' to have them trigger things other skills do).

Considering that the mechanic of the Shot is that it's not an actual "Shot" that hits, it simply puts a DoT effect on the target that ticks 3 times, I don't see this being a "bug".

The only thing I really see being bugged about Explosive Shot is that only the initial tick on the primary target gives any threat at all.

Shadow priests get rewards for keeping their healers at 100% mana =(

Just to clarify:

As I understand things, the 51 point BM talent allows you to get to the last tier of pet talents, where specs without Beast Mastery (the talent) are unable to. This is due to the fact that the last tier of all pet talent trees requires 20 points to be spent in the subsequent tiers. This also means that a talent spec with Beast Mastery can only get one of the last tier talents.

Now, are the 5th tier pet talents are worth the investment into the BM tree instead of putting more points into MM or SV? I guess that's a different arguement.

Sean or Gonk or anyone else that's in beta, can you confirm that this is the case? Or if it's supposed to be the case and it's currently bugged?

No, that was just a tooltip bug. Confirmed on the official beta forums that the pet tiers are supposed to be 0/3/6/9/12.

Meaning it only gives you 5 extra points, and it's really not that great since you can get almost everything you need without it :/

Link to post here: WoW Forums -> Pet talent tier costs

I was under the impression the talent calculators are just playing off of player talent requirements due to an oversight in coding. It would be kind of disheartening for only BM pets to have the top tier talents, although that would put pets in line with BM having the most powerful pets without question.

Quoting Ghostgrawler on the Beta forums and reposting what I've said a dozen times through out this thread already:

Btw, Wowhead's Pet Talent Calculator does work as 3/6/9/12 in the trees as intended, it just for now has the bugged tooltips remaining. You can use it as the pet trees are intended just fine.

Example:

Pet Calculator - Wowhead

Already answered a few posts up:

Source is Blizzard poster "Ghostcrawler" on the beta boards.

That's disappointing. I haven't looked at the beta boards today, so I missed Ghostcrawlers post. Sorry for the bad information.

It seems like exotic pets' "racials" really need to be exceptional then, or I can't see a reason to go past 49 points in BM. That would be unfortunate. Hopefully there is something in the works for a later beta build.

EDIT: Yeah, I didn't bother looking for the source of Mikari's quote. My mistake. Again, sorry for the false info.

The Pet Talent trees are still being worked on and changed around a bit. It's a bit early to make calls on the value of the extra 5 points of the talents. Example - the Tenacity tree currently has no Happiness regain ability ala Loyalty in Ferocity and Carrion Feeder (terrible) in Cunning, but does in the next build.

However, the Exotic pets certainly sound like fluff unless there's some good DPS abilities on them that make them worth using. Probably would have to have Savage Rend nerfed on top of that though unless they put in something that's just as ridiculous.

Right, because if a SV hunter is going to spec for Explosive Shot the other options for dump points are: Wyvern Sting, Potent Venom, Point of No Escape, maxing out Master Tactician, or a point or two in any of the lesser talent tiers [that we skipped because they don't apply towards DPS]. PoNE may be great for an initial frost trap per pull, or a wayward bear trap during a pull as "just in case it's coming right for me", but I'm not going to consider running in and out of melee range just to keep a trap down UNLESS it's a situational thing that calls for it. PV has already been discussed as lackluster. MT can be maxed with points left over. There is a reason that abilities are costing so much more mana, and quite possibly Blizz is addressing going OOM by implementing cross-class abilities that sustain mana pools when all brought together in combinations.

If a SV hunter is going to not get Explosive Shot and if they ARE going to have unlimited mana in any situation (going along with the assumptions and speculations that a pally will always be present and always be judging wisdom and that it will be enough), then most certainly Hunting Party can be skipped for talent points elsewhere. If this is the case, there can be argument that TotH may be unnecessary too, but considering some initial beta information about the time it takes to go OOM on shot rotations.. I wouldn't hold my breath just yet.

Assume a 3.0 speed bow (There's no reason to anymore, but just for convention's sake). That's 2.6 firing speed with a quiver, and it comes out to .3833_ shots a second. A shot every GCD is another .66_ a second. If Explosive stays as not triggering anything, that becomes .5. So a combined .883_ a second. If you have a 50% crit rate, 60% HP gives you a .2649 chance of proccing per second once off cooldown. Not concerning ourselves with whether or not the proc is meaningful, that's terribly streaky. Even if the initial shot of Explosive could trigger it, it would take an awful lot of haste on a fast bow to get anywhere.

Not to mention how boring a hidden percentage is from a gameplay perspective. It's annoying to see the game as a whole move away from RNG silliness and then what looks like the biggest new SV talent stuck on not one but two chance rolls.

Explosive Shot currently is not procing any on crit abilites in any way. No idea if it's intentional or not.