I ignored it for simplicity, since I wasn't sure what a reasonable value was and wasn't up to date with their mechanics/talents.

So, adding in 1/3 of their AP -> SP, we get ~400 mana back per 1.5s, spending 280 mana.

Surely there is no way JoW can go live like this?

Hunters have always lived on something of a knife-edge mana-wise. Unlike other mana-based classes, rather than mana-supply making us choose between good DPS and excellent DPS, we get to choose between excellent DPS and pathetic DPS.

There are a few relevant variables in WLK that could improve the situation.

If Blizzard disproportionately boosts INT itemization on our gear (the increase mana usage of our new shots, plus Careful Aim v2.0 seems to hint that they will), this will result not only in a non-linear increase in mana pools (and therefore larger returns from HP), but also much better returns from Viper. IMO, Viper should always have been an Evocate Lite, allowing us to spam Steady Shot (our cheapest shot even in WLK*) while slowly gaining mana, taking about 20 second to go from empty to half-full, at which point we switch back to hawk. Has anyone done testing on downranking Steady Shot? Given that we'll have a (much?) larger base INT at level 80, spamming rank 1 steady with Viper up may be the Evocate Lite we're after if the DPS hit isn't too large.

With the decoupling of Steady and Auto, Imp.Hawk procs no longer serve to significantly boost DPS by dropping us down from 2:1 to 3:2, or from 3:2 to 1:1... instead, it will only offer a moderate DPS boost, making the switch from Hawk to Viper less of a liability.


Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler

Why not? At the moment, JoW + BoW + Steady Spam ensures nearly limitless mana. Our small mana pools and complete lack of base regen means that the difference between "infinite mana" and "OOM in 60 seconds" is only a few dozen mp5.

Well, with the Int->AP talents that Shaman and Hunters get, I'm sure we'll be seeing more Int on our gear. We just don't know how much. Maybe they'll replace all AP with Int?

Given that 1 INT gives only 1 AP, but costs 2 AP's worth of stat allocation, I hope not. For raiding at least, we can assume the existence of JoW, which means that (as usual) the choice between mail for larger mana pools and leather for DPS is a no-brainer, and would completely defeat the purpose of Blizzard's 'gear convergence' program. We'd still be fighting rogues for gear (which is something I got tired of back in Karazhan).

But my quick calculations show that at the start of raiding, BM hunters will gain more mana than they spend if a ret paladin has JoW is up. This means intellect is really a useless stat and that we should be using leather gear when raiding.

Hence why JoW will probably go through some changes, perhaps scale a little worse, or put in an internal cooldown or something. I hope not though

If we consider Viper with 500 intellect, that is 300mp5 at level 80 with < 20% mana. Steady Shot rank 1 is ~300mp5 usage so we don't gain mana when we downrank.

Ah, I see. I thought they were the same value.

And so does agi. I don't see you spurning that. Why? Because it does other things in addition to the attack power, and compounds with buffs like Kings.

I'm not going to say outright that I want nothing to do with int. For DPS purposes, does the itemization cost keep up with AP? No. But if you have a choice between doing 100 DPS for half the fight or 90 DPS for all of it, which would you prefer? Until we see how the mana situation plays out, it's a little unfair to say "eww eww get away from me." If they had picked something otherwise worthless to us, like strength or spirit, then I could understand.

You don't have to spend talent points to get AP from AGI. Remember that the quote to which he was responding said:

I don't think people are objecting to the idea of possibly adding more INT to gear or at least giving people more reason not to wear rogue/cat leather, but the idea of replacing ALL AP with INT is pretty horrible. It would result in an overall loss in AP, because of the way item budgets work. Plus, we only get 1 AP per INT if we talent for it, and while Careful Aim is pretty accessible due to its place in the MM tree, there are some builds that can't afford it, and itemization should never be absolutely tied to people investing in talents. Any PvP build will require at least 14 points in MM and 11 in SV if this were the case, which leaves only 46 points to go around elsewhere. This isn't a problem for MM or SV, but BM builds would suffer greatly. Aspect Mastery, if it has a "purpose", is for the PvP benefits to Aspect of the Monkey, and that kind of itemization change would exacerbate the problem that no one who specs PvP BM can even afford to buy the new PvP BM talent. It's already bad enough that no one can max it as is, but we'd be looking at only being able to put one point into it.

Yes, but one of the 'other things' that AGI does is give us crit. If you calculate AGI's worth (at level 70), even pre-kings, in terms of stat-budget, 1 AGI is worth 0.5 points worth of AP and 0.552 points worth of crit, which is 1.052 point's worth of DPS attributes. Even with 3/3 CA, INT will only give 0.5 point's worth.

The fact is that in a raid, JoW plus mana-feeding specs means we won't have to worry about mana... all that will matter is how much DPS we can push. Unless Blizzard wants to give us crit for INT, or 2 AP per INT, AGI will remain the preferred (basic) stat for raiders, and we'll take it where we can get it.

I see CA as making INT a less worthless stat, not a more desirable one.

I was looking up iaoth on wowhead and this is what it procs:

Effect #1 [Apply Aura]: Add Flat Modifier (18)
Value: 10
Effect #2 [Apply Aura]: Add Flat Modifier (8)
Value: 15

vs rapid fire:

Effect [Apply Aura]: Haste - Ranged
Value: 40

What does this mean in terms of haste effects. I'm just wondering if iaoth will still be as usefull when autoshots are unlinked from special shots and how the talent will affect the 2sec steady shots.

I think it's worth pointing out that JoW seems to be the end all be all answer for our mana problems. I see a lot of you agreeing that this is the case. I will agree that in a 25 man raid, it's much more likely than not to have at least one paladin and said paladin has more than enough incentive to keep JoW up near 100% of the time. However, I can't see this being the case for 10 man raids.

With our reliance on JoW for longevity, we require at least one of the remaining 9 spots to be a paladin. I don't think this is specifically a Hunter issue either. Mages are in much the same boat when it comes to longevity issues without outside support. To a certain extent, all the other mana using damage dealers are affected as well. Blizzard has purposefully made it so all the tanking classes can be swapped between each other and all the healing or DPS classes amongst themselves as well. There's supposed to be no such thing as a required class. Yet, that seems to be the case with paladins and JoW. Doesn't this go against Blizzard's idea of a certain amount of interchangeability between the classes?

Sounds like a good idea but if you have two activated abilities you can cast them both at the same time which they'll probably want to avoid. It may be better to do it the other way around and if you cast an activated ability your pet queues it and stops using focus dumps till it has enough focus, does the ability and then goes back to what he was doing initially.

Bliz have made posts indicating that there will be some sort of AI with regard to pet focus use but at present I think its NYI and I haven't seen any details.

Hmm.. that would seem to make it better Then I don't quite see the need for extending the cast time of it though?

Only argument I see for extending steady shot's cast time to 2 seconds is to make haste a good stat, and not just a semi-decent one, for hunters (in WotLK).

And it does worry me about it's use in PvP.

I haven't played since TBC was first release, so maybe the item formula has been changed, but it used to be that the more of a stat you put on an item, the more expensive that stat became. Because of this you could have a chest piece with the following stats:

50 Agility
75 Stamina
100 AP

Or you could drop the AP a little and put some intellect on it:

50 Agility
75 Stamina
22 Intellect
80 AP

Both of these chest pieces would be ilvl 137. With Careful Aim the second chest piece actually passes the first in AP.

As much as I was expecting it to be an actual bear trap, some part of me was really hoping it involved actual bears like Snake Trap does.

How often does damage tend to break the snare effect? I'm kind of doubtful about how often I'll end up using it, as much as I'd like to toss it down every time I see a melee class come my way.

Yes, this a valid point.
Still one problem thou, excluding stamina from rogue leather, all other stats on it often are the best stats for hunter dps, (hit, ArP,agi, crit, AP) so while we get some intelect on our gear, rogues gets another stat like Hit or Arp that would give more dps then Int for us hunters.

Carefull Aim will close the dps-cap between hunter mail and rogue leather items, no doubt, but is it enough?
Ofc, then adding raid-buffs and such things, CA will give us some decent AP addition, think with the BoK, new MotW, AI or maybe Scrolls we will have an extra 120-150 Int in raids, and well, 150 AP extra is always nice.

Windfury has a 20 yard range, talented to 30 yards. Enhancement shamans stand in melee range. Survival hunters stand more than 30 yards away, due to Sniper Training.

We'll only get Windfury if we sacrifice Sniper Training to stand close to the boss (which encounters might not let us do anyway), or if 2 Elemental/Resto shamans are near us (the first Elem/Resto drops WoA). In 10-mans, the latter will almost never happen, and on the unlucky night when 1 resto and no elemental shows up to a 25-man, we'll do horrible DPS.

Sorry if i missed this being mentioned so far. Was anyone able to determine if improved tracking worked on non-trackable mobs if you have a HM on them?

The Shaman could maybe drop his totems in beetween... in case the Boss doesn't have to be turned around over the course of the fight.

I think Improved Tracking is still NYI, so impossible to test.

Good luck convincing your shaman to stop DPSing, locate the hunters, run 15 yards, drop a totem, and run back, several times throughout a long fight.

Well i would think that most raids would want to run with 1 of each spec of shamans so i don't really see why the resto shammie couldn't drop windfury for the hunters. Of course you probably wouldn't get improved windfury but that wouldn't be too much of a loss for bm and survival justifies its spot through expose weakness and potentially hunting party.