Considering the images that Blizzard had released a while ago and the comment that Feanoro made on the new stat, Potency, i would hope that some of the new ammo gives us a magical effect and that instead of combining haste and ArP, the new stat would be a combination of ArP and Spell pen. that would make a bit more sense and would help us with shots that are currently being partially resisted, Ex: Chimera, Explosive, Arcane, Etc..

If

• the dot doesn't stack but is, rather, refreshed each time one of those shots hits, and
• it's damage is changed to the most recent shot that applied it

then it shouldn't do too much damage. Looking at a MM guildmate's WWS, I see Steady averages 1288 per hit for him, which means most of the dots would do 429 over 8 seconds, so 53.5dps? Bump that up a bit because ~20% of the ticks would be based off Aimed damage, and ~20% off Chimera... but it still doesn't come out to a large amount.

It's not correct - not getting into stacking or not discussion, you've based your calculation on noncrit damage of the weakest shot of three. Steady shot crit already more than doubles your bleed damage value (and by thus current dps contribution).

So bump of the steady damage by 50%... you're still looking at ~80dps for the 3 talent points, and then you need to add in the difference due to CS/AS. At his Patch dps of 4144, it would need to add 124.32dps before it moves over the 1% per talent point mark. It just doesn't look that unbalanced to me.

I believe Deep Wounds and Ignite currently do a weird "rolling sum" type thing where each refresh it adds the extra damage it's supposed to do to the remaining damage left to do from past refreshes, and recalculates the size of the remaining ticks - there's no reason to suppose Piercing Shots won't do the same, making it better than the above analysis, since you won't ever lose a previous refreshes damage with a newer refresh.

However I suspect it's going to be something like "on crit", since otherwise it'd be a straight 30% increase in special shot damage, which seems a bit much.

Just a couple things I'd like to correct about some of the incorrect statements in the way thrown weaps and imp tracking works. Thrown weapons only lose durability when you use them, not when you die. Also, I believe they recently changed imp tracking in 3.0.8 to in buff damage vs a mob you are attacking as long as you are hunter tracking something(as to discount minerals, herbs, etc.)

The change to piercing shots makes MM look even more like the Arms tree, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. What I expect is that the stated 30 percent bleed will get tuned down to something closer to what Deep Wound's coefficient is, as it just seems way too powerful in the way GC stated. I am interested to see how the changes to armor will affect which stats become most valuable in buffing this talent (AP v. ArP).

As for ammo - hallelujah! My guess is if the haste bonus isn't granted on the ammo (which, I doubt it will be somehow) hunters will just be granted a passive 15 % haste buff as a function of the class (much in the way Paladins get their mana back upon receiving heals and Death Knights do extra damage on spell crits.)

Got to say when I posted the Sniper Training change in guild chat, most every non hunter laughed. While I for one welcome the change, we'll see how relevant it becomes in Ulduar.

They've only mentioned buffs to classes, so I expect the nerfs will be in a future post ... I wonder if, with the change to sniper training, and the stated changes to trap functionality, they will be placing frost trap back on the ICD ... time will tell.

Was this confirmed anywhere? I was under the impression that it was indeed only on the 7 trackable mob types but now I'm curious. You made a good point that if even some of the mobs in Ulduar are mechanical, that's just 5% of your damage flushed down the toilet. And that's discounting any other debuffs that mechanical mobs are immune to, which I suspect would result in an even higher DPS loss.

Immunity to bleeds and poisons/stings would be hilariously bad, but I doubt they'd go back to that silliness again, except maybe for 1 token annoying boss.

Mechanical mobs aren't immune to bleeds and poisons anymore, at least not generally. So just because mobs are mechanical doesn't imply that we'll take a dps hit outside of not benefiting from improved tracking.

So ammo and engineering....

While I like the change as a hunter, but, I see the death of engineering.

It looks like ammo will be like a relic/totem/libram that goes in the ammo slot, and no more quiver. A good change.

But what about engineers?.. Only two things could save engineering.. 1) engineers craft the new ammo "relics" (or at least the better versions) and/or 2) Engineers get a passive buff due to their knowledge of the ammo.

Otherwise, I'm picking up JC again.

And then you add the Mangle modifier. It could definitely push MM well past Survival, but obviously this is not the whole scope of the changes, we will have to wait for the PTR to draw any conclusions.

I don't think Blizzard is stupid enough to put in Mechanical bosses in Ulduar. That would seriously hurt Warriors, Rogues, and feral Druids as well, all of which use bleeds as a significant portion of their damage. If there are golems or whatever, they can just be flagged Elemental.

Bleeds aren't tied to mechanicals anymore (took that out around when Void Reaver was still semi-current iirc). So they can make everything mechanical if they want, and only hurt the classes that have talents for creature-type damage (just hunters and some rogues I think?).

From patch 2.4 notes:

* Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.

Oh, okay. Paladins also have a creature-specific talent, Crusade. I think hunters will be hurt worst at 5%, though.

Does this mean that we are no longer using quivers/ammo bags? If so, I have to say this makes me feel less angry about them nerfing volley (haha). When I began my hunter, I was horribly dismayed that I had to give up my last bag space for my quiver. I learned to deal with this though, realizing without it I would do no DPS whatsover. When I hit the higher levels, the bigger the quivers I had to get. Soon I realized this was a little draining on my gold, having to buy ammo over and over again just to put out my dps. This especially rankled me because I knew none of the other classes had to *buy* their dps. This slightly dampened my view on hunters in general. The new ammo concept, where you just buy one and keep using it, well, it just makes my day.

My main worry is that Blizzard takes the easy route and instead of giving us our 15% quiver haste back; simply let windfury affect range again, thus nerfing us whenever we're without a shaman.

Or, instead, let our haste actually affect our global cooldown like other classes.

As far as ammo being such an extra heavy cost, as I'm sure we've all heard (griped about?) at some point from other classes, at least we save on repair bills every so often when we can get an FD off on a wipe.

Pretty sure pallies save on repairs these days more than anyone else, at least in my guild :/

Rogues and Mages seem to fare pretty well too.

Aren't they still immune to diseases?

Maybe they'll make ammo work like an enchant on ranged weapons; one that is performed by engineers and stacks with scopes. They would have to "up" the mats (of course) but this would create a constant stream of people needing to buy new ammo as they changed weapons. They could roll the haste bonus into this "ammo clip" and it would be dependent on the type of ammo you are installing.

this would also serve to throw engineering a bone, which they may or may not want to do.

At the moment Paladins are 'hurt' the most because of their abilities also being relatively specific. But that is getting changed obviously. A rather significant boost to Pally threat and damage in Naxx (there has to be a reduction somewhere else).

So it wouldn't be a surprise if Imp Tracking gets expanded to Mechanicals, which would actually be great overall for tracking.
BRK actually made a nice little funny comment that Engineers should be able to track Mechanicals. Makes sense and suddenly for Hunters at least the proff gives a valuable and effective DPS boost (but would still suck for all other though). Naturally the talent needs to be changed to "gives 5% damage against any enemy you can track." 5% damage against Hidden enemies would hardly imbalance PvP (one shot or one tick), nor would it be that easy to notice if they were sneaky enough to just not included Hidden.

But I realy think there will be a lot of mechanicals in Ulduar. It is the place of the Iron Dwarves, where ever we run itno them there is nearly a 40% mechanical 'population'. Why should it change? It's what they do. I sort of hope for it too, but fear it with Imp. Tracking. But I can't imagine Blizzard allowing two entire specs suffering that much of a DPS loss for an entire raid tier. That would be a horrible kick in the nuts, especially after all the Pally complaints about their DPS being inflated in Naxx, and them getting a fix for that.

The Piercing Shot bleed is totally unknown at this time. But there are a few options of what it could be, Deep Wounds style with the remaning damage added onto the next application (like it is worded this would be way OP), Chimera Shot style of refreshing per shot (which seems like downright bad DPS) or Serpent Sting style of "a more powerful spell is already active", meaning we only get the 30% of the most powerful shot (Chimera in all relevant cases) while the others could technically sneak a single tick in after 8 seconds while the Chimera bleed runs out. This is a much more balanced value, which could technically fit with the current Hit description (meaning Chimera crits would create massive bleeds). Effectively 30% boost to Chimera Shot alone (Serpent part not counting of course), is something like 3%... Holy crap, it fits perfectly with the 1% per talent comment thingy, doesn't it?
The other shots causing the bleed too... Well, Blizzard is really at odds with Survival and MM given their comments on 51-pointers not being required. Obviously they are for any serious dabbling in the trees, but Blizzard might cling onto the notion that other shots should be viable too, hence Aimed, but that's talented and not always taken, so Steady needs to be taken (why not Arcane is beyond me). Just like Arcane is added onto Lock and Load, while not even any serious Range King Marksman would ever try it. The Arcane is there for the odd Survivalist that doesn't take Explosive Shot. Or an indication that Blizzard doesn't think ES is required. I can't see how this would be all that different.
Also in PvP the bleed from the lesser shots could help with multi tagging. Rogue about to vanish but you can't leave teh healer? Slam Aimed on him (this is about a philosophy so it doesn't actually have to make complete sense) and watch him writhe in agony... eventhough Aimed likely would be better on the focused target.

Sniper Training = boost in all but the most strange cases. Even Sartharion + drakes would give us some degree of bonus, while the current form does not at all (expecting the Kill Shot bonus to remain at status quo). Meanwhile it would be a great boost on fights like Sapphiron (unless you have the luck of Donald Duck), Heigan and Grobbulus, and more of course. Fights whre the current Sniper Training is struggling.

BM thingy... What a lot of pleople asked for, myself included. But looking at the arguments it just seems that non BM (the talent) Hunters will either have issues at the next expansion, pet-trees needing an overhaul then or the same non-BM Hunters will easily be able to grab the extra talent since Call of the Wild isn't all that hot. Unless the new talents require at least a few points. It just seems highly problematic in any case. I hope that Blizzard has found a way that makes these talents worth the effort of grabbing, while at the same time make them practically unique to BM.

The Sunder/FF changes (to a combined 25% ArP) really looks like the right way of making ArP useful again, provided that ArP and those abilities work off the same scale, meaning our ArP is added onto the debuffs. In that case a few extra % of ArP would be rather positive overall. While still not a main stat it would no longer be the black sheep of stats among most classes/specs that make use of it.