Don't forget- if FA increases pet's chance to hit in live the way it does on the PTR, it will be a flat out 1% DPS upgrade until hit cap. If the last few points in a build are going toward something that does not do this (for example, improved aspect of the hawk rarely grants 1% DPS increase per point), then it could be worth using FA and regemming and reenchanting for agility/attack power. The question is whether the agility/AP you gain from these gems and enchants would be better than the talent points you're giving up for FA.

With our Crit rate already quite insane (40-50% raid buffed w/o MT up), it reduces the value of crit so thats not very shocking. Add in the buffs to ArP and (slight) pet nerfs and its no surprise at all.

It is a good bonus, but averages out to significantly less of a good bonus, in my estimation. For a BM cycle 60% of your shots are SS. SV has about the same, less for LnL procs and Black Arrow usage. MM has significantly less due to using 3 shots.

Using BM rotations for reference, theres about a 55% chance the bonus will proc, Serpent to serpent, and assuming no overlapping or internal cooldown, roughly 35% uptime, or ~215 static AP.

The bonus is good, but it's not amazing, and the hit rating FA saves you could theoretically convert into ~195 static AP. Getting both would be ideal.

Except using BM rotation as a basemark is "wrong".

No BM should (currently) be wanting the 4T8 bonus, as it excludes the 2T7 bonus (new feral 2t4 issue).
If you had to run kara/maggy/gruul for the 2 pieces as ferals did, I would say that the 4t8 bonus would make up for the difficulty, but as you can buy 2t7.5 pieces off the emblem vendor in dalaran a bm would have no excuse for not having it - unless some setup I can't come up with right now somehow pushes the 600 proc ap above 5% pet damage.
I just don't see it happening.

Is BM more competitive in raid settings now, or is it still dead in the water compared to Survival and MM?

Hello! I have not really been playing BM an awful lot, and my understanding of the tree is limited.
I am working on finding the most efficient spec for me (I am a raider, I am hitcapped and my gear is overall pretty damn great.) in 3.1, and i am comparing BM to MM and SV, but first i need to find the most efficient spec of each tree. And I was hoping you could help me out with BM.

I put together a spec where i've picked talents i think are obvious choices: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
But I still have a lot of points left, and I don't know where to put them.

My questions:

1. I see alot of specs without Improved Aspect of the Hawk. Why? I realize it is less required for BM because of Serpent's Swiftness, but is it not still a dps-increase?

2. Where do i want my remaining points and should i change something in my base-build? As far as i can tell, there are only a couple of real talents worth taking left, they are:

Mortal Shots
Aimed Shot
Improved Arcane Shot
Improved Tracking
Cobra Strikes
Invigoration
Survival Instincts

Which do i want to get/fill, and am i missing something?

3. Should one ever swap to Aspect of the Beast? Perhaps during Bestial Wrath?

4. What major glyphs do i want as BM?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I believe that is what you should be shooting for. Glyphs are: Serpent, Steady, and Bestial Wrath

I made a post on the Damage Dealing forums asking exactly that. I came back a bit later to find the thread had been deleted.

Conspiracy theorists start your engines!

Ok back to seriousness, I'm beginning to think it was a mistake of sorts. GC has already come out several times mentioning that the previews were likely either done too soon, or it was a mistake to do them at all. And I both get him and understand him. They haven't been able to keep much of what they laid out as incoming (while always guarded about promising these things they were quite 'clear' in GC-speak), so naturally people are asking stuff about things that might never happen. GC is then in a tough position to do damagecontrol, rather than actually talk about the current issues or bugs or anything pertaining ingame things.

While I think the perma-Immo is a cool mechanic, especially with the glyph (since it shortens the duration, making it much more tight), I think we should not think about it much more. Survival looks pretty fine for damage so far, it is perhaps quite inelegant and badly laid out, but it works. That's Blizzard's goal, making it work fitting the game overall. We don't need Immo trap up for DPS. And balancing down other abilities would take time that don't look like it can be spared. As the saying goes: "don't fix what isn't broken". Survival doesn't look broken (if it is, please inform me), so why add something that only adds more workhours that could be spent on things that are not working correctly right now.

That's why I doubt we will see perma-Immo any time soon, if at all.
But why have they let it stay on the official list? And why so long?

That's my question. If my thread was deleted, and it's been asked before, they obviously know that it is on the Patch Notes, yet they still haven't taken it down. It would be nice to know either way though, rather then be left in the dark.

We are not talking months obviously. But anything more than a few days is fairly long, especially when Hunters then begin talking about it being back etc. Deleting the tread, if it didn't have any non-topic related issues, would indicate that they know about it.

All it would take would be a little edit. The Imp Wing Clip thing was a very minor thing. All Hunters could se it was merely placed in the wrong tree. It didn't even pay to begin to wonder about the talent actually going to BM since it was being removed. Now that it is gone makes speculations more likely, even if I don't actually spend much time on such talents myself.

Now the question back would be why not edit Imp Wing Clip then, since it did stay for a good while. And the answer would be muddied, but it was removed. Meaning something did happen along the way. And while I'm sure there are pvp Hunters that curse that potential change, I doubt it would have the same impact that refreshing Immolation Trap would have. And it is exactly that impact I refer to when I say I doubt that we will see it.