Cataclysmic Hunter Changes
 

Current known Cataclysm Changes:

• No more mana; Focus used instead
• 2AP from Agility, 0 from Int
• Steady Shot as a resource provider
• No more consumable ammo
• "Fewer" cooldowns to manage

Relevant links:

• BlizzCon 2009: Class, Items, and Professions Panel Live Blog

Editorial:
Looks like we're getting some of the big revamps promised before. Fewer cooldowns, no consumable ammo, no mana, and (once again) 2 AP per agility.

Obviously we will be getting many talent changes as well, but this is easily the largest change to our class in the history of WoW (aside, perhaps, of removing our ability to wear shields).

Oh, and a legendary two handed axe in 3.3! Clearly a Hunter weapon.

Taken at more depth, the idea of Steady Shot being not only a filler shot but a focus-gaining mechanism is tremendously interesting. Haste improving regen likewise looks to have the potential as a very big change (not only affecting us, but our pets as well). While details are brief, to me it feels like playing the class will be much more fun and bring about a streamlined modernization to our gameplay. With shots supposedly costing 30 or 60 focus (i.e., 5 or 10 seconds of focus regen without Steady Shot), cooldowns will be more reduced. Our gameplay will change significantly.

I'll update this post with details as they become available form Blizzcon and other sources.

The current focus regeneration rates are 6f / second normally and 12f / second during Steady Shot.
Focus is capped at 100.

My question is:
Will the 12f/ second regeneration only occur while casting Steady, or will the increased regen hold until you cast a focus consuming ability?

Is there anyone that will be able to ask this during one of the upcoming panels?

My current thinking is that it might a system similar to the FSR that is activated on casting a Steady Shot, or a system that will just grant increased regen for around 2-3 seconds after each Steady Shot cast.

I don't want to be a rogue with a bow =/.

Well it's either that, or continue to be utterly reliant on JoW.

Things are certainly going to be a lot different. Haste is gonna become very useful to us. Rapid Fire will be our burst cooldown now, as well as bloodlust not sucking that much for us anymore. It is going to effectively make us have to relearn how to play the class.

I'm really interested in the whole thing behind steady. It does sound like it won't cost anything to fire it, as its our primary means of regen, but with a much higher cost on our shots, we likely won't be having a cooldown on them.

The talent trees are certainly have to be revised, and I'm curious on what extra regen on focus we'll be getting in terms of talents, not to mention the bigger part of Talent Mastery that they were going on as well as Path of the Titans.

My concern here is - especially in PvP - we're once more going to have problems on movement fights. Of course, it's far too early to draw conclusions, but based just on what's so far been said, I think it's a reasonable concern.

And... 6 stats on gear to interest us, it seems: agi, sta, haste, crit, "mastery", hit

This is the first thing I thought of when I heard the announcement live, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. At 6f/s when on the move and ability costs of 30 or 60 focus, that's 5 to 10 seconds at a time without being able to use any (offensive?) abilities besides a stutter step auto-shot. In PvP and even in PvE 5 to 10 seconds is a long, long, long time.

Unless they announce at another class panel that Hunters will be able to cast Steady Shot while running or will have another significant source of focus gain, there's no way this will go through as its been described so far.

Personally, I don't see why if an Improved Stormstrike or Judgements of the Wise type ability is good enough for Enhancement Shaman and Ret Paladins, why isn't it good enough for us?

Nothing that I've read so far from any of the panels would indicate "mastery" is a stat. From what I gathered from one of the WoW.com's writeups, mastery will function as sortof an extension of the talent system, serving as a vehicle for the +Hit and +Dmg talents we know and love on live.

I'll be interested to see whether or not tomorrow's Class/Items/Profs panel covers Crit. It's a little strange that they completely skipped it in anything I've read, to include Blue posts.

Also, on the topic of Sta as a stat, it will be interesting to see if the new "Reforging" ability will allow us to remove some (or most if fight mechanics don't dictate minimum health pools) and reallocate those item budget points to something our gear lacks. From what I understand, this seems likely.

Because those specs are variants of mana using classes. If we had Judgements of the Wise or Improved Stormstrike (which basically mean never running out of mana), why give our class a mana bar at all? Those classes' other specs use mana differently. Having our own custom solution that fits the class better than mana makes sense. I'm sure there will be plenty of abilities, talents, and glyphs to change regen rate, reduce ability cost, etc. We only have the tiniest sneak peek at the ideas intended, not the final implementation, but currently our best case instant shot ability is on a 6s cooldown, so even if it is 5s regenerating... it is still an improvement over today.

Confusingly enough, there are two mastery systems referenced. The one you refer to, and another:

And well, they haven't mentioned crit at all no (I realised just after I made my last post I hadn't included that...)

Keep in mind though that's a six second cooldown on a specific ability, not on abilities in general. In a PvP situation as Survival or Marks, by adding in cooldown reducing glyphs, standard dps shots like aimed, Exp/Chim, stings and utility shots like Tranq and Concussive Shot, you can pretty well fill your global cooldowns with very few gaps and certainly none approaching 5 seconds long.

I really have no doubt though that there will be talents, glyphs, abilities and spells that will increase focus regen or reduce cost in any number of ways by the time the expansion rolls out. What does concern me though is their vision for our new resource regeneration system will from its base design deepen our pre-existing issues with movement.

Its nice blizzard is making haste also increase focus regen, I am going to be willing to guess though that steady shot will cost 0 focus...at least I hope so. I wonder how they are gonna handle that with traps and our other non-shot abilities, cause I for one would think its pretty cool if traps go down to 0 cost and just stay cooldown based, that way they wouldn't be such a liability for using up focus, and the only drawback to using them is the GCD they eat vice the large resources they take.

I still am wondering how this will play into hunter pvp...having to worry about GCDs and Focus is going to kind of suck for all our different abilities we can use. Blizzard will probably figure it out though. I can't wait to ranked BG with my hunter though...at least it will offset the fact we are largely fail in arena.

A good idea to stop Hunters from becoming "Rogues with a bow" would be to have them only lose "focus" on greater abilities. For example, you could choose to use a lesser ability and not lose any focus (but have less overall dps), or use a greater ability and lose focus (great for finishers or better DoT spells). It would allow Hunters to stop worrying about mana, keep a rotation, and destroy the need for mandatory cooldowns (because the "focus" takes care of that).

Isn't the biggest problem with plate itemization the fact that they only put STR on it, instead of agi+Ap on leather (and +int on mail), the latter giving the wearer more total stats for the same itemLevel? Stripping off AP from leather/mail sounds like it'll just subject us to the same iLvl limitations as plate wearers.

Also, not sure how I feel about focus. It'll likely mean we'll switch to be resource limited (finally) instead of GCD limited, which will make things a lot less hectic, and also unshackles us from pallies. But it also leaves us ... resource limited - with all the burst vs sustained vs really long sustained trade offs that means for rogues/ferals. I've never really played a hunter before that isn't limited solely by cooldowns and GCDs :(

And of course great sadness at dropping ArP :(. But I guess 2 expansions where people stack it up to 100% is too much.

With all of that said, with spamming Steady to get focus i really would like to see how our rotation would be...60 + 30 focus cost, are the lesser skills like aimed shot going to be 15 or 10? That is going to be weird if we pop big shots spam steady and big shots again.

Only thing i find very...hard to adapt to will be the rotation of using less shots. I do have to say its going to be nice to not have to be limited by mana or having to stack INT anymore!