KC actually stills suffer for some bugs. While playing as well as trying BM rotation on target dummies, I noticed that sometimes KC doesn't hit the target : the focus is spent, the sound is played but I can't see the damages, neither on screen nor in the combat log. I've reported this bug.

The 2) is quite possible. I will do some tests to check it.

There is also a smart thing about KC : recall it with "follow" then click on KC => the pet runs towards your target. The KC is postponed until it reaches it.

KC is comparable to ES, similar CD and comparable cost (not the same, but it should actually count against KC in thise case). Why punish Survival with ES and Arcane, when BM gets to roll on one attack? And the add situation... come on. It is a weak base for Arcane Shot when you compare the shot to the role it is intended to fill, and does fill in the other two specs. Looking back at Wrath, there have been only a few fights where the pet wouldn't have been on target within 2-3 seconds. In many cases we have chosen to not send the pet to not lose DPS on the main target, or simply for convenience of not having to do it, but we could have if needed. And BM certainly will need it if the target requires fast bursting. If it is 2-3 seconds or a potentially CCed pet (could happen, but it is going to be somewhere between rare and not happening at all) that marks the difference, then it most certainly is weak.
I repeat, most of the times where we haven't sent our pets it is not because we have been forced not to, but because the gain has been deemed too little, and the fact that in most cases the Hunter doing that has been Survival or MM. And of course KC hasn't been a major attack. I do remember back in TBC where KC held a fairly similar role, if quite a bit weaker comparably. A good hunter would use his pet, a great Hunter would know when to use the pet on switch and when not to. Especially on adds.
This only serves to dumb BM down again. KC, Serp and Cobra. The spec loses all consideration, especially considering the extention of Serp on Cobra. No more "can I use an Arcane now, or should I not risk delaying KC", it's just use it when applicable. Consequently Arcane becomes what Arcane is now for MM, a 'mobility' shot for special cases. Is that really somehing to look forward to?

The hypothesis was that a no-CD Kill Command means that Arcane Shot would fall into disuse by BM hunters, and that's what I was addressing. I wasn't trying to justify why SV also has an artificial reason to use Arcane Shot, because a) I don't have a justification for it and b) I'm not sure how useful that is in terms of theorycrafting.

If you assume a KC with a 6 second CD, these are the decisions you have to make when it comes off CD:

1) use KC on the pet's current target;
2) use KC on a different target, knowing that the damage won't happen until the pet gets there;
3) use Kill Shot if it is available;
4) use Arcane Shot if your pet is not able to attack;
5) use Arcane Shot if you don't have enough focus for KC, Kill Shot is not available and your target will die before you have enough focus for KC;
6) use Focus Fire if needed;
7) use Cobra Shot if needed to keep Serpent Sting or Scorpid Venom from falling off, or to use a Rhumba proc.

Those decisions don't change when you remove the cooldown from KC. They also aren't necessarily trivial. At the risk of getting far afield from my original goal of merely predicting how we will use the ability, I don't agree that keeping the CD adds another meaningful decision to that tree. It just means that you only make your decision no more frequently than every 6 seconds.

I also don't want to derail the conversation with PvP issues, but that's where situation #4 comes up most often. If you sheep an MM or SV hunter's pet, or root it and blink, you don't automatically force them to use Arcane Shots, but you force a BM hunter to do just that. You also might force a BM hunter to use arcane shots to keep from getting behind in the rotation by waiting 2-3 seconds (up to half the CD on the previous version of KC) for the pet to change targets when it actually is mandatory (for example, target A goes invulnerable and you have to attack target B).

This is significantly different from how MM or SV hunters work. They don't really ever have to confront a situation where Chimera Shot or Explosive shot is off CD, and they have enough focus for it, but game mechanics force them to use Arcane Shot instead. When you have something important on a CD, not being able to use it when it's off CD is A Big Deal™. Removing the CD makes it easier for BM hunter to "catch up" on KCs when they had to skip them because of a pet issue, and you still would use Arcane Shot as filler when you skipped KC. It also makes it so that it doesn't feel as crappy when you can't KC, because it's not like you're waiting for it to come off CD only to be unable to use it.

None of this means that they shouldn't add more incentives to use Arcane Shot, of course. But that's not a theorycrafting issue, so I don't delve into those kinds of things here. It's also why I'm not addressing how desirable it is to have Arcane Shot serve the same purpose in all three specs.

You are right on both points. Reporting it.

By the way, I think the no-CD KC will be very helpful for PvPers to counter people running around pillars or sticking the hunter in melee range. Combined with The Beast Within, it would make the pet chewed people.

I am not in beta, so this is more of an inquiry regarding some of the talents in the MM tree; specifically GftT and Sic ‘em.

From what I am gathering the current beta status is not allowing players to gather any significant data relating to pets so this might be a bit premature, but if someone has some thoughts/clarifications they would be most welcome.

The talents GftT and Sic ‘em combined take 4 talent points. As a MM hunter, (standard raid build) I simply see my pet as an 8%-12% damage increase depending on the fight. His damage is significant certainly but not a huge portion like a BM build. Unless there are some serious boosts to the percentage of damage being done by pets in the expansion, I do not see these two talents based on current pet mechanics/damage as anything to feel good about. With current game stats this is what I am seeing:

My last Lord Marrowgar 10 man fight:
Cat = 11.8% overall damage (slightly higher than normal given the spikes etc)
Duration: 3 min
Focus dump, claw: 121 times average 611 damage per claw every 2.5 seconds.

My Auto crits equaled 37 for a total of 185 more focus giving my cat a potential of 7+ more claws at 25 focus each for 3577 increase in overall damage. (GftT)

My Aimed Shots had 9 criticals potentially triggering 18 free claws/attacks. This would increase damage by 10,998 (Sic ‘em)

Combined, these 2 talents would increase damage by 14,575 increasing my pets contribution from 11.8 to 12.8 overall.

One point in Improved Tracking would achieve similar results under current game dynamics, so I am confused as to why MM hunters would find these talents so appealing beyond them not having a better alternative? It is my understanding that pet focus regen is decreasing considerably but I have heard nothing about pets overall dps increasing for all specs. I know it is too early to crunch numbers, but that is exactly why I am perplexed as to why players find these talents compelling given current game dynamics? Do you guys know something I do not or am I overlooking something? Thanks.

You can't look at the Cataclysm talent trees and apply your ICC-logs the way you did (even discounting you forgot to account for the loss of the current much more powerful GftT in your attack count - your pet will probably do a lot less Bites, not more in Cata).
You also have to realize the devs haven't touched pets at all at this point in beta aside from adding a couple of new skins, they are still working on getting the class talent trees working. All we know are their intentions, ie. all pets should do about the same damage and bring a weaker version of a raid buff. From the massive nerf of GftT we can conclude they want pet focus to matter a bit more (it went from 50 focus on every crit to 6 focus only on auto shot crits), so we can assume the focus dumps (now called basic attacks) will hit a lot harder than they do now as they can't be used almost every pet GCD.

Even if the 4 points are weak, where else do you want to put them?
At the moment, the damage of the basic attacks are the same as live.

And as it seems right now with those 4 points our pet will do alot more basic attacks, so the weight of those 4 points goes up. But right now all talents regarding pets aren't working. GftT won't give focus to the pet, Sic 'Em! won't be consumed, Cobra Strikes won't be consumed aswell, Frenzy won't procc so you won't be able to use Focus Fire and Kindres Spirit isn't working.

Careful Aim currently seems a lot more powerful, for non-BM Hunters, than Sic Em. I'm not overly impressed with GFFT either, given the lower crit rates promised, but you're right there's no good alternative.

Your logic is flawed.

It is true that for MM (and SV) hunters that the portion of our damage from pets is much smaller than that for BMs. At the start of Wrath, my MM Hunter damage to pet damage was about 4 to 1, and I now see like 7-8 to 1 ratios.

The problem with your analysis is that you are using data from a pet who should not currently be focused starved if you are specced and geared properly. Then you are saying if he has this much more focus that equates to this much more damage over what he is currently doing. The truth is that the additional focus results in no extra damage in that situation.

The correct way to analyze those talents is that you ideally need enough pet focus generation, such that it is never starved of focus and can do maximum damage by utilizing every GCD and specials off CD. That is the baseline.

Now to correctly analyze the benefit of those talents is to determine how much damage you (pet and hunter) would lose if you pet loses that focus and becomes focused starved. An example using Wrath comps is that if I remove the 1 point I currently need in GftT to keep my pet from being starved of focus. Doing so causes my pet to lose about 36% of its damage as its Bite cast time increases from the 1.25 GCD to every 5.56s on average. Due to decreased Culling of the Herd uptime, the hunter loses about 1.5% of his personal damage. The total DPS loss of the hunter and pet is about 6.1%. The percent should be even higher at the start of Cata where the hunter to pet damage ratio should be closer as it was in Wrath to start.

Assuming that the pet attack mechanics will be similar in Wrath, you should see similar DPS benefits from making sure that your pet has enough focus to keep him at his maximum damage potential for your gear and spec. If that equates to 6.1% for 4 points, that is still more that 1.5% per point, which is hard to beat.

Furthermore, like in Wrath where initially our crit rates were low and we needed two points in GftT and later could drop to 1 point once our crit rates increased, we should be able to drop points in these talents as our crit rate increases since we only need enough pet focus regen to keep them attacking every GCD. Any additional pet focus is a waste since it cannot be used.

Whether MMs will need all 4 points at the start of Cata or not will have to be determined when we finally have all of the Cata comps at 85 understood and modeled. Heck, it may even be possible that we may be required to take points in Bestial Discipline initially too, but I hope that would not be the case since that would be bad design in my opinion. But we should definitely be able to drop points as our crit rate increases.

Finally, as others have stated, into what else are you going to put those points? Assuming the this MM build with the current talents, the only other options for the 2 points in Sic'Em are:

1) IKC - I do not know why an MM would want this talent since we should only be using free KCs from RiF due to our lesser pet damage and the better damage we will get from ArS for less focus cost.
2) BD - which is pet focus regen as well
3) HvW - More stamina is nice for survival but should not be necessary for PvE.
4) ISrS - With MMs CS refreshing SrS, this ability only affects the initial cast currently and is not much benefit
5) RK - You really am not going to get much benefit from one point in RK and will get even less from 2 points in it.
6) CB - Not a normal PvE talent and definitely not as beneficial as pet attacking every GCD and increased CoH uptime.
7) Bombardment - Another point in this could be useful in some situations but averaged out it is not as important as you pet attacking every GCD, especially with the Cata AoE nerf.

Once we can drop points in Sic'Em and GftT, I would plan to top of Bombardment for its utility if it is just 1 point that can be dropped. If we can drop 2 points with the additional pet focus regen from BD being added, then I would probably move the current point in Bombardment into Frenzy if the pet can keep from being focus starved with it.

Here is another way to look at it:

The current version of GftT is way overpowered. Using a friends current character (I am on break for a while), one point in GftT is worth 656 DPS. Compare this to removing a point in any other of his talents:

CS = 1824 (signature shot)
TSA = 735 (if no other source for the 10% AP buff)
GftT = 656
PS = 551 (our main DPS talent taking advantage of our armor penetration)
AiS = 587 (another important shot)
CA = 283
RWS = 234
SilS = 203
MfD = 179
MS = 178
FF = 153
RK = 148
WQ = 109
CE = 105
MM = 103
IS = 94
LS = 93
FA = 90 (he is currently 0.3% over hit cap so the loss of a point in FA is not fully penalized)
Barrage = 75
IAotH = 72
ISS = 62
IB = 50

As can be seen, most of the talents are not even close to the benefit of GftT. 2 talents are not even worth 1/10th of it. 12 of the talents are less than 1/4th, which is basically the equivalent of spending up to 4 points to get the benefit in Cata. All but 4 talents are less than 43% of its benefit, and those talents are CS, our signature shot, TSA, our main buff which can be provided by others, PS, our big DPS talent to make our DPS on par with others, and AiS, our second best shot.

I believe that Blizzard has recognized this bad design problem with such a fundamental aspect of the game where it takes no play skill from us to make sure that our pet is attacking properly once it is on a target. To make the benefit more on par with other talents besides our signature ones but still probably better than most, they have divided out the benefit amongst more talent points.

Regardless of whether there are other good options to sink those points in GftT and Sic'Em into, a hunter must put just enough points into those talents to make sure that their pet has sufficient focus to be able to attack every GCD (or close to it). Not doing so hamstrings both the hunter's (due to decreased CotH uptime) and the pet's DPS.

So yes, after being used to getting so much benefit from one point in pet focus regen talents, it may seem a "nerf" to have to spend more points in talents for a similar benefit; however, keep in mind that the DPS gain from each needed point spent in these talents will still be higher than the DPS gain from points in many other talents.