Ok first off I’d like to say I’ve been really, really busy lately. Raiding and volunteer work (and Michael Jackson’s death) has really been making me spend my time doing productive things. Last week I was able to get into a 25m Naxx raid. My current guild has been joining another guild on the server to do 25 mans. So we did Naxx, OS and downed Flame Leviathan in 25m Ulduar.
But enough of that. I’ve got some spare time to talk about Patch 3.2 and BM changes that WILL increase BM DPS output! First off we originally had a change to Catlike Reflexes. Not only will it increase dodge, but it will also decrease the cooldown of Kill Command. This will definitely be a DPS increase but I’m still not sold on this talent just yet. I don’t think it’ll be much of a change. Today however I read on MMO-Champion about changes to Animal Handler and the pet talent Wild Hunt. Now these 2 talents will substantially boost our DPS (hopefully). Animal Handler now increases pet attack power by 5/10% instead of expertise by 5/10%. I’m not entirely sure what expertise does since Hunters have absolutely no use for the stat but the AP boost looks nice. Animal Handler was already a very versatile talent since it reduced the chance your pet’s attacks get blocked/dodged/missed (I think that’s what expertise does) and increases the effect of Master’s Call, which is probably the most underrated Hunter ability. Now the attack power boost will make you’re already awesome pet even more awesome! Wild Hunt, a talent all Hunter have at least 1 talent point in (I assume) is also getting buffed. Only BM Hunters, however, are able to put 2 points in this talent. According to MMO-Champion, rank 1 has increased the AP boost from 10% to 15% so I’m assuming rank 2 will increase AP by 30%, up from 20%. The last ability buff I’m going to touch on is Deterrence which is the Hunter “Oh Shit” button (I guess next to Feign Death) when everything hits the fan and you need a couple seconds of invincibility (sort of; maybe for that Feign Death CD to finish). Now Deterrence doesn’t require you to face the attack and you’ll block all physical and magical attacks (plus a cool new animation!).
So now with the changes to Animal Handler and the buff to Wild Hunt, BM Hunter pets will now gain at least 20% attack power , which in turn affects DPS. I’m not sure how attack power is calculated though. It’s either your pet gains a 20% attack power bonus (10+10=20), which I doubt, or your pet gains 10% from Animal Handler and then an additional 30% (presumably), after the 10% bonus from Animal Handler, from Wild Hunt (rank 2). This second scenario will boost your pet AP by more than 20% I believe. Well, I’ll leave it up to the number crunchers to calculate the real attack power/damage increase. All I know is BM Hunter DPS are about to get buffed. Meanwhile, SV Hunters are about to get nerfed (with changes to Entrapment and LnL that I didn’t discuss because I don’t care for SV) and MM Hunters will remain the same. This will hopefully lower DPS gap between BM Hunters and SV Hunters.
