Hunters in WotLK: Addendum

What?  No, I'm not obsessively refreshing the WotLK leaks wiki.  I wouldn't do that?  It's not li...

Oooh, ooh!  Hunter changes!

Oh stop looking at me like that.  Like you're not just filled with an ulcer-inducing, burning need to know what's going to happen.  It's why so many people waste their time with rubbish like horoscopes and telephone psychics.  Not that I would...

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

• Scare Beast's tooltip now shows the correct cast time.

It's nice to know that Blizzard isn't afraid to think big with the expansion.  Maybe we can get the The Beast Within tooltip ammended.

• Damage caused by the pet ability Bite has been reduced, it's Focus cost has been reduced as well, and it's cooldown has been removed.

Hmm... considering that this means that Bite can now be cast ~6.7 times faster, I'd call this a buff.  What's interesting is that this is the niche currently occupied by Claw.  Maybe Blizzard got sick of Hunters complaining about how there are all these pets running around focused like an orbital laser doing heart surgery and no way of using it.

Note to self: complaining works!  /thumbsup

• Screech renamed Demoralizing Screech.

Again, another visionary change from our dark, blue masters.

• Furious Howl's buff range increased to 20 yards.

Ok, this one is a bit... I'm not sure.  Meh?  I mean, look at what Furious Howl does right now:

Furious Howl Rank 4 60 Focus Instant 10 sec cooldown Party members within 15 yards of the wolf receive an extra 45 to 57 damage to their next Physical attack.  Lasts 10 sec.

So the only classes that benefit from this are melee classes and hunters.  What's the maximum range on an untalented hunter again?  35 yards?  I don't think Furious Howl was ever really designed to buff the hunter; it's supposed to make the pet bestest-buddies with the melee dpsers.  But what boss is so huge that they needed to increase the range to 20 yards to make sure they got everyone?

Hmm...

• Shell Shield no longer reduces your turtle's attack speed.

Yes!  Buff turtles!  I'm still waiting on this, though:

Spiky Shell Rank 1 40 Focus Instant 10 sec cooldown The pet begins blocking attacks with its shell, causing 25 physical damage to all attackers.  Lasts 10 sec.

• Steady Shot's bonus damage slightly reduced. Scaling unchanged.

Initially I thought this was a sucky change... and it still is.  But remember that Steady Shot actually scales with both weapon damage and your RAP.  Wouldn't it be nice if Steady Shot was just as awesome at level 80, but cost the same amount of mana.  Maybe that's how Blizzard intends to "fix" Hunter mana issues.

Or maybe they're just dropping the effectiveness of Rank 1 so they can charge us extra mana with Rank 2 to get back to where we were.  Accursed pessimism!

So yeah, no sign of talent trees or the like.  I get the impression that Blizz is probably busy tweaking the classes where they know what they want to do.  I don't think there's much point in worrying about the lack of 51 point talents since it's still early days.

On a side note, if Blizzard doesn't make a vanity pet of the mobs on the bottom of this picture, I'm going to be a very sad panda.