Hunter nerfs probably inc wednesday

-No silencing shot for BM - Yes for the two other specs it should not be touched.
-Stampede removed from arena - All speccs
-Readiness do not reset scatter/trap - All speccs
-Readiness do not reset Bestial Wrath

It's not any of these, however the changes Holinka mentioned for Hunters coming with the restart on Wednesday are relating to Stampede and Blink Strikes.

The changes we have coming for Blink Strikes are intended to assist with the regular complaint we hear about peeling Hunter pets. The change will mean that Hunter pets will only be able to Blink Strike once every 20 seconds and there will be a 10 yard minimum range to avoid the pet using it off cooldown when it's already close to the target. We hope that this will help with Hunter pets utilizing large amounts of glue to stick to their targets.

Our plans for Stampede are actually quite simple to explain; we are removing the ability for the pets summoned through Stampede to use any abilities. The end result of this change should be that the pets a Hunter summons from Stampede will only be able to auto-attack. As you are all aware, these changes will result in a quite the reduction of net damage for Hunters, because of this we have also done a minor 15% buff buff to the damage of Arcane Shot.

Not only are there these changes, but there is still more to come in patch 5.4. We cannot go into details on these for the moment, but keep an eye out for them on the blog ;)

Over the night there were some changes made to the hotfixes that we implemented for Hunters, Váx has already quoted them:

Arcane Shot now deals 10% more damage.
Cobra Shot now deals 10% more damage.
Steady Shot now deals 10% more damage.

Do note that these changes replace the previous hotfix that I mentioned in this thread which increase Arcane Shot damage by 15%, they are not adding to it.

11/06/2013 08:17Posted by Ayano

So we asked for hunter nerfs since their damage is ridiculously overpowered and instead they're pretty much getting buffed? Not sure if I'm catching your drift.

The damage gained from the buffs you can receive from using Stampede is no longer possible, which lowers Hunter damage. The pets summoned by Stampede can no longer bite/claw/nibble/tickle, they can only use auto-attacks, lowering damage during Stampede. Blink Strikes now has a 20 second cooldown making the pet easier to peel instead of them blinking all over the Arena to their target. These are all nerfs which are heavily targeted at pets which mainly effects Beast Mastery Hunters.

In regards to the "triple trinket" that BM hunters have; we have no plans to remove Bestial Wrath from Readiness at this time. Please continue to present your feedback on these changes though as we're always interested to hear your opinions on them.

It seems that quite a bit of information came about last night! :O

I've now increased the posting cap on this thread to allow for some more discussion on this topic. On an added note, over the night the initial patch notes for patch 5.4 were released and I wanted to quote a couple of points relevant to this discussion:

Hunter
General

Arcane Shot had its damage and focus cost increased by 50%.Talents

Aspect of the Iron Hawk now reduces all damage taken by 10%, down from 15%

Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now an ability for Marksman Hunters.Marksman

Binding Shot is no longer a Marksman Hunter ability and is once again a talent.

There was also some additional clarifications for the hotfixes to Hunters made by Zarhym last night on the US forums. The post can be found below and the original here:

Zarhym:

We’re aware that the latest round of hotfixes caused some confusion for many Hunters, and want to offer some insight into the logic and reasoning that led to these particular changes.

Patch 5.3 resulted in Hunters feeling a bit stronger in PvP than in 5.2, where we feel they were in a much better place overall. Stampede in particular has been proving troublesome. We originally designed it with an “empty your stables” theme primarily for flavor–we wanted you to be able to see all of your favorite pets. In practice, it turned into more of a “deck building” mini-game, where Hunters were managing their entire stable to bring as much crowd control, raid buffs, etc. as possible. That’s opposite of our intentions with the Mists stable redesign; we want you to be able to pull out whichever pet you feel is ideal for your current situation. If you’re instead filling your stable based on whatever’s ideal for Stampede, you lose that entirely.

Furthermore, this min-maxing led to Stampede being a bit stronger of a DPS cooldown than we’d really like, especially for Beast Masters (who are already quite bursty in PvP). The hotfix lets us tone Stampede back just a little, and once again allows Hunters to keep whichever pets they like in the stable.

With Blink Strikes, our goals with the original 5.3 changes were to reduce Hunter burst for PvP as well as give them a passive talent option. Generally speaking, we prefer active talents to be slightly superior to passive talents in the same tier. No one will choose an active talent if it requires more work for the same reward. So, we wanted Blink Strikes to be DPS-neutral. Instead, it ended up being a PvP buff, hence the hotfix.

Regarding the changes to Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, and Steady Shot, we had originally only buffed Arcane shot, but there was some risk that it would change Hunter rotations, which wasn’t our intent. We simply wanted to compensate for the Stampede and Blink Strikes changes. Ultimately, our goal with all of these changes is simply to tone back some of the outlying behaviors that were causing Hunters to feel a little too strong in PvP in 5.3, without much impact elsewhere.

Edit: Added in link to patch notes