Sorry about the latest build. It caught us right in the middle of some data changes and made some talents, especially Survival, unplayable.

The idea with stings is that there is only one dps sting, and venoms are for utility.

Volley has been nerfed like all the AEs have been nerfed. You're not alone there.

Don't focus too much on pets yet. We haven't made much of a pass on their abilities so far. In general, we are trying to get them away from having infinite focus and near 1 sec attack times. We also are trying to have more synergy between hunter and pet, especially for BM. The BM tree is undergoing a lot of changes so that the hunter really has something going on besides sending in the pet.

There won't be many aspects: Hawk and Fox are the only ones you will use often. We'll keep Pack and Nature as more situational. Monkey, Beast and Dragonhawk are probably goners.

We were never happy with Aimed Shot as the instant MS shot. We preferred its older design of something like a sniper shot -- long cast time but high damage. Great for openers, especially with Camo.

Q u o t e:
Or is it still undecided about what's gonna happen to the healing debuffs?

Probably all the mortal debuffs will be physical and undispellable.

Warning, epic post ahead.

We wanted to share some our intent with some of the hunter changes, which will in turn help you give feedback.

Focus -- We'll be messing with ability costs for some time. Depending on your weapon, autoshot costs can be higher than "focus dump" abilities, which clearly won't work. We're working on a DPCT priority list that makes more sense. As far as regen goes though, we think the current rate is about right. We don't want the rotation to become erratic and we like the gameplay of building focus through shots. In situations where you just can't stand still, such as kiting, you can use the new Aspect of the Fox. We've tied the focus regen for using cast-time shots during Aspect of the Hawk, otherwise there would be no reason to be in anything but Fox. Focus is more of a combo between rage and energy, since you build it and use it up. The skill of playing a hunter involves keeping your focus high enough -- as it is somewhat random due to procs -- but use it before you overflow.

Shots -- Each hunter talent tree has a "signature" focus dump: Survival has Explosive Shot, Marks has Chimera Shot, and Beastmaster has Raccoon Shot... I mean Kill Command. These all have cooldowns, so if you are at 100 focus, use Kill Command and still have focus left over, you can use Arcane Shot next. This is why Explosive and Arcane no longer share cooldowns. Once you figure out which abilities to use for each spec, the number of abilities you need to manage should feel less daunting. For example, Marks would use Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Arimed Shot, Chimera Shot and Arcane Shot on a boss fight, and Serpent Sting gets refreshed automatically. Think less in terms of shot rotations and more in terms of prioritizations.

Pets -- We haven't done our design pass on them yet. The design is for them to no longer receive raid buff since they get complete scaling from the master (and we don't want them to double dip). Their abilities will be divided into 3 categories: basic focus dumps (e.g. Claw), specials (e.g. web), and exotic abilities for the BM exotic pets. Specials never cost focus and basics have short cooldowns but meaningful damage. All pets will do the same dps. We don't want "wolf or die" in Cataclysm (and before that it was cat). Each pet family will bring a unique raid buff, allowing hunters to be wildcards for when you are lacking something. The ease of swapping pets will facilitate this further.

Cobra Shot -- We're not happy with the damage yet. We want BM to basically not use Steady ever again. Marks may use Cobra in PvP situations where spell damage trumps physical damage.

Kill Command -- We like the Frenzy / Focus Fire mechanic, but are likely to make it it's own clicky and not tied to Kill Command. Kill Command itself will be the signature focus dump for BM. For other specs, it will be more situational, such as dealing damage to a target out of your (but not your pet) LoS. Marks also has the Resistance is Futile talent to give it some more use.

Aimed Shot -- We are returning this ability to be an opener once again, like Ravage or Ambush. In longer fights, Master Marskman can proc instant Aimed Shots, to keep the ability relevant.

AE damage -- The design is that you use Multi-Shot on 2+ targets, and Explosive Trap and Volley on 4+ targets.

Venoms -- The focus cost may be too high. However, don't expect to have to use these on every target. Part of separating Serpent Sting from the Venoms so that they could be more situational. Even Serpent Sting isn't necessary on every target, especially those that will die quickly. Instead 2-3 Steadies with an Arcane or Kill Shot should do the job. Hunters are used to using every ability on every target because there is no real resource cost with mana. Now priority and efficiency become important.

Ultimately, we think these changes will solve some of the problems the hunter class has had as well as making them more fun to play, or we wouldn't be going through so much re-design. :)

We're still working on talent trees. You'll probably see a lot more of the passive or boring talents go away in the next build or two. Talents like Master Marks are here to stay though.

We're still following this discussion. Some players are making some good points and we have addressed some of these in our most recent builds. Here is a quick update on some of the issues being discussed:

Focus -- We think we're in a much better spot for focus regen now. Our goal has been for focus to be a resource you spend on your higher damage shots, which is regenerated passively at a rate lower than energy regen, but faster than energy if you are using Steady / Cobra (which can only be done while stationary). At the lower regen rates, we found it felt bad if you couldn't Steady / Cobra rather than Steady / Cobra feeling like a bonus. We think we're closer to the sweet spot now, but please let us know (preferably after you've actually tried it rather than prophesizing doom).

Aspects -- We're not happy with the way the Hawk vs. Fox choice is playing out. We think that ultimately either damage or focus regen is going to win out and the other aspect won't get much use. For now, we are going back to Hawk being used for damage and regen. We'll discuss other potential uses for Fox. Changing Aspects will not affect focus regen.

Mobile damage -- This is always a touchy subject. In our testing, we found that it wasn't fun with the current implementation when hunters had to move around a lot, especially in PvP. This is why we are giving up on the current Aspect of the Fox design. We also significantly reduced the focus cost per damage of Arcane Shot, so that it is usable under almost all circumstances. We've also removed the focus costs on several utility abilities (e.g. Concussive Shot, Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, Scatter Shot, etc.) One potential use for Aspect of the Fox is to generate additional focus when you take damage, but we don't want to get back into a world where you are "aspect twisting" when someone comes into melee with you in PvP.

Survival -- We're still iterating a lot on this tree in particular. We agree it's probably the least polished of the hunter trees so far. The reason is that we just have it in for Survival hunters.

Pets -- As I posted in another thread recently, a pet scaling pass is underway. We still plan to do passes on the hunter pet talents and abilities as well. With the design that allows you to swap pets often in the field, we want to make sure that there are some interesting choices in which pet you use for a given situation. Provided they are all crabs.

In case I need to say it, the last two sentences of the last two paragraphs are not meant to be taken seriously. :)

Aimed Shot's damage is low and will be improved.

As you've noticed, Kill Command is proving a tricky ability to balance. It's pure attack power and doesn't scale with weapon damage and is based on pet attack modifiers. That's why the numbers swing often dramatically patch to patch. For what it's worth, we think the numbers are getting close now on our local builds.

At the moment, Survival actually has the highest dps in raid gear, though the other specs are within 2K or so. It's unlikely we'll juice Survival's damage until we get more empirical data from players. Players sometimes surprise us with gear, rotation or talent choices which lead to different numbers than we predicted. We are going to make Lock and Load reset the Explosive Shot cooldown when it procs.

We changed pet scaling to make all 3 pet types scale with the same amount of attack power, which should bring the 3 pet types DPS closer together (though Ferocity will still do the most damage, as intended). We want Ferocity to do more damage than Cunning, but not by a huge margin.