Now that 5.0.4 is on the horizon...talent choices? :)

[Loki]

Is it just me, or are the hunter talents just dull? I thought this at the very start of beta, but at least then I was like "Eh, I'm sure they'll change some". Except they didn't. The Murder of Crows/Dire Beast/Blink Strike tier comprises the three interesting abilities. Where's our version of "summon two warlock pets at once" or "get and give an ability to a raid member" or "get an awesomesauce white tiger pet that totally should have been a spirit beast" or "summon an ox to bullrush your foes" or whatever. Some of the other trees also suffer from this (rogue and mage also don't look particularly interesting, for example), but our top tier is just so samey. It's all just weird arrows, cool arrows admittedly, and I like the Huntress from Warcraft III reference that is Glaive Toss, but Barrage is just a lame Volley, and Powershot is a big arrow. Yay. Stampede is the kind of ability I'm talking about, more things like this and less "pick between three self-heals" or "pick between three escape-from-combat abilities that I'm never going to use as I don't PVP".

EDIT: I apologise; it appears Symbosis is not a talent ability for Druids. But their tree still looks more interesting than ours.

[Ziarre]

If you do anything where you need to Get Out Of The Bad, either Posthaste or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera, WILL be useful to you. Disengage is a great way to get out of bad, and should be used except when it shouldn't (as it can and will fling you off of a cliff if you're not positionally aware). Self-heals are useful in all forms of play, as it takes the load off of your healers, thus making you a more efficient raider/dungeoner/pvper.

There is more to being a hunter than simply shooting arrows into the face.

[Loki]

If you do anything where you need to Get Out Of The Bad, either Posthaste or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera, WILL be useful to you. Disengage is a great way to get out of bad, and should be used except when it shouldn't (as it can and will fling you off of a cliff if you're not positionally aware). Self-heals are useful in all forms of play, as it takes the load off of your healers, thus making you a more efficient raider/dungeoner/pvper.

There is more to being a hunter than simply shooting arrows into the face.

I did a small to medium amount of raiding in Cata and I don't think I ever (OK, probably once or twice) used Disengage. Self-heals are useful but they aren't interesting. I thought we were moving away from +5% agility talents, so why is +5% self-heal OK? And the CC tier is also basically useless to me (again, rarely PVP, and am not usually the person relied on for CCing in dungeons/raids). I'm not saying they are useless to everyone; that is a completely different kettle of fish, but they aren't exciting.

[Ziarre]

You missed out. Disengage=awesome way to get a few yards away Very Quickly. I then usually run some more to make sure I'm safe, so that's why I'm liking Posthaste.

It's interesting because you have to decide between damage reduction, passive heal, or active heal. Active might possibly be more powerful than the passive, but requires attention and actually hitting the button. Each of those types of defense has its own strength, and its weakness. Weighing those is what's the interesting part. NONE of those three are a 'must take' talent compared to the others, which is what the +Agility talents were, so there's simply no comparison there.

[Kalliope]

You missed out. Disengage=awesome way to get a few yards away Very Quickly. I then usually run some more to make sure I'm safe, so that's why I'm liking Posthaste.

Absolutely agreed! I love posthaste, even if it's just a matter of crossing the room faster. Helps on so many fights.

[Loki]

You missed out. Disengage=awesome way to get a few yards away Very Quickly. I then usually run some more to make sure I'm safe, so that's why I'm liking Posthaste.

It's interesting because you have to decide between damage reduction, passive heal, or active heal. Active might possibly be more powerful than the passive, but requires attention and actually hitting the button. Each of those types of defense has its own strength, and its weakness. Weighing those is what's the interesting part. NONE of those three are a 'must take' talent compared to the others, which is what the +Agility talents were, so there's simply no comparison there.

It's interesting for the hardened veterans but it's not going to make anyone go "Oh look, in whatever amount of levels I get a choice between a self-heal, damage reduction, yadda yadda. Can't wait!" like summoning a spirit tiger or getting two warlock pets at once would. Especially with the reduced amount of talent points, I think it's even more important that each one means something. Obviously Blizzard does not agree, because a lot of classes have a couple of trees in this manner, but the hunter talent tree seems particularly ordinary and bland. It's not actively bad, but most of it is just nothing.

There are only two talents that actively make me want to use them: Dire Beast, and Murder of Crows. There are three more that interest me: Blink Strike, Glaive Toss, and Lynx Rush. Three of the five are on the same tree. I can understand why certain other players may be excited by Binding Shot. Otherwise, we have six more talents that are either the same or very similar to abilities we got anyway: Silencing Shot, Wyvern Sting, Spirit Bond, Fervor, Thrill of the Hunt, and Barrage. Things we already had are not exciting; however, I can understand why some of these were needed. We then have Disengage abilities, which are not really exciting; again it's only interesting for veterans. Exhilaration is a self-heal that doesn't really seem to gel with the hunter outlook (and is merely exciting because it's a random self-heal we don't usually get), and I'd much rather have seen a passive "Aspect of the Bat" that drained life from opponents attacked or some-such. Powershot is merely a gigantic arrow with a little bit of splash that will more often than not be totally useless or maybe hit one add, and Glaive Toss has splash anyway.

These are just my thoughts on the matter, of course. But I do feel that Blizzard dropped the ball a little on our tree.

[Ziarre]

Just because someone doesn't find them interesting doesn't mean that they dropped the ball, or that they put any less effort into them. They can't please everyone.

Also lol @ hardened veteran. I'm a little ancient, and I like to improve myself, but I'm too lazy for hardcore raiding. Showing up three days a week "or else" sounds like a job to me!

[Sigrah]

For me in Survival Spec:
15: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera. Love the idea of having deterrence and disengage quicker, especially if I end up having to deal with Razorgore much longer.

30: Silencing Shot. Interrupts = $$$$ in raids.

45: Aspect of the Iron Hawk. How could I pass up 15% damage reduction in raids? My healers will be thanking me if I take this.

60: Dire Beast. Seems too good to be true to "last until cancelled", but we'll see what happens.

75: Murder of Crows. I'm almost always in Survival spec, so the other two don't seem as beneficial to me.

90: Powershot or Barrage. More than likely, it'll be Powershot for raiding because channeling abilities can be problematic on fights where you suddenly have to move. Still, I'll wait and see what Elitist Jerks comes up with about them.

[sidrael]

Been running through numbers on http://beta.femaledwarf.com/

I prefer MM but its about 10k dps behind no matter what I run. So it looks like BM Will be what I will run not to mention with Stampede Spirit beast Heal being crazy.

15 Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera
30 Silencing Shot
45 Aspect of the Iron Hawk
60 Fervor
75 Lynx Rush
90 Glaive Toss

Seems to be the Most optimal so far. but again they are still balancing. Looks like I will be changing from Gobo to Orc now too. almost 2% dps gain just changing races O.o
Only problem I currently have is there are so many CD's to manage its kind of hectic right now playing BM.
Lets see how the final balancing batches work out. I know the Simmers are still working on fine tuning the models for things like Lynx Rush.

Also in pvp probably change Fervor for Thrill of the Hunt, and Glaive Toss for Power Shot. Maybe Lynx Rush for Blink Strike.

[Myrrmi]

BM, PvE lvling spec:
15: Narrow Escape - when I get away from the shit, I want to be sure that the shit stays behind me
30: Silencing Shot - FINALLY a proper interrupt! /huggles
45: Spirit Bond - I'm so used to it... I don't think I could live without it
60: TotH - a passive proc giving the gameplay some more dynamics; First I thought about direbeast, but after playing with it I found it to annoying. I already have my pet, and he's the best and the only one I need <3
75: Lynx Rush - my beloved arcturis going all ninja-like on the enemy = priceless <3
90: haven't decided yet, but I guess it'll be Barrage. You know: dwarves, guns, OMFGBBQiWINuDIE, that kind of thing XD

[Protego]

I agree with ya Loki. Of course, Blizzard glitters up all the other classes except Hunters.

[Meggers]

I agree with ya Loki. Of course, Blizzard glitters up all the other classes except Hunters.

Grass is always greener on the other side.

[Loki]

I agree with ya Loki. Of course, Blizzard glitters up all the other classes except Hunters.

Grass is always greener on the other side.

Although there may be some truth to this (and most of the other trees are not as exciting as I would like), we didn't get as much flashy stuff as a lot of the others. I thought we lacked that kind of stuff before I even looked at the other trees, right at the start of beta, and they even took away the elemental effect arrows which were one of the things I was more excited about getting. Monk seems to be the most "glittered up", just because it's a new class I suppose, but we must have close to the most old abilities repackaged as new talents (I think Warriors also suffer from this to a lesser extent, though I don't really play one so I can't say for sure).

[Makoes]

you know...after looking through a bunch of class talent tiers...quite a few classes have re-used spells, in fact, the only class that does not have re-used spells is monks (duh). I really dont know what you guys are talking about, with our tiers... compared to the other classes we are pretty even or better off. if anything the class that suffers the most in mop will be shamans...seriously, its very depressing for shamans...

[Turgus]

All the classes have reused abilities.
Here are a few that I noticed, and I know there are more.

Deathknight: Lichborne, Anti-Magic Zone, and Blood Tap.
Druid: Feline Swiftness, Nature's Swiftness, Typhoon, and Force of Nature.
Mage: Scorch, Presence of Mind, Blazing Speed, Ice Barrier, Ring of Frost, Cauterize, Cold Snap, and Living Bomb.
Paladin:Long Arm of the Law, Pursuit of Justice, Repentance, Selfless Healer, Sanctified Wrath, and Divine Purpose.
Priest: Body and Soul, Phantasm, and Desperate Prayer.
Rogue: Nightstalker, Cheat Death, Preparation, and Shadowstep.
Shaman: Nature's Guardian, and Elemental Mastery.
Warlock: Howl of Terror, Shadowfury, and Soul Link.
Warrior: Juggernaut, Second Wind, Bladestorm, and Shockwave.

Sure some of them have been tweaked a bit, but all the classes save Monks have reused abilities, and talents.

There is nothing wrong with this, as it links the old way of playing with the new direction that Blizzard is taking WoW.

Are all of these abilities balanced? I don't know.
Does one class get more "cool new abilities" than all the others? I think the monk class does, but as they are the new toy that will be the case, just like Death Knights were back in WotLK.
But I like where Hunters seem to fit thus far.
Enough of the old talents to give any spec hunter a choice of what they want, and enough new talents to make things interesting.


Also, Dire Beast is back to a 15 second duration.

[Ziarre]

Excellent point, and excellent news.

[Helsinki]

I finally went through the talent calculator while I'm sitting here waiting for realms to came up (I also already made a warcraft pet account and added all of my toons to it to see how many pets I have - 96!), and there looks to be some very tough choices. I have a good idea of what I want to do, but I am grateful for dual spec. It's always a choice between 2 talents for me, so I'll swap between specs and see which ones I like more. Some of the choices seem obviously better for pvp than pve or vice versa, but others are tougher to pick between (exhilaration and spirit bond, for example). I imagine some of these choices simply can't be fully made until some time is spent playing with them - I haven't done beta/ptr so I'm looking forward to messing around with talent choices.

[Sesamee]

I did a small to medium amount of raiding in Cata and I don't think I ever (OK, probably once or twice) used Disengage.

Heroic Zonozz! I used Disenaged twice each tentacle phase. Once to get into position to dps the adds and then to get back to the group to dps the boss. Oh and then during the burn phase when we all stacked to the side. Also H Morchock when he split, Yor'sahj to get close to the adds faster, heroic hagara to get closer to the crystals to dps or stack on the boss for lightening phase, I can think of all kinds of raiding/pve situations where disengage is useful. I heart Posthaste!!