Cataclysm: Hunter

Cataclysm has brought a lot of changes to the hunter class. The biggest of these is the switch over to focus. This change was the one that had me most concerned about keeping my hunter my main. It sounded at first like it was going to be much like how energy works for rogues and kitties, which drives me nuts.

However, the change has been a good one. Once you get used to it, focus is actually very easy to manage. With the cooldown removal on Arcane Shot, my rotation can be pretty flexible. I just have to have enough focus for Kill Command every few seconds, but with time for about 3 shots in between those, I can consider the use of cooldowns and do quite a bit of burst damage, as well as respectable sustainable damage. Blizzard has said that Beast Mastery and Marksman are still running a little too low for them, so I even have a small buff to look forward to in the future.

Camouflage is amazing, especially for setting up trap-pulls in dungeons. The able to be stealthed from ranged attacks and reducing aggro radii, it's a lot easier to get close enough to fire off the trap and get down to killing. I don't choose to PvP very often, but I'm sure this move would come in incredibly handy there as well.

This brings us to our next feature, Trap Launcher. While heavy-duty CC may be commonplace again, gone are the days of edging to the mobs, laying a trap, pulling, and trying to kite the mob over your trap. This was incredibly frustrating, and this (along with a few other problems) made hunter CC decidedly sub-par for instances. Now, you can fire the trap directly onto the mob you're trapping and get down to business.

Traps themselves have been upgraded as well. Freezing Trap now has a duration of 60 seconds, but a cooldown of only 30. This gives a wide margin for retrapping. Combined with the launcher, hunter CC is more than capable than keeping a mob locked down for as long as necessary.

Cataclysm has brought us a lot of new pets as well. Dedicated dogs (instead of just wolves and hyenas), frisky foxes, buzzing beetles, and manic monkeys have been added, each with their own special abilities. And for the pet-collector, a new stabling and summoning system. Stables now hold 20 pets, which is more than enough for avid collectors of spirit beasts and other unique pets. We can't yet have one of every type, but for most hunters, this is more than enough. Call Pet has seen a change as well. No more cooldown on changing out pets. You pick 5 pets to be available to you at all times, with each slot getting its own summon spell. Just dismiss your current pet and summon the one you want. This makes switching for the task at hand incredibly simple.

Hunters are looking to be both very viable and still unique in terms of what we can do. I'm excited to see what else this expansion will bring us, and where future expansions will take us.