Legion Beta: BM Focus

***GIANT DISCLAIMER*** There's little way to know which abilities from the Legion datamining are being scrapped, which are just carbon copies of the ability from WoD, but will be changed, or which are specifically intended for Legion and are in their close-to-final state. With that said, the following may be completely wrong, and should be taken as the speculation that it is.

Dire Beast

With the Legion Class Preview blog that blizzard published right after blizzcon, we were told Dire Beast would be the only "active" focus regen for BM hunters, with that, the duration was lowered to 8 seconds, and the CD lowered to 10 seconds (compared to a 15 second duration with a 30 second CD currently in the live version of the game).  In addition, the focus return from each attack the Dire Beast does was doubled, from 2 focus per hit to 4 focus per hit.

Dire Beasts' melee hits roughly once every 2 seconds, modified by haste.  In MoP, a function was added in an attempt to get rid of "Haste Plateaus", which gives abilities like Dire Beast a chance for an additional hit, based on your haste. It's safe to assume we'll continue to see that function in Legion. (This is actually one of those times when it then becomes much easier to then predict the value of something like Dire Beast using a spreadsheet and expected values, instead of trying to simulate the value, in which case you have to add in an psuedo-random number generator, and things get fairly messy).

So to calculate Focus regen from Dire Beast, we'll use a base of 4 hits (1 ever 2 seconds for 8 seconds) yielding 4 focus each, on a 10 second CD. That gives us 1.6 focus/second (((8/2)*4)/10=1.6).  To add in haste, we'll change the 2 (from 2 seconds) to "2/(1+h)" where h is our percent haste.  For example, with 10% haste, we'd just use "8/(2/(1+0.1))*4)/10=1.76".  And hey, check this out, you know what's really cool (if you happen to be a giant nerd and find basic algebra exciting)? We can simplify all of that to find the same results just using the base regen of 1.6, and multiplying it by 1+h.  That is, "1.6*(1+.1) = 1.76", which we can use with whichever haste point we're at.

This is going to get much more complicated momentarily, but for now, we'll move on.

Chimaera Shot

Chimaera Shot -- A two-headed shot that hits your primary target and another nearby target, dealing 660% Nature or Frost damage to each target. Generates 10 Focus for every target hit.

It is a good thing there's nothing else worth using in the tier with Chimaera Shot, because as Focus-starved as BM is looking, having an ability this powerful that doesn't cost any focus, but instead gives you focus, is just going to be amazing.

For the sake of the little thought experiment I'm doing right now, I'm going to proceed as if we're on a single target fight, where we can only get 10 focus total, though when we get around to looking at real raid encounters, it will most definitely be worth looking at how we use Chim Shot to maximize targets.

That said, given that this talent will likely be at the very top of our priority list (with the possible exception of when we're above 95 focus and Kill Command is off CD).  So we'll be using it exactly every 9 seconds, giving us an average of 1.111 focus/second returned.

Focus Regen w/ Haste

As they currently exist in the very preliminary Legion data, hunters have a base focus regen of 10 focus/second.  With haste, we again simply multiply our base regen by 1+h, that is, with 10% haste: "10*(1+.1)".  And now you'll see why I was glad to be able to simply the Dire Beast haste formula to 1.6*(1+h). as A*x+B*x = (A+B)*x, we can now just use 11.6 as our base focus regen, and modify it by haste as per usual and then simply add the focus regen from Chim Shot (which doesn't change with haste).  For example, if we have 15% haste, we should have 14.45 focus/second.

Wild Call

Of course, it's not going to be that simple, as we have yet to account for Wild Call:

Wild Call -- Your Critical Strikes have a 30% chance to reset the CD of Dire Beast. 

This then becomes a fairly bizarre thing to try to calculate, as we need to know our APM (actions per minute) in order to determine our focus regen, but we have to know our focus regen in order to determine our APM.

So just to get a feel for the rotation, I'm going to start off with a few assumptions.  The first is that "Your Critical Strikes" means specifically the hunter, not our pet's crits. The second is that we'll be able to cast something every second.  That may not be true, but it's all we've got to go one so far, so I'll hope it is true.  The third assumption, is that Dire Beast does more damage (either through the DB hits, or through the buffs we get for having more pets out) than Cobra Shot (if this isn't the case, it will have some bizarre ramification for our rotation, as DB doesn't actually produce much focus), and it is fairly high on our APL (priority list), meaning if its CD is reset, we'll use it pretty much immediately.

Without taking into account the tier 90 talents (aMoC, Barrage and Volley), I'd expect to see .93 hunter hits per second.  That is: with 15% haste, we'll auto-shot once every 2.61 seconds (.38 per second); we have one Chim Shot every 9 seconds, or .11 per second; and then for Cobra Shots, assuming we're taking the Dire Stable talent (doubling the focus return of Dire Beast), we should have enough focus to cast 1 cobra shot every 2.315 seconds (on average), and still have enough to cast KC on cooldown. Add that all up to get .93 hits per second.

Our next task is to look at the likelihood of getting a crit on one of those hits.  Since I arbitrarily choose 15% haste, let's also arbitrarily say we have 15% crit from gear, giving us 25% total chance to critically strike.  Those critical strikes then have a 30% chance to reset the CD of DB.  That gives us an expected value of  .06975 Dire Beast resets per second, or on DB reset every 14.334 seconds.

It's worth noting here that that doesn't mean we get all of our regular Dire Beasts, plus an addition Dire Beast every 14.334 seconds. Because it's resetting the CD, it's also pushing back the CD of your next Dire Beast (so if this happens just a second before the end of your DB comes of CD, then you've gained almost nothing, but if it happens a second after you've cast DB, you basically get a double Dire Beast for that duration).  If  you average that out, you'll end up with roughly 40% more Dire Beasts from Wild Call, or about 8.37 Dire Beasts per minute, instead of the 6 you would get without any CD resets.

TL;DR - Total Focus Regen (again) 

To modify our original formula for Dire Beast Focus Regen, "(8/(2/(1+h))*4))/10", to account for averaging casting Dire Beast once every 7.167 seconds instead of once every 10 seconds, we just need to change that final "/10" to "/7.167".  With our 15% haste and 25% crit, that means we're looking at 2.567 focus/second from Dire Beast, or 5.135, if we're taking the Dire Stable talent.

So for BM hunters, with 15% haste and 25% crit (which seem like fairly reasonable first tier stats) and the Dire Stables talent, we can expect to see 16.75 focus regenerated per second, on average.

Artifact Talent Tree

While it may seem 2.56732 focus regenerated per second (without Dire Stables) doesn't seem like very much.  After all, Wild Call has a very, very small chance to reset DB, (even at 100% crit, you still only have a 30% chance of it happening).  However, I suspect the reason they had to make it so rare to reset, is our Artifact Weapon Talent Tree will be providing some crazy buffs to Dire Beast, as well as to our Focus in general. 

• Call of the Wild -- When Wild Call resets the Cooldown of your Dire Beast, the duration of all active Dire Beasts is increased by 8 seconds.
• Unleash the Hounds -- Dire Beast has a chance to summon an additional beast.
• Focus of the Titans -- Maximum Focus is increased by 40. 3 levels.

We don't yet know what the chance of some of these things happening will be, but that should help to get rid of a lot of the down time in the rotation, as we level up the Artifact Weapon. 

Throw Back Thursday - Making LFR fun

With the reintroduction of Valor, a lot of us have found ourselves queuing for LFR once again. I've been quite happy completely avoiding LFR all throughout Warlords of Draenor, up until this point, but blizzard really wanted some raiders to carry people through LFR, so they decided LFR would give valor, and raiding wouldn't.

Anyhow, a few years ago, Kripparrian gave us a guide on how to make LFR fun, and I think it still applies, to this day. Enjoy!

Legion Beta: Beast Mastery Hunter Talents and Abilities

Tier 15

• One with the Pack -- The chance for Wild Call to reset the CD of Dire Beast is increased by 10%.
• Way of the Cobra -- For every pet or guardian you have active, Cobra Shot deals and additional 5% damage. 
• Dire Stable -- Dire Beasts generates 4 extra focus when they attack.

Tier 30:

• Posthaste -- Disengage also frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 seconds. 
• Farstrider -- Disengage now has 2 charges.
• Narrow Escape -- Disengage also activates a web trap which immobilizes all targets within 8 yards for 8 seconds.

Tier 45: 

• Binding Shot -- Fires a magical projectile, tethering the enemy and any other enemies within 5 yards for 10 seconds, stunning them for 5 seconds if they move more than 5 yards from the arrow. 
• Wyvern Sting -- A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep, incapacitating them for 30 seconds. Any damage will cancel the effect.
• Intimidation -- Command your pet to intimidate the target, stunning it for 3 seconds.

Tier 60:

• Stomp! -- When your Dire Beasts charge in, they will stomp the ground, causing 400% physical damage to all nearby enemies.
• Exotic Munitions -- Allows you to modify your ranged weapon to use exotic munitions: Incendiary, Poisoned and Frozen.
• Chimaera Shot -- A two-headed shot that hits your primary target and another nearby target, dealing 660% Nature or Frost damage to each target. Generates 10 Focus for every target hit.
  Delirium's Note, there's no way this tier could possibly go live as is, with one talent so vastly superior to the others.  But that said, a chim shot that is not only free, but generates focus?  yes please.   

Tier 75:

• Big Game Hunter -- Increases the critical strike cahnce of your auto-attacks and cobra shots by 50% on targets who are above 80% health. 
• Bestial Fury -- Increase the damage bonus of Bestial Wrath by 20%.
• Blink Strikes -- Your pet's Basic Attacks deal 50% increased damage, can now be used from 30 yards away, and will instantly teleport them behind their target.  

Tier 90:

• A Murder of Crows -- Summons a flock of crows to attack your target over the next 15 seconds. If the target dies while under attack, A Murder of Crows' cooldown is reset.
• Barrage -- Rapidly fires a spray of shots for 3 seconds.
• Volley -- Continuously fire a volley of ammo at the target area, causing Arcane damage to enemy targets within 8 yards every second for 6 seconds.

Tier 100:

• Stampede -- Summon forth a herd of stampeding animals from the wilds around you that deal damage to your enemies.  3 min CD!
• Killer Cobra -- While Bestial Wrath is active, Cobra Shot has a 25% chance to reset the CD of Kill Command.
• Aspect of the Beast -- Kill Command is improved based on the talent choice of your pet. 

Other new Spells and Abilities

• Cobra Shot -- A quick shot that causes 125% physical damage. 
• Aspect of the Cheetah -- Increases your movement speed by 90% for 3 seconds, and then by 30% for another 9 seconds. 1 minute CD.
• Dire Beast -- Summons a powerful wild beast to attack your target for 8 seconds. Each time the beast deals damage, you will gain 4 focus. Summoning a beast reduces the remaining cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 15 seconds.
• Aspect of the Wild -- Increases the critical strike chance of all skills for you and your pet by 10%, and gain 10 Focus per second for 10 seconds. 
• Go for the Throat -- Your Auto-shot Critical Strikes cause your pet to generate 15 Focus. 
• Wild Call -- Your Critical Strikes have a 30% chance to reset the CD of Dire Beast. 
• Exhilaration -- Now Baseline!  Instantly heal your hunter for 30% and your pet for 100% of max health.

PvP Talent Tree:

The BM PvP Talent Tree is by far the least complete, with only two of the 6 spec specific talents available.

Column 1 Talents:

• Gladiator's Medallion - Honor Level 1 - Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character
• Train of Thought - Honor Level 2 - Damage increased by 15%. Being attacked will cancel this effect for 8 seconds.
• Dragonscale Armor - Honor Level 4 - Magical periodic damage effects deal 20% less damage to you.
• Viper Sting - Honor Level 6 - Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their healing done by 30% for 12 seconds. Viper Sting is removed if the target casts a non-instant cast healing spell.
• Thick Hide - Honor Level 8 - Unknown.

Column 2 Talents

• Adaptation - Honor Level 13 - All full loss of control effects with a duration of 5 seconds or longer will be removed shortly after being applied.  This effect has a 1.5 minute ICD.
• Mind Quickness - Honor Level 16 - Increases haste by 15%.
• Catlike Reflexes - Honor level 19 - Critical Melee strikes grant you 30% dodge for 4 seconds.
• Scorpid Sting - Honor Level 22- Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their physical Critical Strike Chance by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Sharpened Claws - Honor Level 25 - Each attack from your Dire Beasts deeply claw at the target, causing the target to bleed for 4 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times. 

Column 3 Talents

• Relentless - Honor Level 31 - Duration of incoming CC effects reduced by 25%.
• Initiation - Honor Level 34 - Critical chance increased by 30% on targets at or above 80% health.
• Survival Tactics - Honor Level 37 - Feign Death removes all harmful magical effects, and reduces damage taken by 100% for 1.5 seconds.  
• Spider Sting - Honor Level 40 - Stings the target with potent spider venom, causing their next offensive spell cast to silence the target for 5 seconds.

Legion Beta: Marksmanship Hunter Talents and Abilities

Tier 15

• Black Arrow -- Fires a Black Arrow at the target doing damage over time. 
• Momentum --When any of your attacks cause a critical striked there is a chance the cooldown of disengage will be reduced by 10%. 
• True Aim -- For every successive Arcane, Marked or Aimed Shot used to attack the same target, those shots deal 2% more damage to the target, stacking up to 20 times, can only affect one target at a time.  Delirium's Note: I really don't like this talent. While the top hunters in the world will of course sacrifice their own DPS to benefit their raid, most will not.  Talents and our rotation in general should reward us for playing well, not for tunneling on the boss the whole fight.

Tier 30:

• Posthaste -- Disengage also frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 seconds. 
• Farstrider -- Disengage now has 2 charges.
• Narrow Escape -- Disengage also activates a web trap which immobilizes all targets within 8 yards for 8 seconds.

Tier 45: 

• Binding Shot -- Fires a magical projectile, tethering the enemy and any other enemies within 5 yards for 10 seconds, stunning them for 5 seconds if they move more than 5 yards from the arrow. 
• Wyvern Sting -- A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep, incapacitating them for 30 seconds. Any damage will cancel the effect.
• Camouflage -- You blend into the surroundings and gain stealth for 1 minute. While camouflaged, you will heal for 2% every 1 seconds. The first ranged attack dealt while camouflaged will deal 10% extra damage.

Tier 60:

• Piercing Shots -- Your critical strikes with Arcane Shot, Marked Shot and Aimed Shot cause the target to bleed for an additional 30% of the initial damage over 8 seconds. 
• Exotic Munitions -- Allows you to modify your ranged weapon to use exotic munitions: Incendiary, Poisoned and Frozen.
• Broadside -- Aimed Shot will now also hit all Vulnerable targets for 100% physical damage.

Tier 75:

• Light 'Em Up -- Targets affected by your Flare take extra damage from all of your attacks.
• Steady Focus -- Using Arcane Shot twice in a row increases your Focus Regeneration by 50% for 10 seconds. 
• Head Shot -- A powerful shot which deals physical damage to the target and all a 25% as much damage to all enemies between you and the target.

Tier 90:

• A Murder of Crows -- Summons a flock of crows to attack your target over the next 15 seconds. If the target dies while under attack, A Murder of Crows' cooldown is reset.
• Barrage -- Rapidly fires a spray of shots for 3 seconds.
• Volley -- Continuously fire a volley of ammo at the target area, causing Arcane damage to enemy targets within 8 yards every second for 6 seconds.

Tier 100:

• Dark Ranger -- Your ranged attacks and attacks that deal damage over time now have a chance to summon a Dark Minion. The Dark Minion will attack your current target. 
• Kill Flip -- For 8 seconds after Disengaging, you deal 50% more damage.
• Lock and Load -- Attach an explosive charge to Aimed Shot, dealing additional Fire damage to the target and all enemies within 4 yards.  Your ranged auto attacks have a 5% chance to trigger lock and load, causing your next two Aimed Shots to cost no Focus and be instant. 

Other new Spells and Abilities

• Aspect of the Cheetah -- Increases your movement speed by 90% for 3 seconds, and then by 30% for another 9 seconds. 1 minute CD.
• Arcane Shot -- A quick shot that causes 125% Arcane damage and generates 5 focus.
• Aimed Shot -- A powerful Aimed Shot that deals 435% physical damage. Cannot be cast while moving.
• Marked Shot -- Rapidly fires a shot at up to 3 targets affected by Hunter's Mark.  Usable while moving. Also exposes Vulnerabilities in the target, snaring them by 15% and increasing Aimed Shot damage done to the target by 25%. Lasts 10 seconds and stacks up to 3 times.  
• Seek Vulnerabilities -- Targets hit by your Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot have a chance to be marked with Hunter's Mark.
• Bursting Shot -- Fire an explosion of bolts that strikes all enemies in front of y ou, knocking them back and disorienting them, and dealing 40% physical damage. 
• Exhilaration -- Now Baseline!  Instantly heal your hunter for 30% and your pet for 100% of max health.
• True Shot -- Increases Haste by 40%, and increases chance for targets to be marked by 100% for 15 seconds.
• Aspect of the Turtle -- You deflect all attacks and take 30% less damage for 8 seconds, but you cannot attack.

PvP Talent Tree:

MM hasn't really been viable for PvP in the last couple of seasons.  With the huge changes to how honor is working in legion, along with the revamping of the specs, so far, at least, MM is looking like a fun PvP spec, giving hunters and option for a very high risk, high reward playstyle.  I'm really excited to take it into some BGs and Arenas, if I ever make it into the Legion Alpha/Beta.

Column 1 Talents:

• Gladiator's Medallion - Honor Level 1 - Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character
• Train of Thought - Honor Level 2 - Damage increased by 15%. Being attacked will cancel this effect for 8 seconds.
• Dragonscale Armor - Honor Level 4 - Magical periodic damage effects deal 20% less damage to you.
• Viper Sting - Honor Level 6 - Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their healing done by 30% for 12 seconds. Viper Sting is removed if the target casts a non-instant cast healing spell.
• Master Marksman - Honor Level 8 -Your shots deal 20% increased damage to targets further than 30 yards away from you. 
• Improved Trueshot - Honor Level 10 - Reduces the CD of Trueshot by 30 seconds, and restores 100% focus.

Column 2 Talents

• Adaptation - Honor Level 13 - All full loss of control effects with a duration of 5 seconds or longer will be removed shortly after being applied.  This effect has a 1.5 minute ICD.
• Mind Quickness - Honor Level 16 - Increases haste by 15%.
• Catlike Reflexes - Honor level 19 - Critical Melee strikes grant you 30% dodge for 4 seconds.
• Scorpid Sting - Honor Level 22- Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their physical Critical Strike Chance by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Hawk Eye - Honor Level 25 - Increases the range of all your shots by 5 yards, and increases their damage by 5%.
• Spray and Pray - Honor Level 28 - Dealing damage with Bursting Shot now grants Bombardment. Bombardment now also reduces the GCD of Multi-Shot by .3 seconds.

Column 3 Talents

• Relentless - Honor Level 31 - Duration of incoming CC effects reduced by 25%.
• Initiation - Honor Level 34 - Critical chance increased by 30% on targets at or above 80% health.
• Survival Tactics - Honor Level 37 - Feign Death removes all harmful magical effects, and reduces damage taken by 100% for 1.5 seconds.  
• Spider Sting - Honor Level 40 - Stings the target with potent spider venom, causing their next offensive spell cast to silence the target for 5 seconds.
• High Value Target - Honor Level 43 - Increases the Critical strike chance of your shots by 30% on targets with a higher maximum health than you.  
• Sniper Shot - Honor Level 46 - Take a Sniper's stance, firing a well-aimed shot dealing 820% physical damage. Increases the range of all shots by 40% for 6 seconds. 

Legion Beta: Survival Hunter Talents and Abilities

As the datamining for the current Legion build 20740 is for the most part complete, we have a great picture of hunter talents and spells.  Usual disclaimer, all of this is in the very very very early stages of development and may not exist in the game when it goes live, or may not even exist now, as a couple different devs have mentioned some of these ideas have already been scrapped.  That doesn't mean they aren't fun to look at / think about, though.

Also, I'd like to give a huge thanks to the folks at wowhead.com and mmo-champion.com for all their work datamining over the weekend.

Survival Talents:

Tier 15:

• Animal Instincts -- When you attack with Flanking Strike, you gain the instincts of your pet, providing you with a random combat enhancement.
• Improved Traps -- Reduce the CD of all traps by 15 seconds
• Way of the Mok'Nathal -- Attacking with Raptor Strike grants you a stack of Mok'Nathal Tactics, increasing your attack power by 5% for 8 seconds. Stacks 5 times.
  Delirium's note:  OMG we get to be REXXAR!!!!!!  Just like MM has the sylvanas talents, it looks like SV is getting Rexxar talents, with this, and Throwing Axes to make up for not dual wielding axes. 

Tier 30:

• Posthaste -- Disengage also frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 seconds. 
• Farstrider -- Disengage now has 2 charges.
• Dash -- The duration of Aspect of the Cheetah is increased by 3 seconds.

Tier 45:

• Caltrops -- Scatter Caltrops on an area. Enemies who step on a caltrop will take Physical damage, and be slowed by 50% for 10 sec. Replaces Tar Trap.
• Steel Trap -- Hurl a Steel Trap to the target location that immobilizes the first enemy that approaches for 8 seconds and deels 1000%AP bleed damage over 20 seconds. Damage from other sources may break the immobilization effect.  
• Ranger's Net -- Hurl a net at your enemy, reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Replaces Wing Clip.

Tier 60:

• Sticky Bomb -- Hurl a sticky bomb at your target which sticks to them, and explodes after 3 seconds, dealing damage to nearby enemies and knocking them down.
• Camouflage -- You and your pet blend into the surroundings and gain stealth for 1 min. While Camouflaged, you will heal for 2% every 1 seconds. The first attack dealt while camouflaged will deal 10% extra damage.
• Throwing Axes -- Toss 3 Axes at your enemy target, dealing 60%AP physical damage for each Axe. 

Tier 75:

• Unkown -- Currently listed as Thrill of the Hunt, which only affects abilities SV hunters do not have.
• Dragonsfire Trap -- Hurl a dragonsfire trap to the target location that explodes, setting the enemy aflame, inflicting fire damage over 8 seconds and sending it into a state of panic. While the target is affected, the flames periodically scordch its nearby Allies as well. Replaces Explosive Trap.
• Snake Hunter -- Instantly grants you 3 charges of Mongoose Bite. 

Tier 90:

• Butchery -- Laceration will now spread to all targets hit by Carve.
• Mortal Wounds -- When your Laceration periodic deals damage, there's a chance youwill gain a charge of Mongoose Bite.  
• Serpent Sting -- Targets hit by your Raptor Strike and Carve are also afflicted with Serpent Sting, dealing 362.5% AP as Nature Damage over 15 seconds.

Tier 100: 

• Sentry Turret -- Summons a Sentry Turret for 15 seconds that shoots at nearby enemies, dealing Fire Damge.
• Expert Trapper -- All traps are improved:
• When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim and all nearby enemies' movement speed is reduced by 50% for 4 seconds. 
• The damage dealt by the fire left on the ground after explosive trap is increased by XX per second.
• Enemies moving through the tar of Tar Trap have a chance to be rooted in place for 4 seconds.
• When your Steel Trap is triggered, the target will also take XX physical damage.
• The Dragonsfire of Dragonsfire Trap now spreads to nearby enemies, causing them to burn and panic as well.
• Unknown -- Currently listed as Aspect of the Beast, which only affects abilities SV hunters do not have.

Other new Spells and Abilities

• Aspect of the Cheetah -- Increases your movement speed by 90% for 3 seconds, and then by 30% for another 9 seconds. 1 minute CD.
• Flanking Strike -- You and your pet attack the target simultaneously. If the target is attacking you,  your pet's attack deals 50% increased damage and threat. If not, your attack will deal 50% increased damage.
• Raptor Strike -- A vicious slash, dealing 150% Physical Damage.
• Wing Clip -- Maims the target, reducing their movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Mongoose Bite -- A brutal Attack, attempting to sever the enemy's limbs, dealing 350% Physical Damage.  Each consecutive Mongoose bite dealt within 3.5 seconds of the last will deal 50% increased damage, stacking up to 6 times. 
• Hatchet Toss -- Toss a hatchet at an enemy target, dealing 10%AP as physical damage.
• Harpoon -- Hurl a harpoon at your target and pull yourself toward them, rooting them in place for 3 seconds.
• Muzzle -- Interrupts spellcasting, preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 3 seconds.
• Exhilaration -- Now Baseline!  Instantly heal your hunter for 30% and your pet for 100% of max health.
• Laceration -- Tear a wound in the target, dealing 1159.2% AP over 12 seconds.
• Aspect of the Eagle -- Increases the Critical Strike chance of all skills for you and your pet by 10%, and increases your chance to gain charges of Mongoose Bite by 100% for 10 seconds. 
• Aspect of the Turtle -- You deflect all attacks and take 30% less damage for 8 seconds, but you cannot attack.
• Carve -- A sweeping attack that strikes all enemies in front of you for 90% Physical Damage.
• Tar Trap -- Hurl a tar trap to the target location that creates a pool of tar around itself for 30 seconds when the first enemy approaches it. All enemies within 10 yards will be slowed by 50% while int he area of effect.

Mastery: Hunting Companion -- Your pet's attacks have a 4% chance to grant an additional charge of Mongoose Bite.

PvP Talent Tree:

In Legion, all specs will have a separate PvP-specific Talent Tree. Each Talent is unlockable with various PvP achievements.  Remember, you'll unlock these by columns based on Honor Levels, not by tier; so you can quickly get the first talent from each tier, but won't have any choices until you start unlocking the second column, and then the third.  In this case, Master's Call is the final talent unlocked, which is just weird, as it's been a baseline talent for so long.

Column 1 Talents:

• Gladiator's Medallion - Honor Level 1 - Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character
• Train of Thought - Honor Level 2 - Damage increased by 15%. Being attacked will cancel this effect for 8 seconds.
• Dragonscale Armor - Honor Level 4 - Magical periodic damage effects deal 20% less damage to you.
• Viper Sting - Honor Level 6 - Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their healing done by 30% for 12 seconds. Viper Sting is removed if the target casts a non-instant cast healing spell.
• Master of the Wilds - Honor Level 8 - Dealing damage with Mongoose Bite reduces the remaining cooldown of your traps by 3 seconds.
• Sticky Tar - Honor Level 10 - Unknown

Column 2 Talents

• Adaptation - Honor Level 13 - All full loss of control effects with a duration of 5 seconds or longer will be removed shortly after being applied.  This effect has a 1.5 minute ICD.
• Mind Quickness - Honor Level 16 - Increases haste by 15%.
• Catlike Reflexes - Honor level 19 - Critical Melee strikes grant you 30% dodge for 4 seconds.
• Scorpid Sting - Honor Level 22- Your Raptor Strike stings the target, reducing their physical Critical Strike Chance by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Bait and Switch - Honor Level 25 - Harpoon causes your next disengage used within 6 seconds to not incur a cooldown.
• Diamond Ice - Honor Level 28 - Victims of Freezing Trap can no longer be damaged or healed. Feezing Trap is now undispellable, but has a 6 sec duration.

Column 3 Talents

• Relentless - Honor Level 31 - Duration of incoming CC effects reduced by 25%.
• Initiation - Honor Level 34 - Critical chance increased by 30% on targets at or above 80% health.
• Survival Tactics - Honor Level 37 - Feign Death removes all harmful magical effects, and reduces damage taken by 100% for 1.5 seconds.  Delirium's Note: Despite being a ridiculously cool talent, this is unfortunately another tool that means hunters are gonna get the boring job in RBGs...
• Spider Sting - Honor Level 40 - Stings the target with potent spider venom, causing their next offensive spell cast to silence the target for 5 seconds.
• Hunting Pack - Honor Level 43 - Aspect of the Cheetah also causes all allies within 15 yards to gain 90% movement speed for 3 seconds.
• Master's Call - Honor Level 46 - Your pet removes all root and movement impairing effects from itself and its target, and grants immunity to all such effects for 4 seconds.  

Legion Beta Data Speculating

Last night brought us our first Legion beta build, and shortly after our first look at datamining from that build.  There's really very little to garner from there, but I wanted to go over a few highlights. Just in case anyone isn't already aware, heed Sparkle Dragon's warning:

Please remember everyone: Datamining is just that. It's not final, and easily misunderstood. MANY changes yet to do. https://t.co/WRatfxRvSS

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) November 20, 2015

First off, Sylvanas Sylvanas Sylvanas!  She's looking more and more to be a huge part of this expansion, and I'm fairly worried that means they're going to kill her off. With the legion trailer we saw she's finally no longer just a pale blue barbie doll, but instead has some character to her model.  In this datamined version it looks like she's somewhere in between the trailer version and the old in game version.  At least she's finally wearing more than just a bikini.  I mean, I don't wanna tell anyone what they should or shouldn't wear, and I'd assume being undead she never gets cold, but I, at least, find her a lot more believable like this (well, as believable as an elven ranger raised from the dead by banshees can ever be).

Not to mention:

Saw someone at petopia point out that the Hunter tier gear icons look very Sylvanas inspired. I agree! pic.twitter.com/EDx9rFhHeQ

— Bendak (@BendakWoW) November 20, 2015

Pitch!  I feel like pitch is kind of a mainstay in fantasy RPGs, so I'm glad to see it make an appearance for SV hunters in the form of the Tar Trap.  Though I have no evidence that this is the case, I am assuming this will be for Melee SV hunters what Conc Shot is for MM and BM (and the old SV).  On a side note, this does nothing to assuage my fears for SV in PvP.  Traps have always been a much more difficult to land than any other class's CC. Perhaps this will seem more useful after getting to play the spec, though.

Skinning from 40 yards away. When Blizzard announced that professions would no longer have direct combat abilities, I dropped engineering on my main hunter and picked up skinning again.  I feel like Skinning/Leatherworking just makes sense for hunters.  Little did I know, they would basically remove skinning from the game, as all of your leather would be coming from the Garrison's Barn.  Regardless, I'm excited to be a skinner again.  It's fun to do while leveling, and some of the perks they're adding will make skinning a little more worth your while.  The perks include things like Butchering, which lets you harvest meat while skinning, or Gutting, which gives you a chance to find various items when skinning.  The oddest of the perks, however, is Mother's Skinning Knife, which let's you skin a kill from  up to 40 yards away.  This may sound like a nice perk, but unless you can also now loot kills from 40 yards away, it will have no benefit, as you'll still have to loot before you can skin something.

There's one datamined icon that seems unmistakably Hunter.  It's name is "ability_pvp_initiation".  This may mean it's part of the new PvP talent tree. Ok, I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel here for hunter news...

Drum Circle. The last little bit of info I wanted to mention was a Drum Circle in Highmountain.  Highmountain, as you all know, is home to an ancient Tauren tribe, as well as the Hunter Class Hall.  And it appears there are now achievements for participating in this drum circle.  In addition, there's an archaeology project called the "Hunter's Drum".  I have no idea what any of this really means, but irl, I dabble a bit in the percussive arts, so I'm excited to see what they do with it.

Of course, the best part of all this news is that it likely means Legion Beta is fast approaching.  I remain cautiously optimistic for this expansion, and of course can hardly contain my excitement to have more hunter math to do!

Thrill of the Spreadsheet: Marks Focus in Legion

When looking through the Legion spec reviews I posted last week, I noticed I put a lot of thought into the Survival focus mechanics, and very little into how focus would work for BM or MM.  For BM, we don't really know that much, as it's clear from the WarcraftDevs twitter and Andrew Chamber's reddit responses, that they're still fairly undecided with how Dire Beast will work, and there's talk of focus generating talents, if need be. For Marks, however, we already have a good bit of info regarding focus and its regeneration.

**WARNING**  Everything I'm about to say is based on my interpretation of a fairly limited preview of the Hunter class in Legion. While I will not write anything intentionally misleading, any/all of it could change before the Legion Beta even comes out.

MM Focus Basics

From what we know so far, we have two ways of gaining focus as MM hunters in Legion. Our baseline regen that will give us 10 focus per second (modified by haste), and Arcane Shot, which will generate 5 focus per GCD.  From what we know so far, the vast majority of our focus will be pumped into Aimed Shot, costing 50 focus. In addition, we'll be spending focus on Marked Shot, a channeled ability with a 30 focus cost, and most likely some Talents (Black Arrow, for example).  

Let's say, just to get an idea of our rotation, that we have 10% haste, giving us 11 Focus returned each second and a 1.36 second cast time on Aimed Shot.  If our rotation consisted only of casting the absolute most Aimed Shots possible (it won't be, but that makes a good starting place to analyze the rotation) after the opener, we'd get into a pattern of using 2 Arcanes between each Aimed Shot, occasionally needing 3 Arcanes.  It would look something like this:

Timestamp	Focus	Ability	Cast time	Focus Cost	Foc Balance
0.00	120	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	85.00
1.36	85.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	50.00
2.73	50.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	66.00
3.73	66.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	31.00
5.09	31.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	47.00
6.09	47.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	63.00
7.09	63.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	28.00
8.45	28.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	44.00
9.45	44.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	60.00
10.45	60.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	25.00
11.82	25.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	41.00
12.82	41.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	57.00
13.82	57.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	22.00
15.18	22.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	38.00
16.18	38.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	54.00
17.18	54.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	19.00
18.55	19.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	35.00
19.55	35.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	51.00
20.55	51.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	16.00
21.91	16.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	32.00
22.91	32.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	48.00
23.91	48.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	64.00
24.91	64.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	29.00

Adding in Marked Shot

Next, we can add in our Marked Shot. While we did get some info about Marked Shot, we don't have any idea how long of a channel it is yet, or more importantly, how long we have to channel it to get the 10 sec buff on our Aimed Shot.  The text we have says "Rapidly fires a shot at up to 3 targets..." to me, that does not sound like our current Barrage talent; the Barrage tooltip reads "Rapidly fires a spray of shots...".  Assuming the singular "shot" from the Marked Shot description is intentional, I think it's fairly safe to assume (as safe as it is to assume anything this early) that we'll have to cast it multiple times to get the 3 stacks of buffed Aimed Shot.  

For this little experiment I'm doing in my brain. I'm going to assume a 1 second channel, since it says "Rapidly". And because it only works with targets that have Hunter's Mark on them, and both Marked Shot and Aimed Shot are listed as "Strong Physical Damage" (all of the abilities were divided into weak, moderate or strong damage), I'll be working under the hypothesis that the opening rotation (before taking any talents into account) should consist of casting Aimed/Arcane Shots until Hunters Mark pops up, then casting Marked Shot until you have 3 stacks of the Aimed Shot buff. After that, we should settle into a rotation of casting as many Aimed Shots as possible, with Arcane to build focus, while always saving enough focus to use Marked Shot again before the buff runs out (so you don't have to triple cast it to get the 3 stacks back up).    Again, it is very possible that I've misunderstood what the devs were trying to describe about the spec, but based on the information we have, I feel pretty good about this as the base rotation for Marks.  It might look a little something like this:

Timestamp	Focus	Ability	Cast time	Foc Cost	Foc Bal.	MSStack
0.00	120	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	85.00	0
1.36	85.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	50.00	0
2.73	50.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	66.00	0
3.73	66.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	47.00	1
4.73	47.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	28.00	2
5.73	28.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	44.00	2
6.73	44.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	25.00	3
7.73	25.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	41.00	3
8.73	41.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	57.00	3
9.73	57.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	22.00	3
11.09	22.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	38.00	3
12.09	38.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	54.00	3
13.09	54.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	19.00	3
14.45	19.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	35.00	3
15.45	35.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	16.00	3
16.45	16.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	32.00	3
17.45	32.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	48.00	3
18.45	48.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	64.00	3
19.45	64.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	29.00	3
20.82	29.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	45.00	3
21.82	45.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	61.00	3
22.82	61.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	26.00	3
24.18	26.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	42.00	3
25.18	42.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	23.00	3
26.18	23.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	39.00	3
27.18	39.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	55.00	3
28.18	55.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	20.00	3
29.55	20.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	36.00	3
30.55	36.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	52.00	3
31.55	52.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	17.00	3
32.91	17.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	33.00	3
33.91	33.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	14.00	3
34.91	14.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	30.00	3
35.91	30.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	46.00	3
36.91	46.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	62.00	3
37.91	62.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	27.00	3
39.27	27.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	43.00	3
40.27	43.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	59.00	3
41.27	59.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	24.00	3
42.64	24.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	40.00	3
43.64	40.00	*Marked Shot	1	30	21.00	3
44.64	21.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	37.00	3
45.64	37.00	Arcane Shot	1	0	53.00	3
46.64	53.00	Aimed Shot	1.36	50	18.00	3

Here we're averaging 13-14 Aimed Shots per minute, which is of course significantly lower than when we had just Arcane and Aimed, but the extra 75% on those Aimed Shots will more than make up for it (not to mention that Marked Shot is listed as a strong damage ability).  

Note, for anyone interested, that because we don't yet know what the percent chance to proc Hunter's Mark is, I didn't try to include any expected value procs for it.  I am assuming that on a single target fight, after it procs, it will stay refreshed so long as you are casting a reasonable number of Arcane/Aimed Shots. 

I'm really excited to get more information from the beta to see if I'm guessing the priority correctly, and to get a look at some of the talents and how they'll fit in here.  This is obviously a fairly dry rotation with just these three buttons; even if you take the Lock and Load talent from the Legion Class Preview, you'd only be looking at variation due to a proc about once a minute.  

Here's hoping the Talents fix all of that, though! Have I mentioned lately how excited I am for Sylvanas talents!?

Thrill of the Spreadsheet: Mongoose Bite Charges

I haven't had too much content to dissect lately, so I haven't had much chance to write any Thrill of the Spreadsheet posts.  Fortunately (or not, depending on whether you like these or not), with three new hunter specs, there's a lot to get ready for legion.

At this point, I doubt there are more than a handful of us who are keeping DPS spreadsheets these days. But even if you're not putting together a full blown dps-spreadsheet, there are some small calculations that might be helpful, just while you're thinking about how you might approach a brand new spec. This morning I was looking at the charges of Mongoose Bite with Jademcian, and decided I wanted to make a little calculator for Mongoose Bite charges in the Survival Rotation.

If you haven't read the Legion Hunter Preview yet, Survival's new Mastery, Hunting Companion, increases how often you get charges of Mongoose Bite.  Every time your pet attacks, you have a percent chance (whatever percent your mastery is) to get an additional charge of Mongoose Bite.  In addition to the mastery, you also get 1 charge every 10 seconds, baseline.

So, for anyone who's interested, here's what I threw together.

Mastery Needs

Haste	5%	10%	15%	20%
Chances/sec	1.025	1.05	1.075	1.1
Mastery needed	22.76%	22.22%	21.71%	21.21%

This one is just a basic calculator for how much mastery you need in order to have an expected value of 1 charge every 3 seconds, at fixed values of haste.  The first row, obviously, is just some various haste percentages.

The second row represents how many hits per second your pet should average. This is based on having Claw, Smack or Bite once every 3 seconds, Flanking Strike once every 6 seconds, and your pet's auto-attack once every 2 seconds (which is the only ability affected by haste). To calculate these, I took how many times they occur every six seconds (I only used six because it's the longest CD and that's how I like to think, that number is arbitrary though, you could start by taking how often they occur every 1 second, or every 15, whatever): Flanking Strike once, Bite/Smack/Claw twice. For the auto-attack, you use 6/(2/(1+h)) where h is your haste percentage, 2 is the base occurrence rate. Take the sum and divide by 6 to get your average hits per second, which happens to also be how many "chances" or "rolls" you get per second based on your mastery percent to see if you get a charge of Mongoose Bite.

The third row, then, takes how many chances per second you average, and uses that to calculate the mastery percentage you need to have an expected value of 1 Mongoose Bite charge every 3 seconds (which is roughly what you need to keep the CMB buff up 100% of the time).  To do this, we first want to know how many we need from Hunting Companion, since we already get one charge every 10 seconds baseline.  1 charge per 10 seconds happens to average .3 charges every 3 seconds (showing off my made dividing skills here), so we need to average .7 charges per 3 seconds from Hunting Companion in order to make our goal of 1 charge per 3 seconds. From there we take our .7 (charges we need to average) and divide it by the solution from row two multiplied by 3 (that is, how many chances per second we had, multiplied by 3 seconds).  And that gives us our mastery needed to average 1 charge returned every 3 seconds.

If you'd like to recreate the calculator on your own, you can use this guide:

B2 - "Haste"
B3 - "Chances/sec"
B4 - "Mastery needed"
C2 - [insert the percent haste you want to test]
C3 - "=(3+(6/(2/(1+C1))))/6"
C4 - "=0.7/(C3*3)

Drawing Conclusions

**Disclaimer** The value of this calculator is not in determining how your rotation should look, or what stat percentages you should have. The point is just to get a feel for how each stat will be affecting our rotation.

In this case we see haste has very little effect on how many Mongoose Bite charges we get, though this will help add a little bit of value to the stat, which would otherwise only affect, as far as we know, the damage from Polearm auto-attacks and pet auto-attacks.

It's also worth noting that the numbers this calculator gives you is based on averages, on the expected value of a statistical chance.  As with anything based on pseudo-random number generators, there are no guarantees.  As such, once we get more information about the spec, how much damage everything does and what the talents are, we may determine we need Mongoose Bite Charges much more often in order to be reliable.  Even if you have enough Mastery and Haste to average a charge every 3 seconds, that doesn't mean you'll necessarily get it.  You might get 6 procs in 6 seconds, and then none for 20 seconds.

Again, the goal of this is simply to start getting a feel for how these particular stats will affect this one aspect of our rotation.

Flipping It Around: Calculating Expected Value

If instead of looking at what stats we'll need to achieve a specific Expected Value, we instead want to reverse the calculator, and see what the expected value for MB Charges will be based on whatever Mastery and Haste we already have.  That might look something like this:

Mastery	18.00%
Haste	5.00%
Chances/sec	1.025
Sec/Charge	3.514938

In this calculator you can just put in  your haste and mastery, then it'll tell you how many times, on average, your pet will attack per second, and then how often you can expect to get a new Mongoose Bite Charge.  

The chances/sec row is the same as it is in the mastery calculator.  The fourth row, however, we're looking out from a little bit different angle.  All you need is your chances/sec multiplied by your mastery (which gives you the expected value of charges you'll get per second from Hunting Companion) and add the number of charges you get per second from the baseline ability (0.1).  I then inverted that number, because it seems more useful, to me, to think about how often I'll get a proc (in the example above, about every 3.5 seconds on average) rather than how many procs per second I'll get (which in the example above would have been 0.2845 charges per second).

If you'd like to recreate this so you can put in whatever mastery and haste you'd like to play with, you can use this:

B2 - "Mastery"
B3 - "Haste"
B4 - "Chances/Sec"
B5 - "Sec/Charge"
C2 - [Input mastery]

C3 - [Input haste]

C4 - "=(3+(6/(2/(1+C3))))/6"

C5 - "=C2*C4+0.1"

Anyhow, if it's something you're interested in, have fun playing with the numbers!

Gnome Hunters!

@Muffinus #legion You can thank Muffinus and the class team for their years of ceaseless dedication to gnomes! pic.twitter.com/Y7q2aBoRYn

— Alex Afrasiabi (@Abrosiabi) November 13, 2015

The world just exploded! In breaking news, gnomes are no longer relegated to support classes. Welcome to the glory of the hunter class, gnomes.  I hope you can find a pet that won't eat you!

Legion Class Preview: Marksmanship

Marksmen, too, shroud themselves in the perils of the untamed wilds, perfecting the use of weapons that are deadliest from great range. They’ve maintained little interest, however, in gaining the loyalty of the many beasts inhabiting these crude landscapes. Instead, the marksman blends into the surrounding environment, surveying behavior of all manner of predator and gleaning deadly methods for stalking their own prey. A sniper in hiding, the marksman unleashes arrows and bullets with deadly precision, exposing the weakness in whoever—or whatever—passes through their crosshairs.

With Marksmanship, we've reached the last of my posts specific to hunter specializations in the Legion Class Previews.  I have very mixed feelings about the spec going forward, especially about the "fantasy" of Marks: for as much as I hate the idea of any hunter class being petless, I have to admit I'm fairly excited about Sylvanas's influence on the new spec. So let's just dive in there.

Elven Ranger Class Fantasy

I think it's time to give up on the name "marksmanship".  Some of the support classes are having their spec names changed (combat rogue is now outlaw?), and none would be more appropriate than with Marks. For one, MM is the only gendered spec name in all of WoW. From a class fantasy perspective, when most people hear Marksmanship, they think "sniper" (his is compounded with talents like Sniper Training, of course).  The image for most, it seems, is of a soldier, hiding behind cover and picking off targets. While that is a fine idea for a spec, I think that should be a warrior spec, not a hunter spec.  I think this confusion is why, ever since the announcement at Gamescom, we've continued to see thread after thread on the forums claiming BM should have a bow, and Marks should have a gun.  

So my proposal is that we change the spec name to "Ranger".  I suppose there will still be some confusion, as in most RPGs, ranger is a hunter-type class that fights from range or melee (as hunters could originally in WoW). For the most part, however, the wow idea of a ranger is well established through the two elvish races.  The the Farstriders and Windrunners, Shandris Feathermoon and even  Tyrande Whisperwind seem to be the models for the new Marks; why not go all the way and just call the class Rangers.  There will be no more confusion as to why they received a bow artifact, and will feel less the need to compare the spec to the old Marks.  

Furthermore, Marksmanship has always felt like the least magical of the 3 hunter specs.  Most of the prominent Rangers in game, however, have some magical abilities also, with Tyrande and Sylvanas obviously having huge amounts of magic.  This seems to be the direction Blizzard is going with Marks: the only spec that will have Arcane Shot, and getting Black Arrow as a talent.  These magic abilities don't fit with the idea of a Marksman/Sniper fantasy, but have well established places in the Ranger lore of Warcraft.

Sylvanas Talents - Long Live the Banshee Queen

I've always had an affinity toward Sylvanas Windrunner. I remember when the WHU army was able to kill every faction leader, including Garrosh, except for Sylvanas; they said it was because of the difficulty organizing everyone and getting lost in undercity, but I feel pretty certain it was that even those Dwarven hunters held a special allegiance to the Dark Lady, and just couldn't bring themselves to kill her.  Well guess what we get:

They currently have a "Dark Ranger" talent which has a chance to summon an undead minion. That minion can also tank. https://t.co/6eNFhbcFBx

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) November 10, 2015

Perhaps the most exciting part of the Marksmanship changes is Blizzard seems to be giving us, through talents, the option of a Sylvanas build.  With Black Arrow and Dark Ranger, this could be a really cool part of the Ranger fantasy for some people.  I know that I, even if those talents turn out to be sub-optimal, will be leveling a Belf hunter, searching out a Sylvanas transmog and taking all the Sylvanas talents on that character, just for funsies.

Playstyle  

Focus Regen, Dump and Signature Abilities

I really love the current (live) iteration of Chim Shot, when I see that blue and green streak come out I get really excited, knowing how much damage I'm about to do.  Even so, I do like the idea of having a spec with no traditional "signature ability" (as we've had for the last few xpacs in Explosive Shot, Chimaera Shot and Kill Command) on a shortish CD, which is what was presented in the Legion Preview blog: Arcane Shot to build focus, and Aimed Shot to dump it, no "signature ability" to line everything up around. 

And I suppose that will be the biggest change to our "rotation". Not having any rotational CDs will free us from the 6 or 9 second cycle everything had to fit into in Cata/MoP/WoD. Remember the the theorycrafting Frostheim used to post on the WHU where he'd go through at what haste levels it was worth delaying our signature shot in order to squeeze in another cobra/steady shot?  Now the only determining factor for which ability to use will be it's priority, utility or how much focus we have.  

One danger in this is, if there is a talent that has a lower DPCT and DPF than Aimed Shot, there will be no place for it in our rotation.  Since our most powerful ability doesn't have a CD and is now our focus dump, we can just spam it so long as we have the focus.  There is no time between signature shots to squeeze in other talents. That will be fine, as long as our talents are significantly powerful that they will get a higher priority than Aimed Shot. 

Another worry I have, is that the "priority system" we currently use will actually turn completely into a rotation.  What I mean is, if we don't take a talent with procs, on a patchwerk style fight we'll be looking at having an exact order of abilities to cast, and then just repeat that cycle over and over.  As I've mentioned before, I do not like playing a spec in which a simple cast sequence macro could perform as well as I.  Hopefully this can be fixed by making the talents that proc things, like Lock and Load, powerful enough to be necessary to doing good DPS.  

Lock and Load

We've now heard brief mentions of two MM talents (Black Arrow and Dark Ranger), but only really have much information on the talent from the Legion Preview blog: Lock and Load.  I'll admit that when I first saw the name, it kind of felt like a punch to the stomach, as it just further emphasizes that my favorite hunter spec (the last few expansions' versions of Survival) is no more.  

Once I got past that pain, I got pretty excited about how this talent will work.  First of all, who doesn't want to attach explosive charges their arrow?  It's very Green Arrow / Hawkeye -esque.  The AoE explosion component of the new LnL  may make the ability mandatory in heavy AoE fights, which isn't at all a bad thing, as Marksmanship has traditionally struggle with AoE.  

I'd like to put the part about triggering a Lock and Load (2 focus-free instant Aimed Shots) into some perspective though.  The chance to trigger this is incredibly low. We have a ranged auto-attack about once every 3 seconds (there are a couple of 2.8 second weapons, but as far as I know, only crafted, all raid drops are 3 seconds).  That is modified by haste, but you'd need 50% haste to get that down to an autoshot every 2 seconds.  A 5% chance once every three seconds means we'll have an expected value of exactly 1 lock and load proc per minute.  2 focus-free instant Aimed Shots per minute.  Unless they raise the percent chance to proc, it's safe to only look at the explosive charge component of this talent when considering it's value.  

1 proc per minute... *shaking my head*

The Return of Hunter's Mark

I'm quite glad to see Hunter's Mark return; I've really missed that little red arrow bouncing on my enemies heads, announcing their eminent death.  With that said, it will need to be a fairly significant chance to be applied for this to be much fun.  I fear seeing some adds, spamming Multi-Shot a couple times or cycling through Arcane Shot to get Hunter's Mark on each target, finally getting them all marked but then the adds are all dead before I can cast Marked Shot. Then crying in a corner somewhere. 

It's also worth noting that the actual channel of this will likely not last long; if you cast 3 Arcane Shots, and get lucky enough that each one applies Hunter's Mark on a target. even then you only have 3 seconds left of Hunter's mark on the first target.  The "exposes vulnerability" portion of the ability, will most likely be much more valuable, as it has the potential to greatly increase you priority target burst, with three stacks of Exposed Vulnerability, increasing Aimed Shot damage by 75% for 15 seconds.

I have some pretty serious doubts that there are any PvP devs who ever come across this blog, but just in case, please please please let Hunter's Mark keep rogues from stealthing.  It's only six seconds, so it's not like the old hunter's mark that would bother them all the way across a map, just six seconds of freedom from the rogue's tyranny of annoyance.

Mastery: Sniper Training

I do prefer the change from movement restrictions on Sniper Training to simply being on Aimed Shot.  The Sniper Training movement made it basically impossible to utilize in PvP, and though I thought it was an interesting idea, it just felt kind of clunky (for lack of a better word): like the days of stutter stepping, but on a more drawn out scale.

With that change, Mastery should become a much more useful stat for MM hunters, or at least even if it's not the best, it will no longer be a penalty on heavy movement fights.

And this should make a lot of the Nelf hunters out there very happy, you can now go back to flipping around all the time, at least when you're not casting Aimed Shot.  

TL;DR

No more traditional "Signature Ability" to base your rotation around; I have no idea how that will feel. Getting to be Sylvanas somewhat (maybe) eases the pain of losing our beloved pets.