Lethal Shots

What do I think about the 3.0.2? I love it. Before, I took the awesome sauce 1 shot at a time. Now I guzzle it by the fifth. My DPS is through the roof, pet DPS is through the roof, and aggro issues are all but gone. Here is my take on some of the larger changes.

• Talents - Once I was finally able to log in Tuesday, I allotted my talent points, speccing deep Beast Master. I went with a 53/8/0 build. I chose talents to maximize pet damage and survivability over personal damage so that I can see how well my pet can tank in instances. Later I plan to re-spec and drop some pet survivability in favor of maximizing damage, mostly for optimal raid performance.
• Stable Slots – 2 extra stable slots is full of win. Now Blizzard just needs to give us more.
• Pets - I tried out 4 pets Tuesday. I was happy with all of them, but only impressed by a few.
  • Gorilla - I love this guy. He holds aggro on multiple mobs like a champ, and puts out decent DPS to top it off.
  • Wind Serpent – In a word: meh. While I like these guys, they are still the same bag of tricks. Beautiful pets, just nothing new to get excited about.
  • Chimera - I wasn’t sure how these guys were going to turn out, but after trying one I am sold. They look nice, are flappy (always a plus in my book), and put out decent damage.
  • Moth - This is the first and only Ferocity pet I have tried, and I’m not too impressed with it. He put out decent DPS, but nothing too spectacular. I’m pretty sure I am going to be shopping around a little to find a replacement for this one.
• Pet Tanking – I’m not sure if Blizzard intended it, but I tried my hand at pet tanking a 5-man. I chose non-heroic Blood Furnace to start with. Nothing too hard the first time out, but still hard enough that I wasn’t OP. I grabbed Gorilladin and headed over there, with a 63 Shaman guildie tagging along. He played pseudo healer for me, which worked out well since he got some easy XP and there were a few times where Mend Pet couldn’t quite keep up. Overall it was a successful, and I look forward to moving on to some harder 5-mans.
• Mana - The new Aspect of the Viper is going to take some getting used to. Pre-patch, I used AotV whenever I was grinding. No need to worry about mana, it was just there. Now I can’t do that. With the nerf to damage while in AotV, I have to actively between AotH and AotV to maintain optimal damage and mana regen.
• Autoshot Unlinking – This one is kind of bittersweet. Before, shot rotations were kind of a defining characteristic of Hunters. With Autoshot unlinked, we now play like many other classes, simply mashing the next ability in our lineup with no regard to our swing timer. Hunter DPS will increase because of this, but it feels somehow wrong.
• Vanity Pets and Mounts – Very little to say here. The extra bag space is always welcome.

Overall i am happy with the patch. There are several changes that are going to take some getting used to, but nothing that is too bad.