Of Ax Throwers and Shadow Hunters

With the onset of Cataclysm we will see the disappearance of our old enemy Consumable ammo. For to long we hunters have been restrained by the ever present thread of running out of ammo, and will only have to worry about durability becoming shot, so we'll still probbaly carry one or two extra depending on how they balance the durability loss, but that's not what this article is about, this is about something deeper than that, this is about thrown weapons. Ax Throwers, Headhunters, Shadow Hunters, lore says that hunter are master's of the wild and ranged combat. We have the ability to use thrown weapons, but gain no benefit from them. None of are abilities can be used with a thrown weapon, and we can't auto-throw. Yet in the case of the Horde (minus blood elves and goblins) thrown weapons were the primary form of ranged damage, but ranged physical dps completely ignores them. Why? The answer, in my opinion is consumable ammo. Hunter's are balanced around the need for ammunition so when that's removed things get a little crazy. That's why the highest DPS bow in the game still does 100 less DPS than the best Wand and 30 less than the best Thrown, and the thrown and the wand are more a stat sticks than anything so dps doesn't matter. That's why Thori'dal was so awesome.

With ammo as a normal item it brings it more inline with other ranged weapons, which is the perfect opportunity to allow hunters to use thrown weapons. For thrown weapons there's already a hierarchy, Axes for Warriors and Daggers/Shuriken for rogues. The third type of thrown weapon in the game is spears though there are a limited number of them, and none above rare quality from what I know. The spear could be the hunter ranged, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Since Rogues and hunters share pretty much the same itemization, and will even more so in Cataclysm letting hunters use thrown weapons properly would be to the benefit of both classes. Even though rogues will have to compete for the drops, there will be more of them because they aren't the only class that can use them. Blizzard has stated that more classes being able to use a weapon allows them to drop more of them (in the case of rogues and axes) so hunters have more options from a rp end and rogues get more options for their thrown. Hunter's are still gonna want to go for a ranged weapon with ammo because of possible bonuses from ammo (like a portion of damage being fire damage with fire arrows) and should still give priority to rogues on them just like daggers. I want my troll hunter to really be a shadow hunter, complete with a glaive.

Side Note: I also think Shamans should be able to use Polearms, they can use 2H maces, and 2H axes, itemization on a spear is great for Shaman, just like druids and hunters, but they'll always give it up in favor of dual wielding, but from a lore perspective it makes no sense.