Volley: A look at where it came from and why it doesn't matter if it's gone.

Recently it was revealed that Volley was going the way of Aspect of the Dragonhawk and being removed.

"It's gone. We want to make Multi-Shot the spell hunters use for AE. Channeling a spell that makes arrows fall out of the sky doesn't feel like a hunter ability and doesn't even really match the name of the spell." (Source)

This of course cause another round of massive QQ for the hunter populace, which of course is to be expected when we lose our primary AoE ability but here's the thing folks need to understands, It's OK.

What people seem to forget is that this is from the beta and not live. AoE is being deemphasized for Cataclysm and most AoE attack were already nerfed to high heaven anyway at the start of the beta. What we need to remember is that there not going to just leave us hanging. We've still got Explosive Trap and the Trap Launcher plus Multi-Shot which apparently sucks in the beta is gonna get redesigned, so we'll still have AoE when we need it, i just won't be volley. Personal it makes sense to me and I'll tell you why. First off the Volley concept only applies to Bows and Crossbows. The spell comes from the tradition of the Rain of Arrows, in which a large number of arrows are fired upwards at an angle so that the arc downwards one your opponents position. However unless there was some kind of specialized machine there was no way for a man to preform this on his own. In fact at least a squad of archers would be required to create the desired effect many shooting multiple arrows at once, this not even possible with guns. The most effective way for a single archer to hit multiple targets was to fire multiple arrows, most commonly seen was three, but it was possible to do more than that, i.e, Multi-Shot. The gun equivalent would be something like a three-round burst or a scatter shot. Further more it was possible to hit a single target with all three arrows. The best idea for a redesigned Multi-Shot would be a cone ability with the chase of hitting a single target with more than one shot. They give it a low to moderate focus cost and a low to no cooldown. Yes it's cool to rain down arrows on your opponent, but they did arcane damage? Arcane mages would gladly take it off our hands. It only did arcane damage because we used mana I believe. I still think they should rename Arcane shot to something like Power Shot or Charged Shot, or even better let it change element based on the location, if you wanted to be really crazy let it hit for whatever the targets lowest resist is between Nature, Fire, and Frost, or Sun Shot and let it do Holy Damage, but I digress. Volley is a relic from a past age and it's time to let it retire and revive an old and more fitting classic.