Hunter AoE Tip

Currently AoE damage seems to be an issue with the fanciness of 4.0.1. I have a tip for every BM hunter. Keep a Chimera or a Worm in your active pets at all times. These two pets have AoE attacks for their exotic abilities. Froststorm Breath and Burrow Attack. macro these puppies to your multi-shot to force the cast. Open up every AoE pull with a explosive trap if possible to give a bit of extra damage. Soloing let the pet gather em up, misdirect explosive trap then multi-shot. This should result in most of your multi-shot threat going to your pet along with the explosive shot threat as a bonus as BM we can fire off 3 multi-shots before needing to steady shot and can pop fervor on particularly tough trash. SV doesn't deal the same numbers but on a long trash pull it might be possible to get more than one explosive in assuming you have the focus, that being said serpent spread is really cool. I haven't had a chance to play with MM yet so i'll through that in when i get a chance.

I want Rhumba Back!

So early in Cata Beta there's was a BM Talent called Rhumba (which actually refers to a group of rattle snakes, who knew?) it was a talent caused your cobra shots to summon snakes that would deal damage if your target attacked anyone. This talent was nothing short of Awesome in most peoples opinion, however Blizzard removed it before ever actually implementing it on the grounds that BM had to many DPS talents. Granted the BM is currently the most powerful spec in the Beta and the 4.0.1 PTR they seem to have a point, though this is probably more due to the low damage of Chimera Shot and Explosive Shot compared to Kill Command, doing barely more than Arcane shot does while being twice as expensive with cooldowns. With the current state of things i find myself not all that happy with the BM tree. As it stands there isn't much to be excited about in the play style. Focus Fire is extremely consistent and does't have a proc feel to it, and other than that talents don't do much for me in terms of changing active play. Most of them put more power in the hands of the pets AI. Though a heck of a lot more exciting than on live it isn't as much fun as MM or SV whose procs actually feel like them. Rhumba doesn't solve that problem in its current form but it could. I'd like to see a couple things for hunters in the future. One more Nature trap, just because I like balance not really necessary at all but it'd be nice, more importantly better use of traps, specifically snake trap. With Trap Launcher, if they ever let it be macro'd I believe tossing out a trap would be a DPS increase Firing Immolation Traps and Snake Traps every so off could definitely add to dps without hindering control since they have separate cooldowns. I'd particularly like to see a version of Rhumba that integrates Snake Trap, it could even turn snake trap into an AoE tool for BM which is a bit lacking and my Chimera refuses to cast his frostorm breath at all. Blizzard originally spoke of BM wanting to us Cobra Shot over Chimera. Currently the primary reason for this is to refresh Serpent Sting. They originally said that there would be talent in BM to encourage this, currently there are a measly three talent that effect Cobra shot two in MM and one in SV none in BM further more there are no talents specifically designed to be used with Cobra Shot. In fact you could alternate between the two spell as BM and i doubt there'd be a difference as long as you kept Serpent Sting up, depending on the damage from improved serpent sting it could vary well be a DPS increase to refresh the old fashioned way and use steady shot, though this is highly unlikely. On the Contrary SV would lose DPS as Cobra Shot benefits from Essence of the Viper. While MM misses out on the Improved Steady Shot buff, Master Marksman procs, and Piercing Shots bleed damage. I know that this means that Blizz changed their design plan at some point but for me Cobra Shot feels like a bit of a let down as a BM hunter. Similarly in it's current form Camo is really lackluster as a level 85 ability, it really has limited use not only in PvE but even PvP I'd like to have a reason to use it other than how awesome it looks. Lastly i'd like to see exotic pets be more of an upgrade. Currently Exotic Pets give a raid buff and some PvP/CC ability of limited use (especially for tenacity pets who all have slows for some reason?) while having two abilities is cool it's really only two abilities in PvP for the most part. For PvE the only ability that matters is the buff in most cases. Two pets have AoE damaging abilities, Chimera which will be the choice pet for AoE heavy fight if Frostorm breath ever works without killing everything, and Worms who will move up in terms of solo/farming pet because of AoE threat. I'd like to see more damage out of exotic pets. Using and exotic pet should be a buff for BM hunters, i understand that not using one shouldn't be a nerf but as a Beast Master you shouldn't be running around with mundane every hunter pets anyway, your better than that. Save your kitty for SV and your Wolf for MM I'm bringing Loque and Krush(as soon as i get him) to every fight I can and i should do more damage because of it. Not a lot more a couple percent is fine but in the most optimal situation is should be using an exotic pet for max damage, which isn't the case. on that no Intimidation ain't gonna cut it, cool it's free, but we are the only dps spec with a purely crowd control ability as a specialization bonus and frankly the increased threat isn't gonna make a lot of takes happy. It implies that we are going to be the crowd control spec and were not, SV has that on lock with Wyvern Sting and Shorter trap cooldowns. It does reinforce the pet but it is much more limited when compared to every other bonus for a DPS class. It doesn't help us do our job and that's deal damage.
In closing Kill Command needs a nerf, Chimera and Explosive need buffs, Camo needs reworking, Cobra Needs a better purpose other than refreshing serpent sting, intimidation sucks, Exotics should be powerful, and DPS traps need to see more use.

Shaman: Healing and Earth Spells

So recently they changed the name of lesser healing wave to Healing Surge, now I didn't really get this, until recently. I realized that the reason for the change is that it's not "Lesser" it heals for more than Healing Wave but it way more expensive. Still the name didn't make sense until i realized something. You see I'm currently taking a Severe Weather coarse and we're talking about Hurricanes, which create storm surges which are huge wave that are thrown ashore by the hurricane really fast. Suddenly I realized something that I never realized before. Shaman healing spell include the following, Healing Stream Totem, Mana Spring Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Water Shield, Riptide, Healing Rain, Healing Surge, and Chain Heal. Suddenly it clicked "OOOOH, Healing Wave!" Yes, shaman healing is essentially based around the element of water, that is why we don't get to do much frost damage because we use that power to heal combined with the 5th spirit, described in Lord of the Clans as Spirit of the Wilds which covers Earthliving Weapon, Earth Shield (essentially), Reincarnation, Ancestral Spirit, and Cleanse Spirit (Tremor Totem is the bastard child who really thematically should be Elemental but is a cleansing spell so its tossed in resto) which essential pertains to the ancestors and all living things, it let Thrall get the horses to throw their riders a very druid-ie thing in my opinion but still shaman-ie in how it was done. Why did it take so long to figure this out? mostly because of the animation for chain heal. The pewpew healing lasers made me think  Kamehameha wave instead water on the beach wave and since all shaman healing spells have the same icon I linked them all together. Looking at things the odd spell out is Chain Heal. The spell chain heal is taken from the Shadow Hunter which was then Healing Wave. Calling it chain heal gave it parallels with chain lightning in elemental, but looking at it now it doesn't fit as well. A better name would have been something like Healing Current which maintains the water theme of the rest of the spell with the same general idea but the animation can stay, since everybody love awesome healing lasers. On the other hand I'd like to see the idea of the 5th elemental spirit better utilized for shaman, maybe a spirit totem, that resto shaman mimic the effect of any restoration totem for a short time, so they could use Tranquil Mind and Healing Stream when the need came along. The other things I'd like to see improved upon is the element of earth. Earth Shock, Stonebiter Weapon, Earthliving weapon (essentially), Earth Sheild (essentially), the various earth totems, and the new Earthquake spell are the only uses of the element of earth for shamans and i think that's a problem, particularly for earth totems. Your standby earth totems are Stoneskin and Strength of Earth, both of which are great totems, the rest are very situational and strongly PvP oriented in most cases.Here's the thing picture this: You're and elemental shaman in a raid. You have a Paladin tank, that takes care of Stoneskin totem, and there another enhancement shaman in the raid, so what totem do you drop? Tremor is only good if there a lot of sleeps and fears, Stoneclaw and Earth elemental will piss off the take and the rest of the raid, Earthbind totem wouldn't be to bad but it last 45 sec, your only option is to trop a stoneskin or SoE but that really only will help if peopl are out of range of the devotion aura or other totem. This is wasted potential. The shamans versatility lies in that it can fill any gap that may arise, but when everything's covered you should be able to drop the best four totems for you. If your resto you take flametongue for spellpower to increase throughput, healing stream for constant HoT or mana tide for mana regen, wrath of air for faster spells casts, and stoneskin for extra midigation. Four totems which make your job, healing, easier. For enh it's searing weapon for more DPS, Mana Tide more mana equal more DPS, Windfury hitting faster is more DPS, and strength of earth more agility, MOAHR DPS. See all about the DPS. Ele get almost all the way there, Searing Totem which is way more DPS with Wrathful Totems since its 10% spellpower from any fire totem. Mana Tide since more mana means more spell which equals more DPS, Wrath of Air which means faster cast times which means more spell which equals more DPS, and then nothing, when able to play set totems down selfishly there's really no good option for Elemental shamans if your in a five man group with a DPS Warrior and a Prot Pally your earth totems are pretty much useless since you have nothing to gain from them and the raid gains nothing from them. Yes you could cover between horn of winter and battle shout but good warriors and dks won't let it fall off, since its essentially free rage or runic power. What i think is that there needs to be a Caster earth totem, in fact make totem of the tranquil mind into totem of the Tranquil Earth make it an earth totem it would give an earth totem option for casters and free up resto to use mana tide and healling stream with out losing the concentration aura buff if there's not holy pally around. The idea isn't for there to be a spell that is always useful, but that theres a useful spell in each category when all you need to worry about is doing your job. As enhance i always drop SoE, Searing (in Cata Magma for WotLK), Mana Tide, and Windfury unless we need a specific buff, or if were running with more casters then i'll use Wrath of Air instead since its better for the group. I also think a stalagmite ability for enh would be cool maybe as a proc not even a spell, unless we still get dead space in cata A talent that turns Primal Strike Stone Strike with a cool stalagmite animation and lets it proc when you cast earth shock resetting the cool down, but not on storm strike, and costing no mana, let it deal nature damage  and deal increased damage against targets effected by the stormstrike debuff. Of course that only if we still have the down time. and i still want Storm, Earth, and Fire!