From the Class Panel at the Blizzard Invitational…

The shot clipping will be removed from Steady Shot, you’ll be able to use it without “interrupting” your autoshot. Hunters will be able to just smash their button.

I… really can’t tell you how I feel about this. Is it nice? Well yeah, and I bet a lot of hunters will be very happy about this. It will be a huge DPS increase, afterall. But for me, this was always one of my very favorite parts of the hunter class. Hearing that it’s going to be replaced with “hunters will be able to just smash their button”, which sounds very macro-like… I dunno. It’s almost as though they said they were going to take away pets or something. Not quite as bad, but, still. I took a certain pride in being able to manually weave and time my rotations. I guess for me, it’s not “all about the DPS” like it is to so many other people.

I will have to think on this one, and hope that there is still some way to “feel the rhythm” in WotLK. For example, maybe we’ll get a new fun shot or new abilities or something so we don’t just have to sit there and hit one button. I hope so, at least!

(And hey, there are still at least fifteen non-shot rotation things that I like about hunters. My love for the class is going nowhere unless Blizz really botches stuff up, I think.)

That said, pets are getting a bunch of super nifty exciting stuff:

All kind of pets will have their own talent tree. A tanking talent tree, a DPS talent tree, and an utility talent tree. Each kind of pet family will have its own talent tree and its own unique ability.

There are going to be new pets in WotLK.

The skill points for each pets are being changed to the new “Pet talents” and will disappear.

I’m really excited for all that stuff. Tanking talent tree? Like… one that focuses on threat generation and stuff? So I can finally have a true soloing/grinding pet? Yes please! And “pet utility”, you can’t help but wonder what that is. I’m definitely looking forward to that.

And does this mean you won’t have to tame new pets for new skills anymore? So I can keep my current three?? /happydance

Blizz’s Final Score from Pike: One thumb up, one thumb down. I’ll be sad to see my beloved shot rotation mechanics go byebye, but the pet stuff is super epic.