Camouflage and Cobra Shot

Okay, here’s the deal any cataclysm alpha or beta related posts I make will have a spoiler disclaimer and you’ll need to click on the title or the “read the rest of the entry” to see the actual article.

Today’s post is going to take a look at the MMO-C data mined hunter abilities, Camouflage and Cobra Shot. If you do not want to hear about any Cataclysm related information that has not been released by Blizzard then do not read any further.

Since this is all coming out of an Alpha version of the expansion everything needs to be taken with a shaker of salt as it can and most likely will change.

As it stands right now, Camouflage is a cool but mediocre ability at best and may prove to be more annoying than practical in PvE.

Camouflage is an instant cast costing 45 focus, but takes 3 sec. before we fully enter a camouflaged state. It has a one minute cool down and cannot be cast in combat.

Basically, Camouflage is an opening ability that will give us a slight dps boost to our first shot in PvE. It also allows us to sneak around and drop traps pre-combat, which is only useful if Hunters are required to do any kind of crowd control.

The fact that it cannot be cast in combat rules out incorporating this into our regular rotation. In boss encounters this will be like casting Hunter’s Mark on ourselves. So for our big level 85 ability we appear to have been given a prowl ability and I’m a little underwhelmed. One final thought is that since this will consume almost half our focuse we’ll want to make sure that we cast it early enough so as to start combat with a full bar. I’d hate for my opening shot to have to be a Cobra Shot.

I suspect that is just a place hold number and won’t impact Serpent Sting by that much. If it did then all three specs (BM, MM, SV) would probably choose to use this over Steady Shot. Still though, even if the duration is reduced to something reasonable then SV and BM hunters might choose this shot over steady. Heck, even MM hunters might use it if they think Serpent will drop off before it can be refreshed by Chimera. It’ll be interesting to see how this one develops.

The talents haven’t been updated for hunters yet so It’s not clear how this shot will be buffed for BM hunters. It does sound like you’ll want to have a serpent sting applied before you cast this though.

Note that the [NYI] stand for “Not Yet Implemented” which means these abilities are not available in the current version of the Alpha, and as such are very, very much subject to change.