By now you’ve probably read the news the Hunters are getting some last minute buffs before patch 5.2 goes live. Here they are,
- Aimed Shot damage +10%.
- Chimera Shot damage +50%.
- Steady Shot damage +20%.
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +15%.
Big buffs for MM and nice buffs for SV. BM remains in the “baby bear” spot, at least in the eyes of Blizzard. So the big question is what does this all mean? Are all the specs equal, is BM’s day in the sun over, did MM just make a colossal comeback? The answer of course is it’s too soon to tell. Patch 5.1 data doesn’t help us, so we’re waiting on the theorycrafters to give us an answer.
My thought is that all three specs will be very close in performance. There will always be an order of one, two, three, but the relevance of that positioning will be greatly diminished.
We may actually be at a point where players should just choose to play the spec they love. We may also be at a point where we look at the specs less in terms of overall dps and more in terms of how they deliver that dps, and how it might apply to each individual encounter.
What you could end up with is all three specs looking something like this,
- MM – Strongest single target dps; mediocre AoE dps.
- BM – Strong single target dps; great burst dps; mediocre AoE dps; able to fill in missing buffs with exotic pets.
- SV – Stong single target dps (slightly behind BM); best AoE dps.
We might be on the verge of Hunters being in as good a position as they ever have been in WoW. At the very least it means we have some news to talk about the on the podcast, and that alone makes me happy.
