The first WoW panel has come and gone at the Worldwide Invitational. It was focused on class abilities in WoTLK, and there was some absolutely juicy stuff, especially for Hunters. As the proud player of a 70 Hunter, I'm feeling amazingly awesome about my class right now. Two of the biggest, most universal Hunter complaints have not only been answered, but answered in a way that I think a lot of Hunter players are going to be incredibly excited about.

Steady Shot Clipping

First up, it looks like Shot Rotations as we know them will soon become a thing of the past, or at least be incredibly simplified, as Steady Shots will no longer clip Auto Shots. This is actually an issue that has gained some blue post love in the past, but it's nice to see it so directly confronted and dealt with.

There may still be a shot rotation of a type for fitting in Arcane Shot and various stings, but it looks like Hunter DPS will no longer be a complicated dance of weapon speed, haste rating, macros, and server latency. That in itself is amazing news.

Pet Talent Trees and Uniqueness

One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.

A gun... for tanks. But that speed makes things a little weird. Maybe some of the theorycrafters in the crowd can come up with some good reasons for that one (or just debate my own) in the comments.

Name: Rifle of the Stoic Guardian (Wowhead, Thottbot, Goblin's Workshop)
Type: Epic Gun
Damage/Speed: 120-224 / 1.90 (90.5 DPS, which is the highest on a gun, save for the Arena PvP guns in S3 and S4 -- except most of it comes from that low speed, see below)
Abilities:

• +31 Stamina, which might make you think this is a PvP weapon, except for:
• Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 20. Which is a weird little stat -- with the stamina added on to it, that means that this gun (named after a "Stoic Guardian") is basically meant as a Tank pulling gun -- it'll let you shoot bullets and give you about the bonus of a minor trinket to dodge and Stam.
• But if that's true, what's up with that speed? You might think that a high DPS would mean this gun is good for a Hunter, but that's not quite true across the board -- especially for BM Hunters (a.k.a. Hunters that rely on their talents and abilities to do damage), a bullet pouch will often make this gun too fast to sneak special shots in, which will actually lower the DPS you can do.
• But on the other hand, from what I understand, weapon speed doesn't actually affect what happens when you first fire the gun. So the idea here may be that a Warrior, pulling, should have a fast enough gun to get a few shots off during the pull, in order to build up more threat. Why else would Blizzard give tanks such a fast gun?

How to Get It: Drops from our old friend Teron Gorefiend, who we last killed for the Soul Cleaver. He's in the Black Temple, there's a Know Your Lore about him, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill by now. Drop rate on this is about 15%, but the good news is that if you need this (as in, you're a tank who often pulls at the late endgame), you'll probably be able to get it.

You might have to fend a few confused Hunters off for it, though. But the dodge rating and the Stamina (not to mention, as we said, the title), should make it pretty clear that this weapon is for a "Stoic Guardian," not a "Pet-loving Peashooter."

Getting Rid of It: Sells for 10g 79s 6c. Will disenchant into a Void Crystal.

With todays news that Hemorrhage is being buffed yet again in the latest build of patch 2.3, I'm getting more and more excited to take out my old rogue character and use my favorite ability again. Back in the days before The Burning Crusade I used to enjoy using Hemo to succeed as a rogue in PvP when latency and casual gear would have left me at a bad disadvantage otherwise. Hemo was just strong enough that it gave me a real chance at success sometimes, and all the other buffs to stealth in the Subtlety tree made me feel like a real rogue sneaking around and stunlocking people, rather than a warrior without the heavy armor, or a backstabber who could never seem to get behind anyone or crit often enough to kill things.

Once The Burning Crusade was released, I felt terribly disappointed to learn that there were few if any more very slow main-hand weapons at the new level cap. Today there are still very few with a 2.7 weapon speed, and even fewer with 2.8, which, before the expansion, was really the minimum weapon speed you needed to start making use of Hemo successfully. This is because Hemo is not "nomalized" like other abilities; it does progressively more damage the more time passes between weapon swings. With only one high-level 2.9 speed weapon in the game (and that a legendary), and all 2.8-speeds being either too low-level to be useful or to far out of my reach to attain, I feared my preferred playstyle would be dead and useless by the time my rogue reached 70.

But now I'm not so sure. I still don't know why Blizzard didn't add more slow weapons like they used to have in the old days, but I'm hoping these buffs to Hemo will make up for the loss, both in raids and in PvP. Still, I'm hardly the best rogue theorycrafter out there. Are any of you good mathematicians able to speak authoritatively on whether this change is enough to raise Hemo from the dead?

Update: Our commenter, Rick, shared with us a link to an Elitist Jerks discussion in which they provide some good research about this change to Hemo. Among other things, it seems this new version of Hemo is now normalized, meaning that, like Sinister Strike, it won't matter what weapon speed you have when you use it -- it'll still do the same amount of damage. Many of them are eager to try it out.