Continued "Spell" Cata Changes

Curious Observation #1: Are there mana drain and disarm effects with Chimera if those venoms are gone now?

Curious Observation #2: Kill Shot no focus cost, but nerfed and CD extended.  Hmm.

Curious Observation #3: Multi-shot.  Kinda expected but a little disappointing in the "how is that supposed to work??" area.

Abstracted from MMO-Champion:

Beast Mastery

• Viper Venom and Scorpid Venom seems to be gone.
• Widow Venom no longer mentions "Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.", I guess the 2 previous venoms are indeed gone.
• Focus Fire now has a 15 sec cooldown. Down from 30 sec.
• Improved Kill Command now Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 5/10% instead of reducing its cooldown.

Marksmanship

• Kill Shot now deals 150% weapon damage (down from 200%) and scales with 30% of your Attack Power (down from 40%). Base damage reduced by 50%. Cooldown increased from 6 sec to 10 sec. Focus cost removed.
• Multi-Shot - Fires several missiles, hitting your current target and all enemies within yards of that target for x% of weapon damage. / 40 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
• Aimed Shot no longer deals 300% of weapon damage, now deals [ 40% of RAP + 681 ] damage. Cast time increased from 2 sec to 3 sec.
• Arcane Shot base damage reduced by 60%, now scales from 19% of Attack Power, up from 17%.
• Chimera Shot no longer deals 190% weapon damage, now deals [ 24% of RAP + 401 ].

Survival

• Serpent Spread - Targets hit by your Multi-Shot are also afflicted by your Serpent Sting equal to 6/9 sec of its total duration.
• Point of No Escape no longer affects Freezing Arrow.

Hunter AoE

All DPS classes need to be able to AoE with some effectiveness.  We currently do fairly well. We do great as single target DPS, so we don't need to be the best in AoE.  Personally, I feel that warlocks, boomkins, and mages should be better than hunters, spriests, and melee in the AoE department.  Our trap and volley are both nice and get the job done.  Heck, if you're SV, you can trap, volley, wait for a LnL proc (or two if you drop a frost trap too) lob in 3 Explosive Shots, and go back to volley and trap.  You can be top trash dps if you want.

In Cataclysm, we will no longer have Volley.  We'll be "making more use of multishot" to paraphrase.  I have to agree that our channelled Volley spell is kinda hokey and using a "shot" is a better idea.  The idea that we have too many buttons and need some trimmed is a bit of a red herring IMHO.

Losing Volley will also further remove one more item from our losing rogue-hunter battle.  We can't damage them unless we see them.  And we can't get them out of stealth with an AoE.  To that end, I say fix the real problem: Flare really kinda sucks and should have its travel time greatly reduced and it should have its cooldown removed to just the global cooldown.

In Cataclysm, we'll be able to launch our traps as if we attached dynomite sticks to the arrows or had a grenade launcher slung under the barrel of our rifles.  That's nice, but it's not good AoE DPS or expected to be good AoE DPS.  Plus, the cooldown on traps suck.

So we're told Multishot will work to fill the void of the Volley.  Honestly, Multishot seems hokey too.  I kinda get it for bows, but don't really visualize it for crossbows or guns.  And Multishot in its current form doesn't come close to filling an AoE void.  So Multishot must change too, right? 

Will it be a cone-like attack?  A cone-like attack sounds like a shotgun, but where does that leave bows and crossbows?  Will it simply change to hit more than just three targets and remain a bit odd?

What about something crazy?  How about a shot that sounds like it should be called TNT Shot.  Target one mob and fire it.  It does instant damage to all mobs near it.  Sounds like it should be called Explosive Shot, right?  That's how right it is for the hunter class.  Oh, and they already gave us something similar 20 levels ago.  Not that we ever used the thing. 

Then again perhaps we should all just run around with a different pet.

Profession Switching

I'm currently Blacksmith/Miner.  It isn't the worst, but it generally sucks.  I get two extra gem slots.  I got no craftable weapons for a hunter and no craftable mail (unlike in Vanilla and Burning Crusade).  I hardly ever mine.  I don't ever have my detect mining up because I've left my improved tracking off once or twice before.  So, Blacksmithing really just gets me some stamina. Cataclysm's Blacksmithing weapons are all BoE.  The same with Leatherworking.  Engineering however looks to have some fabulous ranged weapons and of course the helm.  They also have some gem-like stuff.  Engineering items are listed as Bind on Pickup.  But World of Raids refers to them as BoE.   If they are BoP, it will suck big time and might push me over to doing BS/Engineering.  Reminds me a little of college.

Cata DoTs

Cataclysm will not be allowing (or demanding of) you to front-load the crazy empowered crit SrpS for the Chimera to refresh for the entire fight.  That sounds like good news to me.  I don't like flipping into my T9x, T10x2 set in LK and wont want to do something similar in Cata.

HoT and DoT refresh
Dots and hots adjust on the fly now when they're refreshed. There is less reason to try and get everything lined up perfectly for big numbers before you cast the spell. You'll be able to game it a little bit for the initial spell duration, but it won't refresh infinitely with the big numbers.

We have to rebalance the entire game anyway given the magnitude of the Cataclysm changes, so don't worry about being penalized for any old mechanics that may no longer be relevant. (Source)