What We Know: The Level 75 MoP Hunter Talents

Murder of Crows: not yet released
Menagerie: not yet released
Toxin: not yet released

They will focus on different types of damage.  They will have some affiliation and multiplicative power with the three primary talent choices: Survival, Beast Mastery, and Marksmanship.  One of them will likely have PvP applicability.

We know this from looking at the other pure DPS class level 75 talents.

Warlock
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=108499
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=108501
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=108503
Mage
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=114923
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=44457
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=112948
Rogue
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=51626
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=108215
http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=108216

We also have a strong belief that Menagerie is the "call all your stabled pets out for a massive attack fest".  This would seem to benefit all types of hunters, but BM would likely get the most bang for the buck.

Toxin sounds to me like a DPS boost via a DoT.  They had all sorts of different ammo types in earlier drafts of MoP so I would guess that this makes all your shots poisoned either for a while after activation or indefinitely.

There is a Warrior minor glyph, "Murder of Crows" which has body text of "Your Execute critical strikes summon a flock of carrion birds." It sounds pretty cool and hunters do have the almost equivalent, Kill Shot, so it might be an elevated talent instead of a minor glyph.  Or it may completely go away.  Or it may adjust how Aspect of the Hawk works.

EDITED TO ADD: Bah!!!  Everything is different now.  Different talent names even.

High-End Stat Sticks

Last week we killed Yor'sahj on heroic for the second week.  As long as healers are coordinated with the purple ooze, stacking is pinpoint, mana CDs are used on the first mana void (and it's kept around as a battery), and DPS keep their powder dry for black phases it isn't too bad.  Note to hunters: only fire a black arrow while on your way to kill an ooze if it's a black ooze phase.  Any time after that and you'll be missing an explosive trap.

A nice stat stick dropped.  I was toting Kiril and our feral tank wasn't yet, so I passed.  Next time it rolls in I'll have to decide if it's an upgrade or if it goes into my pet-tanking set.

I did some proc/stat analysis of Kiril earlier this month.  It looks like the polearm yields 514 agility plus 249 for the average proc buff.  No other stats.  So 763 agility.  The heroic staff gives you 529 agility, plus a 50 agility gem, plus a 10 agility socket bonus, and 675 points in non-ideal secondary stats.  If we add up the agility and consider the secondary stats to be only 1/3rd as valuable as agility this staff comes out with 814 "agility equivalent points".  The enchants would cancel each other out.  Which means the heroic staff can be thought of as about 51 agility better.

51 agility isn't bad, but it isn't huge.  This especially true since the proc benefit may be greater and the ability to adequately re-forge secondary stats may not be ideal.

Blazing Saddles

Porting Around Azeroth Without A Mage

Before the beginning of Cataclysm, I knew there would be a lot of moving around across the globe. I didn't realize portals would be in Stormwind (or the Horde's Orgrimmar) such that people would just move in there.  Because I was dumb, and not a mage, I started acquiring a few items. I've added a few but they all seem to come in handy for various activities. Here's my list.

[Direbrew's Remote] - Need a quick pitstop? Need to smelt some dark iron?  Want an ugly hearth between Ironforge and Stormwind?  It's better than a boat or zeppelin. Just don't be a jerk and use it a BG and ask people to click it for a present.

[Baradin's Wardens Tabard] - This is a wonderful secondary hearth.  Land in the quest hub and click on the portal to Stormwind.  Or you could actually do your dailies if you're going for a mount or pet.

[Wrap of Unity] - Another wonderful secondary hearth that level 15 Cataclysm guilds can provide. There are Horde and greater / lesser versions.

[Band of the Kirin Tor] - How often do you need to get to Northrend?  Or Dalaran?  No?  What about going to Dalaran and taking the portal to the Keepers of Time and Dragon Soul instance?  This thing used to be considered expensive.  Now a few thousand gold is pocket change.  There are other styles and upgrades, but there's really no point to them other than the hearth.

[Blessed Medallion of Karabor] - Need to get to Outlands and not near a portal to The Portal?  This will get you there nicely.  And if you're doing dailies for your drake mounts you'll crave this item.

[Argent Crusader's Tabard] - Would you like another Northrend port?  How about to that dailies hub that has all those mounts and pets?  For DPS waiting in a queue, this is a nice immediate activity.

[Hearthstone] - The list wouldn't be complete without this handy item, right?  Level eight guilds augment it with[Hasty Hearth]. A long time ago, I accidentally dropped mine.  I was quite relieved to learn I just needed to talk with an innkeeper for a new one.

[Stormpike Insignia Rank 6] - If you're a BG'er, this can have its uses; This is especially true if you're going for achievements.

And there's simply hoofing it.  But hunters should do it in style: [Master Riding], [Mount Up] and a [Blue Dragonhawk] (ss).

If I was an engineer, I'd have a generator or two, but alas I'm stuck in my ways and not going engineering.  I'm also not interested in expensive consumable hearths to Deepholm since I'm not an alchemist.

And if you're in a group, you should show that you're extremely fast and a gentleman to the lesser classes by tossing a [Have Group, Will Travel] summon.

Average Agility of Kiril, Fury of Beasts?

The average agility gain of the proc from Kiril, Fury of Beasts is a somewhat complex thing to discover.  What I found is a little disappointing.

I have the normal polearm which, on proc, provides +107 agility buff once a sec to a stack count of ten and then persists for ten more seconds.  The LFR version provides a stacking +95 agility.  The heroic provides a stacking +120 agility.  With some modeling and a 45 sec ICD, I expected the normal to provide approximately an average of 365 agility in the best case scenario when averaged over the course of a whole five minute fight.

For the record, I expected the LFR version to provide 324 and the heroic version to provide an average of 410 agility.

That was very optimistic and simplistic modeling.  I was guessing I could get it to proc within the first second when it really only as a 15% chance to proc per shot.  Put another way, I was expecting to have some level of the buff (from one stack to ten stacks) for 44.67% of a five minute fight.

What I see in practice is quite different.  Below is a heroic Ultraxion and normal Gunship from last night.  I expected to see much much better buff numbers and uptime from Ultraxion.  I see only 27.9% and 31.7% overall uptime of any stack count.  In the below images, the green zones are when the buff is active (at increasing stack counts):

Given these observations I'm thinking my optimistic theory-crafting is supplanted by the observed data.  My average uptime is really only about 30% so my average agility for a fight is about 68% of my original calculations.  So the average agility gain from the proc would land around these:

LFR: 221
Regular: 249
Heroic: 279

No Woes to the Nerf

I'm not going to complain about the increasing nerf.  It certainly makes heroic modes much more attainable.  This past raid week we put some learning in on Yor'sahj and got him to 40%.  He's typically the second heroic kill for guilds so we should have him soon.  (For whatever reason we found heroic Ultraxion easier.)

Let me tell you, the 10% debuff does have some weird effects on normal modes.  We have easily nine-manned bosses. Last night, our raid leader jumped "accidentally" off the gunship.  I suspect he just wanted to /afk on a boss we don't use call-outs for.

On normal Deathwing, we were taking down limbs before they even started casting Cataclysm. Then we wiped because we did too much damage.  We brought limbs down to below 70% just as a tentacle popped; This meant we were spread out for the tentacle but we had blistering bloods on the limb just ripping us to shreds.  So we had to dial our dps back a ton.  We are working on the Chromatic Champion achievement to learn the fight in different ways.

It is kinda nice to think that all the heroic modes are within reach.  I can't recall thinking that before.