Top 10 things for hunters to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

With the coming of summer with warmer and longer days and the return of green to the world, most hunters find themselves with little to do. After all, it's the trailing days of the expansion, and Cataclysm doesn't have much more to offer. The bosses have been slain, and we've gathered the gear we want to transmog to.

Dreams of the new expansion is about all we have to pass the time -- well, that and Diablo III, which is the current end-of-expansion pass time for a huge chunk of WoW's population

With that in mind, let's take a look at the top 10 things we have to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria. In addition to the new leveling and new gear and new scenery and a new cuddly hunter race, we also have the smexy new gifts of the expansion.

1. Shoot them in the face! The biggest and baddest thing that I'm looking forward to first is shooting things in the face. It is so delightful, so freeing, that when I'm killing stuff in the beta, I often walk up to the face of mobs even when I don't have to.

Many hunters are celebrating the removal of minimum range as a huge PvP boost, and it certainly is that -- especially for those of us who aren't so great at PvP. There's nothing worse than burning a warrior down to a few percent health and have her finally catch up to you and burn you down to nothing all the while your Kill Shot is active.

But this is huge for raiding too. All those times that the best strategy is to have everyone clump up on the boss, we can finally join the group. Even healers should love this one, since we'll no longer be standing just outside of their little healing circle so that we can actually contribute to the fight. To be sure, this is a small minority of the boss fights out there, but the pain and frustration it causes is disproportionately high (especially on those fights where the optimal strategy is to sit the hunters).

When Mists of Pandaria goes live, the first thing every hunter should do is find something -- anything -- to shoot in the face.

2. Stampede of ultimate doom One of the most exciting new abilities hunters get in Mists is Stampede. And sure, it's going to be sweet to launch five or six pets at once, but that's not what I'm really looking forward to. What I can't wait to do is get a small army of dozens or hundreds of hunters to all launch Stampede at once.

Bonus points if they all have stables full of sporebats. After all, what can possibly withstand a few hundred or a thousand sporebats at once? Possibly not even the server.

3. Knockback trapping I really want to hit a Battleground armed with the Glyph of Explosive Trap. I want to walk up to the cluster of people fighting for the flag in Eye of the Storm and knock a whole cluster off the bridge. If they manage to keep from falling to a dismal death, I want to Readiness and do it again!

4. Pet selection I'm going to hit a raid and rock my turtle ferocity pet for max DPS. And then I'm going to turn around and do some extreme soloing with my sporebat tank pet. And don't forget that porcupine is for fite!

5. Raiding as BM OK, the verdict isn't in on this, but I'm extremely excited to raid as BM again. I know that you can raid as BM now and not be that far behind, but for a DPS whore -- which is most of us -- I've been MM and SV for the past couple of expansions. I've loved playing them too, but I do miss BM raiding, which I haven't been able to do on progression since The Burning Crusade and the first tiny bit of Wrath.

With the fantastic changes to Kill Command in Mists, BM should be capable of performing much closer to their potential than it's able to now, even on target switching and AoE fights. I have high hopes that the DPS numbers are going to work out well.

6. Readiness everything With Readiness available as a talent, every hunter spec can take it, and there's no end of things we can come up to do with it. Well, except Stampede, we can't use it on that. But I'm all about dropping a Freezing Trap, hitting Wyvern Sting (also available to all specs via talent), Scatter Shotting and the Readiness and doing it all again!

Or how about laying on the burst with Rapid Fire and Big Red Pet, then Readiness and more Rapid Fire and more Big Red Pet? And follow that puppy up with shooting them in the face!

7. Useful Cheetah With the new minor Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah, we'll get to use Aspect of the Cheetah and know that it will make us move faster, rather than possibly making us move more slowly. No more will that tiny tick of minuscule damage daze us to a crawl; the worst-case scenario is that we move only as fast as normal. Finally when we need the speed burst, we can use our aspect to get it.

8. Daily quests until your eyes bleed In Mists, there will no longer be a cap on daily quests, and with hundreds reportedly available at level 90, we will be able to do daily quests all day long, every day. I figure this will be fun for about two quests, and then I'll never want to do another daily quest again. But the important thing is that if I wanted to, I always could. Always.

9. Not being yelled at for wanting an upgrade We're still going to want agility items in Mists, but no longer will hunters be using melee weapons (except on Halloween when we're pretending to be abnormally good-looking rogues). This means that all that whining we get from rogues and feral druids and warriors and who the heck knows who else will finally come to an end. We'll no longer have to feel bad about wanting gear that is a big upgrade.

10. New Mania spirit beast I'm sure that there will be new spirit beasts in the expansion, and I just hope we have one named Mania, perhaps with the bonus ability to cure diseases.

Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. From leveling your hunter to learning the DPS value of skill, we've got you covered. If you're stuck in one of the nine support classes, why not move up to the big league and play a hunter?