Scattered Shots: 10 things hunters should get in patch 4.2

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union 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.

Thus far, the patch 4.2 hunter news has been pretty light. There was the odd little tweak to the BM mastery that was most likely just a tooltip update (giving us a more precise number, rather than the rounded one) and the peek at our T12 set bonus, which we've already discussed in depth.

We know that Blizzard's process is to push things out onto the PTR as they are completed, rather than in any kind of priority order, to enable the most testing time possible. It is therefore my theory that Blizzard has some fantastic things planned for the hunter class that we'll be seeing in patch 4.2.

Now, before you get your hopes up, this incredibly awesome list of the top 10 4.2 hunter buffs is entirely fabricated and wishful thinking. There's no indication that hunters will actually be getting these things. But we should get them. We absolutely should.

1. New BM hunter talent: Stampede

BM hunters need to feel the love. Sure, they were drowned in the Blizzard lovin' throughout all of BC, but that was a couple of expansions ago. Wrath was punishment enough, wasn't it?

The long overdue Stampede ability will mark the return of the BM love: on a 5-minute cooldown, the hunter calls every pet in his stable to run amok for 20 seconds. The pets aren't controllable -- in fact, the hunter's active pet joins the stampede. They all throw out buffs and debuffs and rip targets apart, using their roots and interrupts and everything else with wild abandon. You can't Kill Command with them, but the BM mastery does buff their damage.

Sure, a full 25 may be too much, so fine -- let's narrow it down to just the five pets that we have the ability to switch between. But with only five, they better be full-strength pets!

Just be careful that you don't use Stampede when Corehound is one of your pets and it casts Ancient Hysteria before the raid is ready for it.

2. New MM hunter talent: Headshot

Come on, they're marksman hunters -- of course we should get Headshot!

This talent allows the MM hunter to apply hunter's mark to the same target repeatedly. Every time you apply Hunter's Mark to a target that already has it, your screen zooms in at 2x magnification. Every time you zoom in, your crit damage multiplier increases by another 50%. Headshot only works with Aimed Shot, and any movement, use of other abilities, or taking damage removes the zoomed in Headshot multiplier.

A perfect ability to combo with Camouflage. Admittedly, we won't get a ton of use out of it in PvE, but it'll still come in handy from time to time. Especially on every single pull -- imagine MDing a nice 70k Aimed Shot on the pull!

3. New SV hunter talent: Heart of the Wild

Poor survival has had a bit of an identity crisis over the years. Used to be back in the day, the survival talent tree was all about, you know, surviving. Lots of great defensive abilities, combined with a bunch of PvP stuff (since they were the "PvP tree" back when that's how things were separated).

Nowadays, SV has morphed into a spec that's all about magical damage dealing. Well, Heart of the Wild combines these two traits in one simple ability: The SV hunter is healed for 15% of the magical damage she deals.

Simple, straight-up, and makes SV the ultimate survival tree -- as long as they're dealing damage! Also pleasant since SV is currently the only hunter tree without any kind of self-healing at all (though Heart of the Wild would be a bajillion times better than anything the other specs have).

4. Dual-wielding ranged weapons

I talked about dual-wielding pistols in the past, but the Blizzard April Fool's post made me change my mind. We need to dual-wield full-fledged ranged weapons.

Hey, at one point, the suggestion of warriors being able to do it was crazy-broken. Let's get us some of that crazy-broken action. Only better.

5. Engineering-constructed robotic pets

I have long hoped for this. Let's have engineers be able to construct a robot dog pet for hunters. Here's how it should work:

Engineers get a schematic to make the Robo-Dog. This is a companion pet that anyone can have. But the engineers can then make enhancement kits for your Robo-Dog. This enhancement kit turns it into a hunter pet (and also makes it bigger).There are three different enhancement kits: ferocity, cunning, and tenacity. Each one gives a different appearance to the Robo-Dog. For example, the tenacity kit covers your Robo-Dog in heavy armor plating.

This list is so awesome, I'm going to be lucky if I don't pee myself before I finish. And we're only halfway through!

6. New glyph: Greater Glyph of Misdirection

This new glyph will work almost identically to the Glyph of Misdirection, only it will work on healers as well as our pets.

7. Tame Beast fixed to work on feral druids

We've been waiting for half a decade now for Tame Beast to finally work on feral druids, and I think patch 4.2 is the time to do it! Obviously, the taming would only work when they're in their feral forms.

As an alternative to full-fledged taming, the spell could be adjusted to be identical to Mind Control but only function on feral druids in animal form. Or just a form of CC where feral druids roll over and play submissive at our feet for 12 seconds. Druids need some rocks to their animal-form scissors in the great game of PvP, and hunters should be that rock.

8. New pet talent: Mount

Every time anyone calls for hunter class suggestions, there are always a bunch of hunters out there calling for our pets to be used as mounts. It's time to make it happen.

The "breaking" process of teaching our pet to become a mount can be represented via a pet talent that's available to every pet spec. Flying pets can become true flying mounts once you have the appropriate riding skill.

Now instead of riding into battle, dismounting, and having our pet appear with a teeny fraction of its actual health and getting one-shot, we can ride in on our pet, dismount, and have our pet have a teeny fraction of its actual health and get one-shot. Huge improvement.

I want to ride a pink flamingo. What pet do you want to ride?

9. Death bug fix

Blizzard's been doing a pretty good job of slowly picking through the hunter bugs that have been around since the beta -- steadily chopping away at a few of them each patch. Now's the time to hit the big ones.

In particular, there's a persistent hunter bug that's been around forever in which hunters can be reduced to zero health, and then die. If it can't be hotfixed, let's at least address it in the patch.

10. Michele Morrow as the in-game voice of Sylvanas

Most of you are probably aware of actress Michele Morrow's campaign to become Lady Sylvanas in the WoW movie. Well, Michele doesn't just play WoW -- she plays a hunter, and darnit, I want a fellow hunter cast in the WoW movie.

While getting a bazillion people to Like her Facebook campaign will help to garner attention, I think it's time Blizzard stepped up in support by casting her to do voice acting for Sylvanas in game. Of course, we'd need some Cataclysm scenes with Sylvanas then. Probably some soliloquy where she talks about how much she wishes she were a dwarf.

But you know what? Hunter bonds are stronger than bonds of faction or race, and I'm happy to have any hunter in the movie. While we're waiting for Blizzard to take care of its end, why not help a fellow hunter out by Liking her Facebook campaign? It will take you 1 second. You can do it by clicking the Like button below:

Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. From leveling your hunter through optimizing for heroics, pre-heroic loot and pre-raid loot, then on to choosing the right spec for the right job and how to "aspect dance" to maximize your DPS, we've got you covered.