Burning Crusade: Final thoughts:

Ok, and finally, after all that, we come to my overall thoughts on The Burning Crusade changes. I love them.

They've really worked hard to give each of the talent trees their own twist. Beastmasters work closely with their pets, needing a good range of stats and solid micro-management skills to get the most out of thier severely boosted pet. Marksmen can focus soley on getting the most Attack Power and Intellect Possible, relying on a big slow ranged weapon to get big, high-damage shots. Survivalists on the other hand, need to focus in Agility, Stamina and Crit Chance, since their bag of tricks often brings them close to the enemy, a faster ranged weapon will help them activate their special abilities more often, and make them an asset in both PVP and in raids.

As for Wulf, well there's two ways I can take him, depending on the as-yet unreleased information about pets. If pets look like they'll become viable in the endgame, then I'll spec him like this and make him a Beastmaster like he was in his pre-raiding days. If it turns out that pets still don't scale correctly, then I'll adapt his current Marksman build into something like this.

Whichever way I go, the new spells and changes have convinced me that Hunters will have a role in the endgame. Not only will we have damage that will scale properly and make gear upgrades meaningful, but we have our role as pullers cemented by the Misdirection spell. Misdirection will let us open fire early on a target and then pass the aggro our first three shots do straight onto the tank without the need for a clumsy Taunt/Feign Death handoff. It also means we can direct the attention of trash mobs onto the mouthy Mage who's been bugging us, if we were so inclined! ;)

Now all I need is a final word from Blizzard on our pets in TBC and I'll be sound as a pound.