If you’re a raiding hunter in the World of Warcraft, this article is a very good read:

BigRedKitty: Channeling Larry King – WOW Insider:

Except for Death Kniggets, no class got more new toys than Hunters. Mages and Paladins and the other lesser classes got some presents under their WotLK-tree, but we got so many gifts, we can’t see the floor. It’s good to be us!

Now, while many classes seem worried and anxious about how drastically they’re going to change in the upcoming expansion, it seems the nerf-hammer has been mercifully not heavily applied to us hunters. I, for one, missed being a raiding Marksmanship hunter and do not cringe in fear at the thought that gasp, my DPS will depend on my skill at weaving shots again, even as a BM hunter…

Since the The Age of the Raiding Macro-Masher could be over, the DPS of your average hunter versus the other DPS classes will probably decrease. Whereas hunters used to dominate almost all pre-Tier 6 DPS charts, the frequency that a hunter will get the top spot will decrease, as more skill will be required to maximize our potential. Skill > Gear, and WotLK is going to prove that for our class.

JL2003 on Flickr

As much as I liked being at the top of the DPS charts, being a macro masher was not as exciting as the old days of anxiously timing cooldowns to get the perfect shot rotation to work (if a perfect one existed, I didn’t find it…) Again, I’d rather work on actually being a skilled hunter than a one-button killing machine. Just like when I knew I was going to respec to BM, it was for raid usefulness, and I’m sure any future respec (even back to BM) for the expansion will still allow me to have fun with whatever play style I choose. I might even dabble with Survival for leveling. Who knows? I think I’ll have to play around with the different specs in the PTR (and beta, if I can get a key…)

For now, I’m not gonna be a “Wrath-Freaked” hunter.