Oh eM Gee Two Point Three

So 2.3 went live and I have to give kudos to bliz I had minimal lag issues, nothing too crazy works wrong etc. So good job to you developers and IT people at bliz. Now as far as hunter changes I say:

Nice Job They're Not Bad!

To all the hunters crying that they won't get an aimed off in arena. Cry more learn to use rapid fire or a haste trinket properly and most importantly getting 3 free seconds via kiting is not hard. The arcane dispell is awesome leading to hunters being very good for softening a target for a kill.

1/3k Aimed -50% healing debuf
600/1.4k Arcane - Purge something very often important like a renew, ES or so on
another 2k dmg putting someone in a great position to be dropped in 5's

So what did I do yesterday? A little of everything I farmed for a bit leveling my ghostsaber and found the TSA change was phenomenal and really reduced the downtime I needed while farming/leveling a level 50 pet. And that's about all the PvE haha!

On to other stuff. The hunter dead zone change was the only thing to really effect 1v1 situations. It was much easier to get a clutch concussive shot on a rogue and get away after scattering him. The purge was rather funny in a few cases. Owning a locks fel armor and having him freak is awesome. Owning earth shield? Better :)

But the huge change was 3v3. We had been playing with different healers on and off but yesterday Me Warlock DiscPriest went nuts. The team was chilling at a nice (lol) 1600 or so rating. Today? 1750 our warlock has 0 pieces of arena gear and we were just abusing teams in full merc. Dispels while the priest is tanking are ridiculous. One match I zinged fel dom from a lock after we killed his lolguard and I was laughing my arse off. I think we went 9-3 overall our losses were to teams who we dropped 9-11 points to. It was great calling kill targets out. The MS debuf is such a huge asset to the team that has tons of mana burning and offensive dispelling. Melee is no big issue between hunter cc/kite on the warrior and lock fears on rogues and palas.

Things I did notice that were big for other teams? Pain suppression is jacked. Enh shamans are alot harder to drop even in crappier gear. Hunters are a real issue now :)

A few notable losses:

Hunter Warrior Shaman: From our server alliance side (screw u maplestory) these guys were very good and honestly a hunter does a lot to help keep a warrior DPSing. Our basic strat was:

1) Oom hunter while I killed his pet.
2) Keep warrior snared
3) after hunter was oom keep a pet on him to prevent him being useful and getting a drink
4) Then split some dps between shaman and warrior once the sham is forced into heal himself mode fear sham MS warrior and kill him.

This worked well except we dropped their warrior and their hunter dropped our lock at the same time. I was oom priest was oom as he kited the hunter i drank, the hunter killed my pet and their sham got a rez on the warrior... we noobed that up :(. I for see hunter+war+shaman being fairly good relying on warrior dps and the hunter assisting and helping keep the person snared so the warrior can continue bashing them down.

So the shifttusk summary of changes after rambling post?
1) Aimedshot Debuf is great it doesn't break 1v1 game is a huge asset in arena I noticed a huge bump in my contribution to the team hunters are now very good utility in arena between traps stings and purge.
2) The new kara amo is a huge up in dps for arena along side the racial change although as BM I wouldn't be hit capped in pve any more the extra 1%^ crit and 10 dps amo is huge. I was top dmg arena in every match.
3) Poison dispells seem to be going in order of application now so the scorpid may or may not be needed.
4) With the MS debuf I'm now specced out of imp stings officially my stings aren't getting dispelled when someone is MS'd(aimedshotted whatever) if you MS a dpser and sting a healer they're going to eat the viper.
5) The dispell while unreliable is a great asset especially combined with another dispeller like a priest really clearing people out so you can own important buffs like BOF, BOP and ES later.

I'm looking forward to S3 starting I think its going to be alot of fun with our 3v3 lineup. I think bliz's fix to enh shamans is partially successful but I think it is too much a 1v1 buff and not giving them any super utility for arena. They're still easy to shut down and are really only good for some dps and keeping a warrior on someone.

On a side note someone with a toon named "hotforyou" sent me a tell asking about the hunter changes I was in an arena and didn't respond but who the heck was that?