Let me begin by saying that I absolutely love some of the Hunter changes introduced in 3.2, especially from a Beast Master’s standpoint. The reworked Animal Handler has been a godsend. While the auto-capping of expertise for pets has indirectly buffed all Hunters, BM really made out when Blizzard decided to replace the now-unnecessary expertise bonus with raw attack power.

The change to Wild Hunt is nice too, even if it is still a bit buggy. I noticed right away that the stats still weren’t carrying over when I specced into Wild Hunt after the patch went live. I’ve been making sure I dismiss and resummon each time I swap out pets just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, these two welcome changes were well deserved, as BM has needed some love here for quite some time. To review, 10% additional attack power for the pet from Animal Handler, plus 10% increased AP inheritance from the Hunter… good stuff. I like this a lot. I currently PvP with a Beast Mastery spec so this is just gravy for me.

However, the third change affecting Beast Mastery is what I really want to discuss. This is of course, Catlike Reflexes.

It seems as if there’s a lot of confusion concerning this talent choice. That, or some Hunters are just assuming it’s a huge buff and are jumping all over it. The addition of the decreased cooldown on Kill Command has Hunters confuddled, scrambling for places to steal points away so that they can get the 30 second cooldown on Kill Command.

Meh…

I didn’t pick it up. Here’s why…

From a PvP standpoint this talent looks pretty good. I know, I know… BM PvP is quite the oxymoron. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s just how I roll. 😉 I love the hardiness of BM and I relish the last-man-standing style of warfare.

Anyway… the problem is, which talent(s) do you borrow from to pick up Catlike Reflexes. I’ll tell you… none of them.

First of all, this talent is worthless in my opinion without 3 points invested. A properly talented and glyphed BM Hunter will have a 1 minute, 4 second cooldown on Bestial Wrath. The cooldown on KIll Command is 1 min, which is absolutely perfect. Any BM Hunter worth their salt knows to macro Kill Command with Bestial Wrath, and if you don’t, then feel free to visit my macro page to copy and paste. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it on the down low. No one will have to know. 😉

So anyway, in order to make Catlike Reflexes a logical choice, you’d have to invest the full three points to get it down to 30 seconds so as to not be off cycle with the Bestial Wrath cooldown. Again, here in lies the problem… What would be a worthwhile sacrifice for this talent?

For example, this is what my PvP build looks like… [Read more…] about Thinking Out Loud: Catlike Reflexes