That's mostly on target, but there's a little more to it. We actually had a few different goals with these hotfixes. While it?s true that we wanted to reduce Marksmanship burst in PvP, that?s only part of the story; we equally wanted to make Survival and Beast mastery more attractive choices in PvE. That involved bringing Marksmanship damage down a bit in fights where little or no movement is required, and reducing the amount of Aimed Shot spam once mobs drop below 80%.

Marksmanship's burst damage in PvP was indeed higher than we wanted, and we felt that Aimed Shot was the best place to bring burst back into line, so we've reduced its damage, including the Aimed Shot! generated by the Master Marksman proc, by about 20%. To help compensate for the loss of dps and improve Survival and Beast Mastery output, Aspect of the Hawk should now provide 2000 attack power at level 85. This will also make the talent One with Nature more powerful as well. The net effect of the change to Aspect of the Hawk should result in a buff to Survival and Beast Mastery in PvE and (in combination with the Aimed Shot nerf) a slight reduction to PvE Marksmanship dps. The changes should also make Aimed Shot less attractive once a target drops below 80% health and Careful Aim no longer applies.

This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds. Now that it is listed at 2.4 seconds, the actual cast time is now closer to 2.9, which is where we want it to be. We realize this caused some confusion (even for us), and we?re going to see if we can make the 0.5 second delay more visible in the future.

Finally, we also wanted to let you know that Deterrence is functioning properly: Deterrence now provides 100% miss chance rather than 100% parry chance and remains in effect even if the hunter's weapon is disarmed, but it's still possible to temporarily delay a hunter?s use of Deterrence with the judicious use of disarm effects. Previously, certain attacks which could not be parried, such as Cheap Shot, would still land even when Deterrence was in effect; such attacks now shouldn't hit. In combination with some of the recent adjustments to melee mobility, Deterrence should still be more effective overall. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.