Well we have just had another twitter Dev Chat. To see the full thing you can at MMO-Champion.

For the hunter, we got a total of 5 questions and here they are:

Q. What is the design choice behind the focus recharge in Aspect of Fox, is it meant to replace Viper?
A. Aspect of the Fox is intended to be used for mobile damage or kiting. There is still some tuning to be done on Focus and this aspect, but that is the design goal.

Q. Will Hunters be able to pet-tank through cata (even if just beast masters)?
A. What, you didn’t see that video where some guy tanked Marowgar with his Gorilla?

Q. How are you trying to separate the play styles of the hunter specializations? What makes Cobra Shot feel different from Steady Shot?
A. Cobra Shot is ideal for Beast Mastery and Survival hunters because they don’t really have any other way of keeping Serpent Sting up (Cobra Shot extends Serpent Sting’s duration), and also for Survival because it is “Elemental” damage. It’s also useful in PvP or in some other niche situations, say, when a creature is immune to physical damage. Now you have a solution.

Q. Concerning Marksmanship hunters, why is the PvP talent Resistance is Futile a prerequisite for PvE talent Marked for Death?
A. In an upcoming build it won’t be a prerequisite, and we want to change it to proc a free Kill Command instead of an instant critical.

Q: How will pets scale with Mastery their masters’ Mastery?
A. The talent specializations that rely heavily on pets (Beast Mastery and Demonology, for example) have a Mastery that makes Mastery rating also increase pet damage. Other specializations that have pets, but whose pets do not benefit from Mastery, will have their Masteries balanced accordingly, taking into account that pets will not benefit from them.

Also we had some more info on how mastery is now shaping up, as it is no longer associated with talents.

Q: Can you provide some clarity on the 3rd Mastery that is affected item stats?
A. We recognized the earlier implementation of Mastery in the beta was confusing. Mastery is no longer directly associated with a talent tree, but is instead a passive effect learned from a trainer at a later level. That passive effect will now grant the third Mastery bonus you formerly saw in the talent tree pane. The passive effect will have a base value, and then Mastery rating will increase that effect further. The other two Mastery bonuses previously listed at the top of the talent tree pane have been removed, but, in some cases, have been reimplemented as passive specialization bonuses. Currently, in the beta, you cannot see any of the Masteries, as they need to be reimplemented after the talent tree redesign.

There was a new patch go live today on the Beta. With it came the new 31 point talent trees. I love this new system. The trees have become far to big, and this needed to happen. If you are after all the juicy goodness that is the beta patch. MMO-Champion has you covered (they keep going down so give them time). Their talent calculator does seems to be stable.

I don’t really have anything more to say about the trees. I can’t say much as I’m not in the beta (still waiting for my key Blizzard). I love the idea, and I am looking forward for all the news coming though in the next few days about how they are working out.

Thats right, as of today the closed beta has begun. The ivites are being set out as we speak according to blizzards press release.
What does this mean, well if your lucky enough to get a beta invite then you can play cataclysm. It also means the NDA has been lifted. So we have the new talent tress.

MMO-Chapmpion has also put back up all their screenshots.

Also the new CM on the forms Lylirra just announce the beta. Not bad for the first day on the job. Check out the post its got good information on how to know if your in the beta

Also I would like to remind EVERYONE, if you get an email with an invite to the beta, DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS. Go to your web browser and type in the battle.net yourself. This way you keep your account information safe.

I now sit and wait for my beta key. I hope all who are in are having a good time.

If you haven’t taken a look yet head over to the WHU and check out the write up on pet tanking Sindragosa. Now we wait for the nerf from Blizzard. At any rate it is a very impressive feet none the less.

As its patch day and I am waiting for the servers to come up, I have a bit of free time to let everyone know what has been happening in the past few weeks. If you haven’t seen the patch notes yet you can find them here. Also the list of known bugs can be found here.

The big news is I have a new level 80 toon. Deyson the Paladin. This week I finally got around to leveling him from 72. Now I have the task of gearing him. This is not as easy as it sounds. With him being a tank, I have to try and push for the defense cap of 535 so I can tank Heroics. On my perivous two tanks It hasn’t really been an issue. For the Druid you dont need any defense as you get it from talents, and for the Death Knights, they get to cheat, as the Weapon Rune gets you the last 25 Defense. Deyson hit 80 yesterday and he is sitting at 504 defense, so for the next day or so I am trying to find another 30 defense so I can start the badge grind.

I have also been leveling with the recruit-a-friend account. Ariia and I, have almost finished off our second set of toons to 60. Of course she gets 3 toons to 60 because of grant a level.  I mentioned a few weeks ago I also started a alliance Hunter. I haven’t seen above level 15 on alliance side, and I want to get to 60 before the world is changed forever.  So we got our hunters to level 10 to get our pets, and also started a Death knight so we could fund our toons. Arria also started us a guild. I don’t know why but it is called Hunt This. They will get more attention over the next month now that we have finished leveling our Horde toons.

In more hunter related news, I was able to run ICC this week on my hunter. I have to say I was very rusty. My DPS was pretty low, and this was also not helped by my new G13 key bindings. I had only played Toresh once or twice with the new bindings and it sure showed. I hoped to get a few more raids in on the hunter as I am now in two different 10 man teams.

Thats it for now. As always don’t expect anything as you maybe disappointed.