Infact hunters are getting a significant DPS boost. People who fail to see that have either a: Never raided on their hunter, and if they have they belong to the class Huntards(people with little or no understanding of hunters, attending raids to pick up loot, and doing same or less dmg as the main tank) B: never lvled a hunter to 60.
To do good dps with hunters today(yes its possible) requires enormous focus and potting(especially mana pots in long fights) taking advantage of slow weapons so that you use aimed shot as a free shot, and woving this into either a 9 or a 10 second cycle. To add to that, hunters doesnt scale very well with gear, and the itemisation is ******* meaning we take agility items, and agility items alone. Theres also the fact that Auto shot speed is affected by your weapon speed, so in order to maintain an effiecient aimed cycle, you must use slow weapons. The new aimed shot makes all weapon speeds look appealing.
Arcane shot today scales only with +dmg gear(which it only gains 46% from, due to it beeing an instant), and for the average joe hunter you will never see arcane shots above 500dmg. Now it scales with gear, and reports from the test servers say it crits for 1800 with good gear. Thats an instant ability, that with talents can be shot every 5 seconds. Ill trade that for the old aimed shot any day(if you need to ask, the new aim shot resets the autoshot timer when cast)
Come patch day however: Agility is now "nerfed" so that 1 agi=1rap. All hunter based items in the current game are changed to reflect this, by removing some agility and adding ranged attack power(the tier sets, prestors, barb of the sandreaver etc). DOnt forget that our agi to crit rate is changed from 51-32, so you wont loose much by the removed agi in your tier items(if youre wearing them)
In addition, by speccing Marksmanship you now open up the ability to get attack power from intellect, opening up a whole new erray of itemisation options.
Then there is the pet. Unless you specc 31 points in BM, your pet cant hold aggro very well, doesnt dish out good dmg(it dishes out more when youre 20-31 specc, but not anything to wet yourself over) and dies far to easy. Come patch day the pet now gets a base boost, meaning it hits harder, tanks better and has higher survivability. In addition to this, it scales with your gear. Yogi the bear suddenly got angry i say.
Now read this, and keep in mind that at lvl 62 we get steady shot, a 1.5 sec mini aimed shot, can you honestly say that hunters have been nerfed, rather than buffed?
Gratz to BLizzard. I think finally hunters will be a necesety to raids, other than the tedious tranq fights.