You should stop right now, because you don’t know how it functions practically. 20% to Agi and Stam PLUS your pet PLUS giving the rest of your team 10% to all stats is so far better as to no rational person should be even considering lone wolf. 15% damage is not a solid chunk with the other options are giving 6-10% damage boost AND your pet is so far above. Your sniper scenario is also hoping it is a 1 on 1 fight that you get the first attack AND get a crit AND are fighting someone really bad at the game.
They changed it so you get Hawk and Heart of the Lion now.
It’s 7% of base mana, which is an incredibly low cost for a mana ability. Most hunters just aren’t gearing for int because why would you. Later stages of the game will offer hunters a lot more free int on gear, lowering the impact of base mana cost abilities like that. It actually costs even less than chimera shot which is at 12%.
Second it’s an aoe ability and does great aoe damage on 3 or more targets. That’s when you’re supposed to use it. Chimera shot should be superior when you aren’t doing aoe damage. Get a second pair of gloves to hotswap when clearing trash.
Only thing good about it is it has 3 chances to crit per use, which works nicely with Cobra Strikes (still inferior to Lion though)
Like I said, pets are easy to remove from the fight, so that’s half your damage gone. However, the last time I played, Lion was an aspect and forced you to remove your other ones to use it - apparently that changed while I was away. At the time 15% plus hawk was more powerful. I’m actually quite surprised they did that. Now there’s no other comparable option. Kinda dumb, really.
And no, the sniping strategy isn’t anything like that. Like I said before, I’m primarily a Survival hunter who prefers fast, on the go damage and traps. The sniper model is just another fun variant I revisited because Night Elves are awesome in this time period. It’s very successful in a glass cannon support role.
Interesting! Thanks for the update. I hadn’t noticed that yet. I was too busy fuming over Explosive Shot. I can’t believe they’d do that. It makes Lion the only viable option here, but it’s the one I wanted to use in the first place, so I’ll take it.
a pet in 2 seconds of up time does more additional damage then Lone Wolf for an entire fight AND requires them to deal with it which is a huge bonus. Then what you keep on missing is that the other runes do almost the same damage bonus WHILE letting you keep the pet. How is that hard to understand? The other runes are almost the same bonus (while lion also buffs stam and all allies nearby) PLUS YOU KEEP YOUR PET!
Also if you are concerned about a pet being out of the fight, get a wind serpent for ranged attacks.
FORGET THE DAMN PET, ALREADY! 
I don’t want a pet… They just cause combat bugs and you lose half your firepower if you spec into them. I just drop a trap and torpedo their master down. Even in vanilla when there was no Lone Wolf, I didn’t keep those things around. Until Bestial Wrath is available, pets don’t mean crap.
That being said, I do revise my stance on Heart of the Lion, now that it no longer requires you give up your aspects. I’m still blown away by that.
PS: I admit I’m going to use a pet on my Dwarf because boars give extra cc.
It’s only appears decent in Ashenvale PvP because it hits like 30 people.
On paper it seems like it does a metric ton of damage, when in reality it doesn’t. Each person hit is only taking something like 100 damage total. It’s fake damage that isn’t securing kills. It’s a nuisance at best.
It’s good for nothing anywhere. Not PvP, not PvE. Only reason to take it in Ashenvale is because pets are so squishy now that they die near instantly and are effectively useless in group PvP. The something explosive shot brings is better than the nothing pets bring.
It’s not picked because it’s good, it’s picked because it’s better than nothing.
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They would use it in a big pvp fight with 20+ people because it hits everyone within 8 yards of the target. Outside of having a massive number of people stacked together, its useless.
It can also help getting tags for getting honor credit.
Outside of that, it is very weak.
Edit: if you see a hunter using it in wsg, it is likely a bot farming honor and it uses it to increase tags for more honor.
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Facts 
Even stacking it with Serpent Spread and Improved Serpent Sting is mediocre at best, and only looks good on mindless dps charts. I’d rather have something I can actually kill with.
100% on point
That’s true, my concern is though now they’ve gutted the class once 60 and gear comes they won’t revert what they’ve done and we’ll just be broken.
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i honestly wonder how much they will actually need at 60 with some of the passives already available and a pet that already does 3x the damage it normally does.
also will it even need to be reverted? i have a feeling survival mm will pump with a very inflated crit chance at higher levels.
Blockquote They would have to buff the damage to the point where aimed shot 1 shot everyone before anyone would take it otherwise.
This says more about the power of pets than lone wolf or the hunter. But when we talk about pet damage suddenly it isn’t that strong and leave britney alone, but if you sacrifice the pet you literally need a 400% dmg increase to make it a worthwhile trade.
Not trying to bash on you, just me being a noticer noticing some stuff I noticed.
Chimera doesn’t scale as serpent sting doesn’t. Explosive shot is crap vs less than 4 targets. So were left with flanking which is also busted and normal rotation. Duno how survival is meant to magically pump. If anything BM will pump due to pets being the only half decent thing. Though pets scale better with level than they do with gear so a 60 pet in MC will probably be good. By the time you’re hitting late BWL / AQ the pets will be weak and die due to raid mechanics.
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Yeah it’s insane how they made it useless and havent brough it back up.
That and chimera should both be on par with BM rune at least. Its wild that they instantly gutted the ability and yet still wont try tweaking it back up to reality after weeks.
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That dev needs to be fired for such a crappy knee jerk decision.
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No matter your spec as a hunter currently, if you have a pet, it’s doing at least 50% of your damage in an extended encounter.
Lone Wolf would have to boost your damage by 100% to break even with having a pet in single target. If you are in a scenario where you can consistently get MS hitting three targets, the percentage goes to somewhere around 70-80%.
Its currently 15%. Its an absolute joke of a rune and easily bar none the worst rune in the entire game.
Pets by themselves really aren’t that strong. Same goes for hunters. Hunters by themselves they really aren’t that strong. It’s only by combining the two together that hunters put out respectable damage. The second you take one out of the equation, everything falls to pieces.
Agreed. This is extremely urgent. No, I mean. VERY urgent. We need to hotfix this at 4AM on a non-work day (Today or tomorrow). Preferably without patch notes or anything.
^ This is how explosive shot was originally nerfed by a salty developer who lost to me in a 1v1 LOL
Buff explosive shot, and fire aggrend at the same time.
That’s a good point. But so far I find it benefits very little from stats and is just so dirt weak that it’ll never been a threat the way it is. Explosive shot is supposed to be a low distance AoE with major kick on a single target. It relies on high crit to be most effective. Right now they have it as some sort of ridiculous pepper spray on massive groups way outside its visual radius. AND it replaces two moves at the same time - You can’t get more useful things like Beast Mastery, Chimera Shot, and Carve, and you lose out on arcane shot. So it’s costly on top of being crap.
In dps charts during PvE, I’d agree. But often high powered burst do the job in PvP. That’s more where you use Lone Wolf. Or at least you did until they overpowered Heart of the Lion.
They need to consider what it costs to get Explosive Shot. You have to lose Arcane Shot, alone with better things like Beast Mastery, Chimera Shot, and Carve. They’re not giving a viable tradeoff in Explosive Shot. If you’re losing Arcane Shot and Chimera, then it has to do more damage than Chimera alone, but not as much as Chimera and Arcane Shot together. Explosive would also have short range AoE to compensate. That I feel would be fair. Then it’s up to the player to decide which advantage they prefer - more single target damage, or a single relabel attack that does saves on mana and does some AoE too.
PS: If you guys want race restrictions on classes lifted, then consider checking my other thread out and sharing your thoughts.
So do you agree with the bad position other classes(not saying every last one) are in or just hunters in your opinion?