Tricks duplicates the in-combat effect of MD (and does indeed do a better job), but to me that was already a fairly ancillary part of the skill (one that had already been significantly devalued by the tank threat generation improvements in Wrath).

Also, as far as time based goes, rogues is still six seconds to what will be our four. And this isn’t even really about whether or not it’s better or not! This is about Blizzard saying “We don’t want to give a class another classes mechanics.” And then turning right around and giving rogues was was, until that point, a hunter class mechanic. Am I saying we should have gotten camo? Eh, that’s debatable but that doesn’t change the fact that Blizz said one thing and pretty much immediately went against it.

But then I have that annoying habit of insisting on seeing my glass as half full and not really caring that the guy over there might conceivably have a glass that is 55% full ;)

@Ryai: *shrug* fair enough. I still think you’re blaming Blizz for things that are actually the fault of other players, but that’s your call.

And Nim: I had a big rant but it’s just a pointless argument because you’re not really listening when I said ‘-I- never experienced hunter grief until after the BM nerf’ as I was speaking from personal experience :/ or that ‘Blizzard should have no right trying to have a stance in controlling guild interactions to an extent because they don’t do anything anywhere else, so SB should have been on par with cats from the get-go, abusive/controlling guilds non withstanding, as no matter the pet, if a hunter is in one of those guilds, they probably wouldn’t be BM anyways’.

And if they ever do implement auto leveling, it probably won’t happen untill Cat, if at all, this exp change seems to prove it; or hell I’d be happy to within 3 levels of the hunter’s level, but yeah again I doubt they’re gonna touch pet exp/leveling anymore than they have.

Regardless of auto-leveling, hunters get to:
1. Choose which pet to tame
2. Choose a name for our pet
3. Spend pet talent points as we choose

Those are some pretty significant difference from warlock pets.

Being able to avoid having to deal with such jerks on a regular basis is why I consider my guild such a major part of being able to properly enjoy WoW. If guildies are going off to run instances, or if I happen to be free for a scheduled raid, then I’ll join in. Otherwise, I’ll go do my own thing. On the rare occasions when I do PuG a run or head into Wintergrasp or a BG for some PvP, if someone does start mouthing off, then I generally won’t pay any attention. If it gets too bad I might even put them on /ignore, but I don’t recall anything ever getting to that point.

WoW is like life that way – I can’t control what other people do or say. I can only control who I choose to associate with and how I react to what others say and do (and, of course, what I say and do myself). I’m not perfect at managing my own reactions by any means, but why should I feel angry or upset just because some random idiot in WoW doesn’t know what they’re talking about? However, as I’ve said before, that’s one of those perspective things that is fairly easy to achieve from the point of view of a successful engineer that is just playing WoW for fun rather than any kind self-validation. I recognise that there are plenty of life situations where it wouldn’t be anywhere near as easy to just dismiss in-game criticism from a stranger.

As for Blizz not having the rights to provide better tools for guilds… without Blizz creating it, there wouldn’t be any guild system at all. Beyond that, they do largely leave it to players to manage their own play experience, precisely because they *don’t* want to be looking over everyone’s shoulder policing every single social interaction. They’ll ban players that are reported enough times by enough people for violating the ToS, but otherwise they’re pretty hands off (of course, there are also the practical limitations of managing a player base measured in the millions that favour the laissez-faire approach).