A Shift in Priorities in 3.3?

There are a few upcoming changes in 3.3, but few for Hunters so far:

Hunters


Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas. (Yay! I like to switch between Fenris and Varaha for group and solo stuff)

Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect. (Yay? Is there a PvE use for this?)

Talents


Beast Mastery


Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack. (kewl)


Pets


Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. (pet management just got easier)

Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20. (This seems like a nerf...not sure as I honestly never use cower, been a long time since my pet has been able to pull aggro off of a tank, may affect BM more than other specs, it may however be awesome sauce in addition to the changes to Avoidance for certain AoE bits of fight, definitely a boon to pet survival, but will require a macro to maximize usefulness, unless the pet gets smart enough to only use it when taking damage...)

Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.(sounds good and will merit a closer look at the Ferocity tree as it exists on the PTR

Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes. (sounds good to me)

Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%. (ah, synergy)

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%. (Yes! Moonfire, my Spirit Beast, will make it to 80 before Cata!)

Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards. (good, I'm glad)

Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards. (see above)

Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite. (this definitely sounds like a buff, but I'm not sure how often a mob dodges when the pet is behind it...)

So, generally speaking no many changes to the class as a whole, a lot of pet changes though, which I'll cover in a later post. Today I want to talk about my favorite change, an overdue change in my opinion:

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

Nothing is more annoying to me than hitting my Misdirect macro only to be told a "More Powerful Spell is Already Active". I wish they'd at least change the wording to something that didn't insinuate that my Misdirect was a lesser spell...

Anyway, we will no longer have that issue, stacking Misdirect and sending huge amounts of threat to the Rogue....TANK! I meant tank! But a poster on the WoW forums got me thinking. His 'concern' was that he would do less damage in 4 seconds compared to the 3 shots (or really 3 damage sources) that Misdirect utilizes now. I think, and many others who posted after him, that you can do a lot more damage in 4 seconds than compared to 3 shots. Especially if we consider the possibility of adding Rapid Fire to the top of our priority list. Currently the highest DPS priority list includes RF at the top:

RF>KS>ES>BA>SrS>Multi/AiS>SS

Of course this is a theoritical shot priority and not an opening shot rotation.
RF is used at the top of the priority list as it would maximize opening DPS, but is only actually used situationally. Could the change to MD shift the paradigm? Will RF become an actual opener now?
It may become more common that not using RF at the top of the opening rotation would be based more on specific encounters, bosses with a short enrage timer for instance.

Or would opening with Volley now be an option? No, no that's just silly, but at least we will be able to pull multiple targets again, haven't been able to do that since early BC.../sigh. I remember how one hunter in Karazhan discovered the change to Volley/MD....I guess I should've mentioned something before the pull, oh well.