Prognosis: NEGATIVE

While I did have a few attempts at Firefighter in 10 man Ulduar last night (so. much. fire. *shudder*) this is actually about the current patch notes. There are some overall changes (like the addition of a new battleground) there is are a few hunter changes and changes that affect hunters in some way.

Isle of Conquest-The new 40v40 battleground. The idea is cool and I like it, but we all know how this is going to end up: as AV 2.0 with people just zerging the generals and completely ignoring the objectives. Unlike some of my contemporaries who completely shun PvP in any form, I actually enjoy battleground PvP (and doing Wintergrasp with the guild), as long as people actually follow the objectives of it rather than just farm honor from kills. (Arena still sucks a massive one) I suppose I could always try to rustle up guildies or the hit up /trade to find a premade but it would take longer than just hopping into a queue and hope I get a good one. My solution to the honor farming: make honor kills in BGs award about a quarter of the honor they do now or reduce the honor gain from killing enemy players not near objectives (i.e. fighting on the roads) to nothing.

XP from Battlegrounds-Yay. Questing is monotonous. Don't anyone try to deny it. Questing is boring as hell, especially with quests like 'collect x amount of items with a stupid drop rate' or 'kill x amount of mobs that share a spawn with another, more common mob'. Sure, with all the changes to with quest XP in Azeroth and the heirloom shoulders it goes a lot faster, but it doesn't make it any less boring. I like the extra option of being able to have a change of scenery. When I first tried to break up the questing with bgs on my hunter way back when, I was immediately put off because of twinks. With the toggle option, the chances of finding a twink with this change are drastically reduced. (Sure, there will be some who will fight even with the XP gain just so they can grief those who are actually trying to accomplish objectives, but that won't be all that common now)

Emblem change-At first I didn't like the idea but think of it this way: will having access to a few pieces of higher level gear make that player who fails at Heigan magically able to dodge the slime floor? Or help that blind fool not stand in void zones on Kel'Thuzad? How about dodge lava waves on Sartharion? No? I didn't think so. Not a big deal and the e-peen stroking QQers with their 'but that casual getz free gears for doing ezmode heroix and noxxromoulus QQ!!!1!!!' need to get over themselves.

Pets-Now get 40% of our resilience and 100% of spell penetration. PvP related, not really worth caring about from a PvE standpoint. However, masters who are at the appropriate hit cap for their level will find their pets will also be hit and expertise-capped. (If you're under, then it will be scaled accordingly.) This is crucial for hunter pets (and I suppose you locks too) because the only way to get pets expertise now is by speccing BM and taking talents in Animal Handler and warlocks have no way to increase the demon's expertise at all IIRC. I wonder what they'll do with the talent though. For those who don't know, pets are designed to attack the target from behind when they are not the primary aggro target. Their attacks can't be blocked or parried but bosses in a raid can still dodge an attack from behind or the side (6.5% chance). In order to reduce the dodge chance to zero, a player (or pet) needs 26 expertise, or 214 expertise rating, in order to push that off the table. Players that need expertise have it on their gear, enchantments, and gems but classes with pets (who have zero use for expertise) have no way to increase their pet's expertise other than the aforementioned talent but now they won't have to worry about lost dps due to dodges and pet threat will be better soloing due to less dodges and parries.

Silencing shot-Also has a 3 second interrupt. Now becomes more useful against bosses who are immune to silence but are not immune against being interrupted. You still don't want to mess up an interrupt rotation but now we have the ability to pick it up in an 'oh shit' situation.

Blacked Dragonfin-Now only requires one Dragonfin Angelfish, down from two. *Hallelujah, hallelujah* Having to farm twice as many fish to make one stack of food was completely stupid.

Replenishment-Nerfed to provide 1% of total mana over five seconds instead of the current .25% of mana every second. Only a .05% difference in mana gained every second but it's still a nerf.

Aspect of the Cheetah-learned at level 16 now. Big deal. It's four levels before the aspect is rendered practically useless for outdoor travel. And at today's XP rate, going from 16-20 will be about 2 hours of solid play time.
Deterrence-Now has a new visual effect. This is just what the class needed to pull it from the gutters...wait. No it's not.
Traps-Only exist for 30 seconds now. Eh, it matches the cooldown on a non-talented trap. I don't see it as a nerf in the strictest sense of the word. My traps were usually triggered before 10 seconds have gone by, much less one minute. Also, traps are divided by school and have seperate cooldowns. Really? It took them four years to do something that should have been done since the beginning? Like the shaman's totem bar, it's better late than never I suppose.

Catlike Reflexes-Also reduces the cooldown on Kill Command by 10/20/30%. Eh, I like the synergy the current Kill Command has with a talented, glyphed Bestial Wrath. The dodge is still worthless for raiding and I wouldn't bother investing three talent points in a useless talent just for a lower cooldown on Kill Command as BM.
Survival-Entrapment no longer works with Immolation or Explosive trap. A nerf but honestly, since when does a fire trap root you in place? Makes perfect sense to me.
Lock n Load-Now has a 22 second cooldown. Will not proc when frost trap is triggered when the target is immune. Meh, I hate survival, but now I have another reason to not spec it. An unreliable proc chance now has a 22 second cooldown. Goodbye survival as the #1 DPS hunter spec.
Roar of Sacrfice-Can be used on friendly players again, but redesigned. Target becomes immune to critical hits, but the pet takes 20% of the damage taken by the target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes. If I am interpreting this correctly, this ability has gone from being midly useful for soloing to COMPLETELY. FUCKING. USELESS. in any PvE situation. If I'm soloing and taking hits, I want 30% of that damage going to my pet who I can heal with a mend pet. Becoming immune to being crit but still taking full damage from the attacks while my pet takes 20% of that is retarded. GG arena. Seriously Blizz, L2Seperatefunctionforpveandpvp.

Ravasaur Trainer-Finally implemented. Bringing faction balance in available mounts, one day at a time.

There's some tooltip fixes as well but the hunter changes aren't all that impressive in my opinion. The overall changes, such as the Isle of Conquest, are good just the hunter stuff seem more like PvP fixes than anything. Oh well. 3.2 is still a ways off, and changes will be coming.