So at level 71, you get Kill Shot. Let’s talk about it a little.

Kill Shot is sort of like an Old School Aimed Shot, in that it does a ton of damage and it doesn’t just crit, it Mondo-Crits. The big differences between it and Old School Aimed Shot are 1.) No cast time, and much more importantly, 2.) It can only be used on an enemy with 20% health or less. In short, this is the shot that is supposed to “finish off” your target.

I’ve been playing around with it for the past level, not enough to be able to write up a Hunter Kindergarten post on it yet but enough to discuss some initial thoughts on it. Here is what I have found:

1.) Kill Shot makes me happy because it’s sort of like the New Kill Command. Er, the New OLD Kill Command. When I can use it, one of my addons (not sure which one >.>) pops me up a warning telling me I can use it, just like it used to do with Kill Command before it changed. I always dig that kind of stuff.

2.) Most of the time when out leveling/questing, you kill stuff too fast for Kill Shot to be useful. Two reasons for this: Your pet is still pounding away at the mob (especially if you are BM and your pet is doing lots of damage), and you are typically mid-shot-rotation. If you’ve just queued up a Steady Shot, and your Kill Shot opens up, by the time your Steady Shot goes off your mob is probably already dead either to your pet or to your Steady Shot.

3.) It has a fairly long cooldown of 35 seconds, presumably to prevent you from spamming it at the end of a long boss fight.

Now let’s talk about some situations where it might be really handy but where I haven’t tested it yet:

1.) Those aforementioned super long boss fights. I’m sure most of you who have done a little raiding can think of at least one boss that always seems to take eons. Every boss will get at least one Kill Shot, but if the boss is at 20% health or less for more than 35 seconds, that’s more than one Kill Shot– almost two Kill Shots for every minute. And Kill Shots are huge so that’s gonna be a nice little bonus for you.

2.) PvP. It always takes longer to beat a fellow player than it does most quest mobs because of stuff like stamina, resilience, et al. I haven’t done any PvP at all since the expansion hit but I’m sort of thinking a Disengage/Kill Shot combo would be really fun, in an I’m-wearing-a-devilish-grin sort of way.

3.) If you are spec’d into Readiness you can do two Kill Shots in a row. Yeah. I dunno about you guys but I am 99% sure that if I did two Kill Shots in a row, and they both crit, I would blissfully die from hunter ecstasy. Just sayin’. (Has anyone else noticed all the billions of fun things you can suddenly do with Readiness now that it’s easier to spec into? I don’t mean any sort of disrespect to my long-time deep-Survival friends, but its versatility now is really quite amazing.)

In short, I welcome Kill Shot to the Hunter Abilities Stable and look forward to learning about its uses even more!

Now I go to do important things, like eat breakfast, and play WoW. Not necessarily in that order…