Black Arrow (and its Sordid History)

PTRs: Present Testing Realms or Punishment and Torture Realms? Insofar as Black Arrow is concerned, the PTRs are most definitely the former this time around.

Meet Black Arrow:

5 - 35 yd range
30 sec cooldown

Black Arrow
6% of base mana
Instant cast

Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.

It's another instant shot, it deals nasty, nasty Shadow damage over time, and it increases our damage against the target by a burly 6% (you know, between the DOTs from Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Claw, and Black Arrow, I'm beginning to have flashbacks to playing a Warlock... /shudder). No word yet on the initial damage of this shot, if there is any.

Black Arrow currently shares its cooldown with traps - this seems to be an effort to limit the number of LnL procs you can expect per minute, as well as discourage trap-dancing in PvE. My hope on this one is that, since it shares the 30 second trap cooldown, it will also benefit from talents, like Resourcefulness, that lower the trap cooldown. Will we see raiding hunters in four pieces of PvP gear? No. Will they be talented down to a 24 second BA cooldown? I sure hope so.

With a 30 second cooldown, the BA damage bonus works out to a neat and clean 3%, while a 24 second cooldown would push it up to a 3.72% overall buff (on a per-minute basis). Not too shabby.

That said, we've seen Black Arrow before. In fact, it's been in the game files since beta, in one form or another. Will rise from the dead talents graveyard this time around? We shall see.

Update: Black arrow does share the Resourcefulness cooldown reduction