Patch notes! Mmmm, patch notes.

The PTR notes are up, and although they say nothing about the female Tauren problems in Wintergrasp (if you take the portal from Dalaran, you can't get out of the room you port into - the doorway just acts as if it's too small), there's some hunter stuff (from the PTR notes page):

Hunters

• All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
• Aspect of the Wild - This aspect is now raid-wide.
• Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
• Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to "deflect" spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
• Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
• Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.
• Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
• Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
• Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
• Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
• Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).
  

1. Taking things like Taunt (3 min. cooldown) and such off the global cooldown - heck, taking anything off the global cooldown is nice.
2. Aspect of the Wild becoming raid-wide means your shaman don't have to give up their water totem for NR to the raid - and the rest of a hunter's aspects are a self-buff, whereas water totems may be something like poison cleansing. And you don't have to worry about the boss's crazy aggro mechanics killing the totem. :P (Netherspite had a strange affinity for Searing Totems.)
3. Call of the Wild: Hopefully this means that Battle shout doesn't negate its utility anymore? I spec'd puppy out of it because there didn't seem to be a point to it, as it didn't stack with Battle shout.
4. Deterrence: Now a frontal "bubble"? o.O
5. Improved tracking change: Yay. For pulls with mixed mob types, or instances with multiple mob types (example: Sunken Temple has 4 - humanoid, undead, beast, and dragonkin), you don't have to micromanage your tracking. (Sunken Temple was the first time I realized just how useless tracking in an instance sometimes was - first for the multiple mob types, and secondly because of the layers. Karazhan was even worse for layers, even though pretty much everything was undead, with a few demons (and we never bothered with the beast wing).)
6. Kill Shot - yay! The reduced cooldown means I maybe get to use it more than once on a boss, and it will be much better for both soloing and PVP.
7. Kindred Spirits: BM, I don't care. :P
8. Rake seems to have been nerfed a little, but that's okay - kitty has been having aggro issues in groups, even if I consistently pull aggro off him while solo.
9. Readiness/Bestial Wrath: affects BM, not me.
10. Steady Shot nerf: anticipated. I stack for agi/crit/hit/int before AP, so meh.
11. Serpent's Swiftness: BM, so mostly meh, but - it does deal somewhat with the pet DPS overages without diminishing the hunter's DPS further.
12. Unleashed Fury: BM, so not me.
13. Viper Sting: I won't know if this is good or bad until I try it - depends what the %'s are.
14. Volley nerf: anticipated. While 11k DPS on a trash pull was pretty... Volley tended to make me the object of AoE pulls' aggression. Hopefully the reduced damage doesn't diminish its utility but helps some with pulling threat off the tank during AoE pulls.

I don't think this is going to close the gap between my DPS and the BM hunter who was kicking my ass on the meters, but she's probably going to see her numbers come down some. I don't think mine are going to be seriously affected in terms of boss DPS except by the Steady Shot change. I'm in mostly quest, crafted, and instance blues, and haven't touched a heroic yet - I expect to see my numbers reach acceptable raiding comfort levels once I do start doing heroics. (Maybe tonight? If the ice is bad enough that I can't come to work tomorrow, maybe tomorrow...)

I will confess, I'm itching to get S5 gloves, even though I've taken Multi out of my normal rotation since Aimed got added to Barrage/Imp. Barrage. The season starts on the 16th, though, and I don't think my husband is going to be ready for 2v2 - I may have to see if I can put something else together in the interim.