3.08, the Sequel  

When the 3.08 patch notes first dropped, one statement was largely ignored because of the enormity of the hunter changes to take in:

"The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered."

Along with the planned changes for Readiness to no longer reset the cooldown of Bestial Wrath, these changes seem intended to make the 50/21/0 spec a thing of the past. But the changes weren't implemented on the PTR with the 3.08 test candidate. So until a post from Ghostcrawler today, we had no hard data on the Cat and Scorpid changes.

"Here are the cat and scorpid numbers for anyone who wants to theorycraft them. These will be in the next patch (3.0.8) even though they were not on the PTR."

Now currently Scorpid Venom Stings an enemy for 45 to 55 Nature damage over 10 sec with a .043 coefficient. The effect can stack up to 5 times on a single target.

"Rank 6 Scorpid Poison - 20 base Nature damage per tick, ticks every 2 sec for 10 sec, 0.04 coefficient, 1 stack max"

This buffs the DoT nicely, but removes the stacking mechanic of the poison. This equates to a 62% reduction in damage, before the coefficient change is even taken into account.

Blizzard is sending a pretty clear message with this; the Scorpid thing was not forseen, we never meant for Tenacity pets to see the inside of raid instances.

Rake now damages the target for 24 to 34 bleed damage and an additional 22 to 28 damage over 9 sec with a .07 Coefficient.

"Rank 6 Rake - 29 base physical damage, plus 21 base damage per tick, ticks every 3 sec for 9 sec, 0.06 coefficient"

While at first this might look like a wash, a buff to the DoT effect with a lowering of the coefficient. It's not. You have to read closely to see the nerf. Physical damage.

Now Ghostcrawler could have made a mistake, but I think not. While the bleed damage inflicted by the current Rake is not mitigated by armor, physical damage is. Given that all Wrath raid bosses have 13,083 armor, 46.2% of the new Rake's damage will be mitigated.

This equates to an 8.5% reduction in damage from the current Rake, before calculating for the coefficient reduction. Throw that in, and we're pretty close to the magic 10% damage gap that Blizzard has stated should exist between normal and exotic pets.

Message? There's value in the 51 point Beast Mastery talent. Blizzard wants you to dump that cat that's been with you since since level 10, and go tame Barney the Dinosaur or spend weeks camping Loque'nahak when you could be raiding.

More to come when the patch goes live.