Mail Attack Power gear woes come Xpac?

When Blizzard announced the Cataclysm expansion at Blizzcon ‘09, one of the things they also announced was the redesign of Hunters so that they use the Focus resource like their pets use instead of mana. This is a cool announcement especially because hunters have been complaining about their mana consumption and the mechanics of abilities like Aspect of the Viper to deal with this problem. The shift to focus will break their dependence on mana altogether and instead use something more reliable since Focus works something like the Energy resource that rogues and kitty druids use.

dwarf hunter

This switch to Focus come the expansion has me wondering about something though. With Hunters turning their back on the world of mana, what becomes of the mail attack power gear (at least the non-tier ones)? As you know hunters share their gear with enhancement shamans right now and while Hunters are losing their mana dependence, enhancement shamans aren’t. This is the reason why a lot of the mail attack power gear you see around have intellect on it. After all while enhancements shamans go all stabby with their daggers, they still need their mana to cast their totems, shocks and such stuff.

Right now it’s easy to see how the mail attack power gear can easily be interchangeable between hunters and enhancement shammies but this will no longer be the case come expansion. Unless Blizzard figures out a way to make Intellect useful for Focus using hunters then mail attack power itemization is going to be a lot harder because of the rift this change is going to cause.