So I went through every patch and looked for any indication on Hurricane both in the documented and undocumented changes to see when/if it happened, and I couldn't find a single bit except for in patch 1.11 which says this.
~ http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_1.11.0Hurricane: This weapon was not dealing the listed frost damage. That listed frost damage has been replaced with a chance to trigger a damaging frost effect.
If you look in game you can see the frost damage is nowhere to be seen. Such as something like Verdant Keepers Aim which has a the added +1-4 nature damage added to it. These were later changed to a chance on hit effect to keep the +elemental damage effect from being counted as physical damage which was mitigated by armor.
My problem is... Not only are these bows reverted to their "broken" state as blizzard claims they were due to the limits of the bow system ingame, stated in patch 1.12; which can be seen here. But that hurricane has lost its +frost damage entirely in the change.
~ http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_1.12.0Ranged Elemental Damage: Our ranged combat system does not allow a ranged weapon to do a mix of Elemental (Fire, Frost, Arcane, etc.) and Physical damage. Many ranged weapons existed which were listed as doing Elemental damage and did not function properly (the damage was dealt, but was treated as Physical). All of those weapons have been changed to deliver the Elemental damage as a chance on hit effect. Hurricane was previously changed this way in 1.11. The following ranged weapons are also fixed in 1.12: Bow of Searing Arrows, Dwarven Hand Cannon, Heartseeking Crossbow, Dark Iron Rifle, Galgann's Fireblaster, Quillshooter, Shell Launcher Shotgun, Venomstrike, and Verdant Keeper's Aim.
So my question is... Is this intended? Or am I just missing something? Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.