PTR 2.3.0: Pet Leveling
I took a quick look today at how the experience changes on the PTR might affect our pets. I found absolutely no surprises:
- Pets still require 25% of the experience that a player would at the same level. Players now require less experience to level between levels 20 and 60, and so our pets also require less experience during those levels.
- Pets still do not get any share of the experience when their owner completes a quest. (I didn’t expect they would, but it was worth checking.)
- As on live, pets do not get experience when they kill something that is grey to the hunter.
- The experience that pets get per kill does not appear to have changed.
In other words, nothing has really changed. On the one hand, that’s good news — it would have been bad if pet experience hadn’t been reduced along with player experience. But on the other hand, the fact that there were no other adjustments means that the additional experience from quests might cause some difficulty keeping in keeping pets leveled.
I did, however, find something that surprised me. Although the experience that pets get per kill hasn’t changed, I’d never bothered to look into how that experience is calculated before. A while back Blizzard said that they changed the system so that a pet earns experience for its level relative to the enemy, not for the hunter’s level relative to the enemy. And while that appears to be true, it’s not quite the whole story. As far as I can tell, it looks like pets actually earn experience based on the level difference between the pet and the enemy as well as the level of the hunter.
Let’s look at a quick example: You are level 29. Your pet is level 23. You and your pet kill a level 23 enemy. Your pet gets 189 experience from the kill — which happens to be almost exactly how much you yourself would get from killing a level 29 enemy! (Taking into account rest XP and rounding.) And when you and your pet do kill a level 29 enemy, your pet gets 209 experience — the amount that you would have gotten from killing a level 31 enemy. See how that’s working? The game takes the level difference between the pet and the enemy, but then uses the hunter’s level as the base level in the formula!
Maybe this is something everyone else has known for a while now, but it’s news to me!
(And my thanks to Thottbot’s page of game formulas, which happened to turn up in my Google search for experience curves.)
Table of Contents for Series: Patch 2.3
- PTR 2.3.0 Information Here!
- WoW Forums: Egad! Drysc in the Hunter Forum!
- Details on Leveling Improvements
- Patch 2.3 News: STV Flight Point
- PTR 2.3: Later Tonight!
- PTR 2.3.0: Mini-Map Improvements
- PTR 2.3.0: Bear Mount … Pet?
- PTR 2.3.0: New Pets
- PTR 2.3.0: Other Cool Things
- PTR 2.3.0: Pet Circling
- PTR 2.3.0: Reported Issues
- PTR 2.3.0: No More Dead Zone!
- PTR 2.3.0: New Obsidian Raptor
- PTR 2.3.0: No Melee Range Change, Says Hortus
- PTR 2.3.0: PTR Updated - No More Sexy Bear
- PTR 2.3.0: The Dead Zone Saga Continues
- PTR 2.3.0: Pet Leveling
- PTR 2.3.0: Elite No More
- Petopia Updated for Patch 2.3 (then AFK)
- Rotams for Alliance
- Patch 2.3: Catching Up
- Petopia: More Patch 2.3 Updates
- Patch 2.3: Known Issues
- Petopia: Dustwallow Marsh Pets Updated
22 Comments
well thats interesting that the pet killing a level 29 when you are 29 gets the better level 31 exp , that sounds like it must be better to get you final pet choices sorted out a few levels before 70 to give the pet some chance to catch up , but i know from my 67 hunter and my final choices it is still very slow at that level for pets to catch up , but i am trying to level 3 pets so it is my own fault , just a pity we hunters are not like warlocks with our pets always being the same level as us , but i think if we had 3 stable slots and a training slot we would stand a better chance to keep our pets closer to our level
Man… I just got Humar the Pridelord (or Munkustrap, as I affectionately call him). I was hoping 2.3 would help me level him faster. Right now it’s just so incredibly boring and long.
However, I have learned how good at managing my pet I am from taking him to high level instances. For example, I ran Shattered Halls with a PUG group. There was another hunter who had a level 70 ravager, and me with my (then) level 42 Munkustrap. Munk died about twice during the entire run (once being from that warlock boss’s circles of purple death and the second being that hallway with the arrows and fire) while the other’s hunter pet died much more frequently. True, Munk had almost NO way of pulling aggro, but he was still able to hit the mobs and rarely stood by my side in the fighting. And also true, that other guy might have been a huntard… but I choose to believe the “I’m an awesome hunter” explanation.
Thks for checking! I’ve been a bit lazy to check those things on the PTR. Also, I haven’t got much time to “PTR”, since I try to restrain myself from “PTRing” outside of my alloted WoW time, seeing that the PTR does not honor Parental Control settings… :)
“The experience that pets get per kill does not appear to have changed.” - I believe you may want to rewrite this one. On first read, it would make the pets take LONGER to level, now that the level XP has been reduced by 20%… I assume you’re talking in “relative” values and not in “absolute” values, but reading that sentence gives the wrong idea! :)
“(And my thanks to Thottbot’s page of game formulas, which happened to turn up in my Google search for experience curves.)”
Did you check the wowwiki? More complete version here.
Here’s a more direct link. I haven’t found any useful info on thot in over a year. I suppose there is some, but the number of “hunter loot” - “no it’s not” - “That was a joke n00b” posts is a huge hindrance.
well that would certainly explain why it was/is so hard for my level 70 hunter to train up that pretty lvl 20 ghost saber :) even though I stuck with critters that are still green to the hunter (68+). the cat does ok in Outlands, and I try hard to keep him alive for the duration but he’s just not my ravager. ah well.
shibumi
oh I forgot, a handy add-on for me is exp2 and petexp2 (ace). especially the pet exp. I have a VERY definate idea then how much exp the pet is getting per critter and can adjust.
Unless something changed recently, if you’re level 70 and leveling a lower level pet, there is a cap of about 702~703 xp per kill that the pet gets until it gets closer to the mob’s level.
Also, shibumi, mobs that are green to a 70 hunter starts at level 62, so if your pet isn’t near or above that level, they make better kills since you can down them faster. Unless you prefer killing the warlocks at Legion Hold, those mobs go down quite fast too. Unfortunately, on my server that place is over farmed and the people there do not care one bit about hunters trying to level up a low level pet. =(
Since they have normalized pets in that a cat-is-a-cat, I don’t see why it would be a big deal to have any pet get tamed 1 or 2 levels below the hunter’s level. I still believe that the guys at blizzard are book-smart geniuses, but common sense completely eludes them.
Nice- thanks for the info everyone, I need to check out those XP addons as I attempt to level my cat from 62 to 70. At the moment, it looks like we’ll be spending a lot of time in Nagrand killing Voidwalkers. Primal Shadow, anyone?
I second sandralover’s comment about another stable slot - of course I know we all sigh about that - but perhaps someday they’ll realize we might even play the game more if we had that slot just to try out random pets for the look or just the curiousity. As it is I just end up with multiple hunters - when I’d rather be spending more time with one hunter and twiddling with various builds. Oh well. At least I’m keeping the population of lower lvl alts up on my server…
It is finally time we the hunters issue a new mechanic to be installed in WoW.
I strongly believe that the hunter’s class should gain a NPC that can adjust low level pets.
This NPC can even be the same pet trainer that hunters use now to train their pets.
Give this NPC an upgrade. Let him level up pets. This NPC at present time doesn’t have much use once you hit 70.
My suggestion:
Allow this NPC to adjust pet’s level to your current player’s level.
Cost: 1 Gold per.
Example: I tame a level 5 boar. It will cost 65 gold to level it up to 70.
Note: This will only change the level of the pet, not the loyalty.
In turn this change will increase the need for NPC trainers.
Most importantly it will greatly intensify the WoW gaming experience.
Thank You.
Sasquatcha
hehe .
now Sasquatcha has a neat idea but knowing what would happen with a NPC that could level pets i would bet it would be a lot more than 1g a level , but we can always hope the ” gods ” at some point make life more interesting as a hunter , i guess we hunters have all got higher then thought about low level pets , i for one have tried and for around 25+ pet levels tried to level a spider from bloodmyst in tanaris , in the end i was so bored of melee i gave up trying
@Sasquatcha
That would also be a really good Gold sink for Blizzard to implement.
Although I expect that it would be more than 1g per level also.
Hunter pet experience progress | Warcraft-News.com - November 7th, 2007 @ 2:06 pm EST
[...] response to the leveling speed increases coming in Patch 2.3, she’s laid out pretty clearly how pet experience works. Based on some PTR research, she [...]
I’ve already managed to outpace my hunter alt’s only pet (tamed at level 10) by two levels on the current live build - the character in question levels solely by duoing group quests with my girlfriend’s druid, and she isn’t on that much, so in practice this means the hunter is ALWAYS getting rested exp and relatively large quantities of quest exp. It’s doubly aggravating because I can’t just go out and grind without simultaneously leveling the hunter (which defeats the purpose of having a separate character meant to be leveled together), but spell resist mechanics prevent my pet from tanking anything more than 2 levels above it (i.e. anything even a single level above me, which means no even-conned quests). I’m really hoping the 2.3 changes help a bit, because at the moment I’m stumped. :(
the best place for a lvl 70 to lvl up a critter is firewing point in terrokar north of alerian stronghold the mobs are almost all castes and will never run into melee (making kills quicker) alkso they’re in a big circle (convenient eh) and respawn is good tons of greens netherweave and firewing signets which i can sell for almost 1g per ive leveled a lvl 7 lynx from BE start area and a humar using this method there is no faster place hope this helps
Firewing Point is a very good place, but it does get annoying a lot when players come there to quests, even if it is briefly. If no one goes there for their quests, you get a good free ride for pet leveling. If lots of people start coming in to quest, you better take a slight break from the place.
Nothing more annoying to be in the middle of a fight only to see someone blow up the mana bomb in the center of town and see all blood elves die from it, even the one you’re fighting, which means you get 0 xp.
thanks for the info on firewing point i shall have to try that place
as an added thought i created a draenei hunter on the test realm and levelled a level 2 boar , and just for reference i created a dwarf hunter went to the ne area and did tamed the same level boar now i know it may be a racial difference but the test realm boar got to level well before the dwarfs did , something like half a level earlier for me
so i am guessing the extra exp in the next patch will at least help lower level hunters get their pet up to speed/level
my favourite farming though at 67 is the ravagers/warpstalkers/basilisks all for leather+food to sell or use , i guess i do not mind a little melee at times with lower level pets as long as i do not die all the time
I can’t follow the second example - there must be a typo somewhere, or the conclusion just doesn’t make sense.
Hunter: 29; Pet: 23; Mob: 23; Pet XP: 189
Hunter: 29; Pet: 23; Mob: 29; Pet XP: 209
(29*5) + 45 = 190 ~ 189 (OK, that makes sense)
189*(1+(0.05*2)) = 209 (that’s a level difference of 2, not 6)
Even taking the (level+4) XP cap into account, it still can’t be as simple as suggested (or else there’s a typo somewhere).
During a milieu will Quilboar my pet died after two others boar and a wolf decided to attack too. I am trying to tame a new pet but I am constantly told I have too many pets, I try to dismiss te pet but get told I cannot do that as my pet is dead. Is there a cooling off period where taming will fail?
Please advise.
My apologies if this has arrived at the wrong inbox.
Stephen Clarke (Ithlaine)
You have to revive your dead pet and abandon or stable before taming another..
Leave a Reply