Patch 2.3.2 is Here - with Faster Pet Leveling
It’s here! It’s here! (Unfortunately as I type this, the realms are still down. But they’ll be up soon enough, and then …) It’s finally here!
Why am I getting so excited over a minor bugfix patch with no big new content? One reason: Pet leveling speed has been increased.
First, let’s look at the hunter-related patch notes. As always, the latest patch notes can always be found at:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/. (Although as I type this, they aren’t posted yet; these notes are coming directly from the patch download.)
Hunters
- Arcane Shot: Ranks 1-5 will once again deal bonus damage based on attack power.
- Aspect of the Viper effect increased.
- Freezing Trap is no longer limited to one target at a time.
- Pet leveling speed has been increased.
As you can see, there’s not a whole lot of detail here. Aspect of the Viper is better in some undefined way. Double Freeze Trapping is back. But it’s that last bullet point that is going to let me play my characters again.
See, Patch 2.3.0 decreased the experience that characters needs per level between levels 20 and 60. That change also carried over to pets, which was nice. But Patch 2.3.0 also increased the amount of experience that mid-level characters get from quests — and that change didn’t carry over to pets since pets don’t get experience from quests. That extra character experience from quests made it much more difficult to keep more than one pet even with you.
My hunter Kaet, who keeps three pets, was pretty much sunk. Her crabs had been lagging a level anyway; now they lagged two or three or five levels … My newest hunter, Maja, was doing okay with two pets so long as I didn’t let too much rest XP accumulate, but then at level 40 I took a few days off and then went back to tame a Scarlet Tracking Hound, and that messed up everything. Knowing that I had a long, annoying, quest-less grind in front of me — and knowing that Patch 2.3.2 would bring a good measure of relief — I shelved all my 20+ hunters with multiple pets for a month.
So I have reason to be happy about this patch. But what does it mean to you? First, let’s look at the facts. From my testing on the Public Test Realm, it looks like Blizzard made one small and simple tweak — they reduced the amount of experience that pets need each level by a flat 33%. Pets already needed less exeperience per level than player characters do, but now they need even less: previously they needed 25% of the XP of a player of the same level; but now they only need 16.75%. That’s all.
What will this mean to you? That depends on your level and your playstyle, but I can make some broad guesses.
- Below 60, this change returns pet leveling to approximately the state it was in before Patch 2.3.0. That is, you and your pet level faster that you did before 2.3.0, but you’ll be leveling more closely together again even if you have rest XP and concentrate on questing.
- Above level 60, this change is a clear win for pets. These levels were brutal for keeping your pet even with you and Patch 2.3.0 didn’t change that equation (since the 2.3.0 experience changes only extended to level 60). But this pet leveling change does affect level 60+ pets, which means that they will level 33% faster.
- This isn’t, however, a complete fix for leveling a pet that is far lower than you are. If you are a level 70 leveling up, say, a level 10 pet, you still have a long hard grind in front of you. True, it’s only 2/3 of the grind you had before, but it’s still a nasty grind.
48 Comments
HOORAY!
This will make getting Wake the windserpent up to 70 so much less irritating.
It’s really a pity the Outland windserpents just don’t fly right.
This is truely awsome news. My 70 hunter messed up big time not taking time to get a Frost Saber Pridewatcher, and when he got one at 70 he ditched it due to terrible level speed. 25 kils and hardly a fifteenth of a bar of XP?
Now i might ACTUALY get him to, say, 61 before I get uber frusterated!!!
Oh thank the hunter gods!! Brisket the ghost-wolf will finally hit 70! Perhaps I can let ol’ Coco have a raiding break and take the spectral howler instead. Too bad I’ve pretty much given up on my hunter. :( The roll system does not favor her, sadly, and so all that time spent raiding and not a single desired reward. I got a couple things, but only a cloak and some (non tier) gloves for months of raiding Kara? No sir.
Now my druid on the other hand is mad haxx0rz on teh rollz. I’ve gone from level 20 nublet to level 70 closing-in-on-par with the main druid tank. :O Raids have never been so much fun.
Well just hit 70 with my Ghost Wolf “Mirage” yesterday (Knew the patch was coming but just couldnt wait). This is great news though becasue now I can go back and get another Rotting Boar from RFK and bring him up (had one but dropped him at 60 for some dumb reason).
Good luck to all you Hunters and your soon to be new Pets!!
Sooooo excited for this patch, my poor tauren was having so much trouble keeping both her kitty and her windserpent levled up with her…
And now I can get Tux to 70 even quicker! Woohoo!
Hey Mania-
Great work on bringing us the news, this minor patch is VERY awesome! I can’t wait to level up a ZG windserpent.
Though maybe you want to update this under “recent news” on Petopia as well. ;)
Good idea, Draketh.
sure will make leveling my newly acquired scorpion from silithus (the bluish-grey one) for arena who was level 58 when i tamed him, but i got up to almost 62 in short time, now getting to 70 should only require a couple instances and a bit of dailies.
it will also let me finish my ghost wolf, Glitch, up to 70 as well once i get the scorp up there. i think he is stuck at like 52 or 53.
Would come in now i finally got my RFK piggy upto my lvl 44 Hunter /whinge
At least now my plan of getting a non-wierd raptor upto 70 will be less painful when the time comes.
Yay! Now maybe I can keep Yaz’s kitty, Japhrimenl, a little bit closer to her in level? I can at least hope. ^_^
Thank GOODNESS. My level 38 Hunter was tired of playing with level 35 pets!
I took my level 64 ghost wolf into Shadow Labs tonight - he gained 3/4 of his level on a full clear.
It’s still not painless, but it doesn’t feel like I’m rolling a rock up a mountain.
i do hope this fixes the pet lvl thing but i doubt it will be a total cure, my guess is that it will be easier to get them closer to you only if you do not play a lot of rested play-time when below 70 and still do a lot more grinding than questing , for level 70 players i doubt we will notice much change after the pets get to 60 or around that level,
my guess is they saw they had made a mistake and this was the easiest quick fix they could find , i hope they set up a proper fix soon though but i guess that is something we can only hope for
as it is i still want to see more pet choices , and of course pets with separate abilities , spiders with their in-game abilities would be a start , then we may see a few high level players with them , they wanted us to have a variety of pets so they took away the special attack speed some had , yet not all pet types can have any speed of attack ? still i guess at least we do have a few choices but would be better if all types of pets were good at high level and the only way that will happen is if each type of pet has a separate and unique way of attacking ? spiders with traps/poison , dragonhawks from low level we can use up to 70 , the striders with something to make them worth having as a main pet , the bats could do with something as well as the diet puts a lot of hunters off them , difficult food pets do need something special about them apart from just looks …
hehe if i were to get a say in the game play though i would want 2 more hunter classes as well , gnomes deserve to be hunters and my favourite idea would be the undead , there are a lot of undead type mobs they could have as pets
… and change the demon type boars to beasts when you’re at it… some of those outlandish demons look soooo cool :) (make diemetradons and pterodons tameable too :D)
This change is a welcome one, and if you think about it, it’s exponential. You will need a bit less than 2/3 of what we used to need to level a pet from scratch to 70, because the pet will be more useful faster, and thus will accelerate its own leveling.
It still takes time to level pets. Lucky for us, not nearly as much as it did. My 70 hunter wants his gutripper pet to get to 70!
Then I will start on the bigger task — taming a Frostsaber Pridewatcher and getting HIM up.
….and a ghost wolf…
Gad I need more stable spaces. /sigh
Now to just find a pet i actually want to level. Got me a 70 boar and cat which is about all i need at the moment.
Guess they didn’t boost the loyalty gain aswell? That would getting a new pet even more attractive.
to exanimo: if you want to level a pet for the heck of it, just go tame a level 1 something, see how long it takes ya to get him to 70, lol.
the red lynxes are available at lvl 1 :D
A little something I found funny, two of my pets got a “free” level, in a way. Seems like Blizzard didn’t adjust the current xp the pets had, and since my two pets where over 70% towards their next level, when I logged on yesterday they where respectivelt 114% and 116% in xp needed to level up! That’s right, they had more then the xp needed to get their level! XD
I just went out and killed one mob with each, got ttheir level and then they where already roughly 15% towards their next level. Too bad that didn’t happen with players when they made the level 20 to 60 xp change. Would have been nice. Oh well, at least some people out there are going to get a “free” pet level with this. =P
That’s really interesting, Shinryu Masaki. I noticed something similar with one of my pets but I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things.
Same here.
And my PirateCat is 33% into lvl 71 now xD
This should be a great change, but it doesn’t solve everything. For people who primarily PvP, leveling pets is still a massive inconvenience, and for twinks, is still nearly impossible. My 29 Hunter has a 28 boar that will stay that way until they enable pet XP through Pvp or grey mobs, because I can’t gain much more XP and stay 29.
I think the next change that is needed would be something like this:
Hunter pets now earn experience (both towards leveling and loyalty) from killing players in PvP. Player XP in unchanged.
Neverlife, this way you`ll end up with some lvl 69 playres ganking lvl 1 players to level-up their pet.
why can’t they just autoding to your level!? warlock pets do… this is a bit of a letdown for me.
Shardphoenix, they could just make it so your pet gains XP from kills that grant Honor. I’m confident Blizzard could implement it in such a way so that it doesn’t hurt anyone, but would help PvP-centric hunters greatly.
I found a bug in the new patch and its very annoying. I think it is actually the reincarnation of a previous bug. If you are sitting down to eat and someone buffs you, you stand up. I wasted 3 Spicy Crawdads this Tuesday when trying to get my well-fed bonus for Gruul’s.
On another note, the faster Pet Leveling rocks!
I love this patch lots. Well aside from the fact that it seems my Volley animation returned to the older style graphics (the new one was sooo much better) anyways~
With over 130k less EXP required for my level 64 Wolf, this patch is great. What used to take me at least a day to get, I managed to get two levels in a couple hours. Rock on!
Wouldnt it be cool if hunter pets just auto-lvled like lock pets? Why cant our pets be like that? Maybe it would be unfair in some way but I really hate lvling pets.
I for one am kinda glad hunter pets don’t level like Warlock pets. I dunno, it’s just a thing like, the pet is growing stronger with you as a companion, not like you’re forcing it like you do with demons. (Demons are summoned and if I’m not mistaken the voidwalker complains ALOT about being summoned. “Send me back” “I don’t like this place” etc. XD)
Plus, it’d be really weird if you just tamed a tiger in STV and bam it just dings 39 levels to 70 at once lol XD
They should have simply changed it to the pet gets XP with all kills whether it is grey or not. A level 21 cat should get xp from a lvl 40 kill. It is still ridiculous that it takes 3 weeks to bring a pet from 20 - 70 because you have to grind high level mobs. Blizz, just fix this or move totaly xp down to 9 percent of character.
I really miss the special pets…no more hunting for the ZG bat and Broken Tooth…that was uber fun.
I hear a lot of hunters complaining about how our pets require feeding/loyalty/leveling experience when warlock pets don’t, etc., etc. But as Rikaku points out, there’s an excellent reason for that–lorewise, the hunter “story” as it regards pets involves finding these animals and building a bond of trust with them. Raising a pet up to be the hunter’s equal in level involves hunting with them and seeing that they get enough experience to level up as well.
In terms of game balance, though, if we didn’t have to feed our pets or level them, then there’d be no downside to having a hunter pet. Warlocks have a ten-second summoning ritual and need to expend a soul shard (for everything except their imp) to get their pet out if it dies or if they dismiss it. Hunters can dismiss and whistle back their pets, oh, twice in the time it takes a warlock to summon theirs. Warlocks also need to purchase Grimoires to train their pets in higher-level offensive and passive skills; Hunters can go out and learn all of the active skills except Growl from wild beasts. And so on. The upside of a warlock’s minions is that the warlock has the flexibility to switch them out in the field and they can be sacrificed to give the warlock a temporary power boost–to say nothing of some of the really nice passive abilities certain demons give them. (Blood Pact, anyone?)
So, basically, pet leveling and pet feeding and stable slots are the price we pay for having “free” pets we can pick up anywhere, train and retrain for a pittance (or even free, in the case of offensive skills). Changing the hunter class to be more like the warlock class would be unfair to both classes ultimately–and I don’t want to have to expend a soul shard every time I call Nemesis, or be stuck wearing cloth for the rest of my life, just to not have to feed him now and again. ;P
Has it really been a week? « Chronicles of a World of Warcraft Hunter - January 13th, 2008 @ 4:38 am EST
[...] Patch 2.3.2 is Here - with Faster Pet Leveling. Thank. You. Blizzard. [...]
My alt, level 70 hunter named EBERT on shattered hand, Just tamed Humar at lvl 23, it has been 2 weeeks of grinding and he is still only level 65. Every level past 60 requires 100 k experience per level. This is a long awful grind. I know there is pros and cons to all classes, but, the grinding to level a pet is ridiculous plus i need to now grind a tank and an arena pet. by that time season 4 will have started.,.,uhhg there has to be a better way to make a hunter and the player pay in a different way than an average 3-4 weeks to take a pet from 20 - 70
AOK
But, please, can someone tell me if I am grinding properly. My pet is level 65 and I am grinding level 63 mobs, the pet is getting 640 xp per kill. The orges in zangamarsh fall with 4 hits so it nice and fastest spot, plus no one there so they are all mine. anyone have a better faster way to finish this off so I can get to my BEAR and Boar?
P.S. —>>> why has no one talked about the sillyness of only 2 stable slots?
Aok, you may want to measure your pet’s XP per hour (or 15 minutes, or what have you) and then try moving up to level 67 mobs or so and see how you do there. Your pet will get more XP per kill from things above its level, but on the other hand, if moving up slows dows your killing a lot, you are probably better off sticking with the quick’n'easy 63s.
mmm.. still not eager to level the RFK boar up to 70 but .. nevertheless the last levels of gutripper went surprisingly fast.
ps I still miss my pre-nerf BT
YES, Mania I did that exactly. I went and measured how much xp I was getting with the spellcasters in Shadowmoon valley, the elemental plateau and then the blood elves near the mana forges in netherstorm. My pet is level 66, and the required xp is 0 - 122 000 to reach level 67. None of these areas could beat out level 63 mobs. Level 63 mob gives your pet ~~500 xp. Level 67-71 mob ~~ 700-790 xp. The level 63 mob dies in 3 hits, where as the 67 plus mobs take more time to kill, aggro other mobs too easily, and use up mana ( you dont really have to drink at all with 63 mobs). So yes, I answered my own question that it is better to grind 63 mobs than 70.
By the way, Humar was level 23 and going to 60 was not a problem at all, but the lvl 60- 70 is a painful painful grind, all 100 k plus per level.
That’s good to know, Aok. Thanks for sharing those numbers with us!
OMG this rocks! You say you guys messed up I was at 46 looking back and said man I want a scorpid with an original skin that looks more manly then Kirby cheeks…we all know what that means level 6 scorpid! I managed to get it to 18 in just 2 hours!
Maybe I missed it, but no one seems to have commented on the fact that with the new patch and pet leveling changes it is easier to pursue quests AND level your pets. Before the patch keeping two pets at level while pursuing quests (particularly in my case as I have a proclivity to dwarf hunter’s who pursue Darnassus factions points to gain exalted by level 40) meant that every 7 or 8 levels I would occasionally have to devote 1 whole level or a 1.5 levels to only grinding on creeps to get my pets up. Now it is easier to balance it all. Seems like a small thing but it keeps the game interesting for me, not to mentions allowing me to pursue some quests that didn’t fit the math before.
I am a 70 level hunter, just got a 27 level boar, and am not able to get training point or xp for the pet after 2 hours. Any ideas out there?
Comment Comment 43, name should be Devilhunter, sorry about that
Devilhunter, you said that you are not able to get any XP on your new boar? Make sure you are killing things that would give you XP (if you weren’t level 70, that is) — which probably means level 63+.
A good trick is to focus on mobs who fight at a range, so you’re not depending on the pet to keep the foe out of range. Scryer’s rep-targets usually include a lot of ranged foes, Casters, the archers from the easter Netherstorm camps, prime locations to level your pet, and you can fetch some extra coin/rep from the drops.
By the Way, on my german realm there is a little bit different of the exp. My cat is 64 and need 113739 exp, a Char on the same level need 682300. The Result is 16,66%. Not a real different that counts, but a diff.
HF and GL
There are some wobbles in the exact numbers, leading me to believe that the internals of the system are done as a table and not as a formula. *shrug*
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