So I’ve been hearing from a lot of you that your pet just doesn’t hold aggro like they did last week, and I’ve been seeing similar issues myself. I’ve also been hearing from others that their pet’s aggro is just fine or even better than it used to be. So let’s round-up what we know so far.
Growl in the Combat Log
According to Hortus, Growl is not showing up in the default “Self” combat log filter even though other pet abilities are. If you don’t see Growl in your combat log, turn on “Spell Casting” under “Message Types” for the Self filter.
If, like me, you spend so little time with the combat log that you aren’t sure how to configure it, here’s a tip: Right-click on the Combat tab of your chat box — not on the chat box text, not on the black bar along the top of the combat log, but on the tab itself — and choose “Settings” at the very bottom of the menu.
So no, your pet didn’t stop casting Growl completely. It’s just not in the combat log by default.
Growl Isn’t First
A number of players have noticed that Growl is no longer the first action their pet takes after it gets to the target. I set up a pet-initiated-action-only filter with the new combat log and sent Cloud off to attack a number of enemies. I found that there was often but not always a melee attack (and sometimes one or more Claws) happening before the Growl. In my (admittedly quick) test, Growl was the first attack after reaching the target slightly more than half the time.
Is this new? I have no idea — I never checked before. But I think we would have noticed.
What’s the effect? Well, I wouldn’t expect it to have a huge effect on Cloud (a cat) since I tend to let him get a Growl off before I start my pot-shotting. But it will likely have a large affect on boars, who get part of their awesome threat generation from the fact that the Charge skill adds a whole bunch of Attack Power to the next attack. Traditionally, that next attack has been Growl — which scales with AP and thus gains more threat generation. Now, however, it’s a toss-up — Charge could benefit a melee attack instead, which isn’t nearly as useful.
And More …
These two issues with Growl do not seem to explain all the behavior that I am seeing, nor other hunters as well. In particular, I’ve heard that boars and ravagers and cats feel nerfed, but that owls are doing fine and wolves and bears are doing better than ever. I’ve also heard but been unable to verify that ranks Growl 7 and below are unchanged. Seidouyumi let us know that Growl Rank 2 seems unchanged, for instance. And Palladiamors tells us that he is seeing differential threat generation changes on humanoids vs. demons, among others, so target type may have an effect.
But there’s enough going on with pet threat generation that Hortus has begun taking structured reports about this matter in this bug report thread, so if you have specific additional details please head over there and report them.
At this point, it’s unclear what’s going on. I’m going to keep poking around and I’ll update this if I find out anything else that looks important. Feel free to tell me what you’ve discovered in the comments!
I use a Boar for normal tanking, before the the patch i would charge/growl/bite(normal attack) and that would give the boar 4-4.5k threat on omen reguardless of the mob type. now it only gets 1.5k threat which i wipe out in 2-3 shots, this is makeing grinding a lot slower cos of having to use slower shot rotation.
I wish I could add in to this, but I dinged 70 not long before the patch was put in, and got a massive new gun to go on with it. So I’m utterly unable to contribute genuinely valid info.
I will say, though, that I agree with the mana issues. I have been drinking like an alkie on my poor Dorf, and while some of that might be because of bigger attacks, not all of it is, that’s for certain. I wish I’d checked my mana numbers before the patch, so I could see if it’s a matter of numbers. I have definitely been pulling aggro off my pets with alarming swiftness (Raptor and Serpent both) but without being able to compare my old stats, I can’t be sure if it’s just because of the gun (like I assumed it was) or the same problem here.
I also notice that when I’m in Viper, I do notice a regen, but when I’m not, it’s as if I’m not regenerating at all. I think the ‘Intelligence lends itself to regeneration’ has really ended up nerfing those hunters who don’t have high Intellect scores by *slowing* it in some cases… if not a lot of cases.
I’ve made a post on the hunter forums, stating our problem. Please go elaborate on it as much as you can, but keep your comments constructive and helpful, so maybe it’ll get their attention and look into it. Also, while I’m sure this problem affects lower level characters as well, they will mostly be interested in hearing from people using pets at the same level as they are, and preferably people at level 70, as that is what they tune the game around.
The post:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5640885113&sid=1
Ok, this is probably the last post I make on this. I hope some of what I’ve said will help pin things down.
I did think of something while I was avoiding playing my Paladin (yuck, I have five hunters, a warrior, a mage, a shaman, and a warlock- I may end up with another Hunter until Wrath comes out). I wonder if they adjusted the threat/aggro generation of Charge to refect that the last rank of it is found around level 60.
Im 70 BM hunter and have used boars for the last 20 lvls cause they can typically keep agro. After the patch i was noticing his threat lvl after charge had reduced by 2k threat. I read a little about the growl after the charge issue. Im sad that they nerfed some of the great agro keepers, when thats what we need to survive.
It seems they have yet again been playing with the basics of the way things work for hunters or it is a by-product of some other changes they have made? , From what i have read Warlocks have pet problems as well , and along with the thirst problem which i have seen a little of i am wondering if blizzards apparently total lack of real interest in the problems hunters are getting means it was intended ???
By playing my non hunter alts i have not noticed any benefit either from the manna regen changes ,my mage are still always thirsty even though i have tried to boost manna above any stamina gains , my priests still seem to just about survive with little drinking needed except on multiple mobs , so it has me puzzled .
I am now playing my other classes until something gets sorted as i am bored of being nerfed / messed around as a hunter , i have no wish to be a god among all the different classes but hey i do like the idea of send pet , pet holds aggro and i shoot , fair enough i always stand to darn close to mobs so do gain aggro unless being careful with shots , but now , well i guess i could become the classic Melee hunter ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
IN NERF WE TRUST is the new hunters motto ……
Tkc, your pet may have a seperate problem I have noticed recently with a lot of pets that are kept for a long term period. I call it pregger syndrome since their constantly hungry, slowed down in movement and attacks, and often are less able to do the things they were once able to do. I coined this pretty much from my “Rake” cat which I started with right around the time that my sister got pregnent. By the 6th month, both she and my pet tended to be a lot hungrier, slower in movement, and unable to do the things they were previously able to do. As a result, I decided to dump by my cat in exchange for another pet. Several months later, I had to dump that pet too. So far Im keeping a close eye on my latest boar pets “JLo” cause it seems to be showing an increasing appetite.
As for growl, I think it partly has to do with the fact that pet/hunter damage ratios are slightly now tipping closer to hunters generating a lot more damage than their pets can thus the agro drops eventually on the pet and instead focuses on you. In essense this is bad for marks and survival players unlike bm which can just as easily press intimidate to instantly push agro back to its highest levels for pet. The only way I have found to avoid the need to use intimidate is to instead focus on lower damage but a high rate of fire ie precisely calibrated boomstick and hurricane bow. My agro levels seem to stay moderately low since my damaging shots as a whole are lower than the pets but since I have a high rate of fire i still deliver more damage without gaining additional agro. Granted this doesnt do any favors when it comes time to reload on ammo but it manages to keep most targets focused solely on pet. I have noticed this with all my pets though the before mentioned pregger syndrome has some times forced me to start with pets that have less than stellar stats but still they tend to hold agro rather well.
just did a little test, manually casting growl on my boar i didnt turn any other abbilitys off-charge, gore & bite so focus was low all the time but manually casting growl makes sure it’s the next spell to be cast, i got up to 3.5k threat this way. to manully cast growl right click the tooltip so it’s off then left click it to activate it. hope this help’s a bit.
would like an official blue post on this still though.
To those talking about Growl- I suspect that we’re going to have a fix for this shortly. There was a blue response about Growl being properly cast/logged on one of the forums. It showed up in WoWiki’s 2.4.2 page.
So, you may think i am using my pets incorrectly, but i have a 70 WS( a lament for another post that they get nerfed more every patch) a 69 owl(gutripper), I use them to 1 run my friends thruogh pre bc instances to lvl them ans 2 to gank horde… After the patch i logged on and my WS which just b4 the patch could gank 58s solo in gadget with me waiting safely outside, nmow could only kill 45s if i used a trinket and my CDs… And my owl which i use for instance runs because of screech now drags on the ground instead of flying and only sometimes defends me when i am attacked, also bothe pets used to have no issue keeping agro without growl now can barely keep it off my auto shot, with or wothout growl !!!!! I hate the WS nerf… lightning breath used to be 2x the dps it is now…
I have been seeing alot of posts about problems with the cats so I dicided to try mine out. I had no problems what so ever with him, he even seamed to be a bit better than he had been and he is still a few lvs lower than me….huh go figure.
From my personal testing this is not occuring on some realms but it is on others.
The realm that I play on that was delayed on patch day(Gnomeregan),has no aggro issues.I can thwap away with arcane,serpent and auto shots until arcane’s CD is up and if the thing is still standng arcane again and using mend pet without pulling over 50% aggro on a boar.I pull a little higher aggro on a crab,cat,or carrion bird but I still don’t go over 75%.
On Antonidas and The Scryers,I can’t get off more than three non-crit auto shots before I steal aggro.Tested on boars,bats,bears,scorpids ect.Nothing on these realms hold aggro.Their dps alone should have generated more threat than a few auto shots,or in one case ONE non-crit auto shot.
And Hortus’s snide little comment still pisses me off.
“Crying about your class and bickering about semantics does not help us get bugs fixed. If you are not providing useful information do not bother to post in this thread.”
That is one sorry way to handle customer service,especially since there was none of what was mentioned going on in the thread.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5591269680&sid=1&pageNo=1
Cotytto,
Ok, I’m going to probably anger you a little here by taking Hortus’ side. Not that the thread really had a lot of whining going on (and none from you), but he did ask for some information in his first posting and he never really got it from anyone. A few people did whine about this issue though, and a lot of other threads have been whining so heavily that they need some cheese. Even those in Customer Service are human and can get frustrated over the sheer volume of screaming going on. It’s worse when they can’t find the bug, or they aren’t even being told what’s wrong and everyone expects them to fix it right away.
Just be a bit understanding about it. I know that they’re working hard to track it down. Unfortunately, those of us who behave and are nice often get drowned out by those who scream, rant, and whine.
This is from Hortus:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5591269680&postId=56402597922&sid=1#164
“I’ve spent most of the day today testing hunter pet aggro.
First let me say that Growl and Charge interaction is not the same as it was in 2.3.3, this is being looked at separately by the developers. I’m specifically looking at the reports that other pets are not not holding aggro as well in 2.4 as they did in 2.3.3.
Second let me remind you all that threat meter add-ons are not an accurate tool for testing threat. We have internal tools that can display exact threat numbers but those functions are not available to mods in any way.
Third Growl does not appear in the combat log on the “self” filter by default. You must turn it on by selecting Spell Casting message types in the settings for that filter. You can always see Growl in the combat log if you use the “everything” filter.
—–
I have been able to verify by side by side comparison that Growl auto-casts consistently when turned on and that it is doing the exact same amount of threat in 2.4 as it did in 2.3.3.
I also did side by side testing of two identically geared and talented hunters (using a copy of a retail character that reported this problem) with identical fully skilled pets and compared threat.
I sent the pets to attack an unkillable target.
After the opening growl I turned on Auto-shot, and hit Arcane Shot.
I then chain cast arcane shot 9 more times as soon as it was off cooldown.
I then compared the threat of the pet and the hunter. Both were within 10% of each other.
I repeated this on 2.3.3 and 2.4 and the results were nearly identical.
I also repeated this test using Improved Hunters Mark (as I notice all the hunters reporting it have that talent) and the threat for both the pet and the hunter were higher but still within acceptable margins and aggro was not lost by the pet by the 10th arcane shot on 2.3.3 or 2.4.
There may be a bug with hunter pet aggro, but it is not caused by Growl. If anyone has more information or observations about threat they can post here and I’ll try to take a look at them. “
Horitus posted a reply here. Basically he hasn’t been able to duplicate the problem. Idiot.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5591269680&postId=56402096337&sid=1#160
Rob,
I haven’t been able to duplicate the results either. Someone mentioned that it was on random servers. I posted that to the thread.
Damn it, “cats” better not be “nerfed”. Blizzard better change that. Geez louis.
I should add that Hortus said that the problem does not seem to be in Growl. He’s going to continue checking until he can find it though, and wants more information.
Regarding the feeding issues, it seems like with the 2.4 patch that movement or activity disrupts the loyalty boost, whereas in previous versions, loyalty would continue to increase no matter what was happening. Basically, in 2.4, your pet needs to sit and eat to get the full benefits of food, just like you do.
I go to Epcot for the day for my anniversary and look what I miss! :> Thanks for the link to Hortus’ comment, Seidouyumi and Rob. I’m going to give that billing in it’s own post as soon as I catch up with the comments.
Brustal: That’s odd — I’m not seeing that behavior when feeding. I just tested on my cat (who happened to be hungry) and I was able to run around normally (with him following me) nd he’s still get full happiness.
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“Ok, I’m going to probably anger you a little here by taking Hortus’ side. Not that the thread really had a lot of whining going on (and none from you), but he did ask for some information in his first posting and he never really got it from anyone.”
Posts say specifically that pets are not generating the threat they did pre-2.4. Then many hunters replied to his specific requests for information, including gear/macros/pets etc. So, there really is no ambiguity in the bug report.
“It’s worse when they can’t find the bug, or they aren’t even being told what’s wrong and everyone expects them to fix it right away.”
Hortus works for Blizzard. All he has to do is call up the programmers and say, ‘Was anything changed?’ without giving us this run-around.
“I know that they’re working hard to track it down.”
How Do you know they’re working hard to track it down?
I still believe that they don’t care about the issue. If they are looking to nerf the hunters, fine just come out and say it. But don’t give us these lame excuses about ‘acceptable margins’ and 3rd party threat meters / combat log crap. The fact remains: Pre-2.4, it was hard to pull aggro from a charging boar. Threat meters & combat logs aside, the boar could charge and a lone hunter could not pull the mob away, even with a couple crits. Now, the boar can charge, and the hunter can wait….and with two shots pull aggro from the pet.
TheCow,
Please read what Hortus posted. And I know, you hate hearing that I’m taking his side.
The reason why I know that they didn’t nerf Hunters and didn’t do this intentionally is simple- IT ISN’T HAPPENING TO EVERY SINGLE HUNTER IN THE GAME. I have yet to be able to pull aggro off the bulk of my Hunter pets, but my Warlock Voidwalker did loose aggro. The only pet I’ve pulled aggro off of was a Ghostlands Lynx, lvl 17, against a lvl 17 Troll. I tested it a few times to verify, and found that it was erratic.
We’ve had tons of reports from Hunters saying that they’ve actually had a harder time pulling aggro off their pets than before. So, there’s a bug in the system which they are, according to Hortus, busy trying to track down and fix. The first thing he probably did do is call up the code writers and ask if they intentionally changed something. Then he probably reported to them that there was an unintentional change to the structure of the game. Tracking that down can take a lot of time. I just posted on another thread that the WoW environment is spread across at minimum seven servers, and has a ton of code to sift through in order to find where an accidental change may have occurred.
Believe it or not, Blizzard wouldn’t have to change pet aggro in order to nerf Hunters. In fact, Pet aggro is only useful in PvE, where no one really cares if Hunters are a tad over powered. In Arena or PvP, Hunter Pet aggro is useless. I remember facing a Hunter, many moons ago, in a BG. I ignored the pet and ran right in and slaughtered the Hunter. If Blizzard wanted to nerf Hunters, they’d do something like reduce attack power bonuses, or the ability to crowd control since both of those effect PvP and Arena.
The whole aggro issue reeks of an accidental rather than an intentional nerf.
Seidouyumi,
When we were asked to give specific data we did.There was no reason for him to be a jerk when no one had been “crying” or “bickering about semantics”,simply reporting there was a problem.Just because he can’t replicate this on a seperate server,does not mean there isn’t an issue on other realms.
When told by myself that I had this problem on two servers but I didn’t on one server that was delayed on patch day,it was ignored.
There IS a problem.It DOES NOT effect all hunters.It SEEMS to be situational to the realm from my own testing.And lastly,I was not USING an addon to moniter aggro.If I had been I would have said so.Omen2 was too glitchy for me to bother with when it first came out,so I judged aggro by whether or not something came running at me!And one to three non-crit auto shots should NEVER pull aggro from a boar!
I have spent all my time since the patch came out testing this issue,going as far as to level up new hunters to see if maybe the old hunters data was just corrupted.And being told that I’m “crying” and “bickering about semantics” about the class I love,when it is having serious problems,and I’m working my butt off at trying to come up with hard data WILL JUST PISS ME OFF!
I am beginning to wonder.. with Mania’s post about stat changes if this is all somehow effecting aggro. they somehow changed pets as stats changed and therefore there is room for a bug. I never pay much attention to my pets stats (mine either really) so I can’t check my pets stats change. later today I’m going to log in my hunter and see about pet damage, has that changed? anyone noticed? I did notice that I was getting ferocious Inspiration less which means my pet is critting less. If he is doing less damage, critting less, he’s doing less DPS and therefore gets less Aggro. It’s something worth looking at at least. Granted growl should factor in there but still gonna look at it as I know what my pets were doing for damage before 2.4
Varsar: Except the stat changes that I noticed heppened before Patch 2.4, not with it. If those changes had anything to do with this, I would have expected it to affect us in Patch 2.3.
Cotytto,
Your anger still doesn’t help the situation. Insulting people like Hortus doesn’t help either. Nor does lashing out at the rest of us. I’ve posted a few times on the Bug and PTR forums and not been responded to by a blue. It does not mean that they are ignoring us. In fact, one of the bugs I reported was fixed even though I was the only person to post a thread about it. No blue ever responded to that bug.
I spent quite some time trying to duplicate this too. I posted several times here about what I found. Just chill out, ok. Stop screaming about them nerfing us, and about them trying to hurt the class. At least in this instance, this is not the case. Like it or hate it, this is a bug in the system and they really are working to fix it.
bugger it was an idea. oh well guess I don’t need to test it later!
I’m seeing the issue too. Pre-patch, I’d send in my boar and, assuming charge and/or growl weren’t resisted, he’d 4.5K ahead of me in threat before I even fired a shot; I’ve been looking at it this afternoon and he’s generating about 1k threat. Now I know that Omen isn’t 100% reliable but the difference is very noticeable. I feigned death more times this afternoon than I have in the last month! I found an interesting post that suggests that a major part of the problem may be that pre-patch autocast growl was given priority over every other ability providing there was enough focus to cast it, this appears to have changed. It may be that different hunters are seeing different effects because they have different abilities on autocast?
Anyway, the post I read is at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5720272859&sid=1
I told my tank before I did this, but while we were in raid over the weekend I left growl on. (Sapphire 70 Cat). What was interesting is sapphire can no longer hold my agro while solo, but she sure pulled agro right off the tank. I admit there is something going on, but what it is and if blizzard will fix it I am not sure. I do know however that it is not fun to solo with my hunter at this point, if I want to melee I will play my rogue or druid. We are seriously gimped by whatever is going on.
Not to add to it, but just had a co-worker point something out to me. Both of my cats are from the old world, and neither of them are from outland. Sapphire is Shi Rotam and Shadow is Humar. I am going to go and tame an outland pet and see if that makes any difference. The problem may simply be age of pet and where they came from?
Looks like Hortus stated that the original behavior of Charge + Growl has been a bug and it has been “fixed”, so I don’t expect that boars will be fixed any time soon.
This is the link to the blue post:
http://www.wowblues.com/us/bug-boar-charge-and-all-pet-aggro-broken-5591269594.html
Both my cat and I are level 62, and we’re having issues. I’m a beastmaster spec.
I’ve noticed since the patch that my pet just wasn’t functioning right. I was yanking things off him at an alarming rate. I tried different bow and guns, getting away from burst damage and going for a smaller sustained amount but no matter what I do, within five hits the mob goes for me and ignore growls (intimidate will still peel something off me, though). My omen bars have gone insane.
He’s doing a touch less damage than he used to do, too, and taking way more. I thought for a while it was an outlands thing, but my friends who’ve had pets in outlands for a while say this is entirely new.
This isn’t a help, but I thought it might be useful to have someone else pop up to say that there are still big issues.
Here are my observations from my lvl 50 MM hunter Tirahna (Balegund):
CATS:
My cat (and ONLY my cat) seems to be acting differently. He takes more damage for no apparent reason (stats are the same as before the patch). He also doesn’t seem to growl as often left to his own devices. In fact, in 50 test fights, he chose to growl once early on (not always as the first thing upon engaging either) and then did not growl again – at all – unless he lost agro to me for a moment. For what it’s worth the cat I have is the white lion spawned in the Barrens – He’s lvl 49 now.
By contrast my snake (from WC, also level 49) seems to be doing fantastic. He holds agro better than he ever did and it takes me only a little bit of measuring my shots to keep from pulling agro off him.
My boar also was doing well enough though he did seem to be 50/50 about leading an engage with charge/growl or charge/gore.
With the single exceptions of the cat behavior and the cat seeming to take more damage this hasn’t really affected my gameplay. I always have my pets on “manual” unless I am farming grays because as an MM hunter I *need* to be able to force my pet to “hold back” a wee bit of focus for an ordered growl if I crit a few too many times in a row. Usually though “go for the throat” keeps the pet more than topped off to chain whatever he wants.
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