Blizzard has made some important clarifications about the upcoming change to Growl that was mentioned in the 2.4.2 Test Realm Patch Notes: “The hunter pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.”
The rest of this unfortunately-phrased patch note is apparently: “Growl will now scale with hunter Attack Power as was intended.”
Nethaera posted the following in a thread on the Test Realm forum:
Growl was scaling incorrectly before so it’s been changed to scale with the hunter’s AP starting at around 1200 AP. Other pet abilities such as bite, claw, etc will still scale with pet AP.
This raises a number of interesting questions (such as: “How much scaling? Wait — Bite and Claw scaled?!”). I’ll post more info as it becomes available, but for the moment I’m headed to the PTR to test this viscerally.
[edit] Nethaera posted this, not Hortus. Whoops! [/edit]
Incidentally, it looks to me as if the prioritization of Growl vs. other pet skills has not been fixed. Kaet’s crab Frore is getting around to casting Growl on the PTR after a melee attack and a Claw or two, and he keeps getting stuck with too little focus to Growl when its cooldown is up.
This is going to make really testing the Growl AP change difficult.
Turn off the other skills for now?
Well, on live right now I’ve been finding my pet’s threat scaling faster than my own. As long as I get at least as much threat from my AP -> Growl threat as I get with my AP -> Pet’s AP -> Growl threat (non-boar, naturally) I’ll be OK. As it is, my 65 hunter’s threat has been scaling slower (with her AP) than her cat’s threat; turning off Aspect of the Hawk means I not only deal less damage, but the mob is more likely to charge my hunter.
Just to compare: Assuming Petopia’s raw pet AP is their strength bonus, 1200 AP is under the old growl minimum, taking a 70 pet from 304 AP to 568 AP (1200 * 0.22 = 264), with 736 pet AP being the minimum to improve max rank growl’s threat.
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Sigh. For all the hunters saying “hey, my pet’s AP scales just fine, pre-70″ let me remind you of a couple of things:
- You will probably spend more time at 70 than the levels 1-69 if the hunter is your main. Therefore, for people who actually play their hunters, and not as alts, this is a painful bug.
- Gear matters. If you are dressed in greens, you probably will not have an issue. Most full-time hunters can at least manage to run 5-man instances and do quests and run in blues. As soon as you start noticing autoshot hitting for about 400, get ready to spend time running around kiting.
Gamebreaking? Well, that depends. I’m an SSC/TK raider, so I use my pet during raids, where Growl is not a concern. When I’m running dailies to fund the raiding, though, it’s freakin’ annoying.
If I were still running 5-man instances and doing more soloing or rep grinding, I would be rerolling an alt for a while, just until they fix this on live.
Hopefully 2.4.2 goes some way towards that.
By the way, anyone find it ironic that MM hunters, with their AP-magnifying talents, will have an easier time soloing with their pets than… Beast Mastery hunters? I guess mastery over beasts doesn’t include teaching them how to snarl at your enemies.
i was haveing isses with growl not being cast first but i moved it to the other end of wolfs bar and now its always being cast first unless i have it turned off.seems the attacks are being cast in order from one side to the other.i think i moved it to the right…
I haven’t tested anything on the PTR yet. I’ve been doing some work on my Dragonhawk. I have noticed though that some of the other abilities have gotten some increased threat generation to them.
Haven’t seen the PTR’s yet, but I have to admit that the only pet I have which currently is able to keep a mob’s attention for more that a few shots is an owl. And that’s me running around mostly in blues, as I don’t have time for instances, i.e. only have 1-2 epics.
It’s reminding me of when I was leveling a low level pet, shoot once – melee many times. =/
its generally harder to pull threat off of screech
once i get an omen meter warning that im about to pull off my owl pet i just auto shot and hope for the best
Ok, I have a suggestion to everyone having problems with threat. It’s something that works for me, and I’m hoping you can squeeze out the five points for it.
Now, just to note, I’m playing Marksman on all my Hunters. It just seems to work for me.
If you can squeeze them out, put the five points into improved concussive shot. It can be a big help in terms of stopping an enemy and giving you time to burn them down a bit further before having to melee. You may find just doing that is going to keep the mobs at bay long enough to kill them.
Blizzard effectively killed the Beastmaster specc!
For a casual player, with a lot of green(!) items, my DPS is high enough to pull aggro off of my pet. My items don’t have enough AP to get to the ‘scaling Part’ of their equation. A Marksman with its far higher AP does not have this problem.
It reads that, for Growl to scale at all, the AP of the Hunter has to exceed 1200 Points, and my guess is, it has to exceed it by some big number…
No Tx-set, no aggro.
It looks like all good designers left Blizzard a long time ago :(
Ghanur-
Have you tried it in the PTR yet? Before you announce that this is killing anything, please check your own Attack Rating and test this on the PTR. I checked the Armory of a guild I know and those Hunters who put a lot of focus into Agility and Attack power made the threshhold despite being Beast Master.
Part of why I’ve gone MM has to do with the types of pets I really love, and to maximize their damage I need a very high Attack Rating. My Draenei Hunter’s Dragonhawk is doing around 40 damage per blast of Fire Breath at level 15. That’s the 30 base damage and the ten additional spell damage. In reality, due to rounding, she’s doing between 40 and 42 damage.
I have posted a very nice, quiet, thread asking them to lower the threshold a tad, about 300 RAP to allow more Hunters to get over that mark.
Er, with all the bandit stuff floating around, and so many things focused on all the hunter sweet spots ((Agility, attack power, and stamina)) it’s not that hard for a beast master to break that point. Even me in my casual playing are breaking it, though I have to admit not by a large margin. Nyx hit the nail pretty firmly on the head, though. It may not scale enough to really keep things interested in your pet while your thwacking away. As of the last wonderous fix, I can no longer afford to just unload blithely on my target. Well, its either that or I HAVE to unload, so they die before reaching me. But at this point, thats an option too.
You know veryone, I just had a thought with all the aggro issues and the number of hunters complaining about how much they need to melee these days… think about the amount of gold we are saving on arrows!! (before anyone jumps down my throat, I AM KIDDING)
One of the odd ball skills I’ve used a lot as Marksman from the ground up has been the improved concussive shot. It has a pretty good chance of stoping the mob dead in its tracks. It doesn’t break when damage is done either, so I’m able to pretty quickly stomp on a mob before it hits me.
Varsar-
oddly enough, so far being MM has helped me save on arrows. Four or five shots and the mob’s dead. Of course, I’m burning through mana like there’s no tomorrow.
Nice to know there is another mm around. I love bm, don’t get me wrong, but Temp is a shooter first and foremost. I used to have major aggro issues (I am only in blues, no epics), but I recently started using only growl and screech with my owl, and I no longer have difficulty with taking aggro from Wol. I can go full out on my shots and even crit and only every now and then do I have to fd. It sure makes grinding go by quickly, I just use a lot of water.
I felt like a change so I am leveling up a cat again just to compare damage and threat (I have to see for myself, the hard way). Keep in mind my ap is not high at all as I am not geared, and I will still not be geared when this patch occurs. We’ll see what happens, I guess.
On a side note, what kins of owls and cats do you think are the LEAST popular? I went with the common gold lion instead of my previous humar and echeeyakee just to stand out from the crowd.
1 crit and i pull aggro on my scorpion. 2 crits and i pull aggro on my cat.
the more ap i have, the harder it is.
its plain and simple, give pets more abilities to accumulate aggro.
err, meant to also say fix current abilities to generate more.
Marzix, what is your spec? As a beastmaster/marksman my critical generally range from 900-1100 or so just on auto shot, but if I am just auto shotting I won’t pull aggro. Its when I start firing off arcanes, aimed, steady, and multi that I run into problems. Not that it matters to much, I actually sort of enjoy meleeing. *Coughs* Don’t hit me, I know I am a ranged attacker!!
My initial PTR testing suggests that any scaling of Growl with RAP is currently utterly insignificant (if it is happening at all):
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6136324353&sid=1#16
Nimizar: Funny, I’ve been on all evening testing this also, but I posted my results to the PTR forum instead of the hunter forum. :>
And yes, I found the same thing. No scaling whatsoever from RAP 309 to RAP 1677. (That’s as high as I can currently go on my own as BM, but I was just about to log in and see if respeccing MM helped.)
Interestingly, I collect almost identical data on live. I wonder if they haven’t actually made the change yet.
My thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6136615005&sid=1
Palla-
Some Hunters out there actually prefer to melee believe it or not. They use their ranged attacks to burn down the mob first before engaging in close combat.
Tempric-
I’ve enjoyed Marksman and I’ve been using some oddball pets for the spec too. My Draenei has a Dragonhawk and my Blood Elf has a Serpent. Both of them are doing pretty high damage thanks to the spell bonuses.
Marzix-
I’ve been seeing how Bite affects aggro generation. For some reason having Bite in the pet’s rotation seems to increase threat. Crits are going to eat through threat pretty quickly anyway. If I crit with Aimed Shot, I pull aggro no matter what. However, if I hit with Concussive Shot after I pull aggro, I tend to be alright since I can slow or stop the mob.
Mania and Nimizar-
I do wonder if they’ve made the changes yet. I know that they metioned that the physical abilities were suppose to scale with Pet Attack Power, but I haven’t seen it. In fact, on the PTR, my Bite was doing less damage than the tool tip says.
I forgot to mention that they pulled my posting about lowering the threshold for this. Oh well.
Seidouyumi I rarely troll the wow forums, it’s often too painful reading all that whining, but where there other post about lowering the Threshold? Or did Blizzard just not like hunters saying something again?
If you melee a lot as a hunter, you’re welcome to – it is your $15/month, after all – but you’re costing yourself a lot of time and energy to do one thing when another could be done so much more easily.
Bite adds to threat because it’s damage.
Varsar-
I only occasionally go through the forums. It’s always possible that I jumped the gun in mentioning it since some of the testing done already seems to indicate that they haven’t implimented it in the PTR yet, or that they are still working out the kinks on it.
Actually, what’s weird is that this is the fourth thread I’ve posted on that’s been pulled very quickly, but was never reported as a violation. The odd part is that those posts have been very quiet, polite, and just outright suggestions which seem to have been put into effect later. It’s possible that they liked the suggestion and took it into account, but for some reason wanted it off the forums. The suggestions were very tiny little things that weren’t that controversial.
Seidou, Are you saying that it feels like bite is producing more threat than straight out damage would? In theory, that would mean that I should have kept the bat. Growl, screech and bite. Maybe I should have kept her, she was a cute fuzzy brown fruit bat kind, not the nightmare inducing vampire bat kind. I even solo tamed her in ZG. More stable slots, blizz, please!
Agreed, Nyx. As for bite producing threat, it hits for more damage then claw, so of course it produces more. However, if you have a pet that has only bite, growl, and a family skill thats not instant cast, then you typically have enough focus to use growl every time the cooldown is up, while pets with instant attacks, or focus dumps, sometimes have to wait. Its just my experience that pets without focus dumps tend to garner more aggro then pets with. I can test that one pretty easily later.
Another double post, blaugh. Sei, I have noticed that on the WoW forums they have been a lot less tolerant about anyone speaking out against them. Sometimes you’ll get a polite “Take it to a different forum” but most often, they just yank it and imply that you need to STFU. The real problem, as far as I am concerned is, is that it tends to be aimed at the people who make sense, as opposed to the morons. *Shrugs* Its Blizzards game, I suppose.
Tempric-
I’ve noticed it on those pets that have bite. I’m not sure if it has an effect. However, when I’ve turned Bite off, my pets have had a hard time keeping aggro. I really haven’t noticed it on my Serpent and Dragonhawk, but those are a bit different.
Palla-
I’m not going to wonder too much why they pulled those threads. I can still post to the forums, and haven’t found out why they were pulled. To be honest, I’ve thought that the WoW forums were more of a farse than anything else, and not because they were made that way. They were a great idea, but a lot of people just scream and yell about stuff that isn’t even relavent. I sometimes wonder if they pull those good threads so that they don’t get trashed, but who knows.
“By the way, anyone find it ironic that MM hunters, with their AP-magnifying talents, will have an easier time soloing with their pets than… Beast Mastery hunters?”
I agree. Although as BM my pet attacks faster, he still hits for the same as when I’m MM. The AP inheritance MM pets receive is equivalent to 5 points in “Unleashed Fury.” Only thing is BM hunters have to spend 5 talent points.
BTW, I’m in tk/ssc gear as well and near full s3 PvP gear.
And anyone else notice that pet crit is practically useless in PvP? Even with 5 points in “Ferocity” most of that crit will be negated by resilience. Thus, it affects “Frenzy” and “Ferocious Inspiration.” That’s more talent points wasted…
As a surv hunter (0/23/38), I can’t even keep agro on my boar with the current growl. With my windserpent, it’s laughable. I’m happy with any extra help I can get so that I don’t have to use traps/fd/wingclip on every mob I fight.
Guys if I may make a suggestion to those of you who have aggro problems. This is what I do, send in my pet and let it get the first hit, then what I do is just spam my ss/auto macro (kc also helps a tremendous amount with aggro) untill its dead. It doesn’t pull aggro unless I crit like 4 times in a row and the mob is usually like 90% dead if I crit that much. Another thing is that its very mana efficient seing as ss only uses like 100 mana per shot or something. I also keep aspect of the viper up while I do my dailys/solo, this helps me to where I NEVER have to drink when I’m out doing my thing (it also helps becuase w/o AotH on I do a little less damage, thus creating less threat). I run in my pvp gear becuase I play on a pvp server and I get tired of being ganked and with my pvp gear on I have 11 epics on so you can imagine how much damage I pull off with my s2 gun. Please please please try this it really solved my aggro problem completely. (I also use a wind serpent when soloing… not sure if this has much of an effect, I know people use cats a lot but I just find the serpent to be better)
But yeah aggro will probably suck after this patch
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