Comments on: Patch 2.4.2: No Changes to Growl Scaling

By: nickgumshoe

nickgumshoe — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:44:48 +0000

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)

By: Grego

Grego — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:57:58 +0000

I honestly am leaving WoW for AoC. My wife and I came back for a few months and were having a great time but these last few patches have been seriously atrocious. First it was 2.4 and I had to drink all the time. That’s fixed but now my pet doesn’t hold aggro to save his life. I’d be willing to wait until another patch for a fix but it’s been clearly stated that it’s ‘working as intended’.

The worst part is the hunters who are oblivious to the problem and calling out ‘L2PLAY’ while grinding PvP gear in arenas or instancing or raiding. They aren’t seeing these issues since they aren’t using growl. I play exclusively with my wife who is a shadow priest and we’ve only been 70 for a few weeks (moved to a new server). If I feign the aggro is on her with no chance of my pet getting it back. Even an intimidate won’t hold aggro enough. It’s ridiculous that I alone can’t use a simple steady shot rotation and not pull aggro.

One of my friends started leveling up a hunter and while he loves it he says that his pet went from good to crap almost instantly. He’s level 28 and while he’s used to kiting (main is a mage) I told him to love it because that’s what he is going to do for the next 42 levels. It’s too bad that after putting in such a huge buff to leveling for all classes that they’d nerf it so drastically for hunters.

Sorry for the rant, I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat. It sure felt good tho.

By: Bikutanda of Nazgrel

Bikutanda of Nazgrel — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:08:10 +0000

I have been a BM spec Hunter from the start. I have a Wind Serpent, a Cat and a Scorpid. The Wind Serpent manages to hold better agro over the other 2.
At level 70, I would pull agro with plain autoshot. If Kill Command popped, if I crit, I would pull agro.
I respecced to MM this weekend, and hardly ever pull agro off the pet. I have TrueShot up. I can use a aimedshot/autoshot rotation, crit madly, and maybe pull agro.
Hmmmm

By: Nimizar

Nimizar — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:24:50 +0000

@sara: welcome to the joys of intermittent bugs – post patch, some folks appear to be experiencing the Growl prioritisation bug for the first time, while others appear to have found it has gone away. (That’s assuming of course that there isn’t some other problem with Growl, but Hortus *did* do a pretty good job of testing its scaling in isolation from other factors, as did our various scaling tests on the PTR. So until they fix the prioritisation problem, I’m not personally going to go looking for additional potential problems with pet threat-per-second)

By: Corbenn

Corbenn — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:17:40 +0000

I just waiting for the day to come where hunter arrows are magic or physical damage in stead of neither.

*is confused*

All of our shots *are* physical damage, except for Arcane Shot which is magic (Arcane) damage.

By: albin

albin — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:13:06 +0000

I find it complete crap about this nerf i can even auto shot with out pulling aggro how is a hunter to farm if they cant use any special attacks charge and growl generated up to 5.5k aggro now th charge then growl generates 1.1k i think its a bit much. I just waiting for the day to come where hunter arrows are magic or physical damage in stead of neither.

By: sara

sara — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:58:57 +0000

To Nimizar: my point is that she holds aggro *better* now than between 2.4 and 2.4.2…

By: Rikaku

Rikaku — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:14:00 +0000

Really these changes have made Hunter PvE playing almost as fun as sticking a fork into your eye. My pet doesn’t hold aggro at all, the PvE world is going down the drain while Blizz just stands there being all “OmigawdPvP!”~
Now, I’ve dealt with nerfs the past 3 years I’ve been on this game, especially as Hunter. This lowering Growl’s effectiveness even more is downright killer. I’ve always thought that BM talents should have an improved growl talent or something, well here’s hoping that happens in WotLK. Oh yeah, and a higher rank of Furious Howl (nice missing that when theres hundreds of wolves in Blade’s Edge and Terrokar Blizzard!)
Until then, I’m playing my Paladin. At least Blizzards throwing love their way.
And as for Hortus
Hortus…Hortus…Hortus…
Now I get it that he’s probably tired of the Growl/Hunter talk. But that’s part of his job, dealing with stuff. I haven’t seen this many people on a forum even post their issues or problems so nicely and well-thought out anywhere else before. So I really don’t care if he’s upset that he has to deal with a thread about Growl scaling for the 600th time, I’ve seen other Blues deal with a repeated thread topic for the 1000th time with more grace. I think it’s time Hortus stopped being a jerk and stop threatening to have “previlieges taken away”. What is this? Grade school?
Hortus, it’s time to take a vacation and a chill pill. Seriously.

By: Gort

Gort — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:04:55 +0000

As I’ve said before… Hortus Hates a Hunter.

Does this mean they’re not going to fix the mana regeneration? ;)

By: Nimizar

Nimizar — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:55:54 +0000

@sara: Screech is pretty good threat, so when that’s the ability competing with Growl for focus (owls, carrion birds, bats), then the threat-pet-second loss from the prioritisation problems with Growl is a lot less than it is with other pet families. There’s also the fact that the prioritisation bug itself is a chance-based thing – sometimes you’ll just get lucky and have Growl go off close to its cooldown time.

@Brig: aside from Boar Charge, all the pet AP buffs tested on the PTR that actually increased the pet’s AP as shown on its stats page (kibler’s bits, Trueshot Aura, LW drums) also increased Growl threat. Other effects that increase damage without increasing listed AP (FI, IHM) didn’t (although only IHM was tested explicitly).

@Everyone: don’t get *too* annoyed with Hortus over this, folks. Yeah, he’s completely stopped listening, but he *did* spend quite a bit of time on Growl issues right after 2.4 came out (unfortunately not enough to actually find the source of the reported problems), and Blizz QA have some fairly major game-breaking issues to deal with right now in the form of UI lockup bugs and horrendous latency on the realms with high Oceanic populations. That said, I still think he’s been out of line in the way he has attempted to shut down further discussion of the issues with Growl threat (and the incorrect information being posted by the Blizzard reps).