The State of Pet Aggro
In the past several weeks, I’ve gotten really wrapped up in the numbers behind Growl. Along with a bunch of other hunters, I’ve been doing extensive testing — not just on any putative changes to Growl scaling, but also on the basic mechanics of Growl. How do the ranks interact? What’s the threshold for scaling at low levels? (I should have answers to these questions for posting in the near future.)
But in my focus on numbers, I’ve lost the wider and arguably much more useful context: How does the state of pet aggro feel to hunters? What are the current and future effects on our normal gameplay? And since I’ve seen a lot of confusion about these matters both in-game and on forums and other blogs, I think it will be valuable to stop for an overview of the situation.
Patch 2.4: The Start of Aggro Weirdness
Immediately after Patch 2.4, a lot of hunters started noticing problems with their pets keeping aggro. The problem has proved very hard to pin down. Some hunters don’t notice much of a change. With others, it comes and goes. And some are terribly affected.
At the current time, we’re still not exactly sure what’s going on, but we do know two things:
- Testing Growl in isolation shows no changes to the mechanics of Growl itself.
- The prioritization of auto-cast pet skills has changed. Blizzard has acknowledged this bug and says it will be fixed in a future patch.
The Auto-Cast Priority Bug
What’s the problem with the prioritization of auto-cast pet skills? In short, if your pet has Growl on auto-cast then Growl is supposed to cast first whenever it can (that is, when the cooldown timer is up and your pet has enough focus). In addition, your pet is supposed to plan its attacks so that it usually has enough focus for Growl when Growl’s timer is up.
(This is complicated to explain, but suffice it to say that this has always worked magically for those of us who leave our pet attacks on auto-cast and so we’ve never had to worry about it before this.)
But with Patch 2.4, other attacks started slipping in. Instead of being the first attack, Growl may be the third or fourth. This may not seem like a big deal, but over the course of a fight your pet is losing significant threat by this delay. Plus, if your pet has a focus dump skill like Claw, it may sometimes start casting Claw repeatedly, leaving your pet without enough focus for Growl. And while Claw does cause some threat (as all damage does), Growl is much more effective.
Auto-cast prioritization is a big problem, and it could be the main cause behind the 2.4 aggro weirdness. Or there could be other factors at work as well — it’s awfully hard to tell from where we sit. Thankfully, Blizzard has acknowledged this bug and says it will be fixed in a future patch.
This bug affects all hunters, although the biggest effects are probably felt by those who use pets with focus dump skills. Before patch 2.4.2, boar owners also noticed a big effect — but 2.4.2 took care of that by nerfing boars.
Patch 2.4.2: The Charge Nerf
While Blizzard was investigating hunters’ reports of aggro difficulties in Patch 2.4, they apparently realized for the first time exactly how powerful the boar skill Charge is when combined with Growl. Charge, among other effects, also adds a pretty big chunk of attack power to the boar’s next attack. If the next attack is a straight melee attack, for instance, then Charge adds pet AP and thus extra damage.
But if the next attack after Charge is Growl, then that extra attack power translates into extra threat. (I’ll go into the mathematics of how pet AP gets translated into Growl threat in a later post, for those of you who aren’t already familiar with that. For the moment, just trust me that it’s a whopping big blast of threat.) This is why boars are such well-known aggro-magnets.
Unfortunately, this is apparently not what Blizzard intended for boars. So in Patch 2.4.2, Blizzard changed the nature of the Charge AP boost so that it no longer affects Growl threat. The extra pet AP from Charge does still cause extra damage if the next attack after Charge is a melee attack, and Charge still has a number of other fine qualities (like an impressive closing speed and a 1 second immobilize), but Charge + Growl no longer causes the same massive blast of threat.
The Charge nerf affected hunters who use boars, of course. Many of the hunters who used a boar for soloing in particular are now searching for a better aggro alternative. And the change also affected all of us who give pet advice. We can no longer say, “If you are having trouble with aggro, you might try using a boar.”
Patch 2.4.2: Growl Scaling Unchanged
Patch 2.4.2 also claimed to contain a change that would affect all hunters: a change in the mechanics of Growl scaling that would shift the focus from pet attack power (PAP) to hunter ranged attack power (RAP) for the purposes of generating threat. As the patch notes put it: “The pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power and now scales with the hunter’s Attack Power.”
As you have no doubt read by now, this change was never actually implemented — there was no actual change to Growl scaling. (And Blizzard has confirmed that this is the case.)
I’ve seen a lot of misunderstanding about what this means right now, largely stemming from the Blizzard comment that “this is a bug that is currently in your favor” and to “enjoy the extra threat from these buffs.” Unfortunately we haven’t gained anything (compared to pre-2.4.2) with this “bug”. It’s been around since the Burning Crusade launched, if not longer. From the hunter’s perspective, Patch 2.4.2 did not change our aggro situation at all.
(… Unless you have a boar, of course. And keeping in mind that we’re still suffering from the auto-cast priority bug, and possibly some other unspecified bug from Patch 2.4 …)
The Coming Growl Scaling Nerf
But Blizzard has indicated that they will likely fix the Growl scaling “bug” in a future patch. When that happens, Growl threat will no longer be directly boosted by:
- True Shot Aura (At least not directly. TSA will still boost threat indirectly by boosting the hunter’s RAP, however.)
- Blessing of Might (cast on the pet)
- Kibler’s Bits
- Leggings of Beast Mastery
- Strength Scrolls (used on the pet)
- … and similar effects
Blizzard has indicated that the actual scaling factor will probably remain the same, and the threshold at which Growl begins to scale probably will as well. In that sense, removing the ability to directly boost Growl threat with the above effects is pretty clearly a nerf.
But let’s be honest: if you aren’t using these effects to boost Growl’s threat right now, you probably won’t notice when you lose that ability. For example, as a Beast Mastery hunter who never remembers to use buffs and who doesn’t own any fancy equipment (like the Leggings of Beast Mastery), I won’t be losing anything at all. Even if you are currently using Kibler’s Bits to boost your pet’s damage, you may not notice any change to aggro — depending on your pet’s current attack power, the Bits may not even be boosting Growl threat right now.
But if you do use these methods to boost Growl threat — and especially if you are a Marksmanship hunter who uses True Shot Aura — you may notice a big difference. This is because Growl doesn’t scale smoothly; it only starts scaling after a certain threshold of pet AP. These buffs are much more effective at boosting our pet’s AP above the threshold then our own RAP is. (Again, I’ll go more into the mechanics of this is a later post.)
And players like myself are still losing something: we’ll be losing the option to start using those methods to boost Growl threat if we run into aggro problems.
Conclusion
To some extent, debating how badly different hunters are hurt by these changes is beside the point. Ideally, a hunter’s pet should be able to hold aggro for the hunter in the normal course of solo play. Recent bugs have interfered with that, but hopefully they’ll be fixed soon. More worrisome is Blizzard’s apparent take on the importance of pet aggro.
But I’m not going to panic at this point. Blizzard may change their mind about fixing Growl scaling, or they may take pet aggro in another direction all together. We’ll just have to see.
In the meantime, I hope this overview of the current state of pet aggro has been useful.
59 Comments
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how come Blizzard hates hunters so much???
nerfing after nefring after nerfing…….
Excellent, excellent summation, Mania.
I am still puzzled on one point, with respect to Growl (I can somewhat understand the change to Boar Charge): What was broken, which needed fixing??
Kestrel: As far as I can tell, nothing. I think the auto-cast priority bug was accidental, but it caused them to look at how Growl scales and that annoyed someone (probably an engineer) who decided to fix it to spec, whether or not it was causing a problem. But that’s just a wild guess.
Don;t hold your breath about growl Mania. We’re still unable to feed pets in combat. That was a screw up that happened 3 patches ago now if i’m not mistaken.
BM Hunter here with a Boar. I haven’t noticed too much change with the gameplay. Occasionally, I’ll have to Feign Death or use Intimidation. I think the reason I don’t have too much trouble is that I’m equipped with a bunch of greens and a not-so-powerful ranged weapon. That translates to me not having enough “oomph” to pull a mob away from my piggy.
What do you think, Mania?
Actually Blizzard doesn’t hate hunters. It’s a company, made up of a multitude of workers - it doesn’t make changes like a despot with actual feelings about those changes, it’s a corporation. What we’re actually seeing is the end result that probably involves a lot of miscommunication between various teams, and probably a handful of folks who might not understand how hunters actually are played. It’s a bunch of random interpersonal communication problems, and possibly some managers that aren’t really paying attention. With probably a lot of other factors that’d we’d never guess thrown in. Such as maybe employees weren’t given free pizza once a month or something and so it maybe some folks slacked off in reporting bugs? That last thought sounds goofy, but if you think back to places you’ve worked I bet you can think of random examples of little things management did that totally changed how everyone felt about their jobs - and possibly changed productivity.
What’s interesting about listening to the devs at Blizzcon is that you learn about people who will actually stand up for a particular class and actively lobby to try and improve it - worked for locks and druids. But not overnight - there were a lot of changes over time. I’m sure there’s probably someone (or multiple someones) like that who stands up for hunters - and you just know they’re *facepalming* over the entire situation.
Oh and as usual - ty so much Mania for a great summing up. I can tell there are changes in my boar’s aggro, my flamingo was always kinda weak with aggro so it’s never easy for me to tell what’s up with it.
I’ve got to agree with batgri. WoW forums are full of people claiming that Blizzard are prejudiced against horde, or alliance, or mages, or tanks, or leatherworkers, or hunters, or just about anything. Blizzard as an organisation obviously doesn’t have emotions, and if it has a policy it must be to keep the greatest number of their customers happy enough to keep paying their monthly fee. This obviously can’t be done by favouring one race/class/profession over others (or experienced players would all play the same race/class/professions). Rather, they must strive to achieve balance, so that you have approximately the same chance of overall success at the game regardless of your strategy.
This balance is incredibly hard to achieve, because players will find tactics that use talents in a way that the developers didn’t foresee, and because the overall game is so large and complex. This is why they keep tweaking the game - to try and achieve that perfect balance. You may want hunters to be the best class to play, but if they clearly were, then everybody would roll hunter. Would you like that?
Mania-
What you said at the end about Blizzard taking it in a different direction may be what’s going on. There’s a lot of changes with Wrath that are functional and not just content. They may be trying to work out the kinks NOW rather than later.
Being a hunter player that has never had a boar pet (( save for about 3 minutes during the pet taming quest)) and more over hates how they look, I can say I’ve noticed the Growl problem on my Lion. I have a Humar (( Black lion)), and the above post is right. Sometimes he’ll start clawing and claw will override the “Growl” kicking in. And if you’re playing a Marksman hunter, this makes a difference. With out growl to add aggro to your pet, your first aimed shot will pull the mob off your pet and it’ll come straight for you. Which leaves your mob trailing it.
This has happened MANY TIMES since the patch and when it does. I just pray that “Growl” comes up in the rotation before the mob gets to me and my pet can “Re-acquire” It’s threat before I”m in melee range.
(( As fellow hunters, you all know if we’re in Melee range, something has gone wrong and we’re cussing))
I’ve been noticing that my pets are losing aggro more frequently than they used to. But the way to over come this is to just use Feign Death. We have an aggro dump for a reason. That’s what I do as soon as I see the mob turn away from my raptor/ravager. And if FD is resisted, no big deal; I just use Disengage as much as I can. I agree that the change made to Growl is annoying, but we’ve got ways around the problem.
in the forum linked by “confirmed”, im sorry to see the blizz person got upset at the bottom post. it’s too bad they take your informing them of things youve tested as just complaining… anyway, maybe the blizzard team has a different definition of what “scales with hunter attack power” means. If growl comes directly off pet attack power…and pet attack power is based on hunter attack power.. then indirectly growl is “scaling” from hunter attack power.. sort of. maybe that’s what they are thinking but haven’t stated it clearly.
I just use concussive shot and improved concussive shot. Slows the mob right down and they’re usually dead before they hit me.
That doesn’t change the fact they are tampering with one of our core mechanics, Sei. And as gear improves, it gets harder and harder to keep things on your pet, and off of you. I think a HUGE part of the problem is that the people who decide what changes that need to be made, and indeed probably the people who make them, don’t play the class.
I’m bm spec, haven’t noticed a huge difference in my 70 raptor… however, I have a suggestion for people who are having some problems. Birds and bats, (in my experience, that is) with their “Screech” skill are very hard to pull off of… I just tamed one of the new druid birds from Blade’s Edge the other day. She’s only 68 (loyalty lvl 1) and I still can barely pull off her.
*Chuckles* Honestly Killer, that can be said for nearly any pet. The problem is, there seems to be randomized aggro issues which makes things harder for some people. I run into them randomly myself. My wolf? Holds aggro fine. Cat? Check. Former ravager and serpent? Ditto. Dire Raven? Same. But sometimes, just out of no where, the aggro just seems to drop off of them, and I spend the rest of the fight either in melee or kiting. It does not seem to be pet specific, nor can I recreate a situation where it happens twice. I have noticed on my warlock, and sometimes, even more randomly and weird, in AV. I have only had it happen twice, but Drek has randomly just decided he didn’t want to be aggroed to the main aggro magnet before, and reset. *Shrugs* So its not really just a hunter issue. Just an aggro one in general
I’ve just got to pitch in and say that my BM hunter is epic’d out (with raid loot, not arena/battlegrounds epics) and even with a lv 70 owl with the highest ranks of Growl, Screech and Claw, I never fail to pull aggro off it after my second autoshot. Even if the mob survives past the Intimidation stun, a couple of shots after it breaks causes me to gain aggro again. It’s extremely frustrating, and I was really looking forward to them fixing it this last patch.
I suppose having to melee a mob so much helps cut the cost of arrows, but… c’mon. I’m hoping they hurry and narrow down the problem and hotfix it very soon.
BM specc’d, growl on auto, bite on auto - using autoshot only -> cat can’t hold aggro at all. Even using growl only, will not solve the problem, the threat from the attacks seems to be missing then.
Using a pet with screech is not a solution! Birds are always in the way and screech is an AE effect - and there are a lot of situations, where AEs are a no go!
Getting my RAP to the (stated/current) starting point for scaling is near impossible - don’t have the time to raid daily or doing PvP to improve my equipment to the point Blizzard decided :(.
Blizzard may or may not fix this problem, WotLK is 6 month ahead (as a guess) - I won’t hold my breath that they get growl working at all.
Something that worked for 3 years got screwed, and those at Blizzard tell us, it was a bug for that long a time… and that we may have to wait several months until they may fix it, or not…
I will take a look at this situation after WotLK is released, until then, no money for Blizzard - maybe I won’t miss this game at all…
@Seidouyumi:
Why are you defending each and every screw-up Blizzard pulls? Are you working for them?
Leuko, I’m not even remotely epicced out and I was dragging aggro away just fine, and then I tuned Claw off and just left Screech and Growl. I can still pull the aggro because I crit a lot, but it’s usually way too late to matter by the time that happens.
I have to say thought that it’s only Screech that does this for me. My cat is unusable at the moment unless I want to stick to auto-shot alone until the fight is nearly over.
I’m SV/MM specced at the moment as I love the extra traps, expose weakness and wyvern sting, but I’m starting to contemplate going all the way with BM and dropping mortal shots just to stop pulling aggro - and quite frankly that’s just insane. Maybe I should not use a bow, and just throw stuff at my target instead, or maybe switch arrows to those ones we got when we started our characters. That might help me hold my dps down a bit.
I have just tamed my Dire Raven, but now I’m wondering whether to carry on with my hunter at all. I find this very depressing, and I find the reaction by Hortus to well constructed and argued threads to be entirely unjustified.
hell no, my pet can´t hold aggro at all, i have a pet to tank for me, but it can´t tank more the max 2 autoshot. hunter is unplayeble…. good that age of conan got out now… maybe find it more fun. bb
BM specced, with crab, nether ray, raven, all with growl on auto, and focus dumps on auto (when avaliable). No significant threat problems.
Carawn hit part of it on the head. I HATE the way Hortus responds, even to well thought out arguments. He just has a habit of being a jerk when he really needs to address issues.
Sorry for the double post, but Leuko, part of your problem is that you have on claw AND screech. Two aggro dumps. Turn off one, or the other, and it should help. I personally suggest turning off claw and just letting them scream at things, since you get both damage aggro and a debuff aggro bonus.
Triple, dang it. I always screw that up though. Two FOCUS dumps, not aggro dumps.
Geez, Blizzard doesnt like hunters much do they…
Darn, now I have to respecc my pet…
Palladiamors - I think you may be right on that last point, on it being an issue with aggro in general. I hadn’t put much thought into it until now, but thinking back to recent guild runs, we have noticed more aggro weirdness than usual in the dungeons we’ve done. Not so much in Kara, (maybe a bit) but in regular 5-mans, the mobs have sometimes decided, rather randomly, that they are uninterested in endlessly beating on our tank and charge off to slaughter clothies. We’re pretty good about watching our threat meters, and taking a SV run from today as an example, the tank was 20k or more ahead of our mage on aggro, and the main target just walked over and killed the mage.
Hi Mania, what’s about that bug that scrolls of life (e.g. to increase pets life) aren’t working with pets anymore ? I’ve tested it and I was surprised that it increases life for a very short time (not 30 mins) than life value of the pet falls back to the value before using the scroll. What’s that ?
I certainly hope they’ll fix this..I don’t understand what they’d have against hunter pets growl being functional or hopefully even improved. To my knowledge it wouldn’t effect pvp or throw things out of balance, which is usually blizzard’s concern. :/ I definately agree that Hortus seemed pretty rude, and i hope there are other blizzard workers that will read posts like mania’s and recognize it for what it is- a well thought out observation of a problem that has been tested and stated in a polite, intelligent manner. Not an unfounded whiney complaint, which is what Hortus seemed to regard it as.
On my 70 hunter and 65 hunter, I am having aggro problems too, but mostly the 70… I have a cat and a raven on him, he is BM, mostly lame gear but also has a gyrobalance khorium destroyer. Before I had the gun, aggro problems where rare, but now I can’t shoot twice without getting aggro. With my raven, still level 68, is fighting something with screech, it is much harder to pull off aggro and I very rarely do. To bad, though, I love my cat.
Palla,
sorry for the delay. They DO play this class.
Pet Scaling was suppose to help make Pets better. Unfortunately, if it scales too much, Pet can build too much aggro normally without Growl and that risks a group. The Pet becomes unstoppable in Arena and BG. It isn’t just with Hunters, but with Warlocks. My Lock is having trouble with her Voidwalker holding aggro. I’m just glad I can get all my DoT’s up before the mob attacks.
The problem is that the attempt to balance out Hunters in PvP has, especially, adversely affected the threat generation of the Hunter. Especially when the Hunter’s Crit rating and damage have skyrocketed compared to their Pet.
Remember, Pets generate threat through normal damage, special attacks, spells and growl. Normal damage doesn’t have to be high if the others do enough damage to keep the threat going. However, since the Pet isn’t scaling as fast as the Hunter, normal damage drops off, as do the special attacks. So far, I have had little trouble with certain pets keeping aggro though. My Caster Dragonhawk, my Owl and my Wind Serpent. Fire Breath and Lightning Breath both generate a lot of threat. Screech is so constant that it generates its own massive amount of threat too.
I really do think the big issue is the attempt to balance out the classes. In reality, the only way to really balance things out without affecting PvE is to ban pets in PvP areas. And that’s going to go over well.
Seidouyumi,
I don’t really understand how making Growl more effective would throw PVP out of balance. I thought growls and taunts did nothing to other players. I had thought the pet-aggro by growl wouldnt affect pvp at all. However, I dont pvp much, so I may be mistaken on how it works. (obviously pet-damage effects the balance, but I’m talking about the pet’s taunt).
Noba, you’re right, Growl affects only Mob/NPCs, but not players.
Banning pets (they are already not really a danger for most of the classes) is absurd. But it’s a good idea to make pets a bit stronger and hunters a bit weaker so using a pet will be rewarded instead of being punished to have a pet (because it costs food and you have to level it - warlocks don’t have to level their pets).
And if the pet would be stronger, it would hold aggro better.
If I may be frankly,
First -
I haven’t had any problems with my Ravager pet keeping aggro, though I do admit to using omen2 threat checker to know when I am overaggroing. (It gives a nice buzz at my setting of 117% aggro, just below 130% before I pull the mob away)
Second -
Since blizzard allowed the pre-casting of shots (to bypass lag etc.) I get more shots out, especially since steadyshot and autoshot interfere less with each other.
I guess I’m the only one who couldn’t care less about this issue. With a good shot rotation and some modest gear, any non-elite is dead before it reaches me. Even the hardest mobs, you can do 1 rotation, feign, and then another. And when in instances and raids, it’s entirely irrelevant.
Noba,
What I was getting at is that the other mechanics in this have been altered. That has changed how the pets generate aggro. I noticed that I pull a mob off my pet in between Growl casting, usually right towards the end of the cycle.
This means one of two things. Threat is decaying faster than normal, or the normal pet damage is not high enough to maintain the threat caused by Growl. While Growl has no effect on Players, the damage of the pet does, and that may have been brought down in order to reduce the supposed imbalance between classes.
If pet damage output has been toned down for pvp, I’d like to see a compromise to get pve functioning well again. Perhaps a passive pet ability from the pet trainers, that increases pet’s damage dealt by some % ONLY while the hunter is not flagged pvp(or in a bg/arena). Something kind of like Cobra Reflexes works, but it shuts off as soon as you’re pvp or in a pvp area. But I guess that would require a lot of programming work. :/ Oh, and from what some people have said, perhaps Warlocks pets could use this as well, but I dont play one, so I dont know.
Question: Has anyone looked at aggro generation on the rogue arcane sentry’s on the Isle of Quel’Danas? (sunwell isle)
As far as i can tell my pet - boar OR ravager - generates no aggro from growl or charge, only pure dps. Charge does do the 2 second stun, but thats it.
Thus 1 arrow can consistantly pull aggro off my pet.
Missdirect does work.
Bestial intimidation - not sure.
Has anyone seen this? reported it? investigated it? Noticed it pre 2.4.2 on other golems/mechanicals?
I have a lvl 70 Nelf hunter and am currently at 61 on my Belf hunter.
Just want to add, there is a reason why charge affected growl the way it did.
Boars give up damage for armor and health 10% to be exact.
with less damage output it has a struggle to keep agro
kneejerk reactions are never any good, if any changes are needed its always best to do it in moderation.
Since patch my boar cannot keep agro with me just opening with serpent sting and the rest just auto attacking.
Its not the growl prioritizing issue as I keep an eye on DoTimer and see growl going off like its supposed to.
Nice summary Mania (although I don’t think there was anything particularly magical about the way Growl prioritisation worked - just that the various combinations of pet skill focus costs and pet focus recovery ticks worked out such that the pet would normally have enough focus to Growl when it could (or at most a few seconds later on the next focus tick). These days, of course, the delay between Growls can be a lot longer than until the next focus tick after it comes off cooldown).
I’m also not entirely surprised at the lack of interest Blizzard have shown in this problem. They have a few major game-breaking bugs that they’re trying to deal with at the moment, as well as rolling the expansion out for the friends & family alpha test - some discrepancies in the way pets generate threat aren’t likely to be very high on their to-do list.
I’m a little confused after reading the comments by Hortus in the forum thread linked in this article. You seem to be suggesting that Blizzard have said Pet Growl scaling was never changed from focusing on PAP to RAP contrary to what was in the patch notes, however what I am reading is Bliz saying growl now scales with RAP but a bug is also still allowing pet attack buffs to affect growl scaling.
Can someone clarify please?
Elaith, Growl does NOT work on mechanicals.
Growl DOES work in PvP… VS other pets. It will force a pet to attack your pet, all the other pets owner has to do it resend it to attack you.. but it does do something in PVP. I’ve had many a locks not notice their pet was attacking my pet instead of me. (not all that effective but it does do something)
Caleindal, According to Blizzard the only reason Growl was getting more threat from charge was a bug… there are other pets in the game that sacrifice damage for health and/or armor and they don’t have charge so that doesn’t really work as a reason. Turtles being a great example of this. Boars may have a -10%dps but they also have gore tho help offset that.
That being said a bug in the game for 3 years… itsn’t really much of a bug, kinda part of the game at that point.
I expect most of you have done the daily quest “Dicovering / Rediscovering your roots”. It is the one where you charm a ravager in Hellfire. The threat mechanic on the charmed ravager is completely different than any other pets. Instead of a growl mechanic, the charmed ravager has a taunt mechanic. If there are changes to pet agro generation in the future, I wonder if this is the direction they would go?? I think that adding a taunt ability in addition to the existing growl would be interesting, but I certainly wouldn’t want them to replace growl with taunt.
Peter: You mean Stamina scrolls? I hadn’t heard anything about that. I’ll see what I can find out.
Cinna: Pet attack powers scales indirectly with hunter’s ranged attack power. Pets get about 22% of our RAP translated into PAP. So in that sense, Growl has always scaled with RAP.
I had initially assumed from the wording of the patch note that there would be some change in this indirect scaling. After all, why would Blizzard make a big deal out of something that has always happened? But Hortus says that they are happy with the scaling they have now, so apparently my assumption was wrong and the indirect scaling we have is the indirect scaling we’re going to end up with.
Given that, the important part of the patch note then must be the fact that Growl is no longer supposed to scale directly with PAP. Testing with direct PAP buffs shows that the only effect it no longer scales with is Charge — which has its own patch note. Now Hortus says that ’some buffs’ are still causing Growl scaling, but it would be more accurate to say that ‘all buffs except Charge’ are still causing Growl scaling.
That is why I make such a point out of saying that this is not a change for us (outside of the Charge nerf). I agree with Hortus in the particulars of what has changed, but I am emphasizing it differently than he does because I find his emphasis confusing for many hunters who just want to know what this means for them.
Nimizar: Magical meaning I didn’t have to think about it, that’s all. :>
Thanks for clearing that up.
I just wanted to add a data point here. I use a warpstalker (green) trained with Claw 9, and I’ve noticed no difference since the new patch. Blinkie still holds aggro very well, and almost never loses it. I’m a BM/Marks 41/20 cookie cutter build with about 1200 AP. :-)
Bethany
I just wanted to point out that Hortus was right and there is a bug in this patch that is in our “favor”, but probably only for those whose PAP and RAP are both very high. I am MM and have both LoBM and Kibler’s, and since 2.4.2, Growl has been working as I’d always wanted it to. It’s been great. Will be sad to see it go.
I don’t understand why they don’t make Growl work well. Our pets can’t tank heroics/raids, we can’t exploit their use. It only really helps us when questing. You don’t see a warrior soloing saying “I can’t use half my skills because it will generate too much threat”.. why do we have to cut back? Even some BMs (as posted above) noticed their pet doesn’t even hold aggro on auto attacks only!
I have noticed after the last patch none of my pets hold agro very well at all. As a BM hunter before I rarly pulled agro off my pet. But now I am finding almost every mob, I am pulling it off my pet, even with intimidation cast first and giving my pet a few seconds to build agro, plus using jmisdirect on my pet I am still pulling mobs almost right away onto myself using none of my skills and just auto shooting. This has made soloing a real pain in the butt.
If the question Mania is asking is:
How does the state of pet aggro feel to hunters?
It feels wrong.
its too random, when even autoshooting can pull a mob off and have it aggro on you. Its not even playing a hunter anymore, there is no reason one should have to FD in these cases… A few things I noticed:
Seems like I’m crit’ing more. I even dropped most of the crit gear I had to prevent it (around 6-10% depending on if I have the AP vs. AGI gear), and I still will see strings of 2+ crits.
My pet on the other hand seems to be missing, and worse, Growl is being resisted more often. This is on mobs too which were much lower than the hunter or pet (pet 62, hunter 63, mobs 45-55).
My pet was getting aggro on these low level mobs much easier than expected… I would run around without my pet out no problem, but kept getting into fights with him out (was doing some mining this week-end).
Pets with range attacks (wind serpent in this case) are doing the range attack dance again (the bug, where a pet will stop attacking and try and get to range to do the range attack), lowering overall DPS (which I would assume lowers TPS)
Aggro numbers (based of of Omen 2 - though I’m sure its already an out-of-date copy ;) ) do not define who has aggro. Many times I would get aggro while my pet supposibly had more built-up. At one point, My pet (raptor in this case) had over 4K more threat (according to Omen) and I pulled the mob (hunter 63, pet 62, mob 61 ravager in Hellsfire)
I’ve grown quite used to using Omen to watch my threat, even when just farming or questing. But when I can not play (use more than autoshot), its frustrating…
K’
as a side note, seems hunters (and all classes to a point) have this up and down when Blizzard tries to Balance things… We are really in a low down point now. We usually adapt (remember pre-BC, and the RAP nerf… we adapted to it though). Just not sure yet how to adapt to this, specially since we are being told it is going to get worse, not better :(
I admit, that I do have paranoid tendencies, but reading the article and some of the reply posts here, I have to ask myself - is it possible that blizz is willing to anoy all hunters in order to weaken farmbots? lets face it - we ARE the ultimate farmbot class and most farmbot hunters use boars (this is just my own personal observation and not backed up by a global server analysis). to me it seems as if nerfing boars and effing up autocast aggro would be very convenient ways to weaken bot-hunters … just my, most likely totally absurd, 2 copper =)
I have noticed that my boar has no were near as much aggro as it used 2..There are times that on my very first aimed shot i grab aggro and have to feign death…then theres the times were i feign death and i still dont loose aggro..gets very annoying
Oh,
forgot to add to my test results.
Also worked on weapon skills some… I can actually grab aggro (specially off my windserpent) by spamming Wingclip and Raptor Strike when up. Omen usually shows the threat numbers going up past the pets (and since I’m in melee range, its a little easier to grab aggro).
Melee Hunters now FTW :P
K’
I have a 70 hunter (cookiecutter BM/Marks spec), mostly in blues but Kara-ready. I usually use a cat, but I have one of the ravens now, and honestly… I don’t see a difference. I have both growl and claw on autocast on my cat, and screech/growl on my bird, and while I occasionally pull stuff off of my cat, I did -before- the patch.
Boars needed nerfing. Boars STILL need nerfing. My god. They get more skill choice, they get Charge (which is absurdly powerful in its own right) at basic levels when other fancy skills (Prowl, Dash) don’t occur until 30+, they eat anything, they’re tough, etc. etc. etc. For crying out loud, how about giving some love to Spiders? Or how about to freeping Spore Bats? How about de-castering half the mobs in the game? No, I say… nerf boars MORE.
But I digress. If you’re pulling aggro off your pet… then watch your aggro better. That’s all I can say. You want ‘feeling like you’re abused all the time’, roll a retribution paladin, and then you’ll know how good you still have it. :P
pulling aggro off a pet with the first shot other than autoshot has nothing to do with watching aggro better.
Nachwulf, your post is an insult!
It’s people like you, that prevent Blizzard from looking at the many problems they introduced with patch 2.4 - as long as your ilk keeps posting “it’s all fine, and those whiners are too dumb to play their class” nothing will get solved!
*shrug* I haven’t noticed any difference. I open with a shot that isn’t Autoshot. I use my shot rotation normally, including Arcane and Steady. I don’t lose aggro. In point of fact, I play EXACTLY like I did before 2.4 and I don’t lose aggro.
I haven’t changed my talents, my gear, or my pet, save to get the raven; I usually use my cat.
You have to ask yourself then why there is no appreciable difference. :P
What Blizzard should really be addressing is why not a one of the top-rated Arena Tournament players are hunters. The reason, of course, is that pet = largely useless in PvP. A player knows that ‘kill the hunter, pet goes away’, pets do very little actual damage in comparison, thus they’re ignored. Since Blizzard is basing 90% of their buff/nerf judgements on PvP these days, I should expect some sort of buff in the near future. Of course, it’ll probably be a buff to the Survival tree, but I can’t say that it’s not overdue for an overhaul.
Actually Nachtwulf, that is a question I would love Blizzard to answer ;)
Some people are seeing problems, some are not. That is what we are discussing here (without hopefully the flames and insults ;) )
I know I can’t use my normal farming/leveling shot rotations (SS, Auto, Auto or SS, Auto depending on which hunter/weapon I’m on) without pulling aggro from my pet. I can slow my DPS down (less SS), but when I can pull sometimes with just Autoshot, it just feels wrong. Sure, I can Auto, stop, wait, wait, wait, Auto, but that is just not playing a hunter in my book. I wont be pulling aggro, but I wont really having any fun (nor would I want myself on the raid).
I know I don;t have all the tools to get all the answers, and I know you don’t either. But I do know, to me, this feels wrong, broken…
K’
Krush hit it right ont he head, why are some people seeing problems and others aren’t…
I’ve had a boar forever and find this new change to threat to be incredibly frustrating. I can no longer hold aggro, even when I turn everything off except growl, wait a few seconds for my boar to build threat over 2K before I launch a single arrow, and then stick to autoshot. Even with all that, only about 25% of the time my boar actually holds aggro through the entire fight. Intimidate no longer pulls the threat back to my pet, and disengage does nothing. I’ve started using misdirect as often as I can, which I never needed before, and I’m looking into trying a different pet. Maybe I’ll find another one that I like, but for now I’m just frustrated.
I hate to say this, but I have to wonder how people pulling aggro from their pet as any spec. Are you sure you’r eplaying the same class as me? With the exception of the boar, every pet since I was in blues had difficulty holding aggro even when I used conservative shot rotation. Even now, in t5/t6 quality epics, just using auto shot is enough to pull aggro if i get a single crit.
I am exceptionally annoyed now that my wind serpent in partcular is not casting Growl as a first attack. Why would we want any other spell cast first? I have petitioned a GM about this multiple times and they give me the same BS response: they are “sorry” and are looking into it.
Is it just me, or does the idea of a hunter having to tank its own mobs go completely against the intended design of the class? Why else would we have a minimum range for our ranged attacks and other classes don’t? It’s because we are not supposed to be tanking mobs!
These recent changes fly in the face of the obvious design of the class and blizz effectively says “suck it up”… It’s kinda insulting.
Make up your mind about the class, if yo uwant us to be less pet dependent for soloing, then give us an alternative: Fix pets or make there be no minimum for ranged attacks. Frankly the latter, to me, is a cop out anyway.
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