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.