WotLK Rumor: Bite = Claw
There’s a rumor going around that in Wrath of the Lich King, the pet skill Bite is being changed to:
- Do less damage.
- Cost less focus.
- Not have a cooldown timer.
In other words, Bite would be a lot like Claw.
I have no idea whether there is any truth to this rumor or not, but regardless it’s an interesting idea. In the absence of other changes, this would (almost) satisfy one of my own personal goals for pet skill design: all families get a basic (physical) focus dump skill. (Sporebats would still be left out in the cold as the only pet that can learn neither Bite nor Claw. And again, that assumes no other changes to pet skills in the expansion, which seems rather unlikely.)
But I have to admit, I’d be a little weirded out losing the old Bite functionality. Having Bite and Claw both available seems like it increases the options for configuring your pet. I suspect that it’s a false sense of choice, though, since on ever pet I’ve had that’s capable of both I’ve never chosen not to use Claw. So it’s not exactly an either-or. And opening up Claw-like functionality to the pets that don’t currently have it is nothing to sneeze at. But still … it would feel weird.
48 Comments
Hey Mania, i was wondering, did you also happen to come across the rumor that turtle attack speed will not slow down when shell shield is activated, so maybe turtle may be a much more viable tanking pet,rather than just siting in my stable at lvl 70?
I like to use bite in conjunction with claw on my pets. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but for soloing I try to have my pet do as much damage as possible without dumping focus. I have claw on the first pet slot on manual cast (ctrl-4) and bite on the second slot on auto cast (compliments growl imo). I press ctrl-4 manually when I need a boost in pet damage and I’ve been able to hold aggro that way pretty well and keep focus for other things. Maybe I am a noob hunter and should dump focus while soloing, but I’ve had good success this way. I hope there are other skills that will take the place of bite if it is changed.
Bah. I like having a measured focus use. With Bite as it is now, I can be sure that my turtle alway has enough reserve focus to throw up a shell shield at any time.
But that all shouldn’t make a big difference, Mr. Perfect, since the pet is *supposed* to retain enough focus when growl CD timer is up to cast it again.
I have to agree with Mania, when I have the option, I have both bite and claw. I also love high damage pets, so it’s been part of my considerations.
And I also saw the rumour about the turtles. I don’t know how much stock to put in any of this though, seems like everyone is writing the same story so perhaps it’s all from the same source… ?
It is, as far as I am able to tell, legitimately data-mined or just out right noted from the Wrath of the Lich King Alpha test. I agree totally, Mania, the idea of bite being more or less claw is…. just odd. Bite is a good suppliment to damage, and I personally find that having two focus dumps on a pet tends to lower their overall usefulness. I guess bite and claw as instants would both be okay, but…… still. Why not code in snap? It is the expansion, with all new things. Wouldn’t kill them. Meh, if its true, then so far its a very bleak start to how hunters are going to be in the expansion.
I like to train bite in addition to a focus dump skill like claw so I can front-load damage for a little extra aggro at the beginning of a fight.
I’m working on a Turtle Tank and it will be interesting how much more threat it will generate with a Focus Dump. I know their dps isn’t very high, but hopefully the focus dump will add just a bit more threat generation.
Hmm… this would be great after these long years I could start to use my imba crocolisk theres not cooler pet then a croc :)
Two of my hunters use a Carrion Bird as pet – Carrion birds can learn both Claw and Bite, as well as the focus-dump Screech. One of the hunters’ birds uses growl-screech-dive-claw, the other one growl-screech-dive-bite.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages. The biter can do a little extra DPS, but does so in bursts, and I never tried to theorycraft if the focus used for bite might be more useful elsewhere.
For the clawer, I tend to have claw not on autocast (using screech as focus dump instead), but switch from screech to claw when there are neutral mobs near they may accidentally get aggro from screech: for example, while hunting clefthoofs in nagrand, near the (neutral) talbuks and the odd wild elekk. In the same situation, the biter either keeps screeching, at the risk of getting adds, or I stop the screeching, wasting unused focus.
What about the idea making all pets the same – an army of clones with having all the same abilities ?
Don’t like such an idea – really. That’s like making all char classes acting similar with having the same abilities… and sometimes I think Blizzard is working on that hard. Another reason to try out Warhammer Online I guess.
Interesting thought – and pure speculation – given that a fair slice of WOTLK will be Nerubian and spidery, and given the Bite changes (if true), I wonder if spiders will get a little attention to make them more viable pets (and if other needy pets, crocs, hyenas etc, might as well).
The changes to Bite and Shell Shield represent a nice and surprising buff to Turtles. I hope that this is a sign of more pet tanking viability buffs still to come in Wrath. I’d love to keep using my little Monet to tank end-game content.
Apparently Furious Howl is having its range increased.
With a new rank and Bite as focus dump Wolves may actually become one of the most useful pets around.
Making Bite the same of Claw is probably a mistake but turning it into a focus dump sounds like a good idea in order to help the poor forgotten pets (crocolisks, hyenas, spiders…)
Let’s hope they’ll find a way to keep the two abilities different.
That’s great that they might be thinking of helping out the wolves, who are nice pets, just a rank behind since the last expan. A focus dump for bite would be nice, I’d love to see the new variety of pets and not the same 3 or 4 that everyone ‘has to’ go with. I hope these rumors are true! Will they be doing a ptr type beta test for this someday, or do we have to wait until the official release?
Looking from the outside, this will definatly help those pets that are missing a focus dump.
But Just like the patch that made all pets within a family the same, it’s getting closer and closer to one single pet with different skins, and differnet names for their copy of a skill.
Granted this will help some families, but losing even more individuality with pets is a bad thing. Pets are the biggest (well mine anyway) reason for playing a hunter, and not a DPS caster. They should be adding more individuality for the pet classes, not just copy/pasting everything between families.
The turtle for example. Leave the attacks alone. Add a minor taunt to shell shield. Hell, I don’t care, make it say cowabunga! and swing a freaking nun-chuck at the mob. Just keep the families different.
I am starting to think I am in the minority on this. I barely saw anyone else saying this when the pets got standardized way back. Sure people bitched about losing their 1.0 atk spd, etc. But not for this reasoning. This is why I still have never tamed a boar, and use my gorilla as my main pet. I was using a dragonhawk until about 30 (yes, thats right, caster stats). Because it was unique. People asked why I used a ‘crappy’ pet so much, I started just replying with a /ignore.
“But Just like the patch that made all pets within a family the same, it’s getting closer and closer to one single pet with different skins, and different names for their copy of a skill.”
So what you are saying is you want to see hunters at level 80 only running around with a cat/raptor/ravager instead of 80 hunters running around with whichever pet they like the most? Please tell me how everyone running around with the same 3 pets is a good thing.
This is a step in the right direction. I wish this change would go through now, so I could start using my wolf whom I have had since I was 40 again.
Here’s an interesting thought. I’ve observed that since there’s a global cooldown on pet abilities, the bonus focus of GftT is capped about when focus cost = Crit %. If they reduce the cost down to 30 focus, rather than make it a complete clone of claw at 25, it would actually be better than claw.
Dare we hope?
I’d just like to see the “caster” thing either fixed or scrapped.
Just to add, I don’t think sporebats are left out. Tsook from the EJ forum thread about WOTLK datamind these spells:
49966 Smack(Rank 1)
49967 Smack(Rank 2)
49968 Smack(Rank 3)
49969 Smack(Rank 4)
49970 Smack(Rank 5)
49971 Smack(Rank 6)
49972 Smack(Rank 7)
49973 Smack(Rank 8)
49974 Smack(Rank 9)
Name: Smack (Rank 9)
Description: Smack the enemy, causing 54 damage.
(The damage range is on the order of what we have in Claw, though a bit lower. This is the only one I think is especially likely to be a new pet skill since it has 9 full ranks. Perhaps Gorillas? Not sure who else could Smack things.)
Gorillas could smack, but so could sporebats with their tails.
Here is the link to the actual post(he datamind other “possible” pet abilities too):
http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t14903-wrath_lich_king_stuff_blizzcon_thread/p123/
Ok first of all if this is true it is the DUMBEST IDEA EVER! There are two ways to make pets: all the same(GuidlWars anyone?) or species are different(WoW). The first method being very very stupid. Its pathetic if my sporebat were identical to my raptor. The latter being the most viable choice has one flaw: some families just plain suck. Two focus dumps are pointless and bite is a very good move inflicting huge damage. Taking that away would be a serious to almost every popular pet family. The unpopular ones aren’t just unpopular because they lack a focus dump they are unpopular because they have inferior stats and/or movement. (Or in the case of the crocolisk excessive and uneeded noise) For families like cats and ravagers and raptors this would seriosuly nerf the dps capacity. My Ghost Saber (thank you soo much Mania for helping me find out he existed) can do huge amounts of sustained via claw and burst via bite. Change bite and bam burst is gone. I really hope this is a lie otherwise hunters will never rcover from this blow.
On a different note to those talking about focus dumps consuming focus until nothing is left I have this to say: I never run out of focus long enough for anything to not work immediately because of my talents. If you invest in certain places (some of which seem to have no link to the issue) you can make focus a never ending stream. If you play your cards right you can end up with a build that makes your pet NEVER run out of focus!
Deathbang, what world do you live in, cuz I want to go there some time. I’ll start off on the ‘popular’ pets idea of yours. A pet is conisdered ‘unpopular’ when it either A: does not have a focus dump and high DPS to back it up, or B: does not have an overwhelming usage for a certain situation. Right now, roughly four pets match the ‘popular’ category, namel ravagers, cats, raptors, and for arena scorpids. Four. Out of roughly twenty pet families. At the moment a large percentage of the WoW hunter community feels the overwhelming need to have one of the above pets in order to do well. Some people, myself included, will have one of the above pets simply because they like the family itself. Every other pet family is considered inferior simply because of a lack of focus dump or a +7% DPS.
Pet diversity. Thats a good one. At current we are at a middle road in pet diversity. All pets share the same base stats, with a fairly minor percentage varying between pet families in three, and only three categories, those being DPS, armor, and health. Currently, only the DPS stat is looked at by most players. Nearly all pets, minus the unfortunate sporebat, have either bite, claw, or both. I think ten pet families have family skills, unique to their particular family type, with one of those being a self defensive skill, the other being a party buff. Some diversity, but not as much as it could be.
Finally, if you don’t run out of focus, then your either not using a focus dump, or you have a critical rating of 45% and Go For The Throat. Otherwise a focus dump WILL drain your focus within four uses, three or less if you have any other ability going. The down time is usually very low, mind you, but it DOES happen, and it happens to everyone with a pet that either has a focus dump or a larger number of abilities going off at once. Unless you critical like crazy, it happens. Its not a big deal, of course, but it can provide some annoyance when it happens at the exact wrong time.
Something occured to me, when I was thinking about this change. Might it be that bite is being changed to make way for other damage dealing abilities? I am seriously hoping this is the case, and that we are going to see some more pet skills coming, preferably of the family type. Oh well, here is to hoping!
If bite becomes like claw then my wind serpent will be freaking awesome. He already hits with lightning breath on every crit shot with go for the throat. A lot of pets such as hyenas and spiders might become more popular
Why would you want bite to be a focus dump? several pets that have it, already have a focus dump
adding a 2nd focus dump makes no sense
it would be better just to add a new skill thats a focus dump
I just have to say that I love the idea of a pet having a skill called Smack. And again I’m going to moan and groan about lack of stable slots if I can’t teach either of my pets Smack and make Smackdown macros.
Palladiamors: “Right now, roughly four pets match the ‘popular’ category, namel ravagers, cats, raptors, and for arena scorpids. Four. Out of roughly twenty pet families.”
This is true, and sadly it makes for a somewhat dull world. I would love more of a variety of viable pets – especially since I’m working with two oddball pets now that the boar is labeled “questionable” and then the pink tallstrider…well, he’s always been my humor pet. So far I’m resisting the urge to change to one of the “must have pets” – and it’s somewhat sad that the game requires us to ignore so many pets as “useless.”
Meanwhile everytime someone comments over here about leveling up a dragonhawk or a sporebat or one of the pets that I think look wonderful and wish I’d see more often – I seriously want to make an alt on their server just to take a screenshot. Because it’s the kind of thing that makes the solo side of the game so much fun – to take a pet that’s a challenge and see if you can adapt your playstyle to make it viable, and nevermind what everyone else says. So for everyone giving you negative feedback about your unusual pets – just know that some of us think your choice is wonderful, but we’re just quiet about it.
The best moment in my life was when I had my sporebat ouit. A hunter went running by me in Nagrand. Stopped dead. Turned around. Did a half-loop around me. Cast ‘Beast Lore’ on my Sporebat. The entirety of the ‘WTF?!’ was gorgeous.
For me, making ImWithStupid a more viable pet would lose some of that ‘WTF’ness, but would be very nice. I kept it around for the longest time for the simple reason that ‘One day, it’ll be cool’. With changes to the pet families, it may very well end up being cool! Likewise with my serpent. If Bite becomes a focus dump, Suresh becomes an even more viable tanker than he was before. A tank who can pinpoint-pull his own targets, for that matter.
I should’ve put this in my other post. Unfortunately, there’s no way to edit. So I hope you’ll forgive the double-posting.
I was looking at the list of pet skills, because everyone is saying how a lot of pets have both bite and a focus dump. Just for numbers’ sake:
Pets with bite only: 10
Pets with bite + focus dump: 8
So altogether, 18 pets can get bite, and less than half of them have a focus dump to go with that bite. Of those less than half, one (Carrion Bird) already has *two* focus dumps to go with bite: screech and claw, while the rest only have one (Claw, Screech, Gore, or Lightning Breath).
I do hope if they make ‘Bite’ a focus dump, they differentiate it from ‘claw’ somewhat, or remove ‘Claw’ (or ‘Bite’) from some of the pets that already have it. That way, people can decide what they’d like to do with it. Although I still like the idea of Bite being a focus dump, as I said above.
hi, im are what u can call a “cat hunter” im only using cats and on every cat i have they have bite,claw,dash and growl ofc…i think it would kinda boring if they change bite so it is like claw, couse…its will a big diffrece on the DMG…so i say let it be…
and a other thig that i would think whas goin to be fun if the pet sit when u get AFK and like /pet sit command just so u gen get more nice pic´s and stuff:D
sorry if my english is bad its realy early on the moning and im swedish so:P
//Nyga
so bite mabey going to = claw. then whats the point of having the bite skill, why not just delete bite and replace it with claw. I dont think Blizzard will do that. Personally I think claw is overrated, as a focus dump leaves little focus for other abilities. With bite I always have focus in reserve for anything that may arise, and if I do run out of focus, it happens very slowly.
I like this for the reason that it makes my poor spider a bit more viable.
What worries me is Blizzard’s willingness to make high-level pets use really cool models or skins that are found on lower-level pets. I have a Vicious Night Web spider that my troll hunter made the run to Tirisfal Glades from the newbie zone for, as soon as I learned Tame Beasts! I have kept it leveled up ever since then, because I love the black widow spider look. If Blizz puts out some level 70+ pet in WotLK, I will be pissed.
In some ways, I’m not surprised by this. I’m also not surprised by the uproar. After all, doing this will make tons of pets viable. On the other hand, it’ll make all those who are absolute about the ‘best’ pets out there reevaluate their stance on pets.
I don’t understand why ANYONE would want a focus dump skill.
It’s the worst thing ever created for pets, other than cower!
My hunter has a dragonhawk, and with Dive, Bite, Fire Breath, and growl, it’s everything i can to keep it’s focus up enough, even with 2 points in improved focus regeneration.
If you have a focus dump on your pet, it will hold -LESS- threat, because it won’t be able to use growl when growl comes up from cool-down, because it has no focus.
I’ve tried this on multiple pets, if i use a focus dump, the pet can not hold aggro aginst my hunter, even with just white damage and no skills.
It doesn’t work, it’s -aweful- and i pray that they don’t make bite instant-cast.
Bite is the only effective damage skill we have that isn’t a focus dump :(
Ew, I don’t really like this whole “bite = Claw” thing. Almost all pets I have had, spare the serpent, have had a chance to learn Bite & claw. Every time I choose bite over claw, as I find it annoying when my pet cant cast Growl because he ran out of Focus using Claw to much. With bite, I can leave it on and do a little extera damage, and I can still have focus for growl (and others, like Furious Howl.)
I would hate to have another claw -.-
I’m delighted that it looks as if every pet family is going to get some sort of focus dump. (It’s kind of silly to have two talents that increase focus regeneration when many pets don’t even have a way to get rid of the excess focus it generates…)
I just hope that new more heavily damaging with a cooldown abilities, somewhat like Bite in its current form, will become availible for people to choose.
I argee with Wolfington and Kithylin. With claw sapping my focus, a pet cant hold aggro. And if you have the focus regen talents when you have to much focus, its pretty dumb to take those talents. Use the points on something else.
Palliadiamors@22:
Er… and Wind Serpents and Owls/Bats/Carrion Birds. Both lightning and screech are useful.
Kythlyn@32:
Only because of the bug which has stopped the priority on growl.
For pets with claw, bite does not bring anything useful to the table. I’ve been playing around with the theory-crafting excel sheets, and having just claw or claw+bite on my pet doesn’t change a thing in the dps output of my pet. This makes bite a redundant ability for obtaining maximum dps. Actually, I don’t even train my (raid) pets with bite anymore if they have claw. I would like to see claw and bite change places: bite = fast focus dump, claw = slow burst dmg. It would make a larger portion of the current beast families more PvE viable, simply because more families have it.
JJ, I use both a tallstrider and an owl. The owl makes great use of those two talents, but my tallstrider can’t make good use of them. It’s not fair this way.
They should just keep Bite the way it is if Blizzard is going to change it. I have enough trouble with my Carrion Bird with its Claw already, and I dont need Bite to become worst like it too..
Hi guys. Fantastic thread. So chuffed to have found this.. I’m just wondering, with a slightly tenuous link to the bite vs claw thread – I’m totally ill-informed at the whole WOW thing, despite being a lvl 70 hunter. I’m tearing my hair out trying to understand how bite, claw, focus, growl etc actually works. What it actually does? I have a lynx as a pet (incidentally names cuckinfat, you work it out) And I’m struggling to stop him losing aggro and pinning it all on me. Even if i go with aspect of the Viper, and do nothing but autoshoot I’m still attracting more aggro over time. My pet is lvl 5, so he has one more to go. He’s got growl, claw and bite on auto, cobra reflexes, and the usual – armour, health etc…
I for that matter have had to downscale all my armour to focus on sta and int rather than out and out agi, to try and cater for the fact that I’m winning on th e aggro stakes. What is it that i’m doing so wrong?
I’ve heard mixed reports about bite vs claw, not having both on, only using growl… I’m stuck to be honest, and this looks like a great forum with REAL views, not the “You such noob. give me 1g or die” that i’m used to on the Blizzard forums.
Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.
Thanks.
Ad.
Adam: Being a level 70 hunter who is having trouble with aggro is not unusual these days. You might want to take a look at the State of Pet Aggro post that I wrote up. I suspect your problems have more to do with the pet skill priority problem than with Bite and Claw. But it’s a place to start, anyway.
@ Kithylin: Please, stop. Just… stop.
Focus dump skills are used in instance runs, raiding, and PvP – where the hunter’s pet shouldn’t be Growling and thus needs to dump focus – hence the name.
While soloing, one can *turn off* focus dump skills, making a pet trained with Claw just as viable for solo play. [I leave it on, but then, my crit chance is above 30%.]
What else would you be training your cat with [if that's what you have], aside from Bite/Claw/Dash/Growl? The only active skill left is Prowl, something that sees more utility for PvP pets than PvE.
More focus dumps is better, long as the pet AI is functional.
Bite isn’t a bad skill as it is now, but a good DPS pet “needs” gore or claw to be any use in raids.
This change to bite would make wolves, scorpids etc useful again.
Regarding Moonmaul’s post and the “smack” business – this sounds extremely encouraging. It suggests that there’s a concerted effort to deal with the “bad choice” pets and give them something worth having. If the bite changes are a part of this balancing act then I’m all for it. I don’t want to see every pet identical (which would certainly be the easy way out, and which Blizzard could have done already and haven’t) but I think having pets that are never tamed because of pure natural selection would be worse. However this news suggests Blizzard may be going the way that most hunters would prefer.
MOONMAUL?! YOU BADTARD! I am a tauren, not some lame purple tree hugger with giant ears and a cat fetish.
not sure if i want bite to be instant and do lower dmg.
just reducing the CD with 3-5 sec would have been more than enough.
I’m all for increasing the usefullness of the lesser used pet breeds, but I really don’t think turning bite into another claw is the way to do it.
Yes, tuning bite so it’s like claw will help the lesser used pets, but it’s also going to screw with the pets that already get both. I can’t help but feel like it’s Blizz taking a lazy way out, and saying to hell with the consequences for pets that already get both.
Instead of changing bite, they should give those pet families without a viable DPS focus dump a new skill.
I’m going to have to quote Arcazua here:
———-
Increasing distinction will not change anything other than which pets are superior to others. It will just perpetuate certain families being a tier above others, and make normalization (which I think is inevitable) even more painful and full of QQ drama.
———-
We need for all pets to be more or less the same, with family-specific abilities that give them a bit of uniqueness. Blizzard is moving in the right direction.
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