MMO Champion has published some pictures they took at Blizzard’s World Wide Invitational last weekend in Paris. One pic in particular is of interest to hunters — it’s the hunter (and priest and mage) slide from the Class Panel.
In addition to short bullet points about the major announced changes (pet talent trees and no shot clipping for Steady Shot), the slide also shows what appears to be an example pet talent tree!
There’s not a lot of information shown, outside the Cornered ability that was reported before. But many of the icons in the tree are very recognizable and should give us good fodder for speculation for many days! Keep in mind, however, that it is fairly likely that this is just a mock-up and that the final pet talent trees won’t look much like this.
Click the thumbnail to see the full slide at MMO Champion.
that is so awesome!!
And look, there’s a warrior Charge icon there!
Here’s hoping Boars aren’t the only ones with Charge love. :p
To bad we can’t see if there are any family specific trees, like someone mentioned in the D3 post. My pet Kresh could be all kinds of new fun if he gets his own heavy tank tree like good turtles should. =)
Mr. Perfect, most reports at the moment indicate that each family will have its own individual trees, like you heard. This tree could be cat, bear, or something else entirely. If we interpret it literally, then you can see symbols for cower, spirit bond, go for the throat, cobra reflexes, and rapid killing from hunter talents, as well as charge, rend, frenzied regeneration, shred, and one thing that currently evades me. *Laughs* I think cower is covered by its tooltip. I don’t think we can count on those to be what they look like, though this tree in its ‘apparent’ form would fit bears nicely.
Blaugh, cornered, not cower, seems to either be right beside the tool tip, or covering it entirely, apologies on the typo and double post.
If you look at your talents, the tooltip hovers on the top right of the talent (so Cornered is the talent to the far bottom).
I believe each family will have their own talent trees, but they won’t have their own “UNIQUE” tree. Of course they’ll all be different, but I think there will be talents that are shared among some of the families.
Also, if you take a closer look. The actual name of that Talent Tree is “Aggressive” which will most likely be the DPS Tree.
Note the “Requires 20 points in Aggressive tree” requirement on the Cornered tooltip. “Aggressive tree” doesn’t scream “each family has a different tree” to me.
looks like maybe cobra reflexes will become a talent by the look of the top icon of the snake
I’m curious how close they come to the tree’s I created back with my normalization post. ( http://www.war-tools.com/?p=vt&i=44406&b=9zp )
So much for the ‘easy way’ Mania :)
Also notice that we know the name of a second talent: “Focused Will.”
Yeah, I have to stand corrected on thinking that Blizz might take the easy way out with making pet families more distinctive – family specific skills and replacing the training point system with a better integrated talent tree system is way more than I was expecting.
Hooray for family specific trees. =) Or at least role specific ones… Makes you wonder which families get what.
So this replaces the training points system, or is that just a theory?
Er, Nimizar, why would they have three seperate tree names for pets? Aggressive, tank, and utility, or variations of those, should suffice for all three for all pets, and is in no way indicative that the talents therein will be the same. But honestly at this point we have no idea of knowing for sure, its still to soon. Personally I am hanging on them having a good array of unique talents, and a good array of shared ones for pets. Here is to hoping, and waiting.
“All kind of pets will have their own talent tree. A tanking talent tree, a DPS talent tree, and an utility talent tree. Each kind of pet family will have its own talent tree and its own unique ability.” For the information on pet talents, and on skills “The skill points for each pets are being changed to the new “Pet talents” and will disappear.” Taken directly from the Blizzard panel, and copy-pasted from MMO Champion, http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=9454.0
I remember reading on Curse.com that each pet family will have 3 unique trees, though Curse is not online at the moment, so I can’t link it to you. Will check again in the morning.
It also appears to be only 5 tiers deep (none of the talents have arrows pointing downwards out of the frame)…
5 tiers are better then none! I’m totally psyched for this! Finally I can tame pets I’ve always wanted but my stupid need for hot stats prevented. Stupid needs! First thing I’m gonna do is go tame a maroon ape and name him FuriousGeorge.
I really do hope this balances pets out. I like my ravager and all, but I like to swap my pets out. I dont like being stuck to a specific pet family for max dps. I miss using my black wolf from Blades edge.
your still probably going to see the pvp dps pet the pvp utility(stuns/silences/pins) the pve dps, the pve utility and the solo tank. so at least instead of one or two pets running around everywhere itll be at least 4 or 5 after people figure out the min/max for each type. Also, if the whole reducing how much threat a pet can generate from buffs and AP means that ‘tank’ type pets actually work better as tanks than dps pets due to talents the whole thing makes a little more sense now. I’m excited to see what kind of goofy combinations i can make. Dps turtle ftw!
My guild leader has a blue turtle that she uses exclusivly, being able to make it into a DPS turtle or a super tank turtle is going to MAKE HER DAY.
I for one can’t wait for this change. I’m excited. My only complaint is that I’m lvling a Orc hunter to play in Litch King right now and I still have to run around and tame/train till LK comes out.
Something interesting to note, that goes along with the only five tiers deep comment, our pets may be able to take two out of the three talent trees available to them. This would also coincide with a vaguely hinted at “People will be able to talent for two full trees!” comment I think Chilton made. At that point my problem changes to something different. How many ability slots are our pets going to have? Because it doesn’t seem like four are going to cut it anymore. But still, I must admit that the thought of having my wolfie specced DPS/tank or DPS/Utility or ANY combination really makes me very happy.
However, as per my usual, I have to say its still to early to tell. They may deepen those trees, they may have a weird way for pets to gain talent points, like every other level or so.
This looks really cool, but I am really doubting that the three trees will vary for different pets. That is to say, a Wolf’s Aggressive tree will probably be the same as a Turtle or Hyena’s Aggressive tree. We’ve seen Blizzard in action before when it comes to pets, and I really don’t see them implementing seperate trees (a DPS, Tanking, and Utility tree) for different pet families.
REGARDLESS though, these talent trees are what people like me (the Hyena lover) have been waiting for. We might finally obtain that diversity which we so wanted for our pet selection.
I was excited about Wrath before, but now I can’t wait!
Something to take note of, the European WoW site is now taking sign ups for the beta phase of Wrath of the Lich king, with Eyonix informing everyone that state side sign ups will be soon.
Man pet talent trees now thats what we really need not level 30 mounts lol am i right here?
Personal oppinion combining all the “quotes” etc from blizzard staff.
It would seem that ALL pets will have the 3 Trees (Tank, DPS, Util)
It would seem that each FAMILY will have a unique tree. (Most likely the Util tree)
It may be possible to train 2 of them fully. . .by lvl 80?
My guess is that the Tank and DPS trees are the same reguardless of the FAMILY.
A cat CAN likely be spec’d tank or dps. (But not some from both?)The unique tree per family will prob be the Utility tree. So in a cat’s utility tree we will see active skills such as Prowl dash and perhaps improved prowl dash etc to fill out the tree.
A Gorilla’s Tank and DPS trees will prob be identical to the cats. (Also prob must choose one or the other.)But his Utility tree will contain Thunderstomp and other gorilla unique talents.
As far as the question “How many ability slots are our pets going to have? Because it doesn’t seem like four are going to cut it anymore.” some pets too many available now (cats could learn 6 Growl, Dash, Prowl, Cower, Bite, Claw) So I doubt that will change. After all, the one we know about (Cornered) is a passive talent and will not require an active ability slot.
Personally, I’m excited about this change. It can’t help but open up some “flexability” to the choice of a pet family. But I don’t think its going to be a major change the overall roll of a hunter in groups. And I don’t think its going to be a major change to how we solo quest and level either. Sorry, I just seriously doubt that blizzard wants hunter pets to tank Prince. We just won’t have to go train a new creature to lean a new talent every time we can. Which is great news because of the now “extra” slot available to test out various pet families again. The downside to that of course is the difficulty of keeping 3 pets leveling with the hunter.
Rudda, I wouldn’t interpret the released info that way at all. I’d interpret it as saying Blizz have developed 3 different pet talent trees, and each pet family will have access to one of those 3 trees, possibly with minor family specific variations. So cats would get the “Aggressive” (DPS) tree, turtles would get the “Defensive” (tanking) tree and something like a hyena would get the utility tree (no idea what Blizzard might call that).
I was surprised enough to find out they were coming up with 24 family specific pet skills – I *really* don’t expect them to come up with 24 distinct talent trees.
Also, keep in mind that we’re looking at second and even third hand information here, often from people that were just taking notes on the talk in general without being particularly concerned about the specifics of what is being done with hunter pets. How all this is going to work probably won’t become completely clear until either Wrath hits open beta or someone that cares about hunter pets gets a chance to sit down in front of a demonstration build at a Blizzard event.
Hi, can somebody explain to me what ‘no shot clipping for stead shot’ actually means. (please giv a detailed discription)
steady* xP
BMhunter,
Currently your auto shot should be approx 2.7*.15 (weapon speed x 15% for the ammo pouch speed reduction.) So if you start a steady shot too close to when the auto shot should go off, your autoshot will not fire, or it will be “clipped”. It is possible to “clip” it completely if you don’t time steadyshot right. Obviously this will cut your dps in about half. With wrath they are saying that autoshot will now go off even if you are casting steady shot.
For the time being you may want to get an addon like “littletrouble” which displays a “castbar” to help you see when an autoshot would fire so you don;t clip as often.
Nimizar,
The reason I think it will be 3 trees to choose from per pet requardless of family, is because with no tanking skills or talents(cat for example) would be nearly impossible to use when solo lvling. Which would limit all of us to tank type pets. Imagine soloing with a pet that didn’t have “growl”. Or a cat that had no additional armor or stamina. It would break the dps pets completely. The only option would be to make the active skills like growl, dash, claw, etc… trainable to all pets at the trainer. But that would still leave your cat or any other DPS only pet very squishy for solo lvl grinding. And we complain enough about lvling 2 pets. Imagine what it would be like to lvl 3 pets with 2 of them either squishy or just plain unable to hold aggro. If that becomes the case, I for one mose likely won’t play my hunter at all.
This is awesome news! Thank you for sharing this.I know this comment may be a little late,but am I the only one who thinks the talent “Cornered” is…well…
kinda useless? I mean,when does a hunter let his pet’s health get to 20%?! If Sianna’s (Shy-Rotam,btw..cat..*laughs*) health drops below 50%,I start to panic and start mashing mend pet..lol!
I think the idea for pet trees is awesome,but I don’t think cornered is all that special.Meh,maybe a better hunter can explain it to me,I just don’t see how it’s going to be used..
Kitairra
P.S. OT and wrong place,but grats on getting Kaet to 70! woot woot!
Cornered would mostly help when there are too many mobs for mend pet to keep up with the damamge being done. The 20% boost could help burn down one of them so that mend pet could at least keep up with the dmg being taken by the pet.
Nimizar? “Every pet family will have a set of talent trees, similar to player characters: A Utility tree, a Tank tree, and a DPS tree, which will contain unique abilities for each family.” That being said, I expect many pet talents to be the same across the board, with only a few talents and the attacks changing from family to family.
Awesome that ALL pets will have **3** different Talent Trees to choose from. No saying otherwise. I don’t care.
@Palli: MMO-champion’s notes on the WWI talks aren’t literal quotes. Without seeing a video of the actual presentation (I couldn’t find anything on youtube last time I looked), all I think we know for sure is that:
- pets are getting talent trees instead of training points
- each pet family is getting a family specific skill
- there are at least three talent trees (DPS, tanking, utility)
- available talents will vary in some fashion by pet family
For that last one, having 3 completely different talent trees per family doesn’t seem likely, and even one per family seems like a poor return on developer time. It seems more sensible to have a pool of talent trees (possibly with some overlap between them), and assign one of the trees from that pool to each pet family. (That isn’t actually all that different from your suggestion, but allows some families to have completely identical talent trees, assuming the family specific skills are innate when the pet is tamed rather than coming from talents)
@Rudda: In live, pets can tank for soloing and farming just fine without any points in Natural Armour or Greater Stamina. Besides, calling a tree the “DPS tree” just means that dishing out damage is going to be the major focus of the tree – there’s nothing stopping Blizzard from deciding to mix in a few utility and tanking talents as well.
It’s an awesome change regardless of the exact details of how it ends up working though :)
Specifically in relation to Cornered: I’d expect to see that ability changed before Wrath gets to release. Unless pet health pools are increased dramatically, that ability would be leapfrogged far too often to be useful (even with 10k health, the pet would have to be under 2k health for it to trigger). The Paladin protection talent Ardent Defender was increased from a 20% threshold to a 35% threshold for exactly this reason. Health based effects kicking in at 20% only works for mobs because they have so much health and keep swinging for a while after getting that low on health. If a player or pet is below 20%, the next hit they take stands a fair chance of killing them.
However, a similar DPS increase gained for a period after suffering a critical hit, or losing more than 30% of the pet’s health from a single attack may be a very useful DPS talent (particularly when soloing with a DPS pet).
Personally I think it is only logical that each pet get its choice from 3 trees. Because if they make it so that “x” pet family has “x” tree only, then very few hunters will choose “y” pet. We will have gained nothing in terms of diversity.
As it is now on “live” you see cats, raptors, and ravagers and a few wolves. If you see anything else, its very rare and is probobly not the hunter’s main pet for groups or perhaps even solo work. Not that other pets aren’t good (in someone’s opinion) or used. Its just rare to see anything else.
Although, on a side note (that is also OT for this thread) dealing with our pet’s aggro issues, I have found that Using growl then screech (no claw) is a great and constant aggro boost from the bird/bat families for solo. Not to mention it is great in parties to stick it on the tank’s target so the debuff helps the tank take smaller hits.
I think 25-man raiding while still be primarily the domain of the DPS pets: cats, ravagers, wind serpents and raptors at least, and probably a few more. You probably won’t be seeing too many turtles in Icecrown Citadel, since in 25-man raids a hunter’s sole purpose is to help dish out the damage.
What I really want to see is major benefits to the hunter in using a proper tanking pet while soloing and perhaps as an offtank/CC in 5-mans, as well as seeing more utility pets in 5-mans and 10-man raids. There should also be benefits in using a tanking pet in PvP (enough additional survivability that even though it isn’t doing much damage, it can make it easier for a BM hunter keep all of their pet related bonuses active), and the utility pets should also provide interesting PvP synergies with their master.
This variation can be seen to some degree at the moment (with the utility of Screech as an AoE debuff and Furious Howl as a group buff), but no matter what you are doing in the current game taking one of the top DPS pets is generally the recommended option (the use of a pet with Screech for soloing being pretty much the sole exception to that).
“Requires 20 points in Aggressive Tree” is actually “Proof” that they currently are planing for each pet to have more than one tree. Otherwise all your points would be in Aggressive tree anyway and would likely add up to 20 before being able to take the Cornered talent. Granted it is likely a mock-up but still pretty dumb to have a number required for a specific tree if they didn’t expect to have more trees to select from.
A prerequisite that requires a certain number of points in a tree also serves as a level restriction though – it means you can’t get that talent with your very first pet talent point, you have to wait until you have 21 pet talent points. That applies regardless of how many trees each pet has access to.
Pet talent trees sound better that the PITA system in place now. But I’m still adjusting the the crappy mana regeneration and now Blizzards plans strike fear in my heart. I just started playing my Hunter again after sitting at lvl 50 for months. My lvl 35 Mage has far better mana regen than my lvl 56 Hunter.
Ohh! Ooh! I think that blizz will change bears open mouth to shut
http://wotlkwiki.info/up/gameshots2/13.jpg
she/he don’t look attacking.. hmm.. is this true? What you think?
Wow, Nice bear pic, but the one I really want is the baby. Hehe. He’s so cute. Mama and baby (non-combat) would be uber cool.
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