WotLK Beta: Hunter Notes
You can find the full patch notes for the first WotLK beta patch on the WotLK Beta General Forum. The post is just hunter-specific things, and I’ve rearranged them a bit from the official notes to pull out the pet-related things first.
Pets
- Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both).
- Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.
- Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.
- Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.
- All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.
- Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.
- If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level.
Hunter Skills & Talents
- Aspects now no longer cost mana.
- Concussive Barrage (Marksmanship) - Can now proc from Volley attacks.
- Clever Traps (Survival) has been renamed “Trap Mastery.”
- Trap Mastery (Survival) has been removed.
- Deterrence (Survival) - Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect.
- Improved Feign Death (Survival): Now also reduces damage taken during Feign Death by 15/30%.
- Master Tactician (Survival) - Chance to proc increased to 10%, up from 6%.
- Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into “Improved Tracking”.
- New Talent - Improved Tracking (Survival) - Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use.
- Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30% (instead of resist % chance).
First off, let me say that the Improved Tracking thing is kind of neat, and that none of the other hunter skill & talent changes make any impression on me whatsoever.
I am … torn about the pet changes. I’m going to have to think about this, and probably see how it plays out, before I can decide whether I actually like this solution. I will say, however, that I am currently very worried about two things:
- It sounds like each pet family is restricted to one and only one talent tree.
- Auto-leveling pets is going to make testing at all levels a real pain.
44 Comments
Some very exciting pieces of information there - I’m giddy at the thought of each and every pet class getting a special skill and, if I’m not mistaken, all pet classes getting a speed based ability if you put the talent points into it.
I guess we’ll see how it all works out. I wasn’t expecting that families would be limited by tree and I’ll be disappointed if a pet I’d like to use for one purpose is stuck in a predefined role, but I still think it sounds better than the system right now.
You may want to also check out http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Hunter. Supposedly Blizzard has also realized the Tier 11 talents.
Auto-leveling pets is going to make testing at all levels a real pain.
But it’s finally gonna let hunters choose to have a pet of any family and any skin without them having to do that awful grind! We’re freeee!
It felt so restrictive, only being able to choose effectively one pet (out of so many wonderful choices) to keep with me the whole way (I couldn’t keep two levelled with me, though my number two only fell behind seriously at around 58-62).
You’re right, it will be more difficult for theory crafters to look into the workings… but I’m happier to have more pet choices :)
One of the devs did say during the alpha that because each pet family only has access to one of the pet talent trees, there will be talents that occur in more than one of the trees. Believe me, this is going to be the first thing I check out when I am able to log in to the game (alas, a 1.8 GB download is needed before that happens).
And yeah, the problem of testing how pet abilities scale with level occurred to me the first time I tamed something and had it jump in level :)
As far as the general changes go, Steady Shot benefiting from ammo DPS is pretty big from a raiding point of view.
Aidem: I noticed that Blizzard announced it was fine with them to talk about all alpha/beta info now, but I hadn’t had a chance to check on all the ‘leak’ sites yet to see what else was out there. But the BM tier 11 talent … “exotic pets”?! Egad.
Mazil: To be clear, I fully support open pet choice for everyone. I would have preferred a method that still let me do testing — say, a small fee paid to the pet trainer to level a lower pet up — but I agree that this method, however inelegant to my sensibilities, is better than nothing. *grin*
I’m actually a bit disappointed in the automatic leveling for hunter pets. Even though it’s a pain to level up a lowbie pet, it makes some pet’s rarity value what it is. Now that every low level pet can be instantly tamed to level 65, a lot of pets will lose their rarity value.
I find the Pet stuff excellent..But..
Hunters are still being nerfed abit, will the madness ever end?!
This sounds cool … except the changes to skill learning. I love tracking down just the right pet to collect each skill I want to teach my main pet. It feels Hunter-y.
Replacing an active hunt with just clicking buttons on a talent tree seems to take a lot of the fun out of it.
I am a bit torn by the pets only having one talent tree thing, but its still not to soon to change. I am not sure if it makes a whole lot of sense or not right now, but then again, it is five thirty five AM and I am half asleep. Beast masters will get a five point lead, but to what avail? Then again, this is in all due honesty more then what we had before.
And exotic pets? Heck yea! But uh…. what would count as exotic?
I hope this counts as exotic pets:
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/untameables.php
Please!!!
Mmmm the taming a low level pet and having it 5 levels below you has it’s ups, but I have Humar the Pridelord which is tamed at 23. =P (However I did stick with him until I hit 70. XP)
I’m just hoping for more stable slots. I want to collect more nice pets. :<
Hmmm,
doesn’t look promising, as of now.
3 talent trees, where each and every family is hard-coded to - no longer tanking cats.
The pet talent tree is their answer to the stable space problem.
The focus is on the Survival tree, it’s all about PvP/eSports. Maybe there will be some improvements to the other skill trees too - but I won’t hold my breath.
All in all, Blizzard has chosen the cheap way out with their changes to the hunter class.
@Volcan: I want a Land-Shark *gg*
If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level.
First thought — yay!!!!!!!! I can get a deseased wolf now! Or Araga!!!
Second thought — oh no!!! EVERyONE can get a deseased wolf/araga now!!! And I’m greedy!!!
Oh well, sounds cool anyhow.
WAIT! So my speedy DPS cat will no longer know both bite and claw?! Okay that blows, that blows big time.
“Beast Mastery”
You master the Art of Beast Training, teaching you the ability to train exotic pets and increasing the total amount of pet skill points by 5
WTFBBQBACON EXOTIC PETS??????
Im really curious about what they mean by exotic pets. Im hoping they dont just mean like the zebras and giraffe or something that you couldnt originally tame. Im hoping maybe dragon whelps or something. That would be cool. Or those cool dinosaurs in Ungoro =)
Maybe they mean Droods?
*Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family*
..so.wolfs, bears, boars, scorpids, rays will go from Ok-around-pets to only tanking pets?! and cats,raptors, owls, windserpents to dps pets only?!
well i do not like that idea much.
They should Give all pets acses to all 3 trees and let the hunter deside if it`ll be a tank or dps pet. or something in between.
sorry for the typos
Yeah well what are the “three” trees?
Tanking
DPS
and…???
Tanking
DPS
and…Fail!
“Im hoping they dont just mean like the zebras and giraffe or something that you couldnt originally tame”
I sooo want a giraffe..ok maybe a battle penguin.. or a shark you have to mend pet on continuously so it doesn’t die from not being in the water :P
I, for one, am crossing my fingers that “exotic pets” includes Silithids.
If Gore is a DPS talent tree then bite/gore will replace bite/claw for cats… 0.o
I can see we will have to wait a while until we see how all the changes work , and how they pan out , there are many things that sound as if they might be better and a few that may mean we have lost a little edge on other classes.
My guess is we will have to learn how to play slightly differently than we have in the past , but that is nothing new as i can remember a few changes in the past yet i adjusted easily to them.
There are many great ideas there and my guess is someone was listening to us and trying to do what we asked so many times , i hope it was this forum they listened to as at least here the threads were polite unlike some other places.
I just saw on wowhead’s wotlk site under pet skills they have which abilities belong to which family. I hope it is true because crabs get pin.
The changes to Bite and Claw sound good but wait, Only Bite OR claw? So my cat that knows both won’t have both in Wrath? Ick. I don’t like the idea of Cobra Reflexes and Dash being talents either…
Well its just too early to say what’s all going to happen yet. If I can get into the beta Ill be happy, but here’s hoping not all of this is as bad as it looks.
Here’s MY big question…
Does this mean “Caster” pets are going away? PLEASE PLEASE GOD PLEASE CAN I HAVE MY -ATTRACTIVE- NETHER RAY?!?!?!
(I hate the green ones, they’re so uuuuuuuuugly….) Or an orange dragonhawk?
Some comments on people’s concerns:
1. I like the pet-level-jumping thing a lot. One solution to your problem, Mania, is to start yet another hunter (groan, I know), tame a level 1 pet, and stable it. It doesn’t look like already tamed pets are going to jump to follow their hunter’s level while stabled, so you can at least make use of that.
2. It’s already been shown that Bite + Claw reduced the net damage output for pets that could use both, because Bite was eating up the focus Claw was dumping every time its CD ticked. As someone who’s had owls and carrion birds, I can also tell you that having two focus dumps is not necessarily better than one, DPS-wise–screech was handy for its debuff, but having both it AND claw on at the same time sort of messed with how much damage my bird could put out. Plus, if Bite and Claw both have equal focus costs and no CD, how is the pet’s AI supposed to prioritize one over the other? Right now, Bite casts whenever its CD is up, and Claw is used to dump all extra focus between Bite CDs.
3. No telling yet that pets will only be restricted to one talent tree based on family, AND it’s only beta. I’m sure if enough pet-loving hunters point out that they’d be happier with being able to have tanking cats and DPSing dragonhawks, then they might expand the number of trees available. OTOH, we also don’t know if their description of the three talent trees at WWI was completely accurate, either. The “DPS” tree available to “DPS” pets will probably still have some damage mitigation talents in it. And, really, while I know some people (myself included) have had a “non-standard” combination of pet role and pet percentages, I’m willing to bet that most hunters probably do use DPS pets to DPS, tank pets to tank, and middle-of-the-road pets for utility reasons.
4. I’m really not seeing where hunters are getting nerfed. XD It’s hard to say ANYTHING is a definitive “nerf” when taken in context of all the new abilities being added to all the classes.
@Nachtwulf: yep, the devs have confirmed that caster pets will be going away.
@others: wait until Mania posts the initial versions of the pet talent trees before getting too worried about “pet nerfs”. Believe me, they aren’t getting nerfed in any way shape or form, even when a DPS pet is being used to tank or a tanking pet is being used to DPS.
Yup! Nimizar sent me details on the pet talent trees and I’m working on getting those posted now. It’s just a lot of stuff! But it’ll be up soon, I promise.
i hope and exotic pet might be a worgan!
Also, I apologize for coming off as cranky or condescending. I’m just very, VERY excited about all the changes to hunters, pets, and other things in the game; having people immediately start picking at the down sides of it comes off (to me) as…not ingratitude, but it’s certainly overlooking all the good for the bad. Yes, we won’t have quite as much control over pet talents as we’d like, BUT all pet families get a unique skill, which is something we’ve wanted for pretty much ever.
#1 Item I like here is that my Gorilla may actually get the missing ranks of Thunderstomp, that he missed @ lvl 60 & 70. I just hope that he gets the “tank tree” because he is my number one solo grind lvling pet. Even though wowhead’s talent calculators for the Wrath pet talents seem very incomplete at the moment, it does look like he’ll get dash too. In which case, he may become my only pet (other than the dps one my guild will insist I bring to raids.)
My guess behind the newly tamed pets jumping to within 5 lvls of the hunter is because: Say x DPS family is just too weak to keep lvled because you can’t spec it to work well for you as a solo tank (especially true perhaps for MM or Survival hunters) Grinding that dps pet to 80 for raiding would be much less of a chore. Or for those pets that get the “utility tree” (whatever that is) may really be a chore to lvl up without the 5 lvl below change.
As far as Exotic pets . . . after all this is beta. . . and they have to do something to make us wonder . . .
if pets automatically grow to say, 65 when tamed at lvl 3, the training your pets for 67 levels and them becoming HUGE will be gone, wont it? i miss being able to, but then again, when an alliance hunter says “i want a beige scorpid from Durotar, but i dont feel like leveling it!” and the same thing goes for unique low lvl pets in alliance territories, that by the time we horde get high enough level, we dont want to level the pet.
I really hate that they automaticly jump up close to your level. I love having a rare pet that I got at lvl 14 that nobody gets at lvl 70 since they don’t want to grind it up. I hate that now no pet will truly be rare since you can always just get them and level them 5 levels….sigh
QQ over
Tomwolf, have you ever had to train a pet up from said level fourteen at seventy? It isn’t hard, but it is a massive, massive chore. I think its a good thing, especially for people who just weren’t aware of a particular pet or pet skin from a lower level that they liked, and wanted, but didn’t discover until a higher level. Also, this way we won’t see what amount to nearly the same three pets over and over and over. The scorpid from Shadowmoon, the ravagers from the mine, and the cats from Terrokar. Now we can go, find a pet skin we like, tame it, and immediately get a good deal of usage out of it. It isn’t a bad thing at all, though I do understand the desire to be unique.
I really like all the changes to the pet skill system, but I kind of feel bad for all the pet trainers out there, this puts them all out of a job…
And as for pets jumping to be within 5 levels of the hunter making unique pets less unique… that’s why they’re adding “exotic” pets. If you really want that pet few others have, spec BM.
I like some of the changes to the Survival tree, though I’d love to get a look at the real one in the Beta. The one at Wowhead still has the old Trap Mastery. Saying the Survival changes are all about PvP/eSports is a bit strange, given new talents such as Hunting Party and Sniper Training. Believe me, I despise the eSport initiative, but I love my Survival spec.
Am I the only person who doesn’t want pets constantly dumping every possible point of focus? It’s probably just my on quirky play style, but between pets with claw and pets with bite, the ones with a steady measured focus expense are the ones that work. They never run the bar dry, leaving nothing for the next growl or manual shell shield.
My main thought is.. that if pets start getting talent points at level 20 (Opposed to the hunters when we start a level 10) That makes me wonder will we have enough points to disperse into the talent tree to GET the points we want. If I am correct, a pet will learn a total of 15 talent points if it is to be every 4 levels after 20 (16 if you count that we get one at level 20) which makes me even MORE curious towards their talent trees.
I don’t mind the auto grind level, it would make things easier for some (Especially if you’re like me and enjoy taming a low level pet) but it also removes the FUN of leveling that pet up, the THRILL of seeing it slowly grow and level WITH you as you hunt and play as a high level (Let me tell you, I LOVED raising my level 19 Ghost sabered to his current level of 62) and it’s going to be sad that Blizzard is handing everyone EVERYTHING on a silver platter. Don’t make things easier for people, make things FUN and CHALLENGING!
As a survival hunter, all I can say about the talents is that this is going to be awesome.
For those protective of their unique-skinned, low-level pets that they’ve had since level 15, there’s no guarantee that your (colour)-skinned (species) won’t be the most common critter in Northrend, or the next expansion, or… I think allowing hunters complete free choice of pets without sacrificing weeks of play time to the tedium of levelling. Getting a non-caster netheray from 64 to 70 was bad enough, frankly.
Hopefully “exotic” pets mean something like a Druid in Bear form. Man I’ve wanted to train my guildies then leave them in the stables for years…
Seriously these had better be functionally more powerful or better than normal beasts, not just some vanity thing, for me to spend a top tier talent on.
I just have a problem with pets not being able to learn both bite and claw. Also nothing on Prowl, having a NE hunter Prowl is a great tool in BGs and Healing after world PVP.
One of the exotic pets may be parrots, the pirates in Deadmines got them as pets aswell.
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