Petopia: WotLK Pet FAQ + New Beta Pets
I have been sadly lax in cataloging new pets from the beta. Thankfully, other more reliable hunters have been on the job!
Serenas/Luxatra and her friend Kaylink, both of Daughters OfThe Alliance on Bronzebeard, have been exploring Northrend like … well, like little exploring fiends! … and sending me screenshots of all the Beast Lore’d beasts they meet. So I updated Petopia’s WotLK Pet page tonight with 13 new pets, including hyenas and (oddly) wind serpents. I also straightened out some mistakes I’d made with skins. (You can expect that to continue for the entire beta — both the mistakes and the straightening out.)
In addition, I am happy to announce the reason that I haven’t been exploring Northrend as much as I’d like to for the past couple of days: the Petopia WotLK Pet FAQ. (I actually posted the first version last night, but I didn’t announce it here because I knew I wanted to change the structure — which took me all bloody day today.)
This FAQ answers all your most pressing questions about pets in Wrath of the Lich King! Well, 55 of your most pressing questions, anyway. And I haven’t finished going through all of the long, long comment threads we’ve generated over the past week to pull out the rest of the questions that I know are in there. So this is very much a work in progress.
But I am very anxious to hear your feedback on it. What questions did I miss? What answers did I mess up? Comment here or e-mail me, whichever you prefer, and I’ll do my best to fix it.
56 Comments
It all looks pretty good to me.
And just to be cryptic (and annoying!), along with the one about caster pets going away, there were some other blue comments made on the alpha forums that I am absolutely not going to repeat until I see evidence of them actually being implemented in a beta build. I wouldn’t want to get people’s hopes up without reason after all. So let the wild speculation commence! }:>
Hey hey.
I think I’ve found another pet.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/wotlk/ingameshots/grizzlyhills/grizzlyhills_75.jpg
You can see a white windserpent, with the Azeroth model, in the background.
Got no idea whether it’s tameable or not, I don’t have the beta key :/
By the way, it’s name seems to be ‘Guardian Serpent’.
I’ve got question concerning this auto-leveling low-level pets:
Is this a thing we will see in the final version of WotLK? Or is it at least planned at the moment that we will see it? I mean is it possible that this is just for the beta so that beta tester can test as many pets as possible?
I found a picture of the Cursed Offspring of Har’koa http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk112/Meh_110/25.jpg :)
@Eberon
Lord I hope not! I was 55 when I heard about the Ghost Saber..(yeah,I know..*lol*)
and never really felt like grinding it 30+ levels..now I don’t have too! If it stays in the live version,that is.But I haven’t seen anything about it just being
Beta…
And OMG!! That is the prettiest Wind Serpent I’ve ever seen! I LOVE the black and white design!..”drool”…must…..hsve!!
Kitairra
@Eberon: no, the auto-levelling effect has been confirmed by one of the devs as being intentional (it was in a post on the alpha forums though, so no link).
I am interested in that cat without eyes, could we get a screenshot?
@ Gurluas Look at the fourth post. =\
Hmm. Cursed Offspring == reskinned tigergem model?
What if I don’t buy WOTLK right away? Will the pet changes still take place on my pets?
http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk112/Meh_110/25.jpg
@Veyska
Looks like it :o
These new pets are looking great and bliz are giving us some tough decisions too make. Any idea if exotic will be a class of pet or will they still fall under the usual families i.e Devilsaur = Raptor?
Great FAQ, thank you!
http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk112/Meh_110/25.jpg
Devilkitty is here for your soul!
Alternately,
There is no Fluffy, only Zuul!
Nimizar: Gee, thanks for the cryptic! *grin*
Maree: Ooh, nice! I’ll have to see if I can find out more about that Guardian Serpent. Thanks for the link!
Meh: Nice pic of the Cursed Offspring! I wonder if he keeps his eyes when tamed … Wait! Is that your pet? Did you tame him?
Eberon: The auto-leveling is included the beta patch notes, so it’s definitely intended.
Verace: Excellent addition to the FAQ! Thanks. :> And the answer is yes: the underlying mechanics of pets will change whether you buy WotLK or not.
Ventix: No idea yet. Hopefully the next beta build will implement this, or Blizzard will say more about it.
Hi Mania, Great work =)
I’ve got a question. I think I picked up somewhere that people will be able to use two talent builds and chose which one they want to use at a certain time with out having to respec. I forgot where I heard that, but I think I saw mention of it on various spots.
Now Beast Mastery will have a talent that allows you to tame Exotic pets.
How will the two of those work together?
Great work as always, Mania, Nimizar, Serenas/Luxatra and Kaylink. We all appreciate your hard work.
Ghostcrawler likes his secrets, don’t he? Seems like an up and coming build will have more changes for hunter pet talents.
I’m really happy there’s a new hyena! I never see anyone with any and at one point had one by my side. It just took forever to level and with the lack of any real moves, I decided to get something else though.. I really miss those silly hyena attack sounds lol
Considering there are now birds of prey.. does anyone know if the Dire Ravens from BEM have been moved into this slot? or are they still Carrion Birds?
The Dire Raven matches some of the bird models in Birds of Prey.. so it makes sense.. wondered if anyone had actually checked.. or could check this? :)
Has anyone taken a look at this? I was just looking through wowhead’s generic pet skills list and I found:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=53448
Dying Bite (NYI)
When your pet dies, it remains standing for an additional 6 sec to fight before it finally falls.
Spirit of Redemption for pets? If it was a talent I’m guessing this would be in Tenacity, probably where phoenix is in the other tree.
Yahoo! My tamable eagle is back!
Anyone got any hints on what constitutes an exotic pet?
Azkore, currently the Dire Raven is still counted as a carrion bird, and not as a bird of prey.
Technically Ravens are carrion eaters
They’re also birds of prey. They hunt and do kill. One of the problems with Raven’s is that many people mistake them for crow’s. While in the same family this is kinda like mistaking a Wolf for a golden retreiver… or I guess more apt, a Wolf for a Husky.
Raven’s are pretty big birds too. Where I grew up we had an Unkindness (( group of ravens)) That would chase out Red tailed hawks if they tried to nest around our house. Red tails aren’t that small either. While a Murder (Group of crows)) might move on.
but yes ravens could fit in either place. Persoanlly I’d put them in the birds of prey vs the carrion birds (( but if we’re being technical vultures and buzzards are birds of prey too. lol))
I mean that in the beta sense, not the current live build sense.
Dying Bite sounds like it could be a good pvp talent and not just a general pve/Tenacity. If it’s implimented. It also makes me wonder if you could start rezzing your pet during this time.
And glee a white outlands serpent! I’ve been wanting one ever since that one quest in zangamarsh. But ouch at it being a lv 76 elite.
I had a feeling another white bat would be added for WLK (I haev to get one now). The new eagles and hawks look really cool too. With all of the new pets showing up on Petopia, I might need to make a second hunter.
Ventix – I wouldn’t think Devilasaurs would go under raptors, seeing as they would be exotic pets and would therefor get new skills, unlike the old ones. However, it’s still not for sure that they wil even be exotic pets.
@Jayhawk: I have a post on the beta forums asking that very question (since the talent isn’t implemented yet we can’t try it for ourselves):
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202607002&sid=2000
Ghostcrawler’s secrets = her secrets btw :)
*LAUGHS* HER secrets, my apologies.
hmmm…why are people griping about the Beast Master talent? the tree *is* BEAST MASTERY, ya know? whats the point in being a beast master if all you get is an angry pet? i mean come on! spec survival and poke ur pet a few times with ur wep. wOOOooo…same diff. if ur a beast MASTER, then you can MASTER other types of beasts that other wouldnt know how to, because they havent MASTERED the normal ones. cmon. and the “can i keep my exotic pet when i respec?” question, here is an answer. can i keep a felguard after i respec Destro? nope. its gone. only fair that ur exotic pet disappears, isnt it?
I have been looking at the Pet Talent trees and have come to the conclusion that while the extra 5 talent points are nice, these talents will not effect our end game dps much if at all. We already are kinda gimped on talent points and picking up the armor and stamina talents are not going to be the norm because of the lack of overall points.
I really hope that these Exotic pets come with a new “tier” of special talents or a completely new talent tier. I really hope that Ghostcrawler is giving us a line, cause the 5 pet talent points are just flat out not good enough as a 51 point talent. They are an added bonus, but these pets need to be better than normal pets. Either by giving them a huge DPS/Armor/Health family bonus compared to other pets or giving these pets a completely different talent spec, or a 6th tier of abilities in each of the current 3 family trees. These pets need to be better than normal pets.
I trust WoWinsider about as far as I can throw’em. That aside, they currently have an article up explaining that the tool tips for pet talents on the WoWhead calculator are right, and that all single point talents, aside from boars swiftness, require that you have five points in previous tiers, instead of three, meaning that fifth tier talents would only be available to beast masters. Mania or Nimizar, what are your thoughts on this? Incorrect tooltip, or purposeful to make beast master better?
You are the bestest ever! Thank you so very much for your due diligence and sharing what you learn with us. =)
Great job on the FAQ Mania!
I don’t know about you guys but I’m a BM spec because of the added pet bonuses mostly. I come to Mania’s Arcania to learn about Pet related news. Even if I’m on my own I really like the BM 51 talent point… at first I didn’t even pay attention to the extra 5 talent points, because I was excited to be able to tame something special – more points just makes it all the more sweeter.
There are questions we don’t have the answers to yet. I will reserve my judgement for the Exotic pets to be tameable and to see what will make them different from regular pets. The talent right now is just a description of something we can’t begin to really think about without making huge assumptions. It may be a lot better than people imagine. It’s also still in Beta so things might be tweaked or altered anyway.
Right Suzi. Me too.
At first I didn’t even really notice the +5 talent points. I was “Exotic pets? What the frak is an exotic pet? I want one!”
The fact that our pets are going to be 33% stronger than non marksman pets is a ___ BIG DEAL___ those people saying it’s crap haven’t really grasped the implications of how much a 33% bonous in talent points is going to intell. Your pet will be more rounded and more robust. While a non BM pet will still be able to do it’s job. a BM Pet will be able to do it’s job and fudge into other jobs.
And not for nothing.. but if you play a hunter, you play it because you have a pet…. so having a better pet is just sweet sweet dessert.
I play a hunter because of my pets. That doesn’t mean everyone else does. And it may, MAY be possible that only beast masters will have access to fifth tier talents, but personally I doubt that. But yes, those five talent points are worth a lot more credit then people seem to be giving it. Still, it isn’t even implimented yet, so we don’t know if its a drop in the bucket, or a monsoon sized talent yet.
@Nimizar: Thanks, I’m curious to see how this works out (and glad to see I’m not the only one who was puzzled by this).
It must be possible to call the Exotic pet if you switch back to BM without going back to the stable, or else it will be gimping the talent too much. It also creates the question of whether the Exotic pet is one of your three pets or an additional pet.
Possibly…they might treat it as the mounts and mini-pets (and get away with the whole stable idea? (Yes, that would be greedy =).
As for the five points, maybe they can come up with a way for you to mark which 5 are the extra points and only disable those? Which still sounds like an aweful lot of programming work and interface changes. Alternatively, they may allow you two talent windows, one for the BM and one for the regular spec? That feels slightly less clunky…
All hunters will have access to *one* talent in tier five. Since all of them have precursor talents, it’s not really possible to skimp on low-tier talents to drop points in all three.
Beastmasters can conceivably get all three tier five talents on their pet. And given how NICE the tenacity tree is (Last Stand, Taunt, and Commanding Shout? Yes please.), being able to have all three is awesome.
Oh, Mania–the dire ravens use the night elf flight form model (black), not the tauren. The tauren model is the new hawk skin (brown).
From Eliah Hecht’s wowinsider article:
The Tier 5 talents are generally decent, but they’re not “you can have only one” decent. So Mania and I both think the beta behaviour is more likely to be right than the tooltips.
Besides, if Blizzard wanted to increase the number of prerequisite points for some talents, they would just make the pet trees narrower and deeper rather than making talents at a given tier require more points than other talents at the same tier (or even talents on higher tiers!) (e.g. they could easily add two more tiers so the tier 7 talents require you to have spent 18 other talent points, then use specific prerequisite talents to ensure even BM hunters can only get one tier 7 talent). I don’t expect them to do that though – I expect them to keep the tree fairly shallow and adjust the contents so that non-BM hunters will have to make tough choices, while BM hunters will be able to get all the really good talents.
Nimizar has summed it up well.
Ansawa: Shoot! I always get that backwards. Thanks — I’ll get it fixed.
That Eliah Hecht is a noob. He honestly think the tooltips are right and the game mechanics wrong? Come on! How many times since WoW came out did we see incorrect tooltips? I lost count. Blizzard often makes tooltip errors. I mean, doesn’t he even remember the Scare Beast casting thing? That wasn’t too long ago too. Hell, I remember using an addon a long time ago that changed the tooltip’s descriptions for some of the warlock spells…
Thank you, Mania and Nimizar. That was my thought as well, but I thought it’d sound a lot better coming from you two. That should help to quell the scare in at least the Manias Arcana goers.
Id also like to see the “hunched” posture…Seems like a nice pet, it doestn go “untameable” like other cool pets.
I always liked the hunched position of the jewel cats, looks kind of like a charging bull. I also hope they stay tamable, although I’m sure lots of people will have them. (I like pets that few people have!)
the beast mastery thing sounds like a lot of issues to work out. i’d think one way to handle it is, the talent also provides one additional stable slot- a slot that can only house ‘exotic’ pets. that way, if a hunter respecs, the exotic pet is sent to the stable,and simply can not be pulled out to play until the hunter has that talent again. it wouldn’t be fun to have to re-tame every time you want to move some points around… Or if they were going to just scrap the idea, i’d like to see something new, like maybe a long cooldown ability that brings out a second pet of yours to fight alongside your active pet for a short time.
First off, Ghostclaw has confirmed that the tooltips are incorrect and the talents in beta are working as intended. Next up, apologies for disagreeing with you Noba, but I don’t think you should have to spec down 51 points just to get a new stable slot. And as for exotic pets going away if you respec, well, I’m all for it. What good is having an exotic pet if all you have to do is respec to beast master once, go get your ‘unique’ pet, then go back to being MM or survival? From all due appearances the talent is meant to give beast masters a unique line of pets, not all three trees. Just my two cents.
Finally, as for stable slots, it may not have been the way we asked for it, but we WERE just given an additional stable slot. As in I have gone through all of TBC with two keeper pets, and one ‘skill slot’ pet, that’s never been permanent because I just knew I’d have to release them once a new expansion came out. Pretty sure I am not the only one who goes by this philosophy. Now when I release my third pet, it won’t because I have to, just to keep up. It’ll be because I saw something else that I really wanted to tame. Not saying I wouldn’t like a third or even fourth stable slot, just saying that we now have one active pet, and two actual OPEN stable slots, and pets that auto level up to five levels below us. And five levels is nothing to worry about for leveling.
Hmmm I wonder what name I should pick for my Moth. I am going to pick one of those red ones. Any suggestions?
The big thing about getting the pet to 5 levels below us is that it means the pet can now easily take on mobs that will actually give it XP. So you tame your new pet and go farm eternals (the Wrath version of primals) or go grind out more of one of the new reputations, or go do some of the slightly lower level instances, and the pet will be able to handle it.
Regarding the exotic pets, I really think they need to be kept, but not usable when a BM hunter goes SV or MM for a while. Forcibly abandoning all of your exotic pets just because you respecced would be a terrible additional respec cost to add for BM hunters.
As an alternative pet talent, I did see an interesting idea which was similar to a DK’s Dancing Runeblade – it called a shadow version of your pet which performed all of the same actions as your actual pet for a short period.
OK COMON where the heck is the freackin new warpstalker, sporebats,crab,crok,and tallstrider skins
Pal- What I meant by the exotic pet stable slot, is that when you spec out of the 51 point BM your pet is forced away to that slot. It can’t be taken out of that stable while you don’t have the talent. So if you’re now MM or SV, your pet just sits and collects dust. The reason I dont think it should go away completely is.. what if you want to stay BM, but just switch the location of a few points? And in three minutes, you will once again have the 51-point BM talent again. Nobody wants to go re-tame and level up 5 levels just cause of that.
Maybe the pet would only stay in reserve in the stable for X length of time, that way if you took a whole new tree, your pet wouldnt wait forever for you.
I can agree with that, Noba, it would just require for there to be an additional stable slot just for exotics, and that we only be able to tame one exotic pet. Thats not nessecarily a bad thing, and honestly its a good precaution for those automatic respecs we get when a mass talent review or an expansion comes out. Not that it’d be a massive blow unless I’d tamed an exotic from an instance or something.
I still hope and pray for a “Play Dead” type skill to go along with Feign Death. Would be really nice.
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