Beta Pet Skill Changes
When the new beta build went up Monday night, I was able to check out the pet talent changes pretty quickly. But I slacked on re-checking all the family skills. (There’s so many of them now!)
Luckily, you guys don’t slack as much as I do. :> In particular, Ilyara of the guild Ostarim Tel Niasa from Earthen Ring EU and Zepnic the Hunter both sent me a treasure trove of changes with the beta pet skills. And Stranger let us know about changes in a comment here as well.
Here’s a quick run down of what has changed with beta pet skills. (Oh, and I also updated Petopia with this information this morning.)
Boar – Gore:
- Was: Gores the enemy, causing damage. This attack has a 50% change to inflict double damage, or triple damage if used during a Dash.
- Now: Your boar gores the enemy for damage. Causes double damage if used during a Dash.
Cat – Prowl:
- Was: 40 Focus
- Now: No focus cost
Crab – Pin:
- Was: Pins the target in place, and squeezes for damage over 6 sec. (20 sec cooldown)
- Now: Pins the target in place, and squeezes for damage over 4 sec. (1 min cooldown)
Crocolisk – Bad Attitude:
- Was: Snap back for damage at any target that strikes you for the next 2 min.
- Now: Snap back for damage at any target that strikes you for the next 45 sec.
Nether Ray – Nether Shock:
- Was: Instantly lashes an enemy for Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1 sec. (30 sec cooldown)
- Now: Instantly lashes an enemy for 35 to 47 Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. (1 min cooldown)
Tallstrider – Dust Cloud:
- Was: Kick up an obscuring cloud of dust, lowering the chance for enemies to hit by 30%. Effects last 8 sec. (20 sec cooldown)
- Now: Your tallstrider kicks up an obscuring cloud of dust, causing all enemies within 10 yards to miss their next attack. Lasts for 8 sec. (40 sec cooldown)
Warp Stalker – Warp:
- Was: 25 Focus
- Now: No focus cost
Wind Serpent – Lightning Breath:
- Was: No cooldown
- Now: 10 sec cooldown
All Pets – Growl:
- Was: Taunt the target, increasing the likelyhood the creature will focus attacks on you.
- Now: Your pet growls at the target, generating threat and increasing the likelihood the target will attack it.
Wowhead is listing a couple of other changes, including a Sonic Blast cooldown of 10 seconds and Tendon Rip being Instant instead of Next Melee, but currently neither of these is true in the beta.
89 Comments
lol Casters beware…..there is a NEW menace other than Felhunters…the…NETHER RAY!!! (ominous music) any news on exotic talents, Mania?
….oh, damn. The nether ray and warp stalker changes look really nice, Prowl having no focus cost is really nice, but…
Lightning Breath is no longer a focus dump? x__x; I hope they up the amount of damage it does accordingly, otherwise I sense the hunter community is going to be ditching their windserpents en masse.
This is sad, I don’t want to get rid of my Washte Pawne who’s served me for a great 44 lvls.
On a brighter note, it looks like tallstriders and crocolisks will become good solo pets, regardless of the time changes.
As a non-pvp hunter I’d have preferred the former Nethershock – for PvE the spell interrupt is more useful than the lockout – and with the 30sCD becoming 20s with the right talents, it would have been reasonably on call when needed. Crocs and Tallstriders remain nice choices despite the depower, but the 1m crab cooldown shuffles them out as useful pets PvE – now, like the spider, the ravager and the bat, they have abilities that just won’t do enough for the time they take to recharge.
Unless sonic blast *does* get a 10s cooldown, in which case I’m a-keepin’ my darned Zul’gurub bat… but that seems kinda unlikely.
Ansawa-
Having tried a Wind Serpent as it stands now, I’ve noticed that, despite it being a focus dump ability, Lightning Breath has a certain amount of limited ability. I’ve noticed that it can take up to 10 seconds to rebuild enough focus to be able to use it more than twice in a fight. This change is not too bad, and shouldn’t affect your desire to keep your beloved pet.
Seems to me that they nerfed crabs a great deal.
Pin + Longevity = PvP ownage. Ahwls, we can still get it down to 40sec Cooldown at least.
But I don’t understand the tallstrider skill. Does it mean that all targets within 10 yards will miss for the next 8 seconds? Or only on their first attack?
The boar change isn’t so bad. With 2 points into Mobility (Or is that only aviable in one of the other trees? I don’t remember..), it will always inflict double damage.
Maree,
Notice the wording: “miss their next attack.”, so its only one miss.
@Ansawa While I would agree that while leveling this could in fact be the case. Having a Wind Serpent has been all about Go For The Throat since the 2.0 patch. As such Lightning Breath is actually one of the very few focus dumps that actually scales up in damage with your gear. The more ranged crit you have, the more often your pet will use it.
For most of us, this is a HUGE nerf to the usefulness of our pet. Soon after 2.0, they nerfed its spell damage coefficient to make it do less damage. Now they give it a 10 second cooldown? We already had to remove the use of ANY other ability to make this ability work. Its all fine and good making Bite a focus dump, but adding on top of it a CD on LB is ridiculous.
Wind Serpents were not overpowered since their nerf. They are not overwhelmingly popular as is. In fact on my server you are made fun of for having one as a raider. The most popular pets have to be cats, boars and ravagers. With the current changes to pet abilities this will more than likely change to a smaller list including Raptors and only Raptors for any non BM hunter and exotic pets only for those non BM hunters. I really would have liked to see them leave the existing specials alone and focus on balancing the new ones, not nerfing the old ones that are not broken. Balancing them so people would take a wider variety of pets should be the focus.
P.S: The prowl change is good, but I still stick by my thoughts that it should be a talent and cats need to get Rip, Shred or Pounce as their active special.
Wow, Dust Cloud took a HUGE hit. :| That’s very frustrating.
Boars can’t get Mobility since it is only in the Cunning tree – still, with Longevity they will be hitting for double damage more than half the time.
Also, if they change focus to regen smoothly instead of in ticks as they have done for mana (and apparently energy as well), then it will actually solve the Growl prioritisation issue and ensure it goes off as nearly soon as it comes off CD and the pet has enough focus for it (since at 15 focus, it is the cheapest of the pet abilities)
@Nissi:
While I understand your frustration with regards to wind serpents and the cooldown, you should consider that windies were currently the ONLY pet to have a special attack with no cooldown on it, and as you say, its damage thus scaled with your gear, ENSURING that at some point it would be the superior choice bar none (on anything that isn’t immune or at least highly resistant to nature damage).
Blizzard doesn’t want one pet to be vastly superior to any other, they don’t like it when people cookie-cut/min-max/get forced to pick one particular pet or spec in order to perform optimally. Wind serpents are thus brought in line with other pets, and you thus pick and use wind serpents because you LIKE them and their ability (superb for ranged pulls!), NOT because they can spam LBs with GFTT and high critchance.
Thus this actually improves the game, despite that it’s arguably a nerf to winders, because it removes the potential for cookiecuttery. Balance is now maintained, where previously there was none. :)
I don’t expect Savage Rend and Monstrous Bite to go live in their current states – they’re too clearly winners on the DPS front. Blizzard have made it fairly clear that they don’t want any one pet family to be too far in front of the others in PvE or PvP effectiveness. Hence why the nerfs to Pin and Dust Cloud also don’t surprise me (again, the old versions were just far too effective).
With the new version of Dust Cloud, I can see it working in raids and actually being a nice tool to have around for the bigger AoE pulls, as well as helping someone to survive melee focus fire long enough in PvP for a heal to land.
Nether Shock being nerfed even further is somewhat annoying – now even a BM hunter can only get the CD down to 42 seconds (it started at 15 seconds so it was nearly as good as Kick, became 30 seconds so it was nearly as good as Counterspell, now it barely even registers as a meaningful PvE interrupt). That means the combined CD switching it off with Intimidation would still be 21 seconds on average, and that assumes the target is actually vulnerable to stuns. The change does bring it into line with the current cooldowns of the other pet stuns though (Sonic Blast and Ravage).
@FaaR:
The thing about Wind Serpents isn’t that they are significantly better. They are infact very troublesome pets. Firstly, if you are the only BM Hunter and yo have both an Ele Shaman and an Enhancement Shaman, forget about bringing it. LB sucks up Stormstrike charges. Secondly, LB being a spell on a Warrior gets NO inherent crit and it can’t be buffed (unless you dare to bring a caster Wind Serpent which will have 5% inherent crit and will scale with Int buffs). So a Wind Serpent will have a lower uptime on Frenzy and FI. Thirdly in a mobile fight a Cat/Ravager/Raptor is significantly superior as they have all the 10% buff while the Wind Serpent is 7%. Further on that point, the Wind Serpent, to be effective, needs to have LB on a sort of shotmacro. That means that when you move about it won’t use it. The other pets don’t suffer this. And fourthly there are bosses like Hydross who are immune to LB at least some of the time.
All this means that on SOME fights a Wind Serpent is better due to the superior nature of LB. But there are so many ‘but’s that it is a tricky pet to use. Because it is tricky it deserved a superior special. Now it is just MEH. Why use it? There are way better specials among other Cunning pets, and Ferocity pets are going to be way better. Damn, it looks like even Boars can beat it now with the change to Gore… And they are Tenacity pets. This plain sucks.
Either let Wind Serpents retain the no CD LB, or move them to Ferocity. The double whammy of Cunning and 10 sec CD on LB is too much. Wind Serpents aren’t popular because they are beautiful (they are flapping too damn much, and the Outland kind are bugged too), they are in fact rather ugly, Vipers are more attractive. Flappy will be the first pet I will ditch… prolly even if I don’t have to, then at least I have another spot for more interesting pets.
But it isn’t a stun, Nimizar, or I could see it. Its a silence, and it was only a one second silence at that. The twenty second cooldown, that might have been a LITTLE much, but thirty was clearly perfect. Now its taken another hit, and is darn near useless. Its just not fully worth a two second silence to have to watch and micro manage your pets focus and abilities like that. Pin, one nerf I could see, but it go two huge hits. The duration was knocked in half, and the cooldown was tripled. One or the other, fine, but both? Thats just to much. The same went for dust cloud. It had a cooldown increase, and a major hit to functionality. Now its kinda like warp. Sure thats one less shot going through, but unless its something like heroic or mortal strike, or a five point eviserate or cheap shot, it just ain’t doin’ much. But then again, this is beta, and its the perfect time for feedback. All the hunters have to is whine more then the mages or rogues!
((Side note: Its scientifically proven to be impossible to whine more then either of those two classes. Don’t try. But do leave tons of feedback.))
The point I was trying to make without going on and on about it is that a Wind Serpent’s Lightning Breath, when paired up against a Dragonhawk’s Fire Breath, shows that it is actually better to have the cool down rather than an instant cast no cool down skill.
I did a lot of testing on the two a while back, and a Dragonhawk’s FB DPS could easily out pace a Wind Serpent’s LB DPS simply because of the cool down which allowed for the building up of focus after FB was use. This was done on the same hunter with the same equipment, and she was MM. I know it doesn’t seem like it would, but it tended to. So, the imposition of a cool down of the same length may mean that there is a greater parity in terms of the skills now. The only big difference between the two was their physical DPS which is about to be eliminated.
I’m still a bit mad about how cats are the king of pets overall as it is, and they still might be, as it seems like no real nerf to them so far. While pets not as popular are already being downgraded.
That only holds true when your focus generation is very slow, Sei. For a BM hunter with Bestial Discipline, GFFT and a decent crit rating (which represents most raiding hunters), Lightning Breath is better by far than Fire Breath.
Those focus-generating talents make a huge difference. It’s very easy to give a dragonhawk more focus than it can use.
Oops, that should have been “GFTT” (go for the throat)
@Caserno
I agree, it’s not been good for Cats to have been so dominant as pets, along with a couple of other pet types, based on their stats.
However, their primary strength was access to a focus dump (claw) combined with a high basic dps modifier and Dash. In WotLK all pets have access to a focus dump, all ferocity pets have similar basic damage, all can have Dash.
The only distinction Cats bring the table is Prowl, which is an extremely situational PvP ability that has no real damage dealing benefit whatsoever, especially because it can only be used out of combat. At the moment, in WotLK, I would say they are far the weakest Ferocity pet choice.
I have no desire to see Cats become dominant, but Cats need a new ability that will actually see some use in PvE groups/raids, with the current level playing field. I think that making Prowl a talent based ability, available to all pets, is an excellent suggestion.
There are a lot of players who simply like cats for being cats too, remember :)
My lovely blue crab OldBay is not happy with the major pin nerf… mainly the CD, not the duration. if it was 4 seconds of pin and the CD only went up to 30 seconds, i’d be cool with that, talented down to 21. or if they lowered its focus from the absurdly high 80 focus. now that you can’t get nearly 40% pin uptime, the cost needs to come down. 50 seems fair, or maybe even 60 i could tolerate. but at 80 with 1 min CD and 4 seconds? c’mon.
that is just cruel to do that to us crab hunters… dangle the lovely pin, than nerf it to oblivion.
/sigh
Frankly, I’m not worried by the changes. None of them seem to be so “life threatening” in my opinion. Besides, this is still in the beta. Blizz can still change their minds. And frankly, I HATE prowl. Now I definetly won’t be using a cat becuase whenever I had one, I NEVER taught it prowl. It knew Growl, Dash, Bite, and Claw. While prowling, it’s just too darn slow to keep up, and the extra damage didn’t mean squat to me. Besides, if they’re getting charge and charge breaks prowl, what’s the point? I also found Wind Serpents annoying. They require so much control with that LB and my crits, as BM, weren’t really huge as far as I remember. They’re far more ‘flappy’ and irritating than my raven ever was. I’d rather stick to my favorites and see the new pets in store.
I do think some of the abilities took rather large hits, but maybe Blizz will change them back, or at least balance them out to make them more reasonable. I also hope they remove that stupid “caster” type entirely.
PvE cats on live aren’t trained in Prowl – they use Claw as their focus and Bite to consume the excess burst focus from Go for the Throat. Taking Bite away from them may turn out to be a fairly hefty nerf to their DPS relative to the other Ferocity pets (I expect their DPS will still go up overall, just possibly not as much as some of the other Ferocious pet families). One possible fix Blizzard could make is to allow Prowl to be used while the pet is in combat.
Ravagers are in a similar situation (since they aren’t even Ferocious pets), but the utility of Roar of Recovery should still score them quite a few slots as pets of raiding hunters (particularly with the potion changes).
When all is said and done though, it is looking like raiding with any pet will be pretty viable in Wrath, especially in the 10-man raids.
Oh, and one other thing – from a balance point of view, putting the “disabling effects ” like stuns, interrupt/silences, disarms and roots on an initial common 60 second cooldown and the DPS attacks also on a 10 second cooldown will likely help greatly (particularly when attempting to balance them with the power of the Longevity BM talent). I actually expect to see more of this going on in future beta builds as Blizzard attempt to make the various family abilities at least somewhat comparable in power while still retaining their different flavour.
The cats become the most inferior in DPS pets, because their family ability “prowl” can’t be used during combat. Every other pet’s family ability all can be used in combat. Cats should also have one.
I would propose “prowl & pounce” for cats:
Prowl: as it is now, no focus needed. (It’s better if charge didn’t break prowl.)
Pounce: Pounce on enemy and deal some damage (like current Bite ability), 30(~50) focus, 10(~15) seconds cooldown. When used in prowling, it will stun (or daze) the target for (1~)3 seconds.
Nooo! I just tamed Arikara the other day! You dirty rats, you nerfed my Wind Serpent! *shakes fist*
As for cats now being the weakest DPS pet; I don’t care. I’m not abandoning Tiddles and Schro. I don’t care what they do to them; they are mah kittehs!
Seveil-
I knew what you ment. In fact, I read right over it without noticing your misspelling.
Most of what I was looking at was solo work too, and not raiding or grouping where you would not want down time on a skill in order to give Growl a chance to proc. However, I do agree that it is easy for a Dragonhawk to end up with a lot of focus they can’t use.
Stranger, you realize that if Cats had two family skills, very other pet would have to get a second one as well.
I’ve never used a cat mainly because I have a thing for raptors, ravagers and bats. I would actually like to see cats knocked off their throne. Seriously, there’s what, over 165 different total pet skins and everyone go for the same 5 or 6 cats.
@Seidouyumi: I have Go for the Throat, 30% raid-buffed crit, and Bestial Discipline. ;) Needless to say, my wind serpent is using Lightning Breath much more often than every ten seconds right now.
I´m at a similar situation as itnoteasy. I,m sad about the evident loss od DPS of the cat family, but i´ll never abandon kiba. Period. XD
btw, i love this site. Nice work guys, and specially mania.
@Yossir
Prowl & pounce may not be two seperate skills. They can be merged into one skill (and one icon).
Maybe we can rename it as “Ambush”. While not in combat it let cats go into stealth, and the first strike in stealth mode will stun the enemy. Then it deal damage like Bite (live version, not focus dump) thereafter in whole combat.
Unos cuantos titulares | conOsinSemilia - July 31st, 2008 @ 3:32 am UTC
[...] Cambios en las pets con la ultima build [...]
Woot woot woot!
Euhm fresh from the press;
There are 2 additional slots in the stable.
Integrating hunter / warlock pet management into the new mount and companion UI has certainly come up already. Let’s give the new UI a whirl and see if it works and then we can consider if it makes sense to integrate the stable or anything else into it.
Being able to change between pets inside instances quickly might be the biggest change yet. And 2 new slots!, my prayers have been heard.
Zolo, if thats true then I think I just wet myself….. I was hoping for something like this when I heard about exotics…… now I don’t have to get rid of my kitty! And I’ll only need to bring up two more hunters! Not to bad!
Wind Serpent – Lightning Breath:
* Was: No cooldown
* Now: 10 sec cooldown
Noooo! D:
Manco se nace » Blog Archive » Nooooo!!! - July 31st, 2008 @ 5:20 am UTC
[...] Según Mania’s Arcania… Wind Serpent – Lightning Breath: – Was: No cooldown – Now: 10 sec cooldown [...]
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557246019&sid=2000&pageNo=2#24
It is true!!
Well… like people have said, this is in beta. If you think something blows, tell Blizzard about it. Don’t complain here (though we love you, Mania!), because this isn’t a Blizzard blog or forum. Go to the suggestion site and spam them with these things.
I’m not entirely sure the change to Dust Cloud is a nerf. Look at what you’re exchanging (30% hit reduc)… when many things have a hit% -increase-… for a guaranteed whiff that lasts for a potential eight seconds. Admittedly, this is probably geared toward PvP, but… still, imagine being in an instance, when suddenly a group of adds mis-pulls and heads where they shouldn’t. The initial onslaught all whiff for sure, and hopefully that’s enough time to respond. Not too shabby, really.
Assuming bosses are affected by it, 5 Tallstriders in a 25-man raid will be hilarious, especially with Longevity bringing the CD down. Hunters would need to organise a pet rotation :)
Hmm, that could actually be an interesting tactic on bosses which wind up for big hits… during the cast time, have the hunter use Dust Cloud.
Damn, why do the pets have such nig cool downs!
*Damn, why do the pets have such big cool downs!
Pin was better before. =/
Sigh. . .
Ansawa, and to everyone else who read what I posted, all I tested was solo work and not raid or group. I certainly would not recomend having a pet which applies an AoE DoT to a mob in a raid or a group given that doing so can break CC like mad.
I did find that Dragonhawks get a lot more of their bonus damage built into their ability than Wind Serpents. IF this follows the normal patern of a skill with a long cool down or a long cast time having a huge bonus to their skills, you will see a significant boost to Lightning Breath’s damage too.
*grumbles* Why is it that everyone assumes that I’m talking about raiding when I compare Wind Serpents to Dragonhawks?
You know, I didn’t see much mention of this, but if the tallstriders’ ability works on bosses… this will become a significant part of raiding.
Ability to cancel one attack when your tank’s low on health? Yes please!
I very much doubt it, “absolute” abilities usually just don’t work on bosses.
No surprise from me that they’re nerfing some pet abilities, I’m waiting for the rest to be nerfed too (tallstriders and to a minor degree crabs were the only ones which really needed changing afaik)
I’m a bit sad to see Bad Attitude (crocs) get a nerf, but I was expecting it – two minute duration and three minute cooldown on an ability THAT GOOD for multi-target tanking was just too OP.
Still woulda been nice though. :D And I’m still going to tame a croc after the expansion comes out. What do you think of “Handbag” or “Boots” as a name?
i’m a little sad with the changes to tallstriders’ dust cloud, but oh well. most of these changes arent really nerfs (expect the poor wind serpents who’s existing purpose was messed up), as this is just beta and its expected they’ll be adjusting everything. but hey, look at the good side, even if the abilities arent quite as good, atleast we’re getting them in the first place! :D
on the subject of cats not getting something new: Flying fur- all nearby allergic enemies begin sneezing and deal 25% less damage for 5 seconds. ok, maybe not.
So… Devilsaurs is Exotic Ferocius pet family.
Chimera (as per Wowhead, +5%, +5% bonuses) is Exotic Cunning pet family
Still waiting for Exotic Tenacious family…. Basilisks perhaps? seems most probable
Filinn-
I would like to see more than just three exotic pet families. Three exotic families would make this talent a bit less appealing than the idea of opening up a much larger selection.
i read something interesting on mmo
Hunters / Warlock Pet Management in WotLK
There are 2 additional slots in the stable. Integrating hunter / warlock pet management into the new mount and companion UI has certainly come up already. Let’s give the new UI a whirl and see if it works and then we can consider if it makes sense to integrate the stable or anything else into it. (Source)
*faints*
“On a brighter note, it looks like tallstriders and crocolisks will become good solo pets”
XD The tallstrider already is a good solo pet. Awesome defense for a tanking pet, bite, and the much needed dash. I’ve had mine since lvl 10, served me perfectly up to 70. :3
I just got heart palpatations as I read GC’s entry in the thread Keilden linked (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557246019&sid=2000&pageNo=2#24)
So – I’m keeping Trachela and my Ripfang, I get to go tame a croc for tanking, a tallstrider for the cloud, AND an exotic??? Oh no wait, TWO exotics, and the strider… No, croc and exotic and an eagle… Or rabid grizzly!! OOooohhhh so may choices! And what’ll I name them all??? Mania, expect many mails for Name that Pet!!
/me is in heaven! /sigh
Felandra:
‘Wind Serpents aren’t popular because they are beautiful (they are flapping too damn much, and the Outland kind are bugged too), they are in fact rather ugly,’
I am deeply offended by this! My pet Sylos is amazing and beautiful! So it’s a fact that they’re ugly is it? -__- Right, well each to their own but I think you’ll find that a lot of hunters choose Wind Serpents because they are one of the most spectacular looking pets in the game.
Two new stable slots confirmed for wrath, with the possibility of incorperating them into the mount/mini pet summonable UI if it works out well
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/31/new-stable-slots-in-wrath/
Well, once again, spider’s just don’t get any love. I think Blizzard is arachniphobic or something. I can live with the web ability. Holding something in place is nice, but not great. It only lasts 4 seconds, it requires 80 focus, and it has a cooldown of 2 minutes. That’s one minute and 56 seconds of plain attacking. Not even biting. Other abilites deal damage. Why not make it poison web and have it deal alittle damage. I don’t know… just seems like blizzard is trying to KEEP people from using certain pets and using the ones they deem “usuble”. If you are gonna try to revamp huting and pets to make the pets equal, make them ALL equal.
Dweezill, all pet familys get their version of ‘bite/claw/slap’ so your spider will be doing one of those, same as my ravager for the time you’re not pinning. And not for nothing but I can throw ALOT of damage down range in 4 seconds where a melee class couldn’t get to me if he’s webbed. It’s not all that bad an ability.
Wow, I just look at all those changes, then all the new pet family skills – can you imagine having to work to try and keep all the pets somewhat equal, so there’s no one uber pet? And THEN have to work to make sure you haven’t over powered the hunter class in comparison to other classes? Not an easy job.
I think this beta may last a long long time…
And as always – ty to Mania and the other folk getting this info out. I always appreciate the work you guys put into this!
@Sei: I didn’t even read your comparison. ;) I was merely pointing out that the “hidden” ten second cooldown you experienced for wind serpents and lightning breath due to focus regeneration doesn’t apply to me, because I proc GftT often enough that my snake is using it more often. Survival and marksmen hunters with even higher crit rates have found them excellent pets for this same reason–Go for the Throat recharges their focus fast enough that they can use Lightning Breath every 3-4 seconds, not every ten.
I have a dragonhawk, by the by. :) They do seem to get more out of spell damage (and thus my AP) than wind serpents do, but I prefer my wind serpent for single-target DPS.
Ansawa-
Actually, the only place that the comparison was posted was on my old guild’s website. It lead to a massive, long arguement.
I did talk to a number of people who swear by Dragonhawks in terms of solo work while they prefer Wind Serpents for raids or groups. Still, for those without the high crit rate and the right talents, the ten seconds does help for the focus regeneration.
And, yes, it is easier for a Hunter set up with the right spec to really have a Wind Serpent outshine just about everything :) With the new cooldown, though, I guess it’s going to come down to the bonus damage that gets added in now. If they add in the majority of the spell damage now, the ten second cooldown might not be a bad trade off since that can significantly boost the damage out put.
So, no worries :) It’s kind of one of those give and take things. I just wish though, that the lower level Dragonhawks weren’t casters.
@Sei: If they do increase the amount our RAP increases spell damage, I may hang on to my windsnake. :)
And come the expansion, caster pets are going away. ;) So I suspect we’ll see more golden dragonhawks alongside the red and pink ones.
@bradaogre
If I did the math correctly with those same talents Nethershock has a 24 second cooldown(correct me if I’m wrong math was never my expertise) thats only 4 seconds so the ability is MORE useful.
Deathbang, in its second iteration, the one most of us got to know, the cooldown was thirty seconds, or close to twenty seconds talented. In its current form it is a minute cooldown, or around fourty seconds talented. Its an additional twenty seconds, for only an additional second silence, and no increase to shadow damage.
Honestly I’d almost rather they ditch the silence factor and gives the shadow damage on a ten second cooldown. The silence is nice and all, but its not like I have a big problem against most casters as it stands anyway. These long cooldowns are doing a good deal of damage to pet skill usefulness.
The new tallstrider dust cloud isn’t bad, but it WAS better. Right now its at most a one missed attack ability. But in its old form it was a very, VERY large chance to miss for everyone in an AoE radius on a twenty second cooldown, or around a fourteen second cooldown talented. That was only a six second period where they were unaffected. Honestly, that WAS overpowered. Most people in PvP or PvE only stack enough to hit to cover there inate chance to miss. Trust me, 30% is huge, and really was to much. But doing a double nerf was a bit much on their behalf as well.
Yeah, being a PVE’er by nature my first impression of the cunning family was not very good, but when you look at them as PVP pets (which Blizz has said they are intended to be), they actually start looking pretty good.
Ansawa-
I do think they should up the RAP scaling if they give LB a cooldown. It would make Wind Serpents very competative.
I do think that they could move the Wind Serpents and Dragonhawks out of the Cunning category and into the ferocity one. I don’t really see them as PvP pets, but rather solid fighting pets. Or even to move the Wind Serpents into Ferocity and the Dragonhawk into Tenacity. Dragonhawks make excellent tanking pets, I found. One blast of FB was usually enough to keep the mobs on the DH and off me :)
Palla-
I agree with you there. This is another case of putting a pet in the wrong spot. I’d rather see Nether Rays get put in Ferocity with just a straight up damage spell than in Cunning.
Actually, now that I have looked at it, cunning is a lot better then I thought. I never thought it was bad, just not as good as the other two. But it has a single talent that puts it on par with ferocity. Owls focus. Thats a 30% chance to get a free focus dump OR major ability in for free. I think cunning pets will be able to make the most out of large focus costing abilities, AND out of simple focus dumps. That is also, I believe, the man reason for the lightning breath nerf. Because the second, every second owls focus went off from bite OR from itself, that’d be an instant, armor ignore, now scaling lighting blast in the face, with the 30% chance that that ability would set off ANOTHER free lighting breath. Unless there is an internal cooldown on that ability, then it, and cunning pets, are going to be INSANE.
main reason* Bah, stupid typo.
Even though they don’t have the skills at all yet, I still feel sorry for my crab and tallstrider. I expected Pin to have it’s cooldown increased, but at 1 minutes CD, a 4-second duration seems a bit cheap. I think it should have stayed 6.
You’re going to hear me saying this a lot, but … It’s early in beta. Things are going to change one way and then back again, and then get tweaked some other way and then wobble back and forth a few more times. This is one of the big frustrations of beta testing — you think Blizzard has it just about perfect and then they go and change everything on you again.
But there are a lot of moving pieces that need to come together, and a lot more time to get everything synched up just right. In particular, the further into beta we go the more players will have a chance to participate and the more fine-grained feedback Blizzard will get on all aspects of the game.
So at this point I am sitting back, taking deep breaths, trying not to seize on any particular change — and giving as much feedback as possible, of course. :>
(And I say this as someone who almost broke her cell phone throwing it across the room in a rage when I first read that each pet family had access to only one talent tree. I do my best not to post my more excessive reactions to pet changes because I don’t think it’s helpful, but be assured that they exist. *grin*)
@Palladia: …you know, I’d never considered that. Yeah, a chain of free lightning breath would be a VERY BAD thing. XD Although obviously they could put an internal CD on Owl’s Focus that would accomplish the same thing and avoid other such abuses.
*laughs* As I recall, Mania, my response to the one talent tree discovery was “BULL !@#$ING !@#$!!!!” I know we all find things to complain about, but the changes being made really are sweeping. They are not little things, they are not minor, easy to tweak things either. As I think about it, I realize that nether rays/tallstriders/crocs/crabs having ANY ability at all is just fantastic. For so many years now three of those four have had zero, and have been less then popular because of it. Now at least they may finally get some lime light, though I can hope that they alter their abilities a bit more for the better in the time between now and release.
Ansawa, no offense intended, but I’d rather lighting breath have the cooldown and owls focus not. To explain myself, think of it this way. Bite is now a 25 focus, instant use ability that does 120-170 damage that is affected by your pets AP. Now toss in, say, your 30% critical chance and go for the throat. NOW toss in Owls Focus. For giggles, toss in the new beast master ability cobra strikes, which gives you a sixty percent chance on arcane, steady, or kill shot for your pets next THREE special abilities to be criticals. You kinda see where thats going? Ferocity will be able to deal more damage on a per attack basis, but cunning pets will have the chance to put a whole world of hurt on people in a real hurry. And just for fun, they threw in wolverine bite, for the dodgey types. How kind of them.
Arcane, steady shot, kill shot criticals* For my daily triple post.
I can see that, Palladia. I just think it would be more efficient if Owl’s Focus had an internal CD–and if it doesn’t, Blizzard may be setting themselves up for trouble. XD
*Grins* Lots and lots of trouble, Ansawa. I would imagine that it will HAVE to have one, since in its current state it sounds to good. But I do understand the desire to have no cooldown on lightning breath, even with my piddly 25% unbuffed critical, when I happen to tame a windserpent they go nuts.
Just backing up what Mania said here folks: don’t get too attached to *any* of the numbers on the pet family abilities or the pet talent trees. Once the talent trees are stable for all of the classes (as well as hunter pets), Blizzard will start in on their normalisation passes looking at the sustained DPS output the various classes are capable of. For hunters, that is going to include our pets, and if any one pet starts outshining the others too severely on the DPS front then expect it to be nerfed in very short order.
Even after the 3.0 patch goes live, I would expect a few tweaks, especially to the hunter pet abilities – I doubt there are enough hunters in the beta for us to figure out all the possible creative combinations of hunter talents, pet talents and pet family skills.
HUGE nerfs to ALL pet abilities (cept snap, warp which was useless and prowl who was incredibly situational). thanks blizzard
i knew i could put my trust on you to keep us hunters down preventing our pets utility to even come remotly close to the usefulness of warlock pets.
all of you calling any of the old abilities overpowered havent thought longer than your nose. having POWERFUL abilities on pets doesnt make it OP persee, since the obvious reaction on the other side right after the huge qq on forums by the retards is to counter it and 2 shot the pet which they will still do even as 51 BM. that dust cloud just made your 3 melee dps loose 30% hit? wham! target switch and dead hunter pet faster than it takes a hunter to cast mend pet. same with crab pin down. NO class equally geared will have any problems whatsoever to solo kill your pet faster than it takes you to even get him down to 75% hp unless hes a complete retard.
Shaile? What are you talking about? It takes an S3 or T6 geared to my cobled together gear to drop my pets in any sort of short order, unless they come under focus fire from multiple enemies. And thats on live servers, before the buffs that are incoming. Any one dumb enough to focus on my pet and not me ends up dead real quick, usually well before my pet is even half way dead. And yes, having an ability that drops the accuracy of everything in an eight meter radius by 30% potentially every 14 seconds and lasting for eight seconds was a bit much. That being said, I hate it that people are already whining so much about hunter pets.
How quickly people forget… folks, the baseline buffs to all pets in Wrath are already massive. Our pets will be tougher, faster and putting out more damage and threat no matter what happens with the family specific abilities. I expect that to be true even for cats and wind serpents (which currently look like they will be taking fairly solid hits to their focus-based DPS output).
Would I like to see some of the family abilities on a shorter cooldown so they see more use? Yes I would, but that doesn’t change the fact that a buff which ends up being less than you may have hoped for is far from being the same thing as an actual nerf.
“Your boar gores the enemy for damage. Causes double damage if used during a Dash”
so this means that boar hit 50-60 dmg normaly and 100-120 during dash?
that blows -__-’ idiot blizz
(sorry for dople post)
Dash last 16 sec and has 30 sec DC, Gore has 10 sec DC…So, boar can get one hit that makes 100 dmg.. what is the point?
or how knows, we will see… :-/
(Hmm.. the text don’t (or the blizz) tell how much Gore will deal damage, maybe 70 -80 or even 100 normaly?)
A BM hunter with Longevity will bring the Gore cooldown down to 7 seconds (up to three during the first Dash at 1, 8 and 15 seconds) and the Dash cooldown down to 21 seconds (allow it to be triggered again before the Boar’s fourth use of Gore). So a BM hunter can arrange for every single Gore their Boar uses to deal double damage for minimal extra focus cost.
Even non-BM hunters can now get the double damage effect 66% of the time instead of 50% – their pet can use Gore at 1 and 11 seconds for double damage, again at 21 seconds for normal damage, before starting the cycle over again for double damage after Dash cools down at the 30 second mark.
Given that Gore is only a 50% chance to deal double damage on live, the change to make it guaranteed double damage during Dash largely a buff rather than a nerf.
Palladiamors – most melee can 2-shot pets in arena ime
I am beastmaster, Katari, so maybe that is the difference? But even my dear partners cats can’t be two shot in arena, even by high end gear teams. Dropped quickly, sometimes, but not two shot. But, speaking as some one who has played all walks of armor types, the only things that should realisitcally be two shotting you are bosses, high end fire mages, and rogues who double critical ambush. Mind you that is speaking from a literal sense, and at level seventy, but thats also with the consideration of quest greens and blues, and a piece or two of the starting PvP equipment ((Ahh, the memories)). I say you because pets have a moderate amount of armor, even without talents, so they should always have more armor then mail minus shield, leather ((Not dire bear form)), and cloth. What they do lack is hit points, and thats never fully rectified.
Can people kill pets in short order, yes. I even said as much. But unless your walking around in leather and haven’t spent any skill points in armor or stamina, then it shouldn’t happen to often in a regular PvP enviroment.
I agree with Palladia here–I’m also Beastmastery, but it was rare my pet got two-shot or even died inside the amount of time it would take for Gift of the Naaru and Mend Pet to tick, unless the entire opposing team focus-fired.
Most people ignored pets, though, unless I was dumb enough to let Neme out of my line of sight.
Blues HAVE said they will be looking at pet scaling with respect to things like resilience, too.
your plain out wrong palladiamors, im a bm and i do arena rather unsuccessfully since i dont wanna go mm and i got the armor talent AND the hp talent for my pet as well as the skills for more hp AND resistance against the most common dmg types that kills my pet and the only teams that doesnt kill my pet before the second tick of mend pet is double healer one dps teams. i suggest you go do some bg so you get some wellfare epics then do arena and you will notice that when you start at 1500 your opponents mostly have full s3 gear. noones using greens or blues so i dont care if your pet survive the onslaught of those kind of noobs.
pets has no resilience.
pets has no parry.
pets has no block.
pets has SHIT dodge.
pets has SHIT hp.
alas, pets has NO survivability in arena currently and from what ive read about the improvements to pets compared to the new talents and skills that rogues warriors warlocks mages gets pets will have NO survivability at lvl 80 either. stop trying to tell otherwise.
30% missrate on 8 yard aoe for 8 sec of 14 might SOUND overpowered but is not when you start to actually think and count on it. it only affects rogues and warriors really, which funnily enough are the pretty much only ones in arena who has no counter. shamans, DKs, palas has magical means of doing dmg which wont be affected. and any arena team seeing a tallstrider WILL know it has that skill and will consequently take 2-4 sec off their time to kill the pet then continue as normal. i can though see a potencial missuse in 5 man instances which tbh shouldnt be a deciding factor for any balancing issues at all so i wouldnt mind lowering it to 25% for 6 sec of 20 sec cd which would be perfectly balanced. ONE miss is just utterly useless and not worth the focus it costs to use even compared to shit dps skills like bite.
@Shaile
Sir, I think you don’t understand how strong our pets really are.
I used to do arena, but I didn’t bother changing from my raiding survival spec.
I used a wind serpent, spec’d for raiding (avoidance, cobra reflexes, hi HP, medium armour).
I would send Dreadfang around to hit the hostile healer before each team could hide / get a look at the other team.
Even with the entire hostile team in a 5v5 attacking my pet, it still took a good 6-7 seconds for them to kill it.
Now think of how far you can push a pet if you know what you’re doing in PvP.
I don’t like PvP and I did arena for the welfare epics.
Just posting my 2 cents.
sigh
do i have to post a video of my pet getting owned in second in a 3v3 not even a 5v5 in mere seconds and im not using scrub gear? because what you are saying to an outright lie. there is no possible way a full 5v5 team will fail to take out a pet in less than 4 sec unless you play in 1300 rating and are meeting bots. there just isnt.
I think this thread is beginning to devolve. :> Why don’t we let this drop for now and see what the next patch brings.
Incidentally, since I’m not doing any instancing or raiding or battlegrounds or arena in the beta, I’d be very interested to hear from any beta testers who are doing those things about how their pets are doing right now.
and i who thought we just had a decent discussion starting instead of the usual circle jerk agreeing that usually runs rampant. ah well. you seriously need a forum here mania.
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