89 thoughts on “Beta Pet Skill Changes”

1. 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

2. 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.

3. 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/

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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!

7. @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.

8. 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.

9. @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.

10. @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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. main reason* Bah, stupid typo.

16. 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.

17. 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*)

18. @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.

19. *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.

20. 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.

21. Arcane, steady shot, kill shot criticals* For my daily triple post.

22. 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

23. *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.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. “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

30. (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?)

31. 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.

32. Palladiamors – most melee can 2-shot pets in arena ime

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. @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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.