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.
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.
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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:
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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