Comments on: Ghostcrawler on Expensive Pet Skills – Updated!

By: Mania’s Arcania » WotLK Beta Build 8788

Mania’s Arcania » WotLK Beta Build 8788 — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:07:09 +0000

[...] I mis-typed it the last time I recorded LB6 damage.) In particular, it doesn’t look like the focus changes that Ghostcrawler mentioned made it into this build. But Koraa mentioned earlier today that the [...]

By: Nimizar

Nimizar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:02:53 +0000

@Stranger: at the very least, Owl’s Focus should work out to a free use of the pet’s focus dump. Even with Bestial Discipline, pets still don’t have enough focus to use their focus dump every GCD (BD works out to 12 focus per second, the focus dump consumes 16.7 focus per second). Having both Owl’s Focus and Go for the Throat will probably be fairly redundant though.

@Maug: focus management has become a problem in Wrath due to two things:
- the vast array of new pet family abilities and talents added, many with high focus costs
- the fact that some of those abilities are reactive ones, where you want to use then now rather than in a few seconds when the focus is available

The change GC describes gets rid of the high focus costs on some abilities (controlling their rate of use solely via cooldowns), which makes the reactive abilities usable as needed, while still allowing trade-offs between the basic focus dump and other DPS and threat related abilities that still have a focus cost.

By: Stranger

Stranger — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:43:19 +0000

And another point:
If these “expensive skills” became free, the “owl’s focus” talent in Cunning tree will become nonsense.

By: Palladiamors

Palladiamors — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:28:14 +0000

Sorry Stranger, but thats not how lay on hands works any more. Much to my seventy holy paladins delight, lay on hands is now a fifteen minute cooldown that no longer consumes all of the paladins mana. But yours isn’t a bad idea. Still, I’ll take free if I can get it. *laughs*

By: Stranger

Stranger — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:02:17 +0000

Free of focus for long cooldown abilities is alright. But for some high tier talent abilities (such as call of the wild, roar of recovery), free focus seemed somewhat overpowered.
I would suggest that these abilities will consume ALL remaining focus, just like “Lay on hand” of Paladin does.

By: Maug

Maug — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:18:09 +0000

do not understand all this…
the way pet abilities worked even in tbc was fine.. there was enough focus for all I needed on cd.

this will end up as another nerf to us…

By: Rook

Rook — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:23:33 +0000

Regarding the change to Kill Command it seems that it’s current 3 charge form is fairly weak since you cant control which specials take the charges. Also no talent calc I’ve seen has changed the wording on Focused Fire. I think a better concept for Kill Command is just a flat +% damage for specials for a set time (if it stays at 60% maybe a 10 sec duration and if it gets reduced then a reasonable increase in duration to say 20 secs) also it should be affected by Longevity

By: Selesti

Selesti — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:51:38 +0000

It’s good to see that some people are leaving some useful information for Blizzard to work with. There are a lot of good points here too regarding focus and such. I’m sure there will be some more tweeking, but it’s good to know they’re considering all the options.

Btw, for those who didn’t get the beta invite, Curse Gaming is doing a contest involving the new Competitor’s Tabard Blizz had for the Olympics. The prize includes a free beta key. Lucky I was able to get my tabard, and my baby dragon, in 2 AV runs. You guys should check it out.

By: rehnkvist

rehnkvist — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:55:33 +0000

or, leave pin at 80 focus, but take away the CD, KKthxbai. kidding…

basically the failure of focus as a power system is that we can’t control it well. sure, a streak of misses might leave a warrior/bear a little rage starved, but they have abilities to get the rage right away if they need it. likewise, mana and energy are both easy to control and budget. focus is largely beyond the realm of our control.

By: Ketari

Ketari — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:35:10 +0000

Phetsen – good idea