Cunning Pets Add 5% DPS
Rotseh, a hunter from EU-Proudmoore, and Solaia, proprietor of the fine German pet site Solaia’s Wildtierkunde, both wrote in some time ago to let me know that the stat modifiers for the Cunning tree were changed at some point, probably in the patch before last.
I did some quick tests just to confirm, and it’s true: Cunning pets now get a +5% base damage modifier where before they had no bonus to base damage. (Note that since I don’t have exact forumulas for damage modifiers, this +5% is compared to Tenacity pets, whom we assume to have no bonus modifier.)
That means that the pet stats now look like this in the beta:
| Tree | Health Mod | Armor Mod | Damage Mod |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cunning | +5% | +5% | +5% |
| Ferocity | +5% | +10% | +10% |
| Tenacity | +10% | +15% | +0% |
Table of Contents for Series: WotLK Pet Stats
- WotLK: Beta Pet Stats [Updated]
- Cunning Pets Add 5% DPS
25 Comments
Food for thought. Is there a chance that Cunning is the base line? Just since its flat 5% across the board and the rest aren’t. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with all the intricacies of finding this information out.
Either way, The over effect seems right for the goals.
Balance (Cunning), DPS (Ferocity), Tanking (Tanacity)
Keep up the great work.
What I don’t understand is if Cunning is Balance, why WOULDN’T you take a Ferocity pet instead? I mean barring looks, it would be pretty stupid to give up 5% on armor and dps. Guess my beta hunter has more testing to do, because I love my Chimaera, but if ferocity is that much better and no drawbacks, then my wolf is staying with me. Now with more stable slots and the level nerf in beta, I can get my boar from RFK back! YAY!
Faulk_Wulf: That could be true for damage, but for armor and health we know how the numbers are derived and we can calculate the actual bonus.
slayerboy: Keep in mind that the base modifiers do not include skills or talents. Especially in the Wrath world, talents are going to be *way* more important than simple base stats.
Just curious, comparing to what those % are counting? To untamed pet? To each other? Coz if the last one, then why isn’t it be right to take the lowes one as 0? Sorry if that sounds messy, english is not my native language. ^^ I mean what will be the diffenense benween:
Cunning +5% +5% +5%
Ferocity +5% +10% +10%
Tenacity +10% +15% +0%
and
Cunning +0% +0% +5%
Ferocity +0% +5% +10%
Tenacity +5% +10% +0%
?
@ Tarika: I think its not compared to eachother, but to some kind of baseline stats. i mean, in the proces of calculating is might be compared to eachother but that won’t be concerned in the tabell. for example you won’t be able to compare cunning and ferocitiy without concerning the stats of temacy, and so on which is possible very well if you compare it to some kind of baseline.
sorry for bad english
Looks like they’re tweaking it, but still not enough IMO. If they’re working to have Cunning pets be the new jack of all, master of none (which would be fine with me) then they need to have more armor than Ferocity pets.
I’ll be running with a Bird of Prey regardless (benefits of being in a casual guild) but I would like to see Cunning become a viable option. Currently it’s not.
For health, the comparison is to the standard 10 health per stamina rule. So Ferocity and Cunning pets are getting 10.5 health per stamina without talents, while Tenacity pets are getting 11 health per stamina. Note that using 10.5 health per stamina as the baseline to give the Ferocity and Cunning trees a health modifier of 0% would make the Tenacity bonus somewhere around ((11 - 10.5) / 10.5) = 4.76%, which isn’t a very easy number to work with.
For armour, the comparison is to the 35% of the hunter’s armour that pets have received since patch 2.0. So Cunning pets are currently gaining 36.75% of the hunter’s armour, Ferocity pets 38.5% and Tenacity pets 40.25%. As with health, changing the baseline to be the armour gain of the Cunning pets would move the percentage increases away from being nice round numbers.
For DPS, there’s no exact formula, so as Mania posted, it is just a matter of picking one pet group as the baseline and seeing what the results are. The fact that the numbers again come out pretty evenly suggest that Tenacity pets actually are the baseline pet for the game itself rather than an arbitrary choice.
As to why anyone would use a Cunning pet over a Ferocity pet given the current family abilities and talent trees:
- many of the Cunning pet families either have additional DPS or good utility due to their family abilities (especially in PvP)
- a hunter may choose to teach their Cunning pet Owl’s Focus and then skip getting Go for the Throat and/or Bestial Discipline in their own spec, freeing up those talent points to be used for something else
- Roar of Recovery may be a useful mana recovery talent for hunters, particularly in a 10-man raid or small groups that may be short a mana battery class
- we don’t know yet how the DPS increase of Wolverine Bite and Feeding Frenzy will compare to that of Rabid in the Ferocity tree
Raw damage with melee and other physical attacks is far from being the only thing a pet brings to the table :)
Kavu, Nimizar, thanks for the answers. Now this % table makes alot more sense. ^^
This is good, now it means that most pets will be balanced out a bit more, instead of the pet having one stat to focus on
Whether the numbers are what they currently are,
5 5 5
5 10 10
10 15 0
or set so that one is the baseline,
0 0 0
0 5 5
5 10 -5
the relationship is still the same, so it’s really just up to an arbitrary decision on how to view them until it’s determined exactly through data mining or something of that nature. I don’t think they’re done with the stats yet though, since cunning curently still lacks 10 “percent points” in comparison to the others.
I personnaly feel Cunning is geting a little undergraded. All the rest adds up to 25, while cunning gets 15… now I know that the allocation is more important than actual numbers, but at least give cunning a 8% spread then…
I agree inzeen
In fact I think that damage is the best spent of the three, in terms of what you get, since pet health and armor are low.
Since our pets survivabilty is low, any points spent in this category should be worth less than dps, since our pets arent up to task like they are at dps. They are two different realms, and they shouldnt be treated equally.
Cunning and tenacity should be given more stats than ferocity since they are spent in survivability.
For example
C 10 10 5
F 5 10 10
T 15 15 0
(Im assuming they are balancing cunning with talent trees, so im only going to buff them up to 25 total)
How exactly do they rationalize the difference in % of the families? It seems like cunning pets get the shafted in the end. 10/15% for Tenacity pets is pretty damn impressive. 5/10/10 for ferocity pets is also great, but only 5% across the board for cunning pets?
now carrion birds better DD then cats) but I still like my turquoise tallstrider
I do not really like the Ferocity pets getting a distinct advantage in terms of stats over Cunning.
I would go with the
0 0 0
0 5 5
5 10 -5
Theory (I know they aren’t perfect numbers, but just in terms of differential they work). So if you look at the differential numbers, Ferocity get 10″points” more than Cunning and Tenacity gets the same 10 points. So if Cunning is the baseline pet, they get the shaft. In the past we saw some relative tendancies for the “dps pets” to have added dps but most had either baseline or slightly elevated armor/health. I much would have preferred a slight tweaking to pets individually, rather than “talent family”. They could have given us alot more valid choices if they had kept Owls and Windserpents “dps pets” but gave them the cunning tree. Or given Wolves a baseline set of stats and put in the ferocity tree. If this goes through, there may be slightly more types of “generic pets” than there were before, but there still will be alot of the “everyone has a cat, scorpid” syndrome, just on a slightly spread out scale.
Fairwell to the Era of the Cat. Hello to the Era of the Dog.
First off, if you think everyone will only take a DPS pet, I suggest you check out a specific video. Do a search for Hunter Solo Onyxia, you’ll find it.
Secondly, I’m very excited about the Cunning Tree.
Carrion Feeder will save us so much feeding time, and can be used during combat as a quick health recharge.
Feeding Frenzy looks like it was designed for Heroics/Raiding when so many bosses become difficult around the 20% point.
Owl’s Focus will make your pets abilities that much more efficient, allowing them more DPS then if they were running out of focus.
Roar of Recovery turns your pet into a handly little Mana battery.
And Bullheaded has amazing PvP potential, almost like an extra Beastial Wrath.
Thats just my 2 coppers though =D
@Kalalay …
I would say I am excited about everything you mentioned there except the completely broken “Carrion Feeder”
Carrion Feeder as it is now is non functional I believe. Although it was changed to only work on non mechanical/elementals a few patches ago, it is extremely limited. It is completely subpar as a talent compared to the “loyalty/happiness” talents that are in the other two trees. Simply put, the ability requires “fleshy dead corpses” extremely close by to work. As a raider who currently, uses a Wind Serpent as my main pet, this is disconcerting. 95$ of fights where your pet may die, have no corpses around to feed on. While Ferocity/Tenacity pets have the quick fire ability to gain happiness back after a death regardless of the circumstances, Cunning pets do not.
I really hope they change this ability to be something akin to “Ripped Flesh” and require nothing more than a living monster or boss. Right now the so called “Utility Tree” is gimped from a raiding perspective. Is this tree the PvP tree? No its not. If it were in fact changed to be a more PvP centric tree then thats one thing, but its not.
I had no idea Carrion Feeder was so non-functional, I agree, and hope they tidy that one up.
Well, let’s not forget what this post is about: They buffed the Cunning pets by giving them +5% DPS. They used to have +/-0% DPS before and you did not complain. :)
I haven’t watched it myself, but my understanding is that the hunter soloing Onyxia video relies heavily on the current Roar of Sacrifice bug where the pet doesn’t actually take any damage (i.e. correct behaviour of RoS is that if you use it to full effect, the pet will lose 50% of its max health and then the hunter will start taking damage again, but the current behaviour is that the hunter and the pet take zero damage for the whole 12 second duration). Still an impressive feat, but not really indicative of what will be possible once that bug is fixed.
As far as the stat modifiers go… they’re actually pretty minor details when it comes to overall pet effectiveness, and are mainly there as a balancing tool that Blizzard can tweak if they feel any of the 3 groups of pets is grossly overpowered or underpowered. Outside of absolute min/max pure DPS top-end raiding hunters, pet talents and family abilities are going to matter a lot more.
That said, I would definitely agree that Cunning is currently the weakest of the 3 trees, mainly because the happiness and health recovery mechanic of Carrion Feeder is fairly poor relative to Bloodthirsty for Ferocity pets and the Guard Dog/Blood of the Rhino combination for Tenacity pets. Carrion Feeder is a cute idea, but the only times there are likely to be enough edible corpses around to use it is when levelling or farming (and sometimes on instance/raid trash).
Outside of that though, Nimizar, would you please explain to everyone that the Cunning tree is not as bad as they seem to think it is?
And out of curiousity, why not make it so that they had something like improved leader of the pack, where a critical hit would restore so many hit points and so much loyalty…. that way it isn’t exactly the same as the ferocity talent…. just food for thought.
@Palladiamors …
Let me clarify, I do not believe the tree is a bad one. The utility given with Owl’s Focus and Roar of Recovery would seem like a phenomenal pairing. My issues with the current tree is that it lacks any real focus. Yes, I know its thought to be the “Utility Tree” and thus it will be a bit more spread out than the other two. However, the tree itself is just a bundle of non synergy. Wolverine Bite being the equivalent to old school Mongoose Bite is going to be near worthless in both PvE and PvP settings. If the dodge requirement being removed would fix this, but I do not see that happening. Furthermore, its prereq of needing 3/3 Greater Resistance is stupid. (Although do not get me going about the Resistance Talent to begin with.)
The tree has some really good talents. Feeding Frenzy, Roar of Recovery, and Owl’s Focus (Provided there is no internal cooldown on the proc) are all phenomenal. If they can fix Wolverine Bite, make Feeding Frenzy a talent that is on par with the Health/Recovery talent in the other two trees this tree will be pretty damn good.
Wolverine Bite has nothing in common with the live version of Mongoose Bite:
- WB triggers when the target dodges, while the live MB triggers only when the hunter dodges
- WB cannot be dodged, parried or blocked, live MB is just a normal attack
- WB hits really hard relative to the pet focus dump abilities (405 damage for level 80 WB, compared to 120-170 damage for the level 80 rank of the focus dumps)
If you’re going to compare Wolverine Bite to anything, compare it to a version of a Warrior’s Overpower ability that does something like 200% weapon damage, not to a hunter’s Mongoose Bite.
The only thing wrong with WB as a talent as it currently stands is that you have to waste three points in a generally undesirable talent (Great Resistance) in order to unlock WB.
Feeding Frenzy (a 40% damage buff for the last 20% of the target’s health) also works out to about an 8% overall buff to a Cunning pet’s DPS.
And at a 30% chance per 1.5 seconds for a free 20-25 focus, Owl’s Focus ain’t bad either.
The ridiculous prereq talent for Wolverine Bite and the relative ineffectiveness of Carrion Feeder are my only real gripes with the Cunning tree - aside from those two issues it looks great.
I asked this question before, but never recieved any answers… so,I am gonna sk it again. For Carrion Feeder, will all Cunning pets be able to use this. This may sound like a stupid question, but not all pets in the tree can eat meat. So, I am curiosu to know if all the pets can use Carrion Feeder. Also, while I am writing something here, I am gonna throw in one more question. Does anybody know anything new about Caster pets? Are they going away? If so, when? Before or after WOTLK is released? If you have a caster pet before the change over, will it automatically become a regular pet after the change, or will you get to keep the caster pet? Or will I have to go out and recatch a Dragonhawk? Ok, that’s a few more questions than i expected, but I may as well get them in here. I am in the dark about the future of caster pets. If anybody knows anything, or can link a page that i can read the changes from, pease feel free to write. Thanks.
[...] Originally Posted by PSGarak Neither of these are a problem if the ferocity talent tree is also balanced around being slightly worse than the cunning tree. If the bonuses plus the trees are balanced, there’s no need for the bonuses, or trees, to be balanced in their own right. Well, right now if you don’t have the 51-BM talent then Ferocity and Cunning pets are both perfectly viable. If you do have 51-BM then the additional points scale far better with Ferocity pets and you’re strongly advised as things stand to use one. RogueLeaderX - yep, there’s a reason for it being that way: see here [...]
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