Ghostcrawler’s Arcania: Extreme Pet Abilities
Ghostcrawler was out in force last night answering many questions about pets and pet skills on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum.
First, the great news: Wasps are definitely non-exotic:
We didn’t want BM to have all the fun. Wasps for everyone!
Pet Abilities - Damage and Scaling
Ghostcrawler mentioned several times in these posts that the current damage numbers on pet abilities are placeholders; Blizzard hasn’t done a real DPS pass over pet abilities yet. More interesting, however, is that they apparently intend all pet abilities to scale with attack power.
On pet abilities and AP in general:
They should scale with AP, though many of the numbers themselves are definitely placeholder.
Note that the context makes clear that this includes abilities such as Bite and Claw as well.
On changes to Froststorm Breath:
Almost all the pet specials are set at the same numbers. They are just placeholder.
The only bug that was fixed was that the chimera was getting an insane coefficient on its damage.
And yes, I believe the slow is still broken.
And more on Froststorm Breath:
The reason the spell was doing too much damage was because of a typo in its spellpower coefficient. We are trying to convert all of these over to scale off of AP instead.
It was just a bug fix, not the nerf bat. Almost all of the new abilities have placeholder numbers in place. We’re trying to get the mechanics ironed out before we put in final numbers.
Finally, some hunters were concerned that they’d be forced into bringing worms and wasps along on raids for the armor reduction effects. Ghostcrawler responded:
The worm and wasp abilities won’t stack with similar player abilities.
The idea is that if you have a tank that doesn’t debuff armor and nobody else in the raid in a position to do it, then the worm becomes an interesting choice.
The dps between ferocity and tenacity shouldn’t be that extreme in any case. We didn’t want tenacity only ever used for tanking and only ferocity pets brought on raids.
To me, the most interesting part of this response is the last paragraph. The pet talent tree system gives us strong indications of what pets might be more useful for us depending on what we’re planning on doing with them. But those are general guidelines, not constraints, and the family skills can break the mold.
Unfortuntely, since the family skills in particular are still lacking their final damage and AP scaling, it’s not always clear to us at this point how that balance will work out.
Pet Talents
Ghostcrawler also had a good bit to say on the functionality (or lack thereof) and changes coming to various pet talents.
Give us a little more credit than that. :)
Almost all of the pet specials were changed to cost no Focus but be on a longer cooldown. That way they aren’t competing so much for your Bite Focus and you can use them when you want them.
Having the pet take damage from Roar of Sacrifice is still a bug waiting to be fixed.
Next patch Tenacity pets will lose Dash and gain Charge. See how that feels.
We’ll switch the Boar back to benefiting from Charge as well.
And:
We’re not pulling Charge from Ferocity.
The ideas is that Charge is generally better than Dash, but is deeper in the tree. Under this new change, for Tenacity Intervene is better and deeper.
Unfortunately this is a limitation of the talent.
Hunter pets reset all their cooldowns when they are summoned. So without this up-front cooldown, you could use the ability instantly every time the pet died, because death resets the cooldown.
Originally, we had this talent as an automatic, but that was less useful.
Context on Heart of the Phoenix: Right now the 10 minute cooldown resets not only when your pet dies, but any time the pet is dismissed — for instance when you mount up, or run out of pet range.
And More to Come
I’ve skipped over a lot of comments by Koraa, by the way, that deal specifically with hunter skills and talents and don’t mention pets. But Koraa did make one important comment (in the context of a question about Lock & Load) that may explain, among other things, why rhinos don’t have a family skill yet:
I know, this will be fixed in a future build. Data was pulled while we were still working on a lot of things.
80 Comments
“Almost all of the pet specials were changed to cost no Focus but be on a longer cooldown”
More cooldown nerfs? Sigh. The longer cooldown family abilities just don’t offer enough return compared to things like lightning breath or swipe
I’m still not sure I like the removal of Dash/Dive from Tenacity in favor of Charge. I’ve never found Charge all that useful, and it ends up being a big nerf for Boars.
About the problem with Heart of the Phoenix. Why the doesn´t change the cooldown with a debuff like the Priestspell Powerword: Shield.
“Cannot be ressurected by Heart of the Phoenix”
I really dislike that our Tenacity pets are getting charge inplace of dash.. I wanted to see my rhino just hauling up to everyone.. I’d love to see the fear in their face from that.. I’ve also never been much of a fan of charge.
@ Shaigon
The problem would be that dying again would remove that debuff as well and make Heart avaible for use again.
i honestly think you should be able to choose what talent tree your pet can use, but once points are spent in that tree they can only be put in the tree you spent the point in.
It’s mostly us with pigpals who are concerned about Charge. Did the new Gore not sufficently emulate Charge? *is still not in the beta* :P
Never being a fan of boars, I never used one as a main so I can’t say whether it’s a nerf or not. But I can say I way prefer Dash > Charge. Bummer now that my rhino has to have it.
Well he said “let’s see how that feels” right? So perhaps it’s just still a tossup thing. It may not be permanent.
Bobo, I understand that you and a few others where concerned about the boars losing Charge, but the big problem is that they should have given Charge to Tenacity pets without taking Dash away. This is indeed a big nerf to your Boar’s mobility. Having both is the best way to go. Hopefully the devs will change a few things to make sure the Tenacity pets aren’t nerfed anymore.
Has anyone considered the fact that having Dash -AND- Charge makes a certain tree overpowered?
As I said in a comment on another entry, if charge instead of dash goes live when LK hits it may well change my decision on which tenacity pet to get. Warp + dash == fun + mobility, warp + charge == somewhat redundant.
That being said, the notion of a charging worm a la the ones in Silithus is kind of amusing.
I don’t see the problem with replacing dash with charge.
When boars didn’t get charge with the new talent tree setup, people made a big stink about it, and now that they get that ability back, THAT’S no good either? Talk about a tough crowd here! Seems there’s no pleasing some people… :P
Sheesh guys. Charge was always better than dash anyway, if you took the time to properly examine both skills.
1: charge CD is 5 seconds shorter than dash (or dive) on live; in the beta it’s currently *7* seconds shorter. When you’re grinding this does make quite a bit of difference.
2: charge gives extra AP and aggro to the pet; dash does neither.
3: charge follows warrior charge/intercept pathing mechanics, meaning the pet can reach trickily positioned targets more easily - ie go straight up a really steep incline, etc. A dashing pet just rushes here and there until it somehow manages to work itself to where it’s supposed to.
4: total travel time is not much different between the two skills overall. Charge has a fairly long range and hits instantly once it goes off server-side (just like warrior or creature charge-type skills might be added). Unless you often attack things that are beyond firing range you’re unlikely to experience much difference in time to target for your pet. If it’s that big a deal for you, put 1 talent point into boar’s speed - which at least on live does NOT stack with dash/dive, and you get the best of both worlds.
So summing everything up, would I rather have a skill that cools down much faster and causes extra aggro to my TANKING pet over a skill that just makes it run faster for 15 seconds (of which at least 10 will be wasted while the pet stands still in one place tanking the target)? You betcha I would!
FaaR-
You have played a Warrior with Charge? I mean, honestly, truly? I have a Warrior alt, and my first character was a Warrior. Trust me, we get a lot of messages about there being no valid path to the mob. And they rush around looking for the right path as well.
Charge gives an AP bonus for ONE ATTACK. And, it isn’t a huge boost to damage either. The only reason why Boars were sought after for solo pets is that, for a very long time, Charge was giving a huge boost to Growl’s threat. That was removed.
And, have you ever actually used a boar pet? I’ve had them rush around looking for a valid path to the target.
Charge also lasts only a short time. Dash does not. Charge actually lasts until the pet/warrior gets to the boss. Dash lasts 16 full seconds. This means that, if the mob is a runner, the pet can keep up very well.
Add to that, Boars were going to get a double damage buff while Dash was up. This would proc twice durring Dash’s active time.
Oh, and I forgot, the white damage boost to that ONE AND SINGLE ATTACK will not cause enough of a boost in threat to even matter, and it fades fast.
To sum up, the usefullness of Charge has been severely inflated by people who haven’t quite caught up with the changes that were made to the skill, and that white damage has to be extremely strong in order to boost threat.
Charge gains threat also from the root it puts on the mob. Mobs generally don’t like being CCd.
Runners are pretty much never faster than normal running speed (and often slower, due to mobs low on health tending to limp as if injured), and dash’s cooldown is generally too long for it to be available to go off on demand anyway.
You’d get TWO gores doing double damage you say as an advantage, yet you scoff at charge’s AP buff? If one minorly buffed attack is irrelevant, then surely so are two. Especially as you’re far from guaranteed to GET two consistently per fight, due to long dash cooldown. My hunter’s ravager don’t even get to dash every fight; I kill too fast for that even with rather lousy gear.
I still say charge’s usefulness is greater for a tanking pet than dash. If you get a runner, hit it with concussion shot, then intimidate and nuke. Bam. Where would dash be advantageous in this situation? :P
I think losing the Focus cost on skills like Ravage and Nether Shock is nice. Oh and having wasps as a regular pet is really cool too.
IMO, Its stupid that Charge is replacing Dash/Dive in Tenacity. I don’t plan on using any pets from that tree mainly because I prefer the looks and talents of Ferocity/Cunning pets. I doesn’t really irritate me that Tenacity is getting Charge but its that a group of whinnie, boar-lovers complained so much about how their pets just wouldn’t be the same.
I am….. neutral at the moment. I see dash/dive as being more of a PvP type skill, less of a PvE one, really. I mostly use it as a way for my pets to keep up with the more annoying runners, and less of a way to close the distance to them. Now don’t get me wrong, Charge has its obvious PvP uses, but if anyone has ever had a warp stalker or boar suddenly warp/charge back at what is attacking you when your target dies, you know how much of a help it can be there. Still and all, tenaicty pets are getting intervene, which fits with their synergy a lot better then charge does on the over all.
From a ‘nature’ point of view, gore makes a ton more sense then charge. A boar will typically only charge ((Or only NEED to charge you once.)) before it gores your rear into the ground with its tusks. And this is on the fairly rare case that you make one angry, or make it feel threatened enough to actually attack you. So from this standpoint, while both make sense, gore definitely wins on the more fitting scale.
Sei is right Faar, Charge doesn’t generate threat anymore like it used to. Actually, as far as I know, it doesn’t generate threat at all. The immobilize just stops the target, no threat added there as it isn’t doing any damage at all. The threat you’re talking about was from the AP buff, and even then it was just cause Growl was gaining huge threat modifiers from the pet’s attack power being higher. Blizzard removed that not so long ago, in two ways.
I think the best solution is to give both Dash/Dive and Charge to all pets. That way everyone can chose what they prefer to use, Dashing, Charging, or both. There’s still the problem with Warp Stalkers having both Charge and Warp since they’re quite similar, but hey there’s always a way to fix this. I’m working on it still.
FaaR-
Yes, I scoff at the usefullness of Charge. The AP boost to a single attack will, maybe, be good when you get to lvl 80 and your pet has a huge AP bonus. When your pet has sixteen AP and it gets a boost of four DPS for a single attack, it isn’t worth much.
And the idea of a mob being so angry at a root that that boosts threat is also laughable. If that were the case, Hunters wouldn’t be able to pull off Boars still. Hunters still do enough damage to pull threat off their Boars. If the threat from a CC of any kind was that great, then it would be impossible for a Paladin, Warrior or Druid to pull aggro off of any crowd control class be it a Rogue, Warlock, Mage or what ever. Heck, my Warlock still almost instantly pulls aggro off her succubus after she stops seduce.
This all comes down to something that people really haven’t caught up on. Charge USE TO boost Growl’s threat generation. It no longer does. It still does not in Wrath.
And, yes, when you’re talking about a singular four DPS damage for one attack versus two 140-240 damage attacks, I’ll take the dual attack over the singular DPS boost. Like it or not, Charge is pretty darned useless. I know a lot of Hunters who never want to use it.
It comes down to this singular argument. If Charge was such an important skill, if it is such a great skill that it boosts threat generation, if it made Boars that much more viable, you would see a ton of Boars in end game use. The reality is that they peter out somewhere around lvl 30.
I don’t like the Charge change myself, since my Tenacity pet will be a warp stalker, and dash is more useful to the family overall. Anyone who’s seen a warp stalker land behind a running target and then have to scuttle to catch up knows what I mean.
so are they takeing away dash/dive compleatly from tenacity pets and forceing them to speck to get something like it back.or are they just makeing it so they get dash/dive and the tree has an “improved dash/dive” type thing?
They are taking Dash/Dive away and giving them Charge, Hyena84.
In PvE, pets need a movement skill for exactly one reason: closing quickly with the target. Dash/Dive achieve that by moving at 180% speed for 16 seconds, Charge/Swoop do it by moving at 100% speed to 25 yards, then closing the remaining distance instantly. I consider the abilities to be functionally equivalent from a PvE perspective - I never found my boar’s mobility to be lacking in any way on live despite the fact I only trained him in Charge and not Dash.
From a PvE mob management point of view, the burst threat was definitely nice, but the immobilise is excellent as well- sure, these days you need to use it in conjunction with an initial Misdirect, Intimidation or Feign Death to deal with the threat issue, but the immobilise still works beautifully to stop the mob running towards you.
For PvP, Dash has the advantage of making it impossible to run away from the pet for 16 seconds, but being able to use the immobilise on a flag runner or someone trying to get out of line of sight is also brilliant. The two abilities are definitely different, but neither is a clear winner in my mind - they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Finally, from a flavour point of view, I’m quite happy with the idea of Tenacity pets not being able to Dash the way the Cunning and Ferocity pets can. With this change, Ferocity pets will be able to get both Dash+Charge (and hence will be by far the quickest at getting to a target), Cunning pets will be able to get Dash+Mobility (and hence move at 180% speed permanently), and Tenacity pets will be able to get Charge+Intervene (able to close quickly for offense, but also able to move quickly to defend someone). Yes, Tenacity pets will have the lowest mobility of the three, but not so much lower as to make them useless.
so they dont have to speck for charge,they just get it instead of dash/dive?
I kind of agree that dash > charge, while I DO love charge, when I had a boar on my orc alt, and before Dash became available, it was a killer in pvp and letting boar keep aggro in pve- but the ‘fix’ broke it pve wise pretty much imo, and once you get dash, well Charge becomes redundant, as while Dash has no secondary effect, pvp wise imo it is better as it allows your pet to catch up to someone trying to get away from you better than Charge does, as Dash lasts 15 seconds, Charge lasts well, one charge.
I agree with Shinryu, give pets the option to learn Dash/Dive OR Charge, or both- or make it where it’s one skill you have to have taught to your pet, via the pet trainer. So if you want one or the other you have to shell over those ten silver and viola, dash one day, charge the next.
@Ketari: they didn’t increase any of the pet ability cooldowns with this change, they just took away the focus cost so the abilities could be used on demand instead of having to wait until focus was available (this is particularly important when trying to correctly time use of the stuns and interrupts). The only abilities which kept a focus cost were the ones with 10 second cooldowns which are intended to be on autocast along with the pet’s focus dump.
@hyena84: Dash/Dive are a pet talent in Wrath rather than a pet skill. The change GC indicated they are going to try is to put Charge in the relevant spot in the Tenacity tree instead of having Dash there.
Looks like all the QQers got their wish. If tenacity pets get Charge instead of Dash come Live…I’ll be sure to never pick one up…ever.
OK, I have asked this a few times and have never recieved a response. So,I am gonna ask it here, even though it has nothing to do with pet abilities. So, here goes: can anybody tell me what is happening with caster pets? Are they doing way with them? If so, when? Will my Dragonhawk automatically become a “normal” pet, or will I have to tame a new one? If anybody has any info on this, please write back.
And I am so glad that Wasps are not “exotic”. That is the one pet they have added that I definately want, and I don;t want to have to spend 51 points in my BM tree to get it. Kudos for the decision. It will Bee *pun intended* the only new pet I go after (so far).
@Dweezil: that question has actually been answered a few times - we have reason to believe caster pets are going to become normal pets due to comments made by blues on the alpha forums, but they have not yet changed in the beta, and nothing has been said in response to questions on the topic on the beta forums.
I, personally, would rather have dash/dive than charge. I’ve never had a boar long enough to really see the usefullness of charge, so I really have little opinion of it. If the charge instead of dash sticks for tenacity pets…I dread to think of what will happen to Midori, my beloved warp stalker.
The one thing I can say from having tried out some of the pets - you will have so many more choices, no matter what they decide. As always, this is beta - and what they try this week may be reversed next week. But regardless of what happens - the new choices are definitely a step in the right direction. You’ll find much more adaptability, no matter which pet you choose, no matter what your playstyle. Sure, no one will have everything they want - but there’s more of a choice with this expansion.
Dash is 16 seconds.
To Mania,
Thanks for your effort on this wonderful site. It gives me so many useful pet information.
Forgive me if there is misspelling and bad grammar. I am not a native English user.
I have some opinions/suggestions for hunter class and pets. But I am not a beta-tester, I need someone (a beta-tester) to help me feedback these suggestions to Blizzard developers.
1.About long cooldown abilities become no focus need:
An ability with long cooldown means that the ability is powerful. Now a powerful ability becomes needing no focus, it’s imbalance (between pet abilities). But many of those abilities need instant response and can’t wait for focus regeneration. How to resolve the conflict?
In addition to that I had proposed in other threads previously (used up all remaining focus like old Paladin’s “lay on hand”), there is another mechanism.
For those ablilities with long cooldown (>30 sec) and high focus need (40-100 focus), make them instantly cast regardless of current focus. But they will give a debuff that will reduce focus regeneration rate to half for a period. Such as, 40 focus ability –>4 seconds, 60 focus ability –>6 seconds, 80 focus ability –>8 seconds, 100 focus ability –>10 seconds. It seemed, or worked like, that these abilities “borrow” the focus from later.
This mechanism let those powerful/important abilities be able to instanly cast but not with no cost. Isn’t this more reasonable, and balance?
2.About Animal Handler (Beast master talent)
Since all pets will gain hit rating from hunter’s gear, the “increase hit chance” part of this talent become useless. I’d suggest change this part to “increase Expertise point”, which will reduce enemy’s chance to dodge and parry.
@ Undra
I think its easier to make a debuff witch will not reset after dead or dismissed. An there are debuffs in WoW witch stay after dead and logout. I think one you will get as Rouge in Westfall, the length off the debuff about 3 day realtime or more. You get it in a quest and it make that you cant go stealth.
“In PvE, pets need a movement skill for exactly one reason: closing quickly with the target.”
Competely wrong, I’m afraid. When a mob is moving, if your pet is moving slower or at the same speed, they will be out of range for some melee attacks. Dash/Dive was a good way of doing this - and regardless of the potential usefulness of charge, Boar’s Speed is basically now mandatory for Tenacity pets.
Nimizar - Um, looks like a lot did increase to me. Heck, Blizz *said* they increased the cooldowns because they were removing the focus costs on the longer cooldown abilities.
They should give charge the stun it has already plus a 1yd knockback at the same time. Something minor but enough to make it feel like your being charged and rammed into.
In the end, the real argument on this comes down to one fact- how many high level Hunters use Boars. Their use tends to peter out around level thirty. Sit for a few hours in Shattrath, or even watch the incoming players at Honor Hold or Thrallmar and count the number of Boars you see. I think in three months of doing dailies on Quel’Danas, I’ve seen one Boar. I’ve seen Dragonhawks, Ravagers, Carrion Birds, Wind Serpents and Cats out the wazoo, and Wolves, but I have seen a single, solitary Boar. What’s worse, that Boar didn’t use Charge, but used Dash instead.
If Charge is that useful and that spectacular a skill, it should make up for the low damage of Boars. We haven’t had anyone in here stand up and say ‘I use a Boar for a Pet at level 70 and Charge is the absolute reason why.’
I’ve listened to everyone make a furor about a skill that no one seems to actually want to defend as a user of that skill. Heck, except for Bobo and Sgt. Pork, I can’t think of anyone here who uses a Boar as a pet (among active blog/forum contributors). That in and of itself should speek volumes about the usefulness of Charge.
” Next patch Tenacity pets will lose Dash and gain Charge. See how that feels.
We’ll switch the Boar back to benefiting from Charge as well.
[...]
We’re not pulling Charge from Ferocity.
The ideas is that Charge is generally better than Dash, but is deeper in the tree. Under this new change, for Tenacity Intervene is better and deeper. ”
I never felt tenacity pets should have dash (at most maybe rank 1 gained at high level), and was pretty annoyed at boars losing charge - GC’s earlier attempt at a justification for stealing this from boars was simply feeble… sounds like someone over at Blizz got a much needed hit from the cluebat.
Also glad to see ferocity will keep charge - I was glad to see them get it, just resented the seemingly-mandatory offset nerf that was stuck to boars…
Good stuff.
My concern with this Charge going to a whole family is the boars on live have a tendency to charge cc’d targets. Has this been fixed?
@Seidouyumi: I use a Boar for a Pet at level 70 and Charge is the absolute reason why. ;)
Seriously, I was a cat lover before I tried boars, and I’m completely sold on Charge now (still has a cat, and planning to tame another one, but my “main” is Bellygrub, leveled from 24 to 70).
Charge may be not very useful for raiding (I quite raiding a year ago), or for PvP (never did it), but for solo/small group Charge is the best pet skill of all. No, the BEST. It give me so much more control on where my pet will tank the mob after my pull - if I do the same with my cat, too often they just waltz for several feet, sometimes stopping behind me (you can consider it a bug, but I’m not holding my breath on Blizz fixing it in next couple of years).
Hope that they will not change their mind and leave my boar with Charge - I do think it’s a better skill than Dash.
Ok on the topic of charge or dash.. a few thoughts I had and some things that haven’t be mentioned yet. First when I’m grinding low level mobs like birds in Helfire for meat to make kiblers bits. I use my pet to gather 5 or 6 of them at a time Dash comes in very handy for this. (takes about 10 or so seconds to gather that many) If all I had to work with was charge it would be much much slower. It cuts off some time grinding because I don’t have to send my pet in kill the mob (btw I kill a level 61 in about 3 hits before charge would be cooled down) and then sent him to another mob which by that time he would be half way back to me already. Imo dash is much more helpful for grinding. I damn sure won’t be grinding with a tanking pet if I lose the ability to do this. I don’t know who you guys do it but I know that this method works for me.
I know this is off topic but does anyone know if the kurken in azuremyst isle is tameable yet with this new patch?
Maybe I’m being shallow, but I would just be sad to see my boar lose his “SQUEEE-ALL” when he gets to charge an enemy. They’re just so cute!
I agree with an earlier poster that one way around having everyone using cats, ravagers, and raptors would be to allow the pet owner to chose the talent tree for their pets and not have basic, species-based co-efficients. Hunters want variety, and there are so many pets I would love to have visually (hyenas, for one) that I don’t take because they don’t come with the right skills.
Dvorkin-
So far, you are the only person who has come forward to argue for Charge from long term experience. I hope others do so too. So far, everyone who’s argued here have not had Boars long term.
What Blizzard might have to do is what they did in Ferocity. That is to give Charge and Dash to the tree instead of one. I remember the uproar when Boar didn’t have Dash in addition to Charge.
Something that is sort of irking me…. I know its not a massive speed increase, but all pets can still learn boars speed for out doors, at least. Oh, speaking of which, Nimizar, would you request to Ghostcrawler that boars speed not be limited to just outdoors anymore? They did it for druids and feral swiftness, why not pets?
Amarishea: “I damn sure won’t be grinding with a tanking pet if I lose the ability to do this.”
Quite frankly, I don’t understand why would you want to grind with tanking pet at all, regardless of whether they have Charge or not. Ferocious (better DPS) or Cunning (better mobility and Roar of Recovery) pets are much more useful for grinding, and you definitely don’t need extra tanking ability to grind lvl 61 mobs.
Seidouyumi: “So far, everyone who’s argued here have not had Boars long term.”
Does it mean they are not qualified to argue, doesn’t it? ;) - Well, anyway, I can understand people who like Dash better, and I agree that having both Dash and Charge would be nice… but don’t forget that Tenacity pets also have Intervene, and IMHO all three of them on one pet is one skill too many. And I do believe Charge matches the tanking role much better than Dash. Much better, IMHO.
I have to say I support both. I prefer to fire from a longer range (30-35 yds) to give me more time to kite if the pet drops aggro. Between both dash and charge the pet would be at the mob and tanking in at most 1 second. Another thing is people who put talent points in to the range increasing survival talent can fir from up to 41 yards away. That is 16 yards of unbuffed movement before the tanking can begin. Thats not much at the time but it can add up. And I agree that charge no longer increases aggro, that was actually a bug. Now by “buffing” boars they have in fact nerfed an entire tree!
What am I Sei, chopped liver? I’ve used a Boar ever since they got a focus dump in patch 2.0, and not once have I missed having Dash instead of Charge.
It’s mostly people on the other side of the fence I see going “I haven’t used a boar on Live, but I think Tenacity pets getting Charge instead of Dash is going to be a nerf”.
Nim,
In all your posts, I either missed or you forgot to mention that you’ve used a Boar that long.
And, I did use one for a long time too.
I think having both would be a good idea simply because, like it or not, once you take away Dash people are going to kvetch. Once you take away Charge, people are going to whine.
OK, if you are going to give boars dash and charge, why not give spiders web and poison? Get my point? Everybody wants their favorite pet family to have it all. Yeah, wild boars have charge and dash, and tamed ones probably should have both as well. But, wild spiders have both web and some kind of poison (some poisons better than others) and tames will only get web when the expansion comes out. I guess what I am trying to say is: boar people will gripe until they get both, or until the expansion comes out and boars don;t have both. At that point, reality will strike them that boars aren’t going to get both. At the same time, everybody else who has a favorite family will want their pets to get extra stuff too. It won’t happen, but we still want it. Just get over that boars SHOULD NOT get both. If they do, make them exotic. OK,I am starting to rample. I personally don;t want boars to get both unless my spider gets web and poison. There, I guess that was simple enough.
Here’s a really good way to get hunters away from using just cats, ravagers and raptors…. give captured pets the same exact skills and abilites they had when they were wild. I know that would take a ton if intricate work on Blizz’s part, and that is why it will never happen. BUT, that would mean each pet would be truly unique. Want a quicker attack rate? how about taming Death Flayer or The Rake? See what I am getting at? The possiblites would be endless if pets kept their wild abilites. But, like I said, that would take a ton of work on Blizz’s part.
The difference between taking Dash away from Tenacity pets and taking Charge away from Boars, is that if they give all the Tenacity pets Charge, then boars will have it in both TBC and Wrath, while all the other Tenacity pets will get it for the first time in Wrath. Similarly, all the pet families that currently have Dash (except Boars) will keep it in Wrath, while several other families will gain it for the first time. Changes between early beta builds and later beta builds
One of the things to keep in mind here is that given the choice between training Dash and Charge in TBC, all boar owners chose Charge. Now, as far as soloing went, a big chunk of that popularity was due to the 3k or so threat burst it used to provide, but whenever the topic came up on the Blizzard hunter forums, you would still get a number of people recommending them in PvP for the 1 second immobilise (especially for hitting flag runners in WSG and EotS - ride within range while mounted, hop off within Charge range and let the pet loose).
With this change, I think the three trees provide really interesting movement alternatives - Dash+Charge with a Ferocity pet, permanent Dash with a Cunning pet, Charge+Intervene with a Tenacity pet. Very different styles of movement for the three pet groups, all with benefits and trade-offs, but I don’t consider any of them to be a clear cut winner over the other two (obviously, folks that dislike the Charge mechanic will have a different opinion).
I don’t think the question of whether or not I had used a boar myself had come up before - but yeah, I used an EPL boar for the trip from 60 to 70, and for a decent amount of time at 70 as well (since I mostly only log Nim on to raid or run an instance now, Ribs tends to stay in the stables these days - I use a ravager as a DPS pet, and Kosh does the job for farming and dailies as well, so I tend not to worry about switching pets)
Whoops, forgot to finish that first paragraph: “Changes between early beta builds and later beta builds tend to be far less of an issue in the long run than actual changes between one expansion and the next - the number of people that are even going to be aware of the former is pretty small relative to the total number of people that are going to get the new expansion”.
Nim, I don’t get you. All the time you talk about Charge it’s as if you’re always inside the 25 yards range to use it, and that it’s always off the cooldown. That doesn’t make any sense at all. We can easily kill mobs within 5 seconds, maybe 10 at most, that leaves a good ammount of time where Charge is on cooldown. When I still had my Boar I could kill 3 to 4 enemies before Charge was up for use again.
I’m not saying Tenacity pets shouldn’t have Charge, as it is a good skill, but removing Dash from them is a bad decision. It’s the same thing as when they removed Charge from the Boars. I don’t understand why you can’t see this.
And you’re flat out wrong about all Boar user only chosing Charge. This is completely false. All hunters I know that use Boars in PvP use both Dash and Charge on manual cast to use one or the other depending on the situation.
I posted something about this on the forums. I’m not going to repeat myself. However, I have always wondered why don’t they get rid of Dash/Dive from the talent trees and just make it an automatic trainable?
Charge is more likely to be off cooldown than Dash (25 second CD vs 30 second CD).
I don’t think I’m ever going to convince you that Charge isn’t as bad as you think it is, and you definitely aren’t going to convince me that Dash is so much better that losing it in favour of Charge is somehow a huge nerf to Tenacity pets, so I think we’re at the point where we’ll just have to agree to disagree and abide by the arbiter’s (i.e. Blizzard’s) decision :)
Oops, got a little confused between responding to Seidoyumi and Shinryu with that last post. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that since we have fundamentally different assessments of the relative value of Dash and Charge, we aren’t going to convince each other to change our minds (I rate the two abilities as roughly equivalent in overall utility and effectiveness, so I see replacing Dash with Charge as a nice flavour improvement for the Tenacity tree, while others greatly prefer Dash to Charge, thus seeing the proposed change as a major nerf for Tenacity pets).
From a game design point of view, Charge was also the only truly unique ability boars provided in TBC, so if someone deliberately went out to tame a boar for its skills rather than its looks, then it was most likely to be for Charge rather than Gore or Dash. Since Tenacity pets should definitely have Intervene, that means Blizzard are left with the options of giving boars Dash+Intervene, Charge+Intervene or Charge+Dash+Intervene. I think the last one would make the Tenacity tree’s mobility too good, and the first one would upset anyone that tamed their boar specifically for the immobilise effect from Charge. I see the second option as being the one which makes the best trade-off between preserving the existing flavour of boar pets, while still making sure the Tenacity tree pets have reasonable mobility.
First an off-topic note; I’m so darn happy tallstriders are ferocity. They’re getting better than cats (Dust Cloud seems better than Prowl to me)!
Back to charge.
I’ve had a boar for 1 year now. He’s a lovely yellow fellow named Piggy, and I’ve had him since I was lvl 49.
I don’t know what to think about charge. Before the nerf, I always used Piggy. I went to instances with him, I grinded with him, and if I had PvP’ed, it would probably be with Piggy too.
Now after the nerf, he’s been living permanently in the stable.
So here’s my suggestion; Since tenacity pets ARE tanking pets, I can’t see the problem in getting an aggro buff from charge. Plus, it doesn’t affect other players or PvP, so no ones gonna whine (No one with their brain in the right place, that’s it)
The arbitrary-ness of the new pet talent trees are huge. They are trying to give one talent tree for each pet type where they should give us 2 seperate and divergent trees with alot more options.
A general tree with the “common” talents such as Stamina, Resistance, Dive/Dash/Charge, Avoidance, Cobra Reflexes, and Lion Hearted. This talent tree could be expanded for general use.
This would allow the family trees to be expanded much more and give us more choices. Forcing us to use a certain number of points in the general tree before being able to spec into the specialized tree is a real option. I just do not find this system much better than the old system. We have more trainables, but limitations to pets are even worse now than they were before.
Dweezil, how long have you been playing WoW? Once upon a time, many, many pets had different attack speeds. Cats in general attacked faster then any other pet, with Broken Tooth clocking in at a one second attack speed. Drove casters nuts. All pets ARE getting unique family abilities. Believe me, after three years of pets having mostly nothing, this change is so huge, and so welcome its not even funny.
Greetings,
im can say that charge into tenacity tree is good thing, im thinking of getting myself a crab and charge -> pinch -> intimidation while nuking the mob. I dont think losing aggro will be a problem with something like that.
Pally,
I’ve been around long enough to know that pets used to have different attack speeds. That’s why I brought up The Rake and Death Flayer. What I mean by giving pets the abilites they had when the were wild is, give them the faster attack speeds, give the back shadow damage if their attack had it. Ee=ven spiders, in the wild, have several poison attacks. Give them than skill when tamed. Give the game some variaty and let the pets keep all the skills they had when they were wild.
I was one of those hunters who used boars for soloing at 70; that is, until they got the nerf bat. I was so furious, that was the day I canceled my WoW sub. I soloed a lot, almost every day and he was my right hand pet for that. No other pet could hold a candle to him. I still have him in my stables in the hopes they will rise to glory again. Maybe, just maybe, this will do it.
I had to get a bird for their screech-spam to replace him. It’s still not the same. Depending upon the mob, I still have to concuss, intimidate, FD, all that ridiculous stuff I NEVER had to do with my boar; all that stuff that just eats up our precious mana anyway. I am happy to hear of these changes and when I return with WoLK, this is the first thing I will look into. Everyone in my guild knew that me and my boar were *the* soloing team. I look forward to that companionship and butt wiggle again.
By the way, I’ve played a hunter for over 3 yrs now and no pet ever impressed me as much as the boar.
Nimizar - And their descision is “oops no tenacity pets” afaik. The movement issue, the “hey there’s fire, I need to recall oops its only going 130%” issue, picking up the -2- mobs charging all over the place…
Your choices are up to you, but in “fixing” Boars (reproducing an old bug) they’ve removed any chance I’ll be using one to OT, which I was looking foward to.
Boars > All Tenacity Pets per Blizz. *sigh*
Nim-
I remember a time before Boars had Dash. People complained until they were given it.
There are mechanics in place now that make it so that you can’t do Charge and then Dash. Those mechanics may have caused some grumbling, but it didn’t cause an all out revolt. What it ultimately did was force people into choosing whether they wanted Charge or Dash, but not both. Since most battles last only a short time (in terms of solo encounters), one or the would not come into action. I suspect that a lot of people with Ferocity pets will choose to have either Charge or Dash, but not both.
@Seidouyumi
I have and use a boar, cat, bat. I LOVE my boar’s charge, the root effect alone makes it better than dash/dive, how many time’s do you see a pet dash/dive at a target and they do the little positioning dance all across the screen. Well you don’t see that with the boar’s charge, and I don’t know what server you play on but on the 2 servers i play on Uther, and Argent Dawn, I see a TON of people running around with boar pet’s, so I have no clue where you are coming up with your arguments. Oh and BTW I aslo have a warrior and never have that pathing issue you are talking about with charge.
Interesting to see the opinions fly on a topic like this, but nice to see that no one takes it personal =)
My two cents: I won’t tame anything that doesn’t have dive or dash (after lvl 31, and unless I have already learned it). It is the 1st talent I currently train when leveling a new pet on a lower level alt. That said, I’ve had boars a couple of times and can say that I’m neutral on the whole charge debate. That said, I have to also state that I’m definitely partial to dash/dive because it will work on more than one mob while it’s active. Whether farming or just wanting to take down 2-3 at the same time when I know I can, I can hit dash/dive to the 1st mob while still running in to firing range, then send my pet to the 2nd (and possibly the third or more, depending on what it is). Maybe a better way to describe it is to say imagine running a lowbie guild member through VC or WC without having dash/dive….ugh. Yes, I can take the hits fine, but why pay for the repair bill when my cat (usually what i use for that type of play) can run around an entire section for 16 seconds collecting everything then bring them back to my trap for me?? I realize most of us don’t do that on a regular basis, it was an attempt to exaggerate the point…works for farming hides in Nagrand or motes or whatever.
I, for one, am thrilled to see that every pet is now going to get some type of speed boost. Sooooo many pets just don’t get used because they are too slow. Period.
One final note…on my server, it’s true I do not see much variety in pets when looking just at Shatt and IQD. Cats, Ravagers, Raprots, a few owls and carrion birds, and fewer Warp Stalkers and Wind Serpants and that’s about it (except for the occasional novelty serpant or spider). Rarely see boars, but then again, think of how many bears you see in the mid-teens & 20’s that you don’t see at the top end. I think their utility just wears out for the majority of players over time, and in the end, most hunters want a pet the delivers the DPS.
Having said all that, that you all for sharing your thoughts and opinions on this (and all the other) forums. I usually learn something most of the time I read here, and even if it’s something small or trivial, it’s still something new =) You guys do an awesome job, even when things get a little contested like this topic, of being one of the ’smarter’ WoW associated forums…I have much respect for many of you regular posters.
Malroth-
It happens a lot less these days, but I still occasionally get ‘no valid path to object’ messages when I try to charge at a mob.
In my opinion, Dash is better than Charge. I’m gonna spend that “1″ Point in Dash. Charge only does *1* attack, like someone said before. Why waste a valuable Point on that, when I can really use it to add a 2nd Point for my (Ferocity) pet’s Great Stamina (after maxing out all the DpS Talents for it)?
I think, as Sgt. Colon persists in saying, reached an imp-arse.
There are those of us who feel that Dash is better than Charge, and those who feel that Charge is better than dash. There are those who think that Dash is as good as Charge, and a few who think that neither are all that spectacular.
I prefer my compromise. We make them both automatic and everyone can choose what they want. We then replace those two slots with buffs to those skills that fit the trees.
Am I the only one who reads “we will change the Boars back to benifiting from charge as well” as them making it stack with growl? Or was there an issue with the boars not getting their pittance of AP from it and that is what they are fixing? I am not in on the Beta so IDK what the new mechanics are.
@Crimsontusk: in some of the earlier beta builds (before the pet talent trees came out), the boar family skill “Gore” indicated that it would do triple damage immediately after the boar used Charge. When the talent trees came out, this was changed to doing double damage while under the effects of Dash (since boars couldn’t Charge). I took GC’s comment to mean that they were going to change Gore back to something resembling the triple-damage-after-Charge version in the build that switches Dash for Charge in the Tenacity tree.
@Bunkey: Like you, I will only tame pets that have a movement speed increase that allows them to close quickly with the target, but unlike you I will accept any of Dash, Dive and Charge as filling that role. I think the fact that every single pet will have one of those 3 skills available at level 20 in Wrath is brilliant.
I still want a two-headed dog exotic.
Nim, why I’m always replying to you is not because I think Dash is better than Charge, nor that I want Tenacity pets to have Dash instead of Charge, I want them to have BOTH of them. And yet you still reply to me as if I think Dash is everything and Charge is worthless. Why you do that, I have no idea. =(
Still, I agree with you that Charge and Warp are way too similar. I’m still gathering up my ideas for that pet and what to do with it. Didn’t think I had to do so much brainstorming to come up with something good.
Sei, I think that is a wonderful idea. Making all pets auto learn Dash/Dive and Charge/Swoop at level 20 would solve all problems. People who prefer one over the other can just turn off one of them. This would give us a lot more configuration for our pet’s movement skills. Every one would be happy and the fighting would stop.
I decided to check to see if Warp Stalkers did anything other than Warp and this is what I came up with. It specifically relates to the Warp Chasers in Netherstorm. I don’t know if there are too many venemous pets in the game right now, but this is what they do:
Venomous Bite: Spits poison on its target, inflicting 300 - 400 Nature damage, then 39 additional Nature damage every 2 sec. for 10 sec. This ability seems to go away after tamed.
This way, at lvl 20, it would be an automatic training in Charge/Swoop/Warp and Dash/Dive
Another thing, maybe add in another pet, exotic or not, that can warp so that Warp Stalkers don’t get two unique skills.
@Shinryu: the question is whether people perceive a significant enough difference between having Dash+Intervene (current beta build) and Charge+Intervene (future beta build) to render Tenacity pets unusable. Having used a boar with only Charge trained for 10 levels and quite a few battlegrounds at 70 (before switching to a Skettis cat and then a Nethermine ravager), my opinion is that it doesn’t make any significant difference to the overall viability of Tenacity pets, but there have been quite a few people posting saying they think this change will render every Tenacity pet completely useless. (I thought you were one of them, but as it appears you weren’t, I apologise for thinking that - I must have mistaken someone else’s comment as being yours).
Nim, I still think it’s a nerf, but really not to the extent of making them worthless. If I ever did say that some place somewhere, it was probably out of frustration. I do however look forward to seeing pets like Gorillas and Crocolisk charge at their target. Oh and Rhinos too. That’s going to be fun.
Sei, I was thinking something more along the lines of a skill that could help them tank better. While that bite is nice, I know it won’t do anything on anture immune mobs. =/
Think of charge this way, I’ve used both charge & dash. Granted Dash does last longer, but when leveling charge is great for instant threat on a mob. Even not being BM, & using a boar with Gore turned off. After the intial charge & growl, I was unable to pull aggro until about the last 2-3 shots, bye then it was to late for the mob. If the fight lasts long enough usually the boar would charge from the one mob, to the one that began attacking me, basically instantly moving him from one spot to another. Dash & Charge being on the same CD I always thought it would be cool if a boar could dash up to charge range, then charge the rest of the way in, allowing them to get to their target way faster then is normally possible, making it a nice combo. Functionality on it though is that it can be a pain in pvp not having dash b/c dash can if your pet is still alive be used to go after that pesky druid in travel form running circles around the ring until he can drink again. In a way the loss of dash is a hard loss b/c it can be used more then just once, but with charge we do get a better tanking mechanic for initial threat generation I honestly would prefer a choice, & seperate cd’s but only b/c I see the potential gained from moving great distances instantly with your pet. :P
“Granted Dash does last longer, but when leveling charge is great for instant threat on a mob.”
Ok, I’ll have to repeat myself on this one. In caps too. And also using one word per line. Hopefully it will get the message across.
CHARGE
DOESN’T
GIVE
A
MASSIVE
THREAT
BOOST
FROM
GROWL
ANYMORE
!
There. While yes having Tenacity pets get Charge is nice, it will NEVER give them extra threat like it used to do. Blizzard nerfed this. Hard. It will get a lil threat from the attack power buff for the next attack after Charge though, but nothing compared to 5~6k threat. Right now a Gorilla’s Thunderstomp looks like the best snap aggro move of all the skills the other Tenacity pets are getting.
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