The Wrath of the Lich King beta realms were updated tonight with beta build 3.0.2 (8926). The realms are not yet up, but early reports from the normal data-mining sources (like MMO Champion and WotLK Wiki) indicate that a number of pet abilities have changed in terms of damage.
I am hoping this means that pets have been included in the current big class-balancing push. Blizzard let us know before that the previous pet ability numbers were placeholders and that they needed to do a damage and threat pass on pets. And since we won’t actually have a good idea about how the pets play until we get some real numbers for damage and threat … well, I’m hoping that this is kicking off that process.
As soon as I can get in-game I’ll start checking the skills and abilities I have handy to see what’s changed exactly. However, I probably won’t be able to get a complete list myself — since pets and pet skills auto-level, it has become prohibitively difficult to check out lower ranks of pet skills. But I’ll grab what I can and let you know what it looks like.
Also …
Apparently, a lot of hunter abilities have also changed, and apparently in ways that are upsetting for hunters who pay more attention to this than I do. I fully expect you guys to express your opinions of these changes in the comments. I would ask you only to please keep the language within relatively tame bounds and to avoid flaming each other (or me!) in the process. Thanks. :>
[edit #1] Koraa has posted a comment indicating that this build represents the first of two balance sweeps they are doing across all the classes. Their internal build (which we will see next patch, one assumes) already has some changes from today’s build. So keep that in mind when looking at the abilities in this patch.
[edit #2] Here’s an interesting thing hidden in this patch! Acid Spit, the Worm family skill, now stacks up to 5 times on a target. The new description for reads:
Acid Spit (Rank 5): Your worm spits acid at an enemy, causing 29 to 41 Nature damage and reducing its armor by 520 per Acid Spit for 30 sec. Can be applied up to 5 times.
[edit #3] Speaking of spits (!), Poison Spit finally has all 6 ranks available.
So yes, I’m seeing a lot of adjustments in pet ability damage numbers. I’ll get the new numbers up on Petopia as quickly as possible. The changes are not straight nerfs or straight buffs — many skills lost some damage in the middle ranks but gained some on the top and bottom ranks. Others were buffed all the way up, and a few were nerfed all the way up. I look forward to trying out some of the changes in actual play.
[edit #4] Petopia is now updated with the 8926 numbers for pet skills.
I for see a tanking worm in my future named “Spitswhenrubbed”
Very mature…
Moreso than my Ravager, “Ohbiteme”? (Named after guild drama when first attempting to take on Moroes)
Quoting Jester: “But we’re mana users. It’s a silly mechanic, made worse by the fact that we have next to no ways to regenerate it efficiently and spend most boss fight guzzling potions *which we’re not going to be able to do in WotLK at ALL*.
How’s that? Is there some change in WotLK to potions now too?
Hate to be a bother Mania, but do you know how well pets abilites are scaling in the beta? I was just glancing over the redone numbers, and a lot of those are lower then their current live counterparts.
Palladiamors: That’s a very good question, but one I haven’t been able to check out in depth yet. I can tell you that several of the more spell-like skills do definitely seem to be scaling with AP (although not very much) while others — most of them, in fact — are not at all. The feeling I am getting is that the AP scaling for pet skills isn’t yet implemented.
Ugh, god I hope so. One that struck me as wrong was poison spit, on serpents. On live it deals what, 120 damage over eight seconds? Mine ticks for a grand total of 41 nature damage, but does, at least, include the initial spit damage of 41, and then four ticks of 41 again. Its already low, but making it an unscaling 80 would just…. ugh. More then kill it, really.
Palla, I think you’re doing your math on the new AotV incorrectly. A full Steady Rotation with a 3.0 speed weapon will refill a 10k mana pool in about 40 seconds. The Steady Shots will cost 4% of base mana but restore 2% of total mana, and still provide a net mana increase. Serpent Sting also currently restores base weapon speed mana on each damage tick, so it too works out to a net positive in terms of mana (although we aren’t sure if that one is actually intentional).
The version of AotV in this build certainly isn’t powerful enough to justify the huge -50% damage debuff, but it isn’t utterly useless as some are claiming. Increasing the mana regenerated by shots, or adding back a passive mana regen effect, or significantly reducing the damage penalty (or some combination thereof) and we’d be talking about something quite a bit more viable in both PvE and PvP.
And Invigoration was never 4% that I can recall – the highest I ever saw it was 2% (unless the data mining sites grabbed a version at some point that never actually existed in beta).
In the spirit of Koraa’s post, I’m taking the current build as a fairly raw “get everything back under budget” pass, and expect to see some cleaning up of the fallout by the class devs over the next couple of builds.
@Temper: each player can now only use one potion per fight. You have to get out of combat before you can drink another one.
@Jester: haste rating is going to be by far the worst DPS stat for hunters, since we get the new 2.0 second Steady Shot cast time back below the 1.5 second GCD either through talents (BM) or raid buffs (MM & SV). At that point, haste rating will only buff Auto Shot damage, which constitutes only around 1/3 of our DPS – that’s a pretty poor return for a fairly expensive stat.
Regarding names for worm pets: I’m contemplating calling mine “ICanHasSunder”. Failing that, I will probably stick with the name I used for the one I have tamed on the beta server (“Groove” – anyone that has tamed one of the Northrend crawlers and watched it idle for a while should be able to figure out how I came up with that)
Are servers up yet?…Any new stuff?
Ghost Hydra still tameable?
@Jester The problem with the haste is they are giving us too much. Look at the Nax10 set, EVERY piece has gobs of haste that we really can’t use.. (MM doesn’t even need that much). It’s worse than the Sunwell gear sets…
@Ketari If you can build a viable build that still can get JotW, more power to you!! I’ll be going ret myself, at least for leveling… :-)
I was really hoping that the dual-wield +int enchants and mana oil was a thing of the past.. looks like I might have to finally go that route for mana…
I’m not in the beta. My hunter is only level 55. And yet…it’s really, REALLY disturbing how much they’re screwing BM. It seems like someone simply has a vendetta against us.
Look, yeah, there are other specs. But I became a hunter to be a BEASTMASTER. I do not want to play Marksman or Survival, they just bore me. That’s no offense to hunters who are in fact one of those specs – they have a lot to offer parties and raids! However, it’s not my playstyle, nor is it that of a lot of other BMs.
It feels like I created a character, leveled her, developed her character and pets, a labor of love, and then they deleted the class from the game. I know it’s still there and they’ll probably change it, but…that’s what it feels like.
I’d say AotV is still very useful…if I’m interpreting it correctly it seems that you regen 50% mana of the damage you deal which means a say aimed shot hits for 3,000…that means you regen 1,500mana instantly. Please correct me if I’m wrong,but that’s much more useful then the AotV we have currently,but it was still better with 100% mana regen of damage dealt. Why do rogues have one increase or decrease? does bliz not hear about people complaining about them? (I’m not trying to burn them,but do you not see their so called “nerf”?) Oh and everyone that’s on beta..I’ve been hearing a rumor that every class in the game is gonna be able to wear the next armor up…like how hunters and shammys are wearing mail armor right now, in wotlk at lvl.80 they can wear plate armor and all plate wearers get some new armor…is this true by chance? because a plate wearing hunter would be awesome! oh well we better get ready for a death knight battle everywhere,but they’re like a plate wearing warlock that can dps with melee.
MyhealthisOPlol – no, not how it works.
In Viper you hit for 50% damage. Each ranged attack which hits regenerates a percentge of your maximum mana equal to your bow’s tooltip speed. So a 3.0 speed bow will regenerate 3% of your mana per shot that hits. In practice, spamming steady shot is the best idea.
And again, Haste just became the must-have stack stat for reducing Viper time, Nimizar. Yes, it (and we) now scale badly. Plain how this Viper aspect works.
Well, I’m just looking at it from the point of view of someone who has never had any of these talent, cause I’m not in the beta
Even after the changes, I’m still getting a brand new talent that boosts mana regen, a brand new talent that boosts my pets crit rate, etc…
I agree that the haste thing is a little silly… but as long as they don’t force it on us, there’s no issue. I’d say we’re more likely to see a reduction of haste rating on core hunter pieces than an improvement on the way haste scales with hunter spells. (On that note, perhaps some constructive comments in the beta forums might help)
As for being forced to spec int… thats not such a huge deal, since Int will also boost our AP (and we all took that talent, amiright?)
Just to clear up some misinformation, they killed potion sickness. It was only around for a single build. Unless it has been reintroduced, you can continue your potion chugging ways.
Wow, worms got that special Skill “nerfed” big time.
Wasn’t me, Nim! I just said it sucked. *Laughs* Some one else did the 100 second math, but from what I’ve seen its a pretty big theory on the beta hunter forums. I’ve pretty much just decided to wait and see what happens between now and release.
There are so many changes going on. . .racials, pets, every skill is getting tweaked or at least looked at(not even sure for the game mechanics)- in the end the only thing that seems to be the same might be the graphics.
Although I’m curious to see how this all finishes – currently I have a feeling this is not the same game I started playing a few years back.
Who knows, in the end it might be better or worse – all I know for sure is odds are I’ll be spending some serious time in a lower instance trying to figure out how my world has changed and then working out from there.
Until then thank you for all your hard work in keeping us up to date with all these changes.
If these hunter changes go live.. they’ll destroy the raiding hunter as we know it and had our hopes up for in WLK. Personally, I’ll _never_ go MM/Surv to raid, I’m BM and staying that but these changes pretty much destroyed the tree imo.
Just hope these’ll QQ’d at by many the hunters so we could at least get some of them back. And knowing Blizz, I doubt strongly they’ll ruin BM for us.
Played a hunter ever since BC came out and I love every aspect of a raiding BM hunter even though I have to admit it’s boring spamming one button 4h/4x a week, at least it is atm for me.
Heh, Grymm? The graphics are getting an overhaul too. BUT it has been stated that you’ll be able to put them at TBC or old fashioned WoW level if you so desire.
Grymm, the game changed at TBC, and many people will agree that it wasn’t for the better. The first WoW expansion introduced a lot of new concepts, and for the first time itemized gear and quest gear that made sense. Things like spellpower were given en masse to the masses, but to balance that out, DPS had to be increased all around. Hunters, in particular, took a hit to DPS when their Attack Power benefit from agility was halved. But even beyond that, the classes felt different, and in a lot of ways, off. I loved playing my paladin and my hunter pre-TBC. In TBC, though, it just…. didn’t have that same glow. Maybe I had just been playing to long, but after the initial rush of “Oh GOD, that gear is PERFECT for me!” wore off, I was left with a whole lot of nothing. One of my 51 point talents was a situational PvP buff tacked onto a commonly used spell, the other halved the mana cost of my spells for 15 seconds. Both are useful in the right situations, but a 10% AP increase and snare immunity doesn’t benefit me all the time, and lord only knows I don’t need 50% mana cost all the time. Compared to classes or even specs who got skills they could and did use every time the cooldown was up, I was sorely disappointed. There are other factors, but I am rambling.
Wrath of the Lich King, though, even with the nerfs, feels like a whole ‘nother ball game. I am still no sold on beacon of light, or much of the higher level holy tree, mind you, and yesterdays patch has me rethinking my spec for my hunter, but the over all, base line feel just strikes me better then TBC did. I’ll have to actually play around with it a bit, but I think Blizzard is making a step in the right direction.
And finally, my thoughts on yesterdays series of nerfs for everyone but rogues. I believe Ghostcrawler said this, but NONE of those nerfs were based on testing. That was the balancing team saying “Okay, these numbers are adding up to be to much/to little! We’re going to change them to what we think they should be!” Thus making people like the Ghostcrawler cry out in agony. My worry is that we are in the home stretch now, and a lot of skills or talents haven’t gotten a good review across the board, and in some cases are just plain NYI. Or in masters calls case, borked. Here is to hoping they get to fixin’!
If getting out of combat is all it takes to quaff a pot, can’t hunters just use a pot every time they feign? Or does Feign not work like that?
Gurluas: Unfortunately I can’t tame the ghost hydra et al myself, so I haven’t been able to check those. Icecrown and Storm Peaks are open now so I took a turn through them last night and checked a bunch of untameable families. I didn’t find anything especially amazing (except one boar) but I’ll be posting what I’ve got soon.
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You’re right Palladiamors, there was a large shift from pre TBC to TBC. I didn’t feel it so much. I did a lot of solo exploring then and never really got into the endgame content (which one day I may go back and explore).
I think it was because of this TBC felt more like a speed bump then a total shift in direction.
Currently though I’m craving the exploration again and grabbing a new pet or two with my hunter. I think the hunter class is one of those where just playing in the wild is the best training you can get.
The pally – well – the instance portal awaits. Better to test out these changes in the scarlet monestary than wipe the party due to my ignorance.
Either way I’m with you in hoping the fix is coming.
GC has asked for Pet Talent Tree feedback. Go to it Maniacs!
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679804544&sid=2000
*Wrinkles his nose* Not to much really changing for my holy, unfortunately. If I decide to go down to beacon of light I’ll have to learn a slightly different mechanic, but I am not worried to much.
Mania, tthey are asking for feedback on hunter pet talent trees to do a final pass over on the beta forums. Thought I’d point that out.
Oh, hey, Gaj beat me to it, AND with a link! Woot!
The thing I haven’t seen anybody say is…. yeah, hunters are getting realy good pets. the pets will kick but, and it is nice to have more selcetion of pets… BUT, what good is a great pet if you can’t keep the hunter alive. A lot of these “down-gradings” seem to be taking away from the survivability of the hunter. A cool pet is only good if you are around to use it. I can’t think oa any pet (no matter what spec the hunter is) that doesn’t already have more survivability than the hunter who controls it. With all these “down-grades” it won’t matter what kind of pet you have and how you use it (dps, tank, etc). It won;t be around long enough to do it’s job because the hunter himself will be brittle… to say the least.
Thanks for the heads up! I made a new post about Ghostcrawler’s feedback thread to catch the people who watch the RSS feed.
AS I TYPE I am downloading a huuuge 821 MB patch called “WoW-4.2.3-to3.0.1-TBC-USMX-Update”. Dies this mean what I HOPE it means? Can somebody tell me what is going if it is not??? lol
Given the current situation if I had beta access I’d be telling GC all was good and please don’t touch anything tbh.
bakedleech6 – Eh? They just removed the visible debuff…
Ok thanks for correcting me on that Ketari,but now what’s really bugging me is why are hunters getting all the nerfs I mean c’mon we stink at melee…well maybe that’s what they put the new AotB (aspect of the beast)in for I suppose,but even so.
arnt hunters nerfed anough?
Oh, Myhealth, your in for a shocker, and not a good one. Aspect of the Beast is gone. Removed.
You sure they didn’t add the untrackability to another aspect instead?
I personally didn’t think that was worth its own aspect TBH.
Ok I swear now blizz is making me mad not to burn any certain class,but we’re the least b****ed about class on my server atleast…it’s always rogues,druids, and sl/sl locks that are complained about and what do we see? blizz is just making them even more overpowered and now AotB is gone!!!! sheesh what next we become a melee class!?
someone check Bristlepine http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?npc=27681 (it’s tameable on Wowhead) but over felboars untameable!
Well, Blizzard hates hunters, ever has, ever will! (and they hate Engineering).
Looks like I won’t return for WotLK – some of those really old and matured games are looking better every day (like EQ).
Way to go: PvP, Arena and eSports – no place for the fun anymore!
While I’m not in beta so I can’t truly say for sure, but perhaps the AotV was nerfed a bit due to the number of classes that can now restore mana to their parties? Before WotLK it was just shadow priests, but from my understanding now druids, paladins, and is it shaman(?? correct me if I’m wrong there) as well as shadow priests can now restore mana to their groups. This means that there are far more ways to get mana back from your party making you less dependant on your AotV, in theory. Again, I am not in beta to see how that works, but I’m speculating this is part of the reason.
My main is a holy priest, but my original character was a hunter who I mostly use for farming now, but I still love him (and his Ashenvale bear!!). But priests got a nerf to their spirit of redemption which lowers their mana regen as well. I assumed the same thing there, that now they would be getting mana from more classes so it was not as necessary for them to have as much independant mana regen.
Is this good or not?? I’m not sure, will it likely mean more downtime drinking for hunters and priests? Possibly.
Keep in mind hunters also have Cobra Strikes/Invigoration, and the Roar of Recovery talent for Cunning pets.
Invigoration sucks, Infares. Now that I’ve had some play time with it I can say that honestly. The amount is to low, and there are numerous abilities that cost focus that either count as spells and thus have zero critical, or don’t do damage TO critical. When cobras strikes goes off it does help, but the amount is still so lousy that it doesn’t add enough. Cunning pets do a bit to help, but often it still doesn’t feel like enough. Of course right now in beta sometimes mana regeneration borks and doesn’t work at all. Aspect of the viper ALSO sucks. On an average mana pool of aruond 6000 with a Gladiators crossbow restores 187, though milage will vary from weapon speed. I’ll even be kinda and round it up to 200 and 6000 total. Just auto shotting it would take around 90 seconds of being in combat and being at half damage and doing NO other shots. Invigoration will chop off a bit of those, but not by much. Your honestly much better just sitting down to drink then spending any time in AoTV, its really that bad.