A warning to everybody – those CDs you get on November 13 will contain virtually nothing. Expect to follow installation with a BIG download (several hours), since the discs will need to go into production soon (if they’re not already being packed).

More – don’t expect the game to be ready on Noy 13. Even if Blizzard can call a moratorium on new content in the next 20 days (which looks barely possible), they will only have 30 days for debugging and tweaking. That’s laughable for a program of this scale.

I predicted in another thread that WLK would not be ready until next summer. I stand by that prediction, in spite of the launch date. I think what’s released on Nov 13 will be an ugly mess – I’m certainly not going to rush out and buy it until I’ve read here that I’m wrong.

Get well soon, Mania – but next time, hire some removal guys, you tightwad. ;)

Thanks for the news Tinco.

I don’t know if that has already been mentioned, but the Gorilla-Petskill ‘Thunderstomp’ had its cooldown reduced to 10 sec on the recent ptr-build.

Greetings, Tinco

Both pets had the same talents in Longevity etc. (I left the one point off of the cat so the only variables would be the 65/70 lvl difference and the family skills mechanics.

With the new build which included Rake for the lvl 70 cat, He was doing about 480ish over a 5 min period. The lvl 65 Devilsaur against the same target for the same 5 mins did about 500 DPS.
The cat was more consistant DPS because the rake was regular in its timing. Also the bleed effect evened it out over time.
The devilsaur seemed more “spikey” since his Strength Buff would stack up to 3-5 then wear off. (its not consistantly applied)

So in my opinion, the cat would probably out perform on fast short fights or switching between multiple mobs quickly. The devilsaur may do better on Long single mob (boss) fights.

Aspect of Viper should work like:
When you go into Aspect of Viper, you can’t use any skill shot (any shot and attack abilities that use mana) and can only use auto-shot and other non-direct attack abilities (such as Rapid Fire, traps, disengage, FD…). In this period, any damage dealt by you and your pet will be transformed to your mana regeneration. (Including pet’s damage is to balance out BM hunters with the other two spec, because BM hunters depend more on pet’s damage.)
And, importantly, there should be no damage penalty in Aspect of Viper.

If that’s true, then that’s really good. The Exotics being all-around better than the “normals” may be a little bonus for Hunters that go all the way to Beast Mastery. I hope it’s not a large difference between normal and Exotic, but even a small difference is a nice incentive to be BM (which I am and when I hit 60 an Armored Devilsaur will be MINE! BWA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!).

Also of note, lvl 65 Devilsaur is out dps’ing my lvl 70 cat even though it is short a talent point. The lvl 65 Chimaera did very well, but not quite as good as a lvl 70 cat. But my guess is at 70 even it will out do the cat. So even though cats will be one of the better dps coices for non-BM hunters. The exotics may be the way to go if you are a 51pt BM. After all, it is our 51pt talent.