Catching Up With Ghostcrawler

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I haven’t really been keeping up with Blizzard statements about beta or our pets for the past few weeks, so it’s time to catch up. A couple notes:

  • Some of this may be old news that doesn’t apply anymore. I’ll try to weed any of that out if I can, but I may miss something. You can always click through to the original post to see exactly when it was posted.
  • If you have been keeping up, you probably know this stuff. In fact, you may well be one of the kind souls who e-mailed me a link to let me know. (If so, thanks!) But I feel better if I get it all in one place, and some readers may have missed some of this.
  • It isn’t just Ghostcrawler, but GC gives me a handy code word for the title.

Ghostcrawler on pet damage:

All pet attacks scale with AP now, which is not reflected correctly in the tooltips. We have a plan to make smarter tooltips (for characters too) in a Lich King patch. You will probably do more damage than the tooltips suggest, but you should be used to that because almost all character attacks do the same thing.

Cobra Reflexes has always been somewhat confusing, but it ends up being a dps increase. I’m not sure why your attack speed seems to be fluctuating. We’ll look into that.

Ghostcrawler on pet leveling:

We like pet leveling as a feature, but I agree that the time it takes has grown out of control, possibly because killing mobs doesn’t provide the same percentage of your hunter’s experience as it used to. We’ll try to get it fixed.

Ghostcrawler on avoiding the one best pet:

We’d like to get all 128 pet families as close to each other as we can in terms of dps output. Feedback on this is appreciated. Failing that, we want to avoid the One Pet That Everybody Brings

Ghostcrawler on pet panel improvements:

Yeah, the pet stat layout has totally not kept up with the times. It needs an overhaul and we hope to work on it as soon as LK ships.

Aside from players just knowing what their pet’s stats are, it will help people improve their pets, as well as help us realize where the problem areas are.

Koraa on pet health:

We still are working on bumping the base health of the pets up.

Ghostcrawler on pet action bars:

We also have a plan to make the pet bars much more customizable. You should be allowed to remove any button you don’t use a lot, Stay or Aggressive perhaps, but put it on again like any other attack.

Ghostcrawler on pet hit:

We do have a plan to let pets use the hunter or warlock’s hit. Certain talents would need to be adjusted to reflect this change.

Koraa has also done a lot of posts on non-pet hunter skills in the past few days, although I’m not going to round them all up here. But there’s definitely some interesting stuff going on.

98 thoughts on “Catching Up With Ghostcrawler”

  1. W00t first post!
    Anyway it seems Blizzard is finaly giveing pets the love they need and they better keep it comeing!
    What i do want to know is what they plan to do with the Spirit Beasts family, will they add more skin or not?

  3. I’ve heard all of this, from Ghost Crawler and other officials, before. Anyways I’m looking forward to the “pet stats” “soon” and the “out-of-control pet leveling”.

  5. “There are a total, currently, of 221 skins, and 54 models across 32 Families.” From my post on the forums. That includes, incidentally, Spirit Beasts and the new Devilsaur skin. So, yeah, 128? I’m not sure where she got that from.

  7. Just a side note Mania, are rhinos behind the curve? I have a level 70 rhino, and its nearly a thousand health and armor behind the tundra worm I tamed. I am going to go tame a bear and see what that warrants, just thought I’d give you a heads up.

  13. lol polar bear cubs…Blizz just needs to stick with more comedic pets. although, WoW isnt really about comedy…except maybe some quests…

  14. NO! They got rid of the polar bear cubs being tameable! Now they’ve messed up my count.

    220 skins, and 53 models across 32 Families.

    I liked someone’s idea to make Dimetradons a member of the Crocolisk family and make them tameable.

  16. Taming a cute little polar bear, while adorable, was likely not gonna stick anyway. I’d rather not have 128 pet families…I have a hard enough time deciding what pets I want to keep and which I wanna grab or dump for Wrath as it is.

  17. Oooo, I really like the idea of the pet bars getting some work done on them. They definately need more spaces or, barring that, at least the ability to remove skills that I don’t use (like aggressive mode for pets. I NEVER leave my pet on aggressive. I really wish I could put some other skill on there in that spot instead).

    And the polar bear cub…just LOL. I’m of mixed feelings about that one. The pet was ridiculously goofy looking when it leveled up and got larger. Its not a pet I would personally use for myself…unless there was someway to make it stay a tiny attack sized pet. So it looked awful when it became huge. But then again, I’m also of the mindset that they should have just left it alone…if a hunter wants to look like a goofball because of its silly looking pet, let them. Ah well, can’t win them all I suppose.

  18. OH NOES NOT MUH BABY POLAR BEAR!

    Oh well. I’m totally ok with that i guess. Just give us something awesome in exchange. =]

  19. Two big things here that stand out to me.
    1. They are going to work on the pet bars. I hope, in their tinkering, they fix how mine has messed ever since pets “go away” while mounted. When I dismount in combat, most of the time my pet’s bar never appears. This is especially bad if my pet was last set to “passive”.

    2. Pet lvling. . . it was hard enough to keep 2 pets at lvl with the hunter 10-60. for 60-70, it became nearly impossible to keep 2 with the hunter. Especially if you did quests and kept rested XP going most of the time. How in the world are we gonna lvl 5 pets along with the hunter, if they don’t drasticly reduce the pet’s XP requirements for each lvl?

    Thank you blizzard.

  20. Re the polar bear cubs: there was no way those were going to stay tamable the way the were. The cub model was just too coarse to be scaled up to hunter pet size, and I couldn’t see Blizzard redoing the whole model just for an admittedly funny pet skin when there are already plenty of other bear skins to choose from.

    @Rudda: there are a bunch of addons that cause the “pet bar doesn’t come back in combat” problem (they taint the code that redraws the pet bar, which means the anti-botting features in the UI will no longer allow it to be redrawn while in combat). First step is to make sure you have the latest version of all of your addons, and if that doesn’t work, start disabling them until you find the culprit.

  21. Speaking of pets of dubious suitability… is the Varghul Blighthound demon still tameable? If they’re doing a clean-up of tameables right now, it’d be worth rechecking. I think of all the remaining tameables, that would be the most likely to go. Especially if it really is a demon.

  22. @Rudda, are you using “aspected again” (think thats the name, at work so i cant check). The old one, that moved your pet bar to the right side of the screen to make space for the aspect bar to the left, bugged up the pet bar quite often.
    Tthere is a “new” version out that doesnt move the pet bar but simply place the aspect bar to the right, since installing that i have had no problems with my pet bar

  23. I think that they aren’t really “cleaning up” the tameable pets but just fixing a couple of loose ends.

    The baby polar bear cub could have just been tameable because it is sort of a clone of the “mommy” bear with a different model and smaller. Maybe they had to tinker with the code for the baby enough to make it untameable.

  25. I expected the baby polar bear being tameable was a bug, it’s just a little baby. How do you like the thought of people making a baby animal fight adult animals and people on their command?
    Is the owl with the jade skin from Dragonblight untameable now as well? (Athough it has a beautiful skin,) it seems too “unnatural” for a hunter pet.

  27. Well, as far as Spirit Beasts go, there is something I would love if someone could check in beta. There is a wind serpent spirit in Zangarmarsh summoned from the horde quest A Spirit Ally? that uses the white Outland wind serpent skin but is semi-transparent. If someone could check to see if they changed him to a beast and/or made him tamable, that would be great.

  29. @ pet leveling:
    Did I miss something?? I remember chatter over the past few months that stated that pets that were stabled would still receive XP as the hunter gained it, allowing those stabled pets to level with the hunter. Has that been shot down??

  30. Shame about the bear, it was the only realistic bear without a snarl that made it look like some other animal :/ Even if it did look out of porpotions…

  31. Bunkey,

    Stabled pets gain levels five below the Hunter. Once you pull a stabled pet out of its slot, it jumps to five below you if it is not already somewhere between there and your level.

    Basically, if you are a level ten Hunter, and tame a level ten beast and stable it, and then you level to lvl 16 and pull out that pet, it will jump to lvl 11 immediately after you pull it out of its slot. If its level ten when stabled and you pull it out at lvl 70, it jumps to lvl 65.

  32. I see no problem leaving the polor bear cub in there are far to little “Girly” pets in the game and although I am a guy my g/f accually was lvling a hunter and loving it just for this guy cause he is imo a girl type pet I mean what else is there the moths? not all players like the dark scary pets some just want a lil friend to play around northrend with. The model might be corse or whatnot but you don’t HAVE to tame it if it is to messy for ya.

  34. Sigh. . .there are times I wonder what culture I really did grow up in. Am I allowed to say that, as a woman, I find girly and cutsey to be nauseating? There are a lot of pets which I see as being more ‘female’ than ‘male’, including some very brightly colored and beautiful pets like the Wind Serpent, the Dragonhawk, the Owl, the Eagle, the regular Wolf model. I could go on and on.

    I feel that the bear cub was as out of place as the baby gorilla.

  35. Pet skills are no where near balances at this point in time. They have a lot of work to do here, and soon, otherwise there will be very standard pets again. I really liked the idea of seeing a variety of pets again like way back in the days, but as of right now there is 1 ultimate tanking pet…which saddens me.

  36. Dave-

    Which is the ‘ultimate’ tanking pet? Bears? Gorillas? Rhinos? And there certainly isn’t an ultimate DPS pet right now either. I’ve tried both Bears and Turtles. Bears make better multi-mob tanks, but Turtles make great singl-mob tanks. So far, I’ve tried every pet family with a member below lvl 26, and I can tell you that I find little appreciable difference within each tree. Yes, some of them do a hair better damage than others, but really, there isn’t as much difference and certainly no ultimate. I find that Tallstriders to a tad less damage than, say, a cat because of the different special abilities, but I also find that Tallstriders have greater survivability than Cats, especially in multi-mob situations. Hyena are great to grab in order to keep a mob from running away.

    What I am finding is that it is hard to solo play with Cunning pets since they don’t put out enough damage to offset their lowish armor. Ferocity kill fast, but lack staying power. Tenacity have staying power, but it takes longer to kill a mob. I haven’t seen an ultimate yet, and from the looks of it, I won’t.

  37. Why is it that cutesy has to be nauseating? I find being able to find a pet that fits your toon and what ever back story you have for that toon to be refreshing. I for one am more akin to dark and fearsome pets I like the plague bears and wolves? so why not have a cutesy cub? why is it that women have to be nauseated by cute? When it became apparent that woman gamers equaled if not out-numbered male gamers why is it female players had to like the same thing as male players did? Most games are focused at males, Don’t believe me look at the night elves and blood elves? I may be an old school gamer and maybe I am glad to see something that 20yrs ago didn’t exist but I for one find it refreshing to see things in games to grow and focus on more then the male or tomboyish female perspective and give us options I may not want a cub as I have a lil darker play style but why does that have to make it nauseating?

  38. *LAUGHS* Sei, your going to beat me into a pulp I am sure, but I never knew you were female. I am sorry!

    Anyway, confirmed, Blighthounds still tameable.

  40. Oh thank god Blighthounds are still tameable.. Phew.. Thanks Palla. ><
    I wish they’d make the blue and green forms of the Blighthound tameable. I saw screenshots- beautiful. xD

  41. Grimlord,

    I have to agree with you that it is nice to see that the gaming industry is starting to take women gamers more seriously. However, I still don’t like really cutsie pets. I think a lot could be done with softer models (bears are one I’d love to see redone anyway) rather than overly cutsie. Oh well, I get a feeling that we’re not going to agree on this.

    Palla,

    I know. I’m not a typical woman. It can be a bit hard to tell gender over the internet in set ups like this unless we discuss things that are more, well, telling. Most of the people in game tend to think I’m male. I stopped correcting them after the first year.

  42. *laughs* Don’t worry, I’ve been mistaken for a girl before. Comes with the internet, I suppose. Unless you flat out tell people what you are, they’ll just make their own assumptions.

    Anyway, one my way to see if I can’t find one of them there spirit beasties.

  43. Sei-
    Thanks for clarifying =)

    I find this interesting, I don’t really find pets all that gender specific. I know a couple of women who don’t ever remotely use ‘girlie-girl’ pets. lol In the end, I think it would have been nice to have the option, although it doesn’t intrest me at all, as I believe their can never be too many taming options. It does get old seeing the same 4-6 pets running around Shat/raids all the time.

  44. Bunkey, prepare to get sick of devilsaurs. Every other hunter I encounter has one. I have one, of course, but thats because I’ve always, since the first time I hit Un’Goro, said “I WANT ONE!!!” Not for any DPS purposes. My wolf is still my prefered pet, my cat is now very close in number two, and serpents are my number three favorite.

  45. I like my pets sort of neutral. I don’t want something that looks like a giant carnival prize following me around, but I really don’t like having pets that look pissed off all the time.

  46. @ Sei

    Odd.. Seriously I thought you were a girl xD I never thought of you as being a guy.

    @ Grimlord

    Anyway, you are very right about the idea of having bigger options for girl gamers and I don’t mind cutesy pets but… That was way over board, yeah it’s cute but it was to the point where you looked ridicules. If my toon had that and I strutted around with it i’m pretty sure I actually probably wouldn’t be taken too seriously.

    In that case I agree with Sei because girls aren’t tomboyish if they too like ‘dark’ things. The whole gender difference really isn’t that different, we just want to make it that way. Hell I know I am not a tomboy because people have told me they could never think of me as one ever. However, I like devilsaurs and demon hounds and bats and I’ve certainly not heard of many girls complaining on the forums that the pet families aren’t ‘girly’ enough for them. So thanks for trying to get us more ‘cutesy’ pets to make us look likes ‘girls’ but really I’m sure that there’s already an amazing amount of other pets that can be just as feminine.

  48. Lamis-

    I can check, but I doubt that he is. It would certainly be interesting if he was given that he’s a Druid-Bear. And I’m glad to hear a vote of support about the cub. It seems a bit icky to have a pet that’s way too cute.

    Bunkey-

    I’m glad I could help.

  49. lol, everyone of our pets are considered female. Doesn’t matter if it is the bloodiest beast bat out there, it’s a female (except for the strictly male lions – they are always male, but then we don’t ever use them – lazy and uninspiring, lol). My granddaughter is the same way, all our pets are female. That is what is great about WOW – one can make them anything, even that pink one.

    Glad to see Mania back – hope the move went smooth(er) and hopefully hubby went to chiropractor. : ) I do up you told that woman, that you do sport a 26″ hubby control device (i.e. a frying pan). Comes in handy when I need it….

    I am going to try and get that beta back up and going. My replacement video card should be here next week and my gd is going to install it for me.

    But my thinking is why have a bear the same as a wasp or even a cat on GC’s trying to have all pets so close. It is so lopsided now what difference is it going to make?

  50. *Chuckles* I knew the bear model wasn’t going to stay. But it was amusing while it lasted, in a strange, morbid, you-just-got-eaten-by-a-baby-bear kinda way. On an odd note, the cubs and their parent’s are now aggressive, where they were neutral.

    On a side note, the spirit beast is going to be even harder to tame now. Blizzard added in an achievement involving all the rares of Northrend, including the spirit beast.

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