Posted on Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 11:32 pm UTC
Filed under:
Game News
I have finally managed to get the pet talents updated on Petopia for the last couple of builds, and I thought I’d do another quick round-up of the changes I saw. Again, if you’ve been keeping up then you probably know all this already, but I’m still catching up myself so humor me. :>
These are changes for (more or less) the month of September, although as far as I know most of these were in the last two builds.
Also note that the stat modifiers on Petopia’s pet talent page may be out of date with this last build. Stats are up next for me (in between new skins, which I am slowly working on).
Shared Talents
| Talent |
Changes |
| Dash or Dive |
- Now lasts 16 sec instead of 15 sec. (Seems like this happened earlier and I just missed it.)
|
| Boar’s Speed |
- Increases speed indoors as well as outdoors.
|
Cunning Talents
| Talent |
Changes |
| Carrion Feeder |
- Cooldown reduced to 30 sec (from 2 min).
|
| Feeding Frenzy |
- Was: Your pet does [20%/40%] additional damage to targets with less than 20% health.
- Now: Your pet does [6%/12%] additional damage to targets with less than 35% health.
|
| Bullheaded |
- No longer has a focus cost.
|
| Roar of Recovery |
- Now restores 30% of your total mana over 9 sec (instead of 20% over 8 sec).
|
Ferocity Talents
| Talent |
Changes |
| Spider’s Bite |
- Was: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your pet by [10%/20%/30%]
- Now: Increases the critical strike chance of your pet by [3%/6%/9%].
|
| Lick Your Wounds |
- Healing now takes 5 sec of channeling (instead of 10 sec).
|
| Rabid |
- Effect lasts 20 sec (instead of 30 sec).
|
Tenacity Talents
| Talent |
Changes |
| Pet Barding |
- Increases armor by [5%/10%] instead of [3%/6%].
|
| Grace of the Mantis |
- Was: Increases your pet’s Dodge chance by [2%/4%] and hit chance by [2%/4%].
- Now: Reduces the chance your pet will be critically hit by melee attacks by [2%/4%].
|
| Roar of Sacrifice |
- Now specifies party or raid member (instead of friendly target).
- Now transfers 30% of damage taken to the pet, instead of allowing the pet to absorb p to 50% of the pet’s health in damage.
|
25 Comments
I think you mean “Roar of Recovery” restores 30% mana over 9 sec not “Bullheaded”.
well, I see quite a few nerfs here. Although I suppose we wont be sure if they are nerfs per se, but more just changes, not really bad, but not really good. but then again, i just hate how nerfed spiders bite was that -20% will just let the pally enough time to bubble/heal >.< d@m cockroaches…
Interesting to see all the damage nerfs that they gave the pets. I can tell you on the PTR, my Devilsaur at level 65 with Spider’s bite and Rabid was soloing two of the level 69 Crack-Elves on Sunstrider Isle with very little issue before the last few patches.
It’s not that much harder now, but the change is there.
Thanks, Infernov — I conflated the changes to Bullheaded and Roar of Recovery by accident. I’ve separated them out now. Good catch. :>
Re: Nerfs — Rabid is a clear nerf, but I’m not so sure about the others. Feeding Frenzy does less extra damage but does it over a significantly longer time; Spider’s Bite went from extra crit damage to more crits (and I know which one I prefer). I don’t know about Grace of the Mantis — I don’t know enough about Dodge to know which I like better. But there are some nice improvements in there as well. I’m especially pleased that Boar’s Speed will apply indoors.
Well, the mana change for roar of recovery is pretty big. I imagine that plus viper plus super mana pot = full mana very quickly. Great for raiding.
I think its worth mentioning (somewhere, and I’m here right now) that with 3/3 Longevity, Dash’s cooldown drops to 22.4 seconds, and 16.8 seconds with 1 pet TP in Mobility. For a BM hunter, the second point in mobility is not needed. :)
Longevity does reduce the CD of all pet talents, if anyone was wondering
Double post time :)
Mania, the purpose of Grace of the Mantis is to help pets be uncrittable by bosses, which is something dodge can’t do. Its also sort of a psuedo-resilience. Overall the damage avoidance is the same (or very close to) or even better against classes that do better than double damage on a critical hit.
Thank you, Jaedenkaal — that does help me understand it better.
Ooh, I’d missed the change to Grace of the Mantis. That’s an awesome change that will actually make Tenacity pets a viable off tank in level 80 instances (when combined with the general health buff to pets). Reason: pets are really squishy in instances because they have at least a 5% be critically hit. Player tanks either stack +defense on their gear to become immune to PvE critical hits, or, in the case of druids, have a talent that achieves the same thing. While 4% crit chance reduction isn’t enough to give pets complete crit immunity, it does reduce the chance down to 1% against same level mobs (and at most 1.4% against non-skull level mobs in level 80 instances and raids). In PvP, the fact that it works against all attacks where dodge only works against melee attacks is also a big advantage. With this and the pet barding change, “hunter tank” builds become far more interesting.
The Feeding Frenzy change was a nerf, but a justified one (old version was an overall 4% increase in pet DPS per point spent, new version is 2% pet DPS per point spent).
The Spider’s Bite change was a straight buff. For non-BM hunters, 230% pet crit damage was relatively worthless, because their pet’s crit chance is so low. Increasing their pet crit chance from 5% to 14% on the other hand, is very nice. For BM hunters, upping crit chance from 15% to 24% is also very nice, since not only does it provide comparable extra damage to the 230% crit effect, it also means more Frenzy, Ferocious Inspiration and Invigoration procs, as well as giving the BM hunter’s pet a reasonable chance to actually crit against resilience capped targets in PvP.
Note that the Dash/Dive cooldown was also bumped up to 32 seconds when the duration was increased to 16 seconds (this actually happened at the same time that Mobility was reduced to 8 seconds per point)
(Tangent: I love Firefox – it saved this post despite the PC losing power while I was writing it)
I am a hunter tank on the PTR lemme tell u with longevity, Roar of sacrifice, Shell sheild, and increased healing talents only the pallies and sum mages anr rogues can harm me, and even then it takes em sum time. All i get is “WTF hunter tank? lol l2p” then they duel me and its not” WTF absorb!?!?!? its ooo op i cant hurt u blah blah blah” i wish we culd get pet resiliance /sigh
sweet
Thanks for the analysis, Nimizar! (And yeah, I figured I’d just missed the Dash/Dive change when they made the other changes to that and Mobility.)
Righteous! Righteous!
When is Patch 3.0.Whatever scheduled to go live? I want to experience all of this wonderfulness soon!
I also want to know that, Mitsuhide :-P
Nimizar, the talent does say “critically hit by -melee attacks-… so, its really the same actual damage reduction as dodge, it just reduces burst damage better
Ah, OK – that’s the same mechanic as the druid Survival of the Fittest talent then (just a 4% cap instead of 6%).
I am wagering on 3.0.2 going live around October 13, a month before the release of Wrath. Too soon, in my opinion, but meh.
I’m happy with the change to Spider’s Bite; more crits mean more procs from invigoration, ferocious inspiration, and frenzy.
I can hardly wait to get “Roar of Recovery”
Finally found my perfect pet too, and obtained it one week ago!
I’m a BM and I love using lots and lots of spells to get my enemies down on their knees!
And this, of course, costs mana. Lots and lots of mana!
But Alyssia is “Cunning”, so this works out great for the two of us!
Our enemies will tremble before us!
Feel our wrath!
(Macro)
Wow, Nimizar, you work for Bliz? :) For some reason, I can’t get into the the percent here and there like you did, so THANK YOU for the interesting updates. I hope you get with Mania and write the new hunter guide! (yup that is the type of person I am – read and put into practice what better heads than what I have, have figure out.).
PS (oft subject)- run, do not walk, to the nearest computer store and buy an UPS! 550 to 750 watts should be plenty for you. Also have you tried IceWeasle? You may like it too.
A little off topic but still a good place for this question.
Can we please get some beta numbers on the baseline damage of the special skills instead of just leaving it as rank?
trueasitis: Click on the name of the skill or the skill icon and you’ll go to the skill page, which has numbers for all the ranks.
Boar’s speed was a great change! I’m also very excited to try tanking a 5-man with my gorilla now that it has crit-reduction and more armour, as well as the change to Thunderstomp.
and so there it is. thank you very much I had never known about that. Also the bear cubs are no longer tameable : (
I don’t work for Blizz, but I do like to run the numbers when comparing abilities :)
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