Ghostcrawler’s Arcania: Casters & Air Guitar
You know, if it weren’t for Ghostcrawler’s posts I’d find the days between beta patches pretty boring.
On a new rank of Growl:
We recently added a new rank of Growl. Once we have the final numbers in for it, that should help with threat a great deal.
10. Happy with our pets hp/survivability? or do you think it still needs further testing.
It still needs further testing.
(Note that there is also a lot of boring PvP stuff in that thread that I am skipping over. But if you are into PvP you may well want to take a gander.)
Regardling the polar bear cub:
The problem with the polar bear wasn’t that it was cute. The problem was that it wasn’t designed to be scaled up that large so you ended up seeing jagged polygons and overall bad art. It also didn’t have the full suite of animations. I’m not sure it could even open its mouth.
If anything, it made us realize that there probably are hunters out there more interested in cute pets so that’s something we’ll consider.
Beast Master 61 point talent - Cute Pets. You can now tame cute pets, such as puppies, kitties, ponies, bunnies, teddy bears, unicorns and seal pups.
On ex-casters and their little DPS problem:
I’m not aware of the bug, but it might have gone off to a programmer or someone else. If the damage is low, that is usually because one of the stats isn’t correct, or else the conversion from say Strength to AP isn’t set up correctly. But I can look into it.
*big grin*
Abandoning from the stable is on the list. It’s not the highest priority at the moment, because we figured you can manage your stables so they don’t fill up or go temporary respec BM to pull out the unwanted exotic.
On pets playing air guitar:
Air guitar has been fixed.
“Air guitar” may require some explanation (although conveniently you can watch the video that GC is responding to). Basically pets in the beta right now are doing an attack animation with sound as one of their idle animations, so that when you are just hanging around in town (or anywhere else) your pet will every so often appear to attack the air. It also happens when you take them out of the stable or summon them. It’s pretty disconcerting, so I am glad it will be fixed in an upcoming build.
45 Comments
LOL! Tame cute pets? I think it would be funny to have a cow able to attack someone though… Thank you for the info!
the air guitar thing looks kinda funny actually, i know it needs to be fixed but that is some sad rush of programming on blizzard’s part
I’d rather see them working on the “Turn off pet sounds” myself. :)
It’s good to know they’re on top of things though.
Seriously, could you imagine an attack kitten? or seal pup?
That’d be hilarious - especially if you killed someone with it. I’d never log back in if I died to bunny. Actually, that was the first thing to kill me back when I first started playing UO (Ultima Online). In fact, I kill rabbits in WoW just for spite.
Good news about the caster pets. =D
Ghost Crawler is beginning to sound like she’s our candidate for a MVP award ;)
GC is *everyone’s* candidate for a MVP award (some of the other devs post good info at times, but GC is the only one trying to a bit more insight into the whys and wherefores of what the devs are up to)
Unicorns? So Zhevra *will* be tameable in the next expansion XD
See not just my g/f that liked cute pets some hunters like the idea of having a cute bear or whatever I for one just want a BA corehound or devilsaur. MMMMMMMMM devilicous.
Hmmmm. Is Blizz and GC just throwing a bunch of useless pet stuff at the hunter class to make up for the total lack of viability in PVP. Are hunters going to be a worthwhile class in wotlk. Many hunters don;t believe so.
GC = pure awesome
She’s not just hunters’ heroine, she’s been doing this for other classes as well. Blizzard needs to add a GC fan club board or something so we can all make sure she knows that we all really appreciate what she’s doing.
(Oh Mania, I admit I giggled out loud when I saw who GC was responding to about the caster pets! And here I was already opening up MA to make sure you knew…xD)
Daikyu said…
Oh me too!! For months on my new dwarf I’d kill any rabbit I came across… Deer too, for the same reason (one cornered me in Moonglow.)
AWESOME AWESOME OMG OMG OMG OMG AWESOME TAMME CUTE PETS???? MY WISH CAME FRIKEN TRUE /cheer /cheer /cheer /cheer /cheer /cheer /cheer OMG I WANT A PUPPY I WANT A PUPPY I WANT A PUPPY SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BAD ITS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AWESOME ISNT IT? ISNT IT? ISNT IT? YES IT IS I KNOW
Daikyu said
“That’d be hilarious - especially if you killed someone with it. I’d never log back in if I died to bunny. Actually, that was the first thing to kill me back when I first started playing UO (Ultima Online). In fact, I kill rabbits in WoW just for spite”
Ultima Online I played I liked it before I started WoW but then Ultima came terrible but I was a hunter or as they are called “Tamer” and then it started becoming terrible after I was so killer then my cousin played WoW and so I started
playing a hunter and my first pet was a owl but in UO a kitty killed me first too. I like killing allys cows tho. MUAHAHHAAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHHA
*Goes to tame a BUNNY!*
the cubs looked awful then you had to go kill thier mommy fight in front of them, taming something then its first test under your loving care is to kill its mom ..
yea i wont be taming another one.. ever.. and it was HUGE and it looked horrible
( i still feel bad about taming it.. to take a picture of it)
what would be nice if they had the bear skin and coyote skin with closed mouths until they ran or fought
thats all im looking for both those models are constantly snarling
Killer attack bunny!!! Doesn’t anyone remember Monty Python? O and I want it to stay really small too.
Nimizar - MVP for dodging, perhaps (certainly her dodge rate hasn’t been nerfed like Hunters has).
I judge on results, and we ain’t getting any.
A lot of these changes are steps in the right direction in my opinion. A lot of those topics (and by a lot I mean all of them) quickly get derailed and full of nothing but complaining. There’s only so many things you can change without horribly imbalancing the class that the complaining shifts from the hunter class (from a pvp aspect) complaining that they’re underpowered to other classes complaining that the class is overpowered. Not everyone enjoys PvPing and are quite happy with the changes, including myself. (I enjoy PvPing as a break from daily grinding)
Featherkitty: Um, you do realize that GC was kidding right? They’re not actually going to implement kittens, polar bear cubs, and bunnies with vanity pet AKA Critter models to be tameable. Ghostcrawler was saying they might now think of making pets whose model isn’t ferocious like a snarling bear since alot of people are still complaining over the bear cub (which I still think is ridiculous).
Well I’m glad GC is being the person we’ve long waited for. I’ll be glad when Growl is working great again. And pet survivability made better.
*Chuckles* Do not make Ansawa and I break bad on anyone.
I’ll respond to Ketari first. Have you even looked at the other blue posters? Compared to their answers, Ghostcrawler is down right open. She does dodge often, that is true, but at least we get some answers and feed back from Ghost. I have gotten aggrivated with her in the paladin forums before, but I have to keep in mind that she is one person, and can’t make everything happen alone.
Gungadine? This is a pet site. A great deal of the people who visit here, and post? Are pet fans. As in we love our pets. And most of the changes to them haven’t been useless. Air guitar was a silly bug, and it has been fixed.
Lemme get this off my chest. Hunters aren’t as bad off in PvP as most of the hunter community thinks they are. Notice, I said PVP, and not Arena. In PvP there are exactly two kinds of fights as a hunter. Those you can win, and those that kill you. The winning fights are, plain, simple, straight out, fights where you can keep your opponent at some sort of range, any sort of range. A hunter at range ((Not factoring in gear, use your head for that)) is unbeatable. Even if all you can do it jump turn and fire off an arcane or a sting every little bit, as long as they can’t melee you, and you can deal some damage to them, you can win. Note that this is easier as beast master, where your pet can deal more damage AS you run away screaming like a little girl.
Then we get to the un-winnables. The melee. This one was written up different, first iteration. Then I stopped, and I thought about it. EVERYTHING is made to counter kiting now. Retribution paladins are ungodly in melee, able to deal the insane sorts of burst damage that frightens me. Enhancement shaman have aquired a way to do away with snares, and have always had frost shock to make everything a waddlefest. Feral druids even aquired a snare recently, AND fear immunity in the form of berserk. HOWEVER, we are no longer just fodder in melee. We’re mainly fodder, don’t get me wrong, but it is now possible to do some REAL damage in melee, and we have deterrant to help us along. It doesn’t fully balance us out, but considering we have a few more escape options now, we can have a good twenty seconds between shadowsteps/intercepts to stay at range due to disengage, and THEN actually focus on raptor striking and mongoose biting. I am not saying stay in melee if you have the option to run ((Scatter shot, intimidation, disengage and drop when you hit the ground)) but I have been experimenting with it a bit….. we’ll never beat, say, a warrior or a rogue, but if you can sink enough damage into them before they can fully lock you down……
Anyway /rant, I am done for the moment.
As my double, if you think a cat doing Air Guitar was funny, you shoulda seen my succubus and Felguard jamming away at nothing…..
For a triple, death knights are the new hate. Srsly. Phear dem.
Palla-
I honestly think that the best solution for Hunters is to go realistic with them. Archers in battle rarely have to stand and fire. Getting rid of the cast time on Autoshot would allow hunters to run and fire at the same time. That’s how many an archer works. I mean, I can fire Arcane Shot or Serpent Sting without stopping. Perhaps have a built in reduction to hit rate while running, but allow Hunters to run and fire at the same time.
Ugh. PVP.
That said, the archer comparison is most accurate. What people forget about too often is that PVP is not about /dueling people. The point, folks, is to work as a TEAM. Not every man for himself. What happens in a BG when everyone is only concerned about their HK rating? You lose. Yup. Every time.
Yes, we aren’t melee fighters. If you wanted a melee fighter, roll a rogue, warrior, DK… face it, this game is ass deep in melee fighters. We are RANGED FIGHTERS, in fact, the only ranged class that doesn’t rely purely on magic damage (remember what DKs are built to counter? Yup. Think about that.)
What people need to do is to realize that your hunters in a given conflict are your artillery emplacement. Warriors, paladins, furdrooids? PROTECT US. We will save your ass, and we will burn down anything around us if you can just keep whatever it is busy enough. I have a priest friend that I often BG with. As long as she sticks near me, we’re nigh unstoppable… -and- she is still able to keep up those around her as well as me.
Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. THAT is the secret to hunter success in BGs. If you keep getting pwned, take some friends with you that you know won’t run off like idiots.
I have to agree with you 100%, Sei. We are the only physical damaging class that can’t do our damage on the run. And yes, Nacht, that is where a hunter excels. Behind everyone else. Even more so then any other class, hunters need to hide. It really does hurt our viability, but if you go in aware of your weakness and strength, you can do amazing. This, however, is also the problem with arenas, and why I said we can do great in PvP, but not arena. Its small scale, easy lock down, and you don’t really have anyone to hide behind.
I hate to play the devil’s advocate here but when it comes to realistic archers i think there would be a “cast time” because they have to load their bow/xbow.. unless you have a gun there will be a lag before you’re able to shoot again.
If I’m not totally mistaken of course. I couldn’t see myself running around and positioning a crossbow bolt or arrow.. but i guess it could be mastered with time.
A double, because I forgot to add some important things. My aforementioned phear death knights was said precisely because they can and do defeat positioning. Death grip, and then all you can do is pray that disengage gets you far enough away.
Has anyone else PvPed at eighty? Does it feel to anyone else like even tenacity pets bite it WAY to fast?
Arenas are inherently broken anyway, the way they’re set up right now. There’s a reason why every top rated 2v2 arena team is basically ‘MS War/Resto Druid’.
Hunters are a support class, basically. Course, I knew that when I rolled mine over a year back, so none of this is any real surprise. XD
Anyway, in Arenas, the minmaxers will very quickly find out what the best combo is, and it will always be ‘highest dps+best healing’. Right now, highest DPS-> warriors, best healing -> druids. Post patch? It’ll be the same tune, just a different stanza.
On the other hand, back to history…when was the last time you saw an archer in a gladiatorial fight? Yup. About, oh… never.
Yea, because archers in arena would have been insanely unfair….. the ability to shoot your opponent full of arrows across the way? Yea, no one could close distance fast enough to not take at least nicks, and then if the archer had any sort of melee skill……
@ Snake Eyes
Cows already attack people. I play one every time I open WoW. It’s called a Tauren lol
@Palla
Absolutely agreed. We are weak in the melee department, which gets us in trouble in the arena. GC’s post gave me hope that Blizzard is aware of this and will be giving hunters in general more melee abilities. Deterrence being made baseline was fantastic. Scatter shot moving to a lower tier (even in a different tree) is helpful. These are very good changes. We need more of this, since we quite simply cannot get ourselves back out of range easily at will. No other ranged class has quite the same problem, since they can still do full dps instant casts with a warrior standing on them, if nothing else. Given, no one can do ANYTHING while stunlocked by a rogue, but that’s another story entirely.
Additions like disengage make me think that Blizzard wants hunters to be far less effective at melee range, since we’re very very powerful when we ARE at range. It’s all nice in theory, but we can get locked down so easily that this isn’t necessarily the most practical train of thought.
If I could post on the beta forums (or anyplace else where Blizzard would actually care), I would beg for them to consider giving us more options at melee range. Most of our melee abilities are defensive and focused on allowing us to get back to range our target (raptor strike depends on there being a next melee swing, mongoose bite and counterattack are…well, counterattacks, and wing clip - the only one we can use when we want it - no longer even does a piddly amount of damage). I know that they don’t want hunters to be strong everywhere - that would be ridiculously overpowered (obviously). It looks like we ARE getting more passive talents that will hopefully enable us to get more mobile, so here’s hoping.
Oh, there was a whole conversation while I was posting. x_x More replies!
“I have to agree with you 100%, Sei. We are the only physical damaging class that can’t do our damage on the run. And yes, Nacht, that is where a hunter excels. Behind everyone else. Even more so then any other class, hunters need to hide.”
^^ So true, Palla. Unlike other ranged classes, who get instant casts that are actually instant-cast (meaning no arrow/bullet travel time) and longer casting spells, most hunter shots are instant. I think this is why hunter/resto druid is (or at least was) a nifty combo, since they do the same thing with their heals (running and hiding) moreso than any other class, mostly because they can.
Bah, I had this all written up, and Flake, my little white kitten, thought she’d sit on the keyboard and erase everything.
The difference in our instant casts and the casters instant casts are painfully wide. Casters instant casts totally bypass most armor types, dodge, AND parry, and on the whole do more damage. Not to mention casters don’t have a minimum range and generally have numerous forms of escape. Of our instants, arcane shot bypasses armor, aimed shot has moderate damage, and serpent sting is just a now more effective DoT. We can’t auto-shot on the move, we can’t effectively melee in general, and our intant casts are generally less effective. Not to mention LoSing us is not only easy, but puts us back into melee range with very little trouble.
Our escape options need help. Serious help. Freezing trap got an amazing buff to help, that was just taken away. Disengage helps, but the terrain is very likely to cause problems. Just waiting to see where they go with this.
Oh, and just to aggrivate you, the reason they undid the freezing trap buff? Our pets didn’t stop attacking the target. Okay….so….. you screwed over a much improved CC for hunters because…. our pets? Uh…passive? Having your pet under control much? That was a lame reason to undo that nice buff.
Palladiamors, I see only one option after your previous post. Give me your little white kitten. Kthnx.
hehe
Yea, you should see her when I try to write. Apparently, my fingers are playthings.
I found a quote that amused me greatly…..
“I’m under a firm personal belief that Blizzard has calculators that operate in another dimension.
A dimension where in fact 1+1=Yellow”
Palla-
They operate on B. S. Johnson’s version of Pie, which is, of course, and even 3.
Hrm…
I’m going to tame myself a pony, a unicorn and a seal pup!
xD
*nodnods at post #33* That’s the sort of thing I wish GC could be made aware of if she isn’t already. :/
*pets Flake* Hee! That reminds me, I made a baby cow hunter on a new server to hang out with a friend and I got to help a night elf hunter tame Echeyakee! I’d never gotten to summon him before either, so it was a really fun experience. I would do it for anyone, Alliance or Horde, but there was something extra rewarding in being able to help out a fellow hunter whose char looked a heck of a lot like my true main. It was like, “yay, I get to be the nice Horde hunter this time!” xD Anyway, your kitten reminded me of this because the teeny white lion was so adorable! :D It almost made me want to tame him myself, but one of the reasons I wanted this hunter was to tame a panther; I don’t have room on my NE. /random
Tame Cute Pets
lol, fittingly enough, in my early Hunter days, first thing I tried to do was tame a squirrel.
Attack my little white kitten! Eat there faces! *looks at all the people staring at her.* Okay, Moonlight. Back to work for you…*sighs*
While a bear cub would be funny, it’s just….weird. It’s really big thing that was meant to be really tiny. I think our best bet would be to make it a vanity pet, and if hunters complain, give ‘em a free bear cub mini pet. ;)
Anyone that read my other post. I was just playing along can’t I or is it not allowed?
But but….it IS a vanity pet.
what if Aspect of the cheetah, and aspect of the pack no longer had a daze effect if struck? that would help us hunters get a bit of distance right? It would also make aspect of the pack more usefull as a group buff. “Sprint” is a speed increase affect that doesnt cause daze -though it is on a 15sec timer, and what of druids travel form? they dont get dazed when in that form. I truely think that getting rid of the daze effect would be a great thing. Sprint in bg’s works, travel form in bg’s work, but our aspects…we get hit and end up moving slower then if we had hit the “/” button….
On the subject of cute pets, how about a yellow colored rat or mouse that has lightning breath? :P
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