Patch 3.0.3 is going live today during the normal Tuesday downtime! You can find the complete patch notes in their normal location (after they’ve been updated, anyway), but in the meantime let’s look at the hunter-specific bits.
Hunters
- Aimed Shot: Added to Barrage and Improved Barrage talent.
- Animal Handler: Now increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. (No longer increases the pet’s chance to hit.)
- Aspects now have a shared cooldown category of 1 sec and no longer have a start cooldown.
- Aspect of the Dragonhawk: New aspect added that combines the benefit of Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Hawk, available at level 75 and 80.
- Aspect of the Monkey: The Dodge chance has been increased from 8% to 18%.
- Aspect of the Viper: The per attack mana regeneration has been reduced by 50% but this ability now generates 4% of maximum mana every 3 sec. In addition, the per attack regeneration now also works on melee attacks.
- Disengage now fails if you’re rooted and is no longer on the global cooldown.
- Hunter vs. Wild: The attack power bonus from this talent now applies properly to Hunter pets. In addition, the bonus attack power will now be recalculated properly from equipping items.
- Improved Aspect of the Hawk: This talent no longer causes incorrect mana costs when interacting with the Rapid Recuperation and Improved Steady Shot talents.
- Mana cost of Disengage has been lowered to 5% of base mana, down from 14%.
- Thrill of the Hunt: The mana gained from using this talent with Explosive Shot is now 1/3 of the normal amount per critical strike (but gets 3 opportunities per cast.)
- T.N.T.: Explosive Shot can now only trigger this talent when it is initially fired.
- Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons no longer affect ranged haste.
Pets
- Rake (Cat), Scorpid Poison (Scorpid): Lowered damage of all ranks.
- Stampede (Rhino): Lowered the knockback to 10 yards.
- Raised the damage of exotic attacks: Spirit Strike, Lava Breath, Froststorm Breath, Acid Spit, and Stampede.
- Lowered the cost of pet specials from 25 to 20.
Professions
- Glyph of Trueshot Aura: Now increases Aimed Shot crit chance instead of increasing attack power bonus.
Bug Fixes
- Hunter: Ferocious Inspiration will now apply raid-wide, as intended.
- Hunter Pets
- Sonic Blast (Bat): Will no longer ignore LoS.
- Bad Attitude (Croc): Will no longer ignore the Longevity buff.
- Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.
- Gore (Bore): Fixed an issue where a wrong value was being applied.
- Savage Rend: Corrected typos in the tooltip.
Other Changes
I re-acquainted myself with my beta hunters last night before beta ended to verify the pet skill notes in particular. (Did you know that the zombie plague is still a problem on Murmur, the pre-made PvP beta realm? Neither did I ’til I was infected by the stable master in Ironforge!) While I was there, I also noticed a couple of interesting things that aren’t listed:
- Fire Breath now has a 20 yard range. (The graphic effect is unchanged, but the spell does take effect 20 yards away.)
- Furious Howl now specifically mentions that it boosts both ranged and melee attack power.
- Ravage and Swipe both seem to have gotten a damage increase that the notes don’t mention.
- Ferocity pets seem to have the Charge talent back in their tree.
It’s also interesting to note that Monstrous Bite and Venom Web Spray did not get a damage increase. Apparently they were already better than non-exotic skills. The other exotic skills all got a hefty increase that doubled their damage numbers — although note that this does not in any way double the pet’s total DPS.
Oh, and Petopia has now been updated with the 3.0.3 skill data.
[edit] Plus, of course, you can now tame Shattered Hand Warhounds.
(By the way, my thanks to Moiri for poking me a few days ago about this. I’d been neglecting the Public Test and WotLK beta realms lately in favor of the events on the live realms.)
Well at first I was a little confused about the gorilla changes…
But now I love them.
1. Although I still dont understand the magic/physical damage, the focus cost is down to 20. More Thunderstomps = more win
2. Thunderstomp no longer requires 2 or more mobs to proc = more win
3. After logging in, I noticed that Swipe was on autocast in my pet’s bar. I turned it off, grumbling about annoyances… until I remembered #1.
Further testing on my Isle dailies has suggested that my gorilla is now doing MORE damage now than when I was manually clicking Thunderstomp/not using Swipe in multi mob groups AND still keeps threat perfectly well. Gorillas = WIN.
Im sorry but what does “Expertise” do?
Has anyone checked to see if the wolf mounts that the Fel Orcs are riding on in Hellfire are tameable?
Okay! Official word is in.
Stomp: Not gone. Any pet that sounded like a symphonic tympani player on a meth tweak still does.
Screenshake: Gone! No more pet-induced motion sickness.
(I’m posting this ’cause Mania asked me to confirm that it’d gone through.) n__n
bah just checked they are not. Was worth a shot though. and it’s good to know about the screenshake, that got annoying. Thank you Nachtwulf
Expertise and why the change to animal handler is a good thing:
1. Pets in 3.0/Wrath benefit from their master’s +hit rating
2. This means a hit capped hunter (+9%) also has a hit capped pet
3. This made the pet +hit chance on Animal Handler pretty useless
4. Instead of increasing hit chance, expertise instead reduces the target’s chance to dodge and parry, to the tune of 0.25% per point of expertise.
So 2/2 animal handler always reduces your pet’s target’s chance to dodge the pet’s attacks by 2.5%, and when the pet is attacking from in front, also reduces the target’s chance to parry by 2.5%. The latter is important when the pet is tanking, not just due to the increased damage and threat generation, but also the reduction in “parry thrashing” (when a mob parries, their next auto attack happens sooner. Too many parries = dead tank).
CozyTea – Yea, the “smart” pet management which makes me spend about x3 as long making sure they’re on the stupid boss, not on an add. Sorry, it’s most definately a hinderance that pets don’t do exactly as they’re told. Indeed there’s at least a few fights where this can mean I wouldn’t use the pet.
Hard to make any real judgements when I haven’t actually used it yet.
Well, what about all us Beta people who did use it and told Blizzard/the PVP smacktards who cried for it to happen that it was roughly a 1/3rd drop in mana generation?
Everything in 3.0.3 sans the pet changes is a fat load of nerf and it blows.
Related to the pet multi-targetting thing:
1. I’ve noticed this – and it often means I end up aggroing a mob off my pet because I thought the pet had it, when in fact it was doing the rounds. I think that selecting a target and specifically telling the pet to attack it, rather than let the pet select a target from those attacking it, may help. However…
2. I’ve also noticed that when my pet’s definitely fixed on one target, I sometimes get aggro from other mobs that are attacking my pet, even if I’m not using mend pet, multishot, volley or anything else that would actively draw threat – the simple fact that I’m attacking their friend draws them off my pet, unless my pet is doing its automatic multi-targetting. Now – has this always been the case and I’ve somehow been blind to it before, or is this a new thing – for mobs that are initially attacking my pet, and not taking any damage or healing aggro from me, where is this threat coming from.
And finally, anyone know if the self-healing from Bloodthirsty cause healing aggro? And if so, to the pet, or to the hunter? How about Serenity Dust? Certainly Lick Your Wounds seems to generate a satisfactory burst of AoE aggro.
@Brad-I was doing quests in Nagrand this morning on my night elf hunter with his cat and when he was fighting two mobs, I was pulling aggro without even touching the second mob or having mend pet ticking. I’m pretty sure the healing aggro from bloodthirsty is going to the hunter, and not the pet.
I can finally have my dream of charging into battle with my loyal wolf=)
Woot!! I just tamed the shattered hound in ramparts, its easy for a hunter to solo reg/heroic ramps is they can CC well enough and have a trash pet to hold aggro a bit, I’d suggest reg unless it was a group for h ramps, I’ll just use him for looks though XD it looks really cool too, all my pm’s with him out are like,”Dude that wolf is f’n sick where’d you get him!?” or “Man you suck lol, I’d give anything to be a hunter just for that wolf lol”
@MyhealthisOPlol: On PTR or live? I’d love to get that hound.
You can get the wolf on live the only bad thing about it is it doesnt share any of the natural emotes other wolves have.
‘Pal aggro’ is old news. If you do too much damage to a given mob, his buddy will come over and whack on you. It’s behavior I’ve seen since I started playing. S’why I tend to drop a trap if I’m engaging multiple mobs for any length of time.
To Bradagore , aggro being pulled off pets is and always has been normal , since the patch it is far harder to do it , if you are setting your pet onto a group of mobs and shooting at just one then try a target pettarget macro , that should solve your problem , if you shoot only the pets target then no more oops i am being eaten.
As it is now i find it very nearly impossible to break mobs away which was a great surprise to me.
@54 re: stomp NOT removed…
Yep, took a bit of the shine off of finally having charge for my land-based ferocity pets… I’m glad the screen shaking is gone but am hoping they get around to removing the STOMPSTOMPBOOMSTOMPITYSTOMP feature in the not too distant future as it is not only annoying but also just silly when a much larger, plate armored elekk mount is quietly padding on by…
Honestly the unique look and powers of the exotics is plenty of l33tness for this hunter – the big stompy stuff is over the top and distracting.
@Scott thats because the elekk is wearing tennis shoes And why didnt the Alliance recognize the elekk coming over the hill? because the elekk was wearing sun glasses.
Hi Mania! never posted here before. I just noticed my silithid has now 50 more points of STA than my ravager.. and 50 more of INT aswell. Already noticed this ? Seems exotic pets now have this +50 to those attributes… sorry if someone posted already,im not seeing that even using search.
Hugz from spain dear hunters =) !
Lol, what a mess, i just noticed someone put a scroll of stamina on that silithid! Roflmao so embarrasing, but hey i was just wondering how the hell wasnt posted if it was a change =D
Soz and all, at least im happy leaving a post in this page!
Hugzuzgz! ^^U
Nacktwulf, Sandralover – I stand corrected. I guess in the old days I just didn’t engage multiple mobs unless I really had no option. Mind you, SL, I can drag aggro off my pet, tenacity, ferocity or cunning, if I try, and I’m only tier 4 geared (and yes, cower was off). I’ve even started going about with Aspect of the Beast rather than Hawk, in the hope that the pet AP boost will help.
Has Anyone Calculated the Damage differences on the New Version (3.03) exotic DPS pets -vs- The Non Exotic… I drag my Corehoud out of the stables and deal with the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, if there was enough of a damage difference.. THanks!
@Tashi : the shattered hound worg is tameable on live as of yesterday :) I’m gonna just use it for looks though XD I can’t live without my scorpid pet lol. If anyone tries to tame this beast I suggest a healer if you don’t feel doing it on reg..solo, up to the wolves, but if you do try to tame it I say congratulations in advance :)
Is there anywhere on the site that lists a spreadsheet of actual pet stats by family broken down by level or every 5-10 levels?
I am trying to find things such as armour levels and health and an approximation of how much they increase per level.
I created a post in the DPS “BLUE” forums and heres its excerpt:
I tried to look for any references to these two issues me and a cpl friends were finding out yesterday, but we seemed to have ALL had the same issue and even when asking outside hunters they were surprised to see the same.
Issue#1:
Volley seems Broken ATM. I am under the impression as I aggro and hold many mobs (or single) and shooting/Casting “Volley” (a semi basic kinda channeling hit) I should still be able to auto shoot my tabbed target regardless of where it is as long as it’s in range and tgt’d. After testing on NPC’csAND the tgt dummies in org the Graphic SHOWS shots going, but no hits… kinda like goin through the motions of shooting but with no resulting damage.
Issue#2:
51 point Pet Advantage… I , as was many other hunters, was excited about the new exotic pets and their intended higher DPS as a perc from going into that portion of a hunter tree/spec. I understand the re-arranging of pet abilities and dmg (er CAT) and such, but heres my issue and why I dumped 51 point ATM. Me and a friend spent 45 minutes pulling out ALL our pets and comparing DPS and DMG done… Understandably I was under the impression there was an advantage to having a Devilsaur as a pet with it’s alleged higher pet dps. After running ALL pets through both SHOT supported and solo we came to the conclusion that the cat still out DPS’s the dino by our tests at least 5+%. Even with the possibility of Focus starvation as a contributing factor… we found that NOT to be an issue as I regularly had 3x stacks of Monsterous Bite NOT shot supported and although it did periodically dip to 1-2 stack unsupported… I had zero issues when shot supported keeping it stacked and refreshed without focus starvation being an issue.
Thanks for the time and if neone else seems to have these issues I can’t see them being a “hiccup” as we spen the better part of over an hour playing with the dummies and NPC mobs.
As a result I went back to 50/11 since a bit of a benefit to focus far outweighs the non payoff for the fifty first point so i can have a pet that just looks different but has no advantage or eve match for my cat and it’s already semi-dmg nerf.
… SO as far as an advantage the DINO gets = nada and the volley thing is annoying as it’s a graphic going through useless motions. Is or has neone else seen this and noticed the same thing?
link to post in BLIZZ forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12354807735&sid=1
Drina: There was once, and there will be again — once I get the data together. Problem is that with auto-leveling you need to have characters at each level break to gather the data. I’m sure we’ve got enough people here to cover most of the level ranges, but organizing everything is enough of a pain that it’s further down my list right now.
I’m glad that Exotics got their 10% increase now. Woot!
I still really hate that “cat” DpS got decreased so hard.
And I’m kinda tempted to Tame a War Hound. What kind of sounds does it make? Does it do the barking the so-called “wolves” do? I hate that. I want to edit it. Real wolves do not bark.
Did I miss something in 3.03? er my cat still out dps’s my dino thus 50/11/0 rather use GFTT avoiding possible focus starvation than get a jkewl looking pet that is same ol’ same ol’ as others or less…
and core houds are asthetically kewl, funstionally mediocre