The Public Test Realm was updated today with build 9704. Blizzard has stated that there are no updated patch notes for this build, but nevertheless MMO Champion has identified possible changes, including:
- Beast Mastery
- Aspect of the Viper now requires a ranged weapon.
- Survival
- Trap Mastery now increases the duration of Frost Trap and Freezing Trap by 10% (Down from 20%), the periodic damage done by Immolatrion Trap, Explosive Trap, and Black Arrow by 10/20/30%, and increases the number of snakes summoned by Snake Trap by 30/60/90.
- Pet
- Stamped (Rhino) no longer knockbacks the target but causes it to take 25% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 min instead.
- Spore Cloud range was increased from 5 to 6 yards.
Keep in mind that these changes are derived from the client data and may or may not be intended by Blizzard.
I am very interested to hear about other potential changes. So if you’re on the PTR, let me know what you find!
Rikaku,
yes, my pet will be doing the tanking. And Stamina is my main priority, but I would also like to get my 5.8 crit resist. So, that is gonna take some stacking in either defense or resiliance. Let’s face it, pets will always be critable, and if my little slime does get crit to death, my hunter would then take over the tanking. lol Yeah, it’s going to be an adventure, and I will have to practice it. but, if other hunters can tank bosses level 80 heroic raids, I am sure I can learn to do it too with some practice. lol I am also considering stacking up armor rating, since pets also get armor from the hunter. so many options, just wanna try to get the optimal stats for the optimal affect.
Dweezil:
Resilence doesn’t apply to PvE enviroment (if I’m not mistaken). It’s a pure PvP spec, also it does not transfer to your pet, so stacking that is doubly useless. Definitely use armor rating in any way possible. I don’t believe pets receive any defense rating (other than armor) from the hunter, so it may be your best bet to go with that.
Ariamodasu:
Even if you post on the US forums, 90% of the time it will go unanswered.
Right now the fact remains that despite the complaints of the hunter community, Hunters are where Blizzard wants them. This is the only reasonable conclusion I can come to after Hunter has gone about 2 PTR builds without really being “touched”, even more so BM Hunters.
Personally, I think this is gonna turn into 3.0.8 again. i.e. we tell blizzard over and over again that it’s a bad idea/broken, they don’t listen, and then 2 weeks later “we screwed up guys!”
Thats not actually correct Rikaku. Resilience is a pve stat as well so affects the hunter however you are correct that both Resilience and Def will not transfer to the pet.
(As a side note.. NanoTrev, I am in the UK so cant post to the US forums where GC hangs out so my good ideas will never be seen unless someone from here takes my ideas and puts them onto the US forums for me.)
So a suggestion is:
(A) Allow 50-100% of the hunters Defense (and also resilience though I know this has been rejected by blizz before) to transfer to the pet. This will improve their tanking ability whilst at the same time nerf our dps by stacking def gear
OR
(B) Make Aspect of the Beast a pet tank buff (increase pet stam, armour and AP by 10%, increase pet dodge by X% OR it could increase stam/armour/dodge if Tenacity and AP if Ferocity/Cunning) – Glyph of Aspect of the Beast (increases the bonuses) – Aspect Mastery (add Aspect of the Beast = Pet has 2% less chance to be crit by melee or ranged attacks)
OK going back to Dweezil it is possible for the hunter to tank either using Dual Wield (using tanking weapons) or a 2 Hander (using a Druid staff). You will need to stack a combination of Def/Resilience to reach the crit cap avoidance then any extra is good on dodge. There is the new Glyph of Raptor Strike which will mitigate damage too. Overall a hunter can be an avoidance tank a bit like a DK (where most of our potential tanking abilities were stolen and given to them… not that Im bitter about it!). The drawback is a hunter hasnt been given the threat abilities to actually stay on top to tank. So its a catch22 situation.
So if you want your pet to tank which is more viable but risky without crit avoidance cap you should be stacking stamina gear whilst not gimping your AP too badly. So what you need is pvp gear as the basis, druid staves have best Stam and some armour, Stam gems galore and odd socketed accessories like rings, necks (possibly tank or pvp versions).
Drina and Rikaku,
Luckily, I am a JC, so i can make the trinkets that give a good bit of Stam and still be socketed. So, that is 61 and 62 stamn form the two trinkets and 4 sockets. Not to mention i can use my dragon’s eye cuts to stack up some of the stas I need to work on. I also have most of the pvp gear already. but lately, I have been looking at the Icy Scale armor. It has a TON of stamina, and a LOT of sockets. the drawback with it is, It only offers Stam and frost resist. So, that is an avenue i am looking at. If i go that way, i have the option of more stam or defense rating/ armor. Liek i said though, no AP or Agility to speak of. Which brings me to another questions. Do i wanna try forany kind of Agility? It helps with my AP, dodge defense… and could be somethig I should look inot as well. what are your thoughts on that?
They were going to make resilience PvP only, but scrapped that idea. It is just less useful for PvE then it used to be.
You know, one way to help with the lack of tanks is to just flat out make hunter pets potential tanks. Voidwalkers too. The problem is that recently a void walker tanked down Saphiron, and Blizzard IMMEDIATELY NERFED THEM.
The problem is, and I actually understand this, that hunter pets get stats from buffs applied to them, AND a portion of the buff applied to the hunter, same with warlocks. In a solo or non-coordinated PvP enviroment that doesn’t matter to much. But in PvE, it means pets go insane, and causes pets to scale wildly. The answer is simple, give the pets 100% of buffs given to the hunter, but don’t allow pets to be buffed. Course that brings up all sorts of targetting not funness, like potentially not being able to target pets for nessecary things like healing.
Dweezil, focus mainly on stamina, but don’t neglect your AP. The more AP you have, the more threat your pets will generate. I’ll do a little more research and see what else I can dig up.
I know that this might seem off topic, but can anyone tell me if these are three good pets for the 30-39 BGs?
SeafoodSam (Crab)
SHAZZAM (Carrion Bird)
TheVet (Hyena)
I was just wondering. also would a scorpid maybe be good to or no?
Some promising comments on MMOChampion today:
Differences between pets DPS
Totally agree. We don’t want 51-BM hunters to have fewer pet choices. We want the 51 BM talent to be a net dps increase as well as giving the player some prestige pets, that often have some nice little buffs or abilities.
Perhaps we will see a change. =D
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=45666.0
I just checked the snake trap thing. I’m a level 72 hunter *cry* and my snake trap only coughed up 8 snakes…
And, Did Cats get a nerf? Blizz epicly f*cked up rhinos. Since I’m pissed enough, Ai dun want teh kittehs to be f*cked up as well as teh rhinos and teh DPS of Hunters.
Truefax: Bizz be hatin’ like hell on hunters. So there goes my chances at my Zulian War Tiger…
Icanhascheezburger:
I dunno where you read Cats got nerfed. Other than the loss of 5% damage to all ferocity pets, I don’t see any cat specific nerf.
On another note:
New PTR build, no real changes. Though now Hunter’s Mark is 5 mins, so yay? Well, could be worse so I guess it is a yay.
I could see the entrapment nerf being of concern to BM hunters looking for another snare option since improved wing clip being being removed…
The hunters mark thing sounds like a change for raids. Perhaps the new harder ones with the 500 billion hp bosses? I’m ignorant as to why we would ever need a 5 minute mark, and if they really intend for single fights to last that long or longer, standing still just firing crap at something, it sounds like EQ or FF11 all over again.
Ignorant of course, again, I just started getting into endgame content…
I could continue but it’s been overdone already…
Ryai:
I’m doing just fine.
Edit.
Yes, there are things to improve, but the new patch looks fairly promising.
Saranette: Don’t remind me of FFXI. I hated those almost 2 hour long boss fights. Not to mention the one 24hr boss fight. I love life too much to devote hours to one boss that doesn’t figure in wipes. XD
Just got home from work, and nothig really new to say… but I do wanna thank everybody for the imput they have given me. i do appreciate it. Keep it coming.
‘Course that brings up all sorts of targetting not funness, like potentially not being able to target pets for nessecary things like healing.’
Or maybe pets only recive 50% of a buff- so the pet still double dips but not as insanely as I would love pets to still be able to be healed Palla :c
Cause mean not every time can you get a VoA group with like 7 blood DKs and oh my god the healing buff aura thing of theres, I got hit by that rock shard aoe even tho I strifed to get away and a shaman was going to heal me but I had already recovered from the damage I had, thanks to the aura and life bloom.
@ Rikaku: Wasn’t there a boss for one of the newer FF games that was/is like invincable? I heard that some people tried for 24+ hours before they finally had to give in as they were literally getting sick.
Also;
‘I could see the entrapment nerf being of concern to BM hunters looking for another snare option since improved wing clip being being removed…’
Ignore the fact it was an SV talent :D
and you know not BM
… what the hell does blizzard smoke sometimes? O_o
And er yay five minute hunter mark … not like it really is that troublesome to cast … talented or not. I heard Feral/Fairy fire or whatever the armor reduction talent of droods got changed like that too or something so not really surprised.
Tho tbh this feels more like a hotfix change than something to be tinkering with now :/
Edit: btw Palla;
‘The problem is that recently a void walker tanked down Saphiron, and Blizzard IMMEDIATELY NERFED THEM’
How the hell did they manage that? Whenever I use my VW I almost always pull aggro- affliction or demo D:
If I remember right, IF, then because of various buffs and gear the voidy had 65,000 hit points or so, and everyone just sort of ran with it.
I don’t understand why hunter/lock pet tanking should be frowned upon. I mean, I would assume it takes a very odd or spicific build and gear that would be unconventional at best. It’s not like they would put tanking classes out of the job, it’s too exotic to even be flavor of the month.
-ohhh but once the warrior kiddies get word of it and start in with the “yeah would you like my too? huntard L2P. please. to the ground!”
html broke the tags. oops!
“yeah would you like my IMPORTANT WARRIOR ABILITY AND PLATE MAIL too?”
Probably would be the same warrior that tried to tank our ring of blood group while being fury/arms specced and BLAMING THE HEALER FOR IT LOSING AGGRO.
At the time Alice was able to out aggro the bosses, and ofc get squashed and all she was doing was scree scree scree…
/facepalm
Luckily when that idiot left a VERY NICE DROOD CAME TO HELP US :D
luvbaredrood.
And Palla, if you’re remembering right .. well .. holy .. holy crap.
@Dweezil
The Ice gear is great for stam but is a dps nerf. I have a full set stacked with Stam gems.
So far on the ptr without much pvp gear or tanking items I can get my semi buffed pet to around 26k health and me to about 29k. With more gear I have worked out it can be up to around 33k+ and thats not using BiS.
Pets will NEVER be decent tanks, even with the health/mitigation, for the following reasons
(a) Long Taunt cd
(b) Poor target control
(c) Lack of controlled/positioning movement
Unless of course you are using Eyes of the Beast to control it.
It would be fine for static fights but ones where the tank repositions or moves would be impossible if the hunter was still active.
However Pets would make great Off Tanks for raiding and possibly Main Tanks for instances.
One other suggestion to make them tank is to change Eyes of the Beast so the hunter phases out and takes control of the pet without a timer. However if the pet dies then so does the hunter.
Or as I have mentioned in other threads they create a Pet Merge talent where we become a Werebear/Weretiger to tank or melee dps. Solves pet death problems on pet unfriendly bosses and gives us an alternate role.