38 thoughts on “PTR 3.1 – Updated Patch Notes”

1. So was right in thinking SS wasn’t reciving a boost from prowl :/

   anyways; ‘Heart of the Phoenix: Can no longer be set to autocast (which did not work)’ Blizz is wrong, I have had HotP auto cast on its own, and go off whenever the pet died, well every time it was available. It caused quite a few bugs such as the pet sticking in place and the pet bar disappearing and all that..

   And at Rake: While I don’t raid with a cat and my lv 70 alt’s cat is only lv 66 so understandably she doesn’t see much dungeon time either [if at all], your assumption is most likely correct, given the fact if Rake has a longer duration on the target than it has to cool down- BM or not, this would mean if rake was still up when it was used again- and it did not get reapplied, it would be a slight loss of dps, not sure how much but if you’re a min.maxer, probablty enough to chew the dps meters over.

2. Wondering if you know why Petopia is down?

3. Grim: Working on it.

   Depending on the state of your DNS lookup, you may be able to access wow-petopia.com as a temporary replacement. If you get a hosting page (plastered with gold ads I can’t do anything about, unfortunately) then you’re in the same boat I’m in and you’ll have to wait until the DNS update propagates to you.

4. Gar My Heart of the phenoix on my hunter (64)s cat went off on its own even if the pet wasnt dead .-.
   I mean its funny and all because it would Be at full health then I would Be fighting and it would auto then when more adds came and killed it and it was on CD i had to Run away D:
   (off Topic)
   P.S Bm Is not nerfed. Im getting top dps still in raids and dungeons (raids level wise, not 70-80s like for Mc) And I still own every one i meet. :P

5. –Cower: This ability will no longer turn itself on ALL the goddamn time.–

   That’s the patch note I am waiting for.

   Who cares if the &^%$ tooltip doesn’t display? How about fixing it so that when I turn it off, it STAYS off? Aggggggggghhhhh.

6. Is Spore Cloud the AoE debuff? It will be interesting to see how this pans out. The old-skool AoE debuff (Screech) used to generate aggro like crazy…

7. Yay blizz is fixing everything, of course except that BM hunters still aren’t as good as SV, but w/e and speaking of fixing……. what happened to petopia??

8. ‘P.S Bm Is not nerfed. Im getting top dps still in raids and dungeons (raids level wise, not 70-80s like for Mc) And I still own every one i meet. :P’

   Depends; is pet dying or not? If pet’s not dead then like Rikaku, I think, said, the dps difference between BM and SV is 200ish dps. The TRUE hurdle is when pet dies, SV can keep chugging along, bm have to take time to revive pet- if we have the mana at the time.

   Three manning a HC boss when 50% of your dps is dead is NOT enjoyable, let me tell you.

   Korzak: well theoretically if they’re fixing HotP they might be fixing Cower, Prowl, and etc.

   I’ve had Growl, Cower, Claw, Monsterous Bite, Bite, etc turn themselves on and off randomly.

   And half the time I only notice is when I realise WHY IS PET AT 100/100 FOCUS STILL!?

   sigh.

9. Ryai is right in regards to BM: total damage/dps output is dependent on BOTH pet and master alive and kicking…… once the pet dies, there goes 50% of the damage/dps we make. Either you’re one of the few lucky ones in an instance or raid where the healers are nice and actually WATCHES everyone AND their pets’ health to keep them alive, then good…. not many healers think its not a waste of mana healing a pet alongside a tank that really needs it. I’ve been in a lot more instances/raids where you’re left to your own devices when it comes to healing your pet, one of Ryai’s experience a few topics ago is a common theme…. especially if a PUG is sooo bad that your pet is dead 70% of the time because of constant FUBARS while with them that you may as well tough it out without your pet beside you until they finish or give up.

10. Black – This is why I’m SO happy one of my friends specced Holy. We’ve had times where we joke about him healing my pet XP “I heal Kik’s pet EVERY time!” and I add, “Even more than the tanks?” “Of course! Because I can do both and no one will notice!” and the main tank just chuckles and adds, “Long as I don’t die, Kik wont be forced to spec Surv.. ^__^”"Heal my pet when he’s at 90% rather than 95% and no one will need to worry.. ^^;”
    Of course, it’s not really like that.. mostly.

11. They mostly come out at night…mostly.

12. Settle down, Newt.

13. lol gj for catching the reference Korzak XD

14. @Korzak:

    It does its job pretty well for the most part. It’s no Thunderstomp, but if you’re looking for a Tenacity alternative a Sporebat’s not a bad place to go, especially with rank 5 supposedly being fixed. They have claimed to have fixed it earlier to no avail.

15. I like how instead of fixing HotP, they just made it un-autocastable. Good Job Blizzard. was it too hard to make it autocast? Or at least auto-prompt when your pet dies “would you like to use Heart of the Phoenix? Oh I’m sorry you can’t do that kind of coding? Hmm… sure sounds alot like how a SOUL STONE WORKS TO ME!!!

    Bah, I’m sorry, I’m grouchy. But this autocast bug is ridiculous and I hate having to have like 3 macros just for fixing any autocast bugs for my pet.

    To all those talking about BM Pets & their raid survivability:
    The actual number is 35-45% that your pet contributes. Also, if you’re having problems keeping your pet alive, you may need to look into re-speccing either yourself or the pet. I know I’m going to make enemies with this, but, It’s not strictly your healers job to keep your pets alive. They’re there to keep the tank and actual players alive. As a BM hunter, you have many talents, glyphs (in 3.1) and pet talents that should allow you to keep your pet alive without constant heals on your pet. Sure, even my pet gets one or two random chain heals from the shaman since he’s near the melee; but I’m not going to rely on that ability. If we’re attempting things like Sarth+3D, the last thing on my healers’ mind is my pet, regardless of my spec.

    Take Spirit Bond for one. I don’t know why people say this isn’t a useful talent, just because it doesn’t increase you or your pet’s DPS straightforward doesn’t mean don’t take it; In fact, if it helps keep your pet alive longer, well than thats more DPS it’s doing as opposed to be dead. It really is a good talent. +10% healing to you and your pet is nothing to sneeze at. Just take Improved Mend pet (for the disease and/or mana reduction cost) as well. If you can’t keep your pet alive even with this, then perhaps you should use Power Auras addon to let you know when Mend Pet is no longer on your pet to keep MP up all the time in a boss fight.

    Take certain pet talents, Like Ferocity’s Bloodthirsty, Heart of the Phoenix, if you need more take some of the other survivability talents available to you instead of just straight dps.

    I always keep my pet on passive on boss fights. If you keep him on defensive and you call him back, when you fire another shot off, the pet goes charging back towards the target. Keep it on passive, that split second decision to command your pet back from the fight sometimes makes the difference between surviving a Lava Wall, Sapphiron’s Ice Breath, and Death.

    I’ve ran some awful (I mean AWFUL) PUGs lately (I was desperate for badges, now not so much), but despite that, I’ve had no problem keeping my pet up. I know it is possible. Just remember that sometimes there’s more to pet managability then just telling it to attack an enemy and claw it’s face off. Sometimes you have to sacrifice your 1 second to throw out a Mend Pet. Sometimes you need to take Spirit Bond to make up for the lack of heals your pet may get (I mean when we don’t have enough Hit Rating, we gem and/or spec for Hit Rating til we do, why isn’t it the same for keeping our own pets alive?).

    Just some ideas, since I know someone is bound to say ‘I ALREADY DO THAT!’ after I say this. XD

16. Rikaku, you know the drill by now. It’s easier for Blizzard to take things out then to fix them.

17. I now know what’s worse than trying to kill a pally on a hunter. Trying to kill another prot paladin on your prot paladin oh my god D8

    /offtopic

    Like Palla said, it’s easier to do shoddy work :/ /sigh.

    Anyways my pet doesn’t die all the time :p [and still 35-45% can be rounded up to 40/50 but that's just nitpicking], what I meant is the circumstances where it’s gone pearshaped in a bad way, my example was the erf, I forget his name- I never really take in the names well enough in instances to remember off the bat, but it was the one where he has the blue proto drake.

    So we’re doing it and doing it, and the rogue or other hunter were the ones designated to grab the spears- but it’s gone eight passes by and he’s not down and we’re freaking out and then suddenly he’s down and BAM like instantly the other other is dead and then a rogue takes a whirlwind to the face and it’s just scatter to try and recover.

    So it’s me, Aurelius, DK tank, pally healer. We proceed to three man him, with much difficulty. Aurelius dies in the first whirlwind, think she has HotP and I press it or revive her, the first time, call her back mend pet her and shootshootshoot send her back out [she's at full health] and then before I know it all of a sudden she’s dead in two hits from another whirlwind- i think it must be my fault. I gather mana and try and rez again, and well it went from bad to worse so thought screw it, WASTE MANA ON KILLING BOSS.

    That’s the sort of pearshaped ohsh example I meant, where you are forced to litterally choose what to do, passive or not.

    Cause mean even if the pet is still alive- if you can’t use it, that is still 35/50% of your dps down the drain.

18. Well i think the rake nerf is to change up the difference in raiding pets, every hunter in my guild has a cat as of now. Bliz prob wants wolves tallstriders and wasps seen more

19. I have looked and so far cannot find any of the changes to the new pet teirs for bm 51 point hunters. Can anyone link the talents or have they been removed?

20. James-
    well, i dont think u will ever see tallstriders… their unique attack isnt useful in a raid environment as far as i know, but i’m sure that i see plenty of wolves in raids, and ur best bet is gunna be a pet wasp if u dont have a druid in the group, so why blizz feels they need these to be seen more often is absent to me.

21. I like the fact that they are fixing a bunch of pet issues, though I don’t really understand why they just dont remove cower, or place it in the pet tree, I’ve never used it….and its caused a few wipes as pet suddenly drops aggro and everything gets on me (I am full BM btw).
    On the bright side for hunters who do run with my Resto Druid, since my alts a hunter, I have an insiders idea of the importants of pets, and treat them like another player, heals/buffs and all.

    I am really glad that Spirit Strike is getting fixed to work with prowl, as I am currently in the process of camping spawn locations to give spirit beasts a try.

22. Heh, even in vanilla WoW days “COWER” was the least likely spell/ability any decent hunter would want to get when they want to tame a pet for a particular spell (back when the spells/abilities for pets were locked to one or few types of pet/s per level/skill range, etc… and was trainable only by taming that particular pet to get it…. I remembered just going to the swamps outside of theramore just to tame a croc named Deadmire for an ability that even crocs shouldn’t have had that time) …. even back then, the easiest way to dump pet aggro was to turn off growl and let rip with your own shots and that certain spell that switches aggro from pet to you directly. When the infamous patch came that literally screwed around with pet skills going crazy by turning off and on at the wrong time made “cower” one of THE worst pet skills to have……..

    Sorry for rambling….. but Makoes suggestion has merit. “Cower” should have just been a pet talent rather than a core skill/spell as it is never used… though the option to take it should be there in the off chance where someone does want it. As I go down the updated patch notes, even with the supposed fixes, its not clear for those not in PTR if its still buggy or not…… it shouldn’t be THAT hard for them to simply code it to stop autocasting after you shut the spell down manually…. they’ve done a lot of nice changes, but some of their blatant laziness on things that really needed work are still evident.

    And BTW…… I read the Call Stabled Pet/Dual Spec updates and find them…. cumbersome. I agree with the majority that the cooldown reset should no longer factor especially once dual spec is taken, it should just “BE” there without any cooldown at all. I guess we’ll have to see what happens once the final build gets released, but at least they got that one right… in a way.

23. I still find it ironic pet cower actually works but when you least want it too but mine has never worked. Ever. And thats supposed to be my crappy aggro dump :<

    /obligitory random Moonkin comment.

24. @Blacksands

    I remember those days as well…THANK ELUNE THEIR DONE AND BURIED!!
    But I say that as a spoiled hunter,now.Then,you had to work for for . Trudging through unknown and dangerous lands,always an eye open for mobs higher level than you…or hordies
    ..lol…no offense to my fellow horde hunters “smiles”
    I for one am glad for the pet system we have today..and no,I firmly believe that it did not make me a better hunter chasing the mobs down and leveling a new pet to get “Dash:Rank 2″…what made me a good hunter,was what i did AFTER I learned a new skill.

    Kitairra

25. Hmmm. Two double posts in one day…Sorry.heh

    “Then,you had to work for “insert ability here” for “insert ability rank” was what it wass supposed to say…/sigh

    I tried using the sideways triangle thingy’s showing “more” or “less”,but they didn’t show…and now I’ve wasted a lot of space explaining that…/sigh…epic fail..

    I need more coffee…

    Kitairra

26. Oooh what fun I had stripping my orc down to nothing, not even a tabard as I was to cheap to buy one back then, going to Grom’gol, dragging ‘Gex’ to help me and just MAKING A MAD DASH TO WESTFALL… for upgraded gore or charge. I forget which.

    Or in general stripping an alt down and running naked thru dangerous territory. That is one thing I am glad is gone.

    /ramble.

    And why wouldn’t you use cower? I use cower- I use it when I’m in a pug with a War tank- especially if he starts complaining I’m using growl when I am not as that tells me oooh boy better watch my threat /turns cower on. Granted I never specc imp cower, and I NEVER have to use it with runs with a pally tank or a SMART DK or War/BareDrood, but I still have it up on the pet bar to toggle on/off, and if you’re someone who complains about it and yet never use it .. sorry.

    I like Cower- I like how it keeps my pets safeish when running with an idiot who doesn’t know how to tank. It keeps me from getting more auuuurg when in a bad group.

    And mean especially now as it doesn’t waste points to learn.

    Hate how it and everything else turns itself on or off when you DONT want it tho.

27. before the new pet talent trees were installed I never bothred to learn cower.
    it was usefull for a little while before the uber nerf of 3.08 but even then with my guild’s tanking ability it is enough to have growl off to be on the safe side and dps to my heart’s content.
    I agree that maybe in a bad pug cower can come in handy but… come-on, do you call that kind of a group “fun”?
    I would rather simply not have it and maybe clear some space in the pet bar for something usefull.
    oh well, at least blizzard are starting to fix things.
    for example, I completely approve of the fixes for dusty cloud, rake and spirit strike. its a good start.
    with any luck they will squeeze in some more fixes before the patch goes live.

28. –Cower: This ability will no longer turn itself on ALL the goddamn time.–

    That’s the patch note I am waiting for.

    Who cares if the &^%$ tooltip doesn’t display? How about fixing it so that when I turn it off, it STAYS off? Aggggggggghhhhh.

    Kor, I agree it’s a really worthless if not hindering ability. I put my cower in the spellbook and shut it off and so far it’s behaving in there and staying off.

29. Well, I actually want to thank Mania for doing all of this. Gathering all this information is very hard work(For both this and warcraft mounts and any other site that I don’t know about) and I think we should all applaud her for her great efforts.
    *stands from his seats and applauds.
    Thank you :)

    Vespias:
    My cower has been woring rather well, maybe it was fixed. But I can’t tell for sure yet. Maybe it was a bug that they forgot to mention in an earlier patch.

    Ryai:
    Who didn’t have fun doing that? LOL, I hated having to run my orc up to westfall in order to get screech, and half the time I would respawn back at the GY near Booty Bay! I was glad when they made the skills. However I still stand by my statement that some of the skills should be increased or worked with instead of Blizz always just working on the stronger pets.

    I wish you all good luck until next time :D

30. Well it’s not that it wasn’t fun- but it was a major deterent in some cases for me in going and learning new pet skills. Tame trash pet. Sit there for 50 minutes with a cat named cat, spamming prowl and dash and praying you learn it before someone comes along and is all LO U BOT? or doesn’t even bother to ask- and reports you.

    Mean I have enough naked dashing fun running nelfs to Northrend to tame crows or alliance thru WPL and EPL and ofc the zeps to get dragonhawks or cats- or running naked belfs up to dunwhatever for frost leopards.

    But not really sad about not having to spam a skill to learn a new rank

    And tbh I can’t argue with that, I would love to see other pets outside of CATS WOLVES DEVILSAURS SPIRIT BEASTS as no offense as I love them too, but I hate seeing the same skin cat or ‘saur, or wolf, and would love people using others.

    I mean I’m like one of the only lv 80 hunters using a core hound atm. Or a wasp- let alone the Hive Queen skin model, and Rak’shiri or the aqua tiger skin and the purple ones getting rarer as I see moar leopards, frost and cursed offspring running around, or the spotted riding tigers.

    Even the Varugal Blighthounds are disappearing and being replaced with the Northrend Wargs, while no offense, I just find it strange people abandon the spunky puppy for, unfortunately, another wolf that just idles :/

    I love worgs- I hate how Blizz didn’t give them a decent idle ani like normal wolves.

31. In the past these updates may have piqued my interest, especially with the fixes to HotP. Due to testing though; I’ve found additional points in health and damage to be far more useful than HotP, regardless of it’s state of functionality.

    Elsewise this patch only truely affects passionates of sporebats and cats, especialy if the changes to rake add up to more DPS. However, as some have stated, fixing tooltips is a rediculous effort by blizzard to say that they’re doing something about the issues with many parts of the game. In all reality the only changes much of the community will be happy about are the ones ACTUALLY FIXING SOMETHING…

32. P.S.;

    @Ryai;

    I agree comepletely. It seems that for quite awhile I’m the only one that I’ve ever seen with the beautiful Trachela carrion bird, let alone the purple chimaera. Once again the community seems to be falling into the old cookey cutters. Long gone are the initial surges of diversity brought about (though apparently temporarily) by 3.0 …

    @Mania;

    I agree and thank you for all your hard work on behalf of the hunter communities abroad. Great job, and I encourage you to keep up the hard work!

33. Yay! My baby sporebat will actually work? Holy hell XP

    Can’t wait.

34. Well it’s good to see that SS will produce more from prowl but i think the problem with the spirit beast goes far deeper than that.

    It dishes out less DPS than a cat and i think that’s an issue that needs looking into. I’ve noticed posts about the PTR tests at the heroic dummies still showin the spirit beast off it’s DPS count in comparison to a cat. Now given that things change alot on the PTR, we can only hope that the DPS bug gets fixed.. Apparently the whole spell power issue has been corrected in relation to spirit strike but it still isn’t providing the right figures…

35. I never found HotP to be practical as an autocast, because what killed your pet last time is most likely going to glitch kill it again as the health isn’t actually automatically 100%.
    Just make a macro for it, and you still have space on your pet’s bar for things like cower, which will stay on or off if it’s in the actual bar. Go figure.

    Cower is actually useful if you have the improve cower talent. Save’s my wolf’s butt all of the time.

36. Ryai:
    I hear you. I only have a ramparts wolf for PVE, but I use my Ooze for PvP (Just becuase it’s fun) My alt however, only lvl 38 twink, but he has scorpid, hyena, and crab. I never see those anymore, apart from one BG whe there was a guy that kept sending his crab after my crab, and my crab would die, and I would kill the guy, and then I hug him for the “make love not warcraft” achievement. what also took me by surprise was a horde coming to kill me and had a PET SPIDER! I saluted him whenever I saw him, but my pet was on aggressive and my hyena tore him apart :P Life’s kinda funny that way… But I do believe that if the pet skills were improved or changed in some way then people would take other things apart from woves, spirit beasts, cats, devilsaurs, and raptors (I’m seeing a quite a few of them, too.)

37. I actually found autocast HotP to be extremely useful for PvP. It bugs me to no end that instead of FIXING it, they, once again, just did away with the autocast. The problem with it not being autocast is that your pet bar fades not to long after your pet dies. This means that anyone in a frantic situation will just have to pay more attention. A bit annoying, but oh well.

38. Palla: Not only that but DISAPPEARING PET BAR WHEN YOU DOOOOO use HotP :D

    fun times of aaaaah when pet was on passive.

    Wish PVP pets could get it too, it’s so sad when Angelus, my orc’s WS dies and lays there all pathetic and dead for several minutes cause I can’t waste time to rez her.

    @ Ethgri: I had Trach for a bit, before the growl crapout and during, but afterwords I had to get rid of her as she just wasn’t able to really survive long enough to do anything [had to get a temp warp stalker], I may and possibly will tame her on an alt when I can.

    Really wish Hunters could get just one more, pet slot. I would really, really love that.