Patch 3.1: Pet Ability Changes
Word on the street is that Patch 3.1 hits tomorrow. We’ll know soon enough, of course!
[Edit: While I was typing up this monster post the patch was confirmed for tomorrow. Which is now today in my time zone. *sigh* I need to learn to type faster. Or possibly just get started earlier.]
But in the meantime I figured I’d better get ready to update Petopia. In the process, I went through all the pet abilities (skills and talents) looking for changes. And I made a list!
Of course most of this is in the patch notes and I don’t think any of it is a complete surprise because we’ve been talking about it since the 3.1 PTR went up. But you know me — I like to round up information all in one place!
Family Skills
Skill Changes
- Acid Spit: Each stack of Acid Spit now reduces armor by 10% instead of by a flat amount per rank.
- Furious Howl: This skill previously had only one rank which added a scaling amount of attack Power to everyone in the raid within 45 yards. Now it has 6 ranks that each add a flat amount of Attack Power to the wolf and its master only. In addition, the cool down was increased from 10 seconds to 40 seconds and the duration was increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds. And finally, Furious Howl now stacks with Batt;e Shout and Blessing of Might.
- Rake: This skill will now always refresh when used. I guess it wasn’t before, which I can see would be a problem.
- Savage Rend: The tooltip was corrected to say that the skill boosts “the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 sec” instead of “the raptor’s attack power”.
- Spirit Strike: Prowl will now increase the damage of Spirit Strike (for that first attack out of Prowl).
- Spore Cloud: All ranks now reduce armor by 3% instead of reducing it by a flat amount per rank. In addition, Blizzard now promises that all ranks of Spore Cloud should now auto-cast properly.
- Stampede: This skill now affects only one enemy instead of any within 10 yards, and instead of knocking the targets back Stampede causes the single target to take 25% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 minute. This effect does not stack with Mangle, according to the patch notes.
- Sting: All ranks now reduce armor by 5% instead of reducing it by a flat amount per rank.
- Cower and Froststorm Breath will now display their cool downs correctly.
New Skills
- Pummel: Pummel the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. (20 Focus, Melee Range, Instant, 30 sec cooldown). This is the new Gorilla family skill, replacing Thunderstomp.
Belated Skill Changes
As I checked over my data, I found that I had inadvertantly missed some changes that actually occurred in previous patches:
- The damage for Spirit Strike was out of date.
- I showed Lava Breath and Poison Spit reducing casting speed by 50% when they had actually been changed to 25% awhile back.
- I still had Tendon Rip as a Next Melee skill instead of an Instant skill. Also they fixed the tool tip grammar at some point.
Talents
I’ve tried to organize the many talent changes in a way that helps make it clear everything that happened, but … there were a lot of changes. :>
By the way, in case it’s not clear … I use square brackets to condense the effects for multiple ranks of a talent. So for example, [5/10/15]% means that this talent has three ranks; the first has a 5% effect, the second a 10% effect, and the third a 15% effect. (I picked this up notation somewhere so it’s probably sort of standard, but just in case I thought I’d better explain it.)
Talent Changes
- Avoidance (All): The description of this talent has been clarified by removing the words “an additional” from before the percentage effect. Now the description just reads: “Reduces the damage your pet takes from area of effect attacks by [25/50/75]%.” The functionality stay the same.
- Great Resistance (All): This talent has been buffed from reducing damage by [3/6/9]% to reducing damage by [5/10/15]%.
- Cornered (Cunning): The chance to avoid critical strikes has been increased from [25/50]% to [30/60]%.
- Feeding Frenzy (Cunning): The additional damage from this talent has been increased from [6/12]% to [8/16]%.
- Roar of Recovery (Cunning): The cool down was lowered from 6 minutes to 3 minutes.
- Bullheaded (Cunning): In addition to removing movement-impairing effects, Bullheaded now also reduces the damage done to your pet by 20% for 12 seconds.
- Heart of the Phoenix (Ferocity): Can no longer be set to auto-cast. According to the patch notes, that never worked anyway.
- Intervene (Tenacity): This talent was moved from the third tier of the Tenacity tree to the fifth tier (to make space for Thunderstomp). It wasn’t otherwise changed.
- Roar of Sacrifice (Tenacity and now Cunning): Pets can now only absorb damage from the hunter, not from other group or raid members.
New Talents
- All Trees:
- Wild Hunt: A new talent in the sixth tier of all three pet talent trees, Wild Hunt increases the contribution that your pet gets from your Stamina and your Attack Power. Wild Hunt has different pre-requisite talents in each tree: in Cunning it requires 1 point in Wolverine Bite; in Ferocity it requires 1 point in Call of the Wild; and in Tenacity it requires 1 point in Roar of Sacrifice.
- Cunning:
- Grace of the Mantis: Although previously in the Tenacity tree, this talent is now available to Cunning pets as well. However, while it remains a fourth tier talent for Tenacity pets, it is a fifth tier talent for Cunning pets.
- Roar of Sacrifice: Likewise, this talent is now available to Cunning pets as well. Just as in the Tenacity tree, Roar of Sacrifice requires 2 points in Grace of the Mantis. However, while it remains a fifth tier talent for Tenacity pets, it is a sixth tier talent for Cunning pets.
- Ferocity:
- Shark Attack: A new talent in the sixth tier of the Ferocity tree, Shark Attack increases pet damage by [3/6]% — like another, rather expensive, Spiked Collar.
- Tenacity:
- Thunderstomp: The Gorilla family skill Thunderstomp is now a talent available to all Tenacity pets. It moved into the spot formerly held by Intervene in the third tier of talents. It has no pre-requisites and only one rank. (Presumably the damage from the attack scales, but reports seems to indicate that the talent does less damage than the gorilla skill used to.)
- Silverback: A new talent in the sixth tier of the Tenacity tree that causes your pet to heal 1% of its total health every time it uses Growl.
Belated Changes:
Again, these are changes that happened previously which I just ran across in my data. I’m calling them out in the hopes that I didn’t mislead anyone.
- Apparently the description for Rabid (Ferocity) was clarified at some point and I missed it.
- I was still showing Call of the Wild (Ferocity) as being raid-wide when it had in fact already been changed to affect just the hunter and the pet.
Whew!
And that’s that! I hope … Seriously, let me know what I missed so I can get it updated on Petopia! (I’m putting this post up slightly before the Petopia update, but it’ll synch up soon enough.)
90 Comments
Guess now I know the -ish time of Ryai’s possible Swan song.
But atleast on the upside, all my characters get free talent refunds.
And atleast there was one good tank per change, 15%- magic damage might be worth while. Mostly for a test run for Ravenlord mount and see if Erebus can handle a Heroic.
From what I read on the Wowinsider site concerning the official patch notes, Stampede may have been buffed back to having a knockback (though only on one enemy) and /causing/ a bleed effect, instead of simply increased susceptibility to bleed effects. They’ve been wrong in the past, but if it’s true, there’s one pleasant change to add to the list.
I’m somberly excited about tomorrow. I’m excited, I really am, but…
I’m gonna miss explosive shot. I remember hating it at first a few patch iterations ago in the happy Zangarmarsh before I realized it has a nasty stun! I love having more crowd control, I love playing a silly pvp tank-ish huntard. I’m going to play a Hybrid hunter tomorrow, and do some testing between the new SV, Hybreed, and a BM spec just for sillies. Not sure how I will roll as of yet.
Who knows, perhaps I’ll learn to love Black Arrow for raids? I’m not to excited about it. Again, I loved trapdancing, hell, any dancing for a couple years now.
What I am excited about? New silly turtle mount? Aotona? Argent Tourney? My Scorpadin being a true Scorpadin? Possibility of new tameable trash in Ulduar (er whatever the spelling is.) Possibility of REALLY GLITCHY QUIRKY UNINTENDED tameable trash?? Aotona??? Aotona being PvP-viable on my playstyle????? Yes please!!!
Now what am I very afraid about tomorrow (or the day after if the servers are lolfubar?) Logging in, respecing and finding my Wasp net health dropped like 2-4k (On my PvP gear, she’s juuuust broken 20k health. My Scorpadin is pushing 22k. Now THAT’s survivability.) Also logging in to find my Wasp shriveled up to the size of a gnome. Also sending said wasp into battle and noticing her sting didn’t pack as much of a punch for me as it used to…
And yes Beastmaster, now I TOO will feel the pain of having a rare tame jacked by a griefer. Hopefully not, but most likely. I’ve been getting far too lucky lately.
I still don’t get the change to Rhinos though. It seems far to specialized of a skill that just seems to gimp the pet in the end.
Also, Ravager and Gorilla seem the most useful to me for PvP, which is sad because they’re by far the most butt-ugly pets and I can’t stand them anymore (not as much as cats mind you.) I’d describe what I think the ravager looks like more, but I’d like not to have a pink birdy appear behind me and postgank.
/endposturing
In case you didn’t see:
“Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet’s abilities based on its specializations.”
There was something I was going to comment on but…..*Scratches his chin* I forgot.
Blizz doesn’t know viable if it came up and bit them in the bum Talaaya D:
Tbh all this does is change the fact that pre lv 40/50, you won’t really have to worry about taming a tank pet [most pets can tank pre outlands mobs just fine]. But after that? It’s a hinderance to DPS pets to tank pets and well utility are just fine as is.
True ‘viability’ would be allowing, with the use of the now somewhat redundant Pet Trainer, any pet to be a Ferocity, Tenacity or Utility pet.
And you know then they wouldn’t have to tag +5 of everything; Utility could stay even [as for pvp and pve they are fine], for DPS it can be +10% dps, and for Tenacity, +10 armor/health and +5 health/armor.
Talaaya : *nod* I mentioned the stats in the Patch 3.1 Overview I did a few days ago. This post here was just trying to round up the pet ability changes ’cause there’s so many of ‘em.
I’m reeeaaally looking forward to having my pallybear. And the Argent Tourney. And swimming mounts. And possible new Ulduar tameable trash.
I’m also curious to see how furious howl works with TSA (hey, for fights where your pet needs to stay next to you as a walking buff, I’d take furious howl over a kitty not doing anything any day), so I’m camping Old Cliff Jumper. I tamed Ironjaw a few hours ago, so if my camp is unsuccessful (and I plan on logging out in camping position, hoping to be there as soon as the servers get up), I’ll still have a cool-looking wolf and won’t have to put up with the competition I expect will be camping all the cool skins after the patch. …Or maybe everyone’ll be going after Gondria. :P In any case, I’m still deciding on what to call my new wolf!
On the other hand, though… I have a crap computer/connection, and I’m nervous about my guild dashing into Ulduar only for me to DC as soon as we start pulling trash. :(
Yehhh.. Patch time… *starts conga-line*
Finally can get rid of that ugly-butt-scratcher and break out good ol’ Cointreau… my Death Flayer which was my very first pet all the way from 11… cant wait..
Bah.. nothing about Gore.
Warp ability sucks! the buff that it makes just lasts for 4 seconds.. so your stalker avoids about 1 hit maybe 2.
and why the hell didnt blizz just fix/boost those crappy pet abilitys like warp or a gore?
I think that every pet that has a tank / soloability skill should be remade to a nice pvp / pve ability… I would love to use croc or a bear that would be usefull in pvp.
making every pet ability to do damage or just simply boost the damage of you, or your pet
There’s one thing that bugs me a litte…how will we be able to get the new talents if we aren’t BM? Will Blizz add more talent points?
*pet talents I mean
… Lerk do you know nothing about what you are talking about? Warp is FINE. Warp does NOT need to be fixed- right after the change and before I even got WotLK, my Warpy tanked the grons for the ogre quests, then all four dragons.
Now- if your Warpy is tanking 2/3 mobs, it’s gonna be hit on alot more than ‘once a second’, meaning Warp is GOING to give a chance that your stalker will dodge more than one hit.
Yes Gore is crap- but that does not mean Warp is. Gore is just poorly tagged onto charge, but then again only Boars get that so what are you gonna do about it.
So please, Lerk, please, STOP complaining about Warp?
The thing is that u need to Be BM to get them, its a litle buff to BM hunters
to get the new pet talents
To add onto Ohunterr’s post, in responce to yours Nalain; the new talents were put in there exclusively for BM hunters. Blizzard’s sort of poor excuse in an attempt to ‘buff BM yet keep it nerfed’.
If you’re not BM, but MM or SV, it really won’t matter to you Nalain, because your pet is not a standard 40% of your dps.
And Blizzard already flat out said they aren’t implimenting more talent points or changing the trees.
This might be a silly idea, but now that there are even MORE pet abilities in the pet trees, why not just increase the pet points slightly? I’m not sure if they did this or not What I am SURE of is that those “tier 6″ abilities will only be reachable by BM hunters. (God knows when the Devs at Bliz will be able to give them spotlight without having rets, DKs, and Warroirs always having to track them down for an easier kill and show the game what the talent tree is really made of). *Sigh* But anyways,What I’m getting at is that the pet trees should have say 2/4 more points added just for those boosts at the top of the tree for example “Natural armor and Stamina” boosts at the top of the tree as well as charge so that they won’t be meaningless on the tree itself.
Johnny: They won’t do it. Why? Because the BM talent already rewards FOUR points. Adding another 2/4 will allow non BM hunters access to one/two talents, most likely one. Then of course BM would have an extra 4 already bringing to total from 16 to 20 and 20 to 24- which would allow a BM hunter to get everything and then what would happen? Someone else would complain.
I’m sorry but I have to say No again to you- I wouldn’t mind an extra pet talent as originally the BM talent rewarded five points. But I have to shutter myself in such a crutched build, that I NEED those talents to boost my pets.
Survival Hunters and Marksmen hunters do NOT need the talents, nor do they have to be work their pets as hard as a BM does; if their pet dies? So what? Unfortunately or not, the pet does NOT equal half of your DPS when an SV or MM hunter- but for a BM hunter it does.
And we have to give up a bit of survivability pet talents, to obtain the extra DPS.
If you’re trying to have a pet be able to be a PVP and a PVE pet at the same time, you’re playing it wrong; either specc it as pure PVE or pure PVP or get one pet for both, it’s what I do.
That and this would be basically playing into Blizzard’s excuse of ‘oh you’d be able to talent for everything’ :/
Johnny:
That’s also kinda the point of the new pet talents. GC stated early in 3.1 PTR that the point of the new talents was to also increase the usefulness of BM 51 pt talent.
“And we have to give up a bit of survivability pet talents, to obtain the extra DPS.”
This is also true. I had to give up (I think it was) Lick Your Wounds if I wanted all the new talents, and that’s *with* the extra BM talent points @_@ But perhaps thats why there’s glyph of Mending…which reminds me I need to pick that up from the AH.
I’m glad 3.1 is out, I’m tired of the dead air that’s been hanging around WoW lately. Now, if only I could get the downloader to stop saying my comp is behind a firewall…. *le sigh*
The patch is out :D
Double post cause I meant to address other posts too, but I suck and didn’t D=
Saranette:
Every pet will be losing at least 2k health in my experience from the pet families. Don’t be horrified if yours did as well. 2k isn’t going to make or break you pets though, no worries. Sadly, however, I don’t think Wasps got shrunk. I’d be ecstatic if they were (cause I’m sick of people using a bug that manages to however at my usual camera angle); but as I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s part of patch 3.1.2-3.1.9. But as for now, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
But your super enthusiasm is catchy XD
Ryai:
I kinda have to agree, Warp blows. I don’t mean like the ability itself sucks, but it blows as a family skill. 4 seconds isn’t very long, maybe 6 seconds would be better. But in general, I think it does suck XD However, this is coming from someone who freakin’ loves her thunderstomping thunder-lizard, so I’m still gonna be usin’ Gezz, Warp or not XD
Personally, I just want the Argent Tournement. As a member of my guild’s mount collecting team (Hereby known as the “Mount Squad” …. there’s only 3 of us *cough*), I will be dedicating my time to the tournement. It’s lame I have to get that frostsaber, but it will be fun to see just how fast we can do it =D
Rikaku:
I know very well that You had to give up some of the other pet talent abilities, I was just hoping we’d be able to boost up BMS pets a bit more. GC’s statement meant that pets would lose suvivability for DPS. Which by the way Would be fine anyway, if the pet dies and has the Heart of the Phoneix on CD, I could just run out of the fight (Hopefully) and ethier switch to Surv with the Duel spec. OR just rez it again and bring in more of the pet DPS hurt. P.S Hope you finally get past the firewall and download it :D Now just got to wait for the Devs to finish with the realms.
Ryai:
I understand all of that, hell Surv and MM are really just bringing the pets along for the ride so they could annoy the *Beep* out of a player while you fire away.
I pretty much finished checking all of the pet changes and hunter stuff on WoWinsider, so I really didn’t figure out a way to arrange my pets talents.
My pets are so far:Raptor (Rex) Devilsaur (Tex) Corehound (Greenfang) and Ghost Hydra(Timeuas) (Along with Loq that I am farming to find in SB like hell) So trying to think of a way to give each pet a diffrent strength in the pet trees for example My Corehound has the most DPS skills or my Raptor has the most Survivability and attack power. Its going to be one hell of a ride trust me. Good luck on patch 3.1 guys and have a blast! I know I will. (Sort of)
Johnny:
Yeah I wish it was a buff too.
HOLY CRAP PATCH FINISHED YAY! Damn you realms!
*cough* Sorry, I have ADD…
Anyways, yes, this patch will be fun. There really is something for everyone (Cmon thunderstomping Worms!)! I’m just happy Odin (ghost wolf) can finally run <3333
Rikaku:
Haha, Its more like: GO THUNDERSTOMPING ANNOYING GHOST HYDRA THAT MAKES NOISE EVERY 9 SECONDS! Hope Bliz fixes that like they did with the Ghost wolf run :/
Rikaku: The fact is if they did change warp- it’d not be to buff it. And if they did anything else, someone would cry it’s OP or something. It’s not the best- but it doesn’t have to be.
It’s not broken and I don’t want Blizz to ‘fix’ it like they ‘fixed’ Gezz and the Ghostwolves and etc else.
I just wish there was a Red Warpstalker as I would really love one for my Orc :/
Her theme is mostly black n red pets. For I is cliche.
Johnny: That’s part of the Hydra charm imo. I like how Erebus is noisy.
He complains when he’s hungry, he complains when he’s stuffed. He complains when there’s nothing to tank- and he complains when there is something to tank. He complains when I run around to much, and the only time he does shut up is when I get on my Netherdrake [as seriously a horse and strider are to small to carry Erebus].
TBH what they SHOULD fix, is Devilsaur running animation and giving Corehounds a swim animation.
Stomping.. thru water..
…
Logic has been defied.
O.o I made a reply but it didn’t go through
Double Post: ok I guess it was Firefox messing up?
‘Rikaku: The fact is if they did change warp- it’d not be to buff it. And if they did anything else, someone would cry it’s OP or something. It’s not the best- but it doesn’t have to be.
It’s not broken and I don’t want Blizz to ‘fix’ it like they ‘fixed’ Gezz and the Ghostwolves and etc else.
I just wish there was a Red Warpstalker as I would really love one for my Orc :/
Her theme is mostly black n red pets. For I is cliche.
Johnny: That’s part of the Hydra charm imo. I like how Erebus is noisy.
He complains when he’s hungry, he complains when he’s stuffed. He complains when there’s nothing to tank- and he complains when there is something to tank. He complains when I run around to much, and the only time he does shut up is when I get on my Netherdrake [as seriously a horse and strider are to small to carry Erebus].
TBH what they SHOULD fix, is Devilsaur running animation and giving Corehounds a swim animation.
Stomping.. thru water..
…
Logic has been defied.’
Ryai:
*Chuckle* Considering I have all 3 of those pets (Not bragging) The Devilsaur run animation and the Corehound water stomp I’ve been used to for awhile, I forgot all about it. My hydra is just like any Crocolisk as well. They make hell of alot of noise in combat and around town with the hissing. So for a Spirit Hydra that thinks its a Crocolisk, its doing a pretty good job! Only thing is everytime I try and RP in Silvermoon, I’ve got to put Timeuas in the stables or else everyone’ll be yelling: “WHY DOES IT SOUND LIKE A WHOLE ARMY OF NAGA’S ARE OUT ON MY FRONT DOOR!” Your normal QQ, I’m sure XD.
Ryai:
“The fact is if they did change warp- it’d not be to buff it. And if they did anything else, someone would cry it’s OP or something. It’s not the best- but it doesn’t have to be.”
Oh I know. Seriously, people will cry OP when they have no idea what it means. And I don’t think it needs a “buff” persay, but a suitable change considering 4 secs of dog when the avg. AS is 2.0 is, well, lame. At least if it’s 6 seconds, thats at least 2 dodges. And it’s not like people should be attacking your pet in arena anyways, so it wouldn’t change anything drastically for OPness.
The thing that bugs me about warp is that they gave cats a second family skill, to help compensate for the lack luster prowl, so why not warp stalkers? Don’t get me wrong, warp has saved me a few times while soloing because it can get the stalker back to you so fast, but they really need something else, like a poison bite that works like rake. I think warp stalkers hit you with that all the time in outlands. At least it is some kind of poison bite…..
Whew! I accidentally slept through my alarm this morning, so I’m kinda relieved the realms aren’t up yet: no one can ninja Old Cliff Jumper before me, now!
I did notice in the patch notes that rhino Stampede has a knockback again (still?)! So it’s not just a crappy increase to bleeds which no BM hunter has anyway!
Im upset about Furious Howl now does not affect all the party and the cool down ratio….ugh wolfs where good and now this just bit us in the butt…
Arnen:
Blizzard fucked up the patch again =) You know them. And if you have a battle.net account, don’t get excited; their “authentication systems” aren’t up. And since they didn’t post a message about it EXCEPT for the forums, I just “repaired” WoW.
Which means all my nice configurations are gone… Yay! 800×600 resolution on my 1440 x 900 monitor =D
Yes, I’m annoyed, the realms will be up while I’m in class, so that’s why I’m smiling =D
Palla:
Poison bite for Warp Stalkers: Genius. Pure genius. I demand it now XD
Well they have several abilities, the Netherstorm ones can stun and posion and it’s very, very annoying running around on Ama spamming a macro, looking for Nuramoc and have like 15 warpstalkers trailing me.
Ok I exagerate.
But a poisonous bite wouldn’t be that bad tbh, maybe about the same cd as Rake and SS and etc?
OH AND I KNOW HOW TO KILL A RET PALADIN :D
was farming rep n marks in AV. Was juuust getting Snowfall GY back. Paladin comes zooming up so I pop trap n detterence n disengage and run away, and slip down the slope, and slip again, and think I get a few seconds to heal rite? nope wrong, paladin leaps off, just to cheapshot me.
Then I watch as he splats and dies beside my corpse. Awww revenge 8D
No offense to anyone.
Rikaku: That does sound like a decent change, but as I said you know Blizz :/
Or maybe they could change Warp altogether; dodges the next two/three hits, no time on it? .. no wait that is op.
‘ I’ve got to put Timeuas in the stables or else everyone’ll be yelling: “WHY DOES IT SOUND LIKE A WHOLE ARMY OF NAGA’S ARE OUT ON MY FRONT DOOR!” Your normal QQ, I’m sure XD.’
Oh god lol, the image it made me think up, oh god XD
ty for the laugh.
Rikaku:
Ouch. :( So glad I checked the forums before I tried that.
Coincidentally, I tried to get rid of the “OMG you haz firewall” message by actually resetting how my firewall handles every item I can configure that has to do with WoW, and still got it. xD I think the downloader mistakes my slow connection for a fast connection behind a firewall… Ah well! Now it’s time for the waiting game…
Also, at least there are new video settings to play with. Though, I’m not even seeing half the new options mentioned in the patch notes, one’s totally greyed out, and most of them aren’t very customizable for me… That’s bad, isn’t it? >>;
OK, ther should NOT be more points given out to spend on the pet trees. It’s something for BM hunters. It’s like saying someone specced BM should get to have Explosive Shot. They are put into the sixth tier for a reason… so that non-BM specced hunters can’t get them. If you want more points for your pet, use one of your dual specs as BM. Seems like everybody wants a sup[er-powered hunter and a super-powered pet. I am all for buffing hunters so they are on an even playing filed, but even I can see giving non-Bm hunters more points becoming a (good) problem. Should people who get the 51 point BM skill get more points to spend on their pet? Sure. Should non-BM specced hunters get more points to spend on their pet? nope.
I guess I can say fuck off to my gorilla.
Because they’re going to suck now.
Easy there, Neither. They won’t suck, they just won’t be the ‘ultimate’ tanking or soloing pet now, and that is GREAT. I hated it that they were the number one because of an overpowered family skill. It needed to be toned down a bit, but I am even more happy that thunderstomp was given to all tenacity pets. Most likely it has been balanced better, since before the level 64 or so version was overpowered, and the level eighty version went up by like ten points of damage or so.
Oh they’ll suck.
And I got a feeling the skill on the tree will suck along with them.
I know a couple of the regulars were commenting about why would anyone kill pets in PvP, or if you’re not a BM spec, your pet don’t mean jack. I know what you’re saying, but here’s some food for thought=)
I love the gimpy tank spec I talk about, play about, because… well, it’s unexpected, and it gives the pet much more meaning out of BM. I mean generally out of BM, your pet is either token cat/dino, or a root/snare trap with four legs (more or less.) Now my raiding gear isn’t up to par yet (I’m still using 80BoE blues, crafted epics, a Drake Crossbow, and gemming for agi and just barely made hit cap for bosses,) but when I pop on Stamina set, my pet DPS actually increased a bit more! Between gimping my dps, and raising the pet’s (more if I had more general use to drop Dragonhawk aspect to return to good ol’ Beast aspect like I had glyphed while levelin,) a perverse near balance was achieved…
Okay, perhaps not, but they pull more of my combined damage than properly geared.
Now should you do this? Prolly not, but it is funny. Do I still send in my wolf/wasp to fight mobs and bosses in raids? You bet, abd it made me sad watching the raid leader one evening, a hunter, dpsing with his blighthound just sorta cheerleading.
Admittedly, I don’t have enough experence in Arenas to make an absolute judgement on Stamina/Tenacity setup; I haven’t played higher than like a 1300 rating game there. However, the last fight I had was my first actual epic fight – nearly twenty minutes of a single 2v2 match, Me and a resto shammy, against resto and feral druids. It was hilarious, and I blundered towards the end; I totally forgot about their combat rez, had I know better we’d have won the fight. But the best part was that after a point like over ten minutes in, the feral constantly focuing on me (because I’d CC him off my healer,) is finally like F THIS!!! and makes a concentrated effort to KILL MY SCORPID! Took a minute er two even to do!
You see, playing a SV hunter this way, my pet is EXTREMELY important to me. Just like a gimped tank, my pet is essentially my resilience, or mitigation, or better yet, an extra set of cooldowns! It’s almost sad, because I’m thinking about switching to a turtle; a pet dot that I need to keep a very close eye on seems counter intuitive for crowd controlling since it makes breaking traps/scatter/fear that much easier. But I love the look of my Scorpion. Yet, if I went with a turtle, which also look cool to me, I could truly play the most unbelievably obnoxious tactic of any Street Fighter scrub; turtleing! I have been curious if the damage reduction talents on cower and stuff stack together with the turtle family skill. Now THAT’s Survivability!
It would be soooooo annoying! I LOVE the idea of that!
(again, this post wasn’t meant as a flame, just food for thought=)
Neither:
How are they going to suck? They *still* have Thunderstomp! Now they have Thunderstomp and Pummel. I see that as a far cry from sucking, hell, they’re be one of the most useful PvP pets now. They’re still great for soloing as well, they didn’t *lose* anything, so what you’re upset over, I don’t know.
In the official patch notes, the rhino special Stampede, still says it has its knock back.
It does Kristy, but I don’t think I am even going to bother downloading the patch. Can some one else see if Stampede still has a knockback?
Palla:
No one can tell yet, Blizzard still broke the game. Authentication servers are down and if you have a battle.net account, you’re screwed. =(
I think they enjoy breaking the game….. *Mutters darkly at Blizzard*
Palla:
Of course they do. They knew that I was excited to do my new argent tournement and said “Nope! Not that battle account merger, Vista-using lunatic NE hunter! NO WRATH FOR HER!”
Ironically, I live 20 mins away from Blizzard HQ. I’m gonna drive down there and leave an “aged yolk” (*cough*) at their doorstep one of these days. Maybe I’ll leave a broken monitor there too saying “YOU KNOW WHY!”
You know our servers will break in Europe tomorrow :D Though I’m out most of the day so hopefully be back for when I get back. I’ve got all my lot ready and waiting. Mits for her new turtle in Ghostlands, Kalandis (Pally) and DG (Priest) for their “new” spell, Evai my Draenei to see if she can finally pick up a BFD quest that bugged, Korvus and Sera gonna try the draenei youngling quest that also became buggered…
Though thank you Nat for having a fishing rod for doing your quest, I long chucked the rest thinking I wouldn;t ever get fishing 3/4 years ago now.
Re: Stampede — Yeah, the patch notes indicate that it still has the knockback, but so far as I know they’ve said that in the PTR notes for awhile now. And on the PTR (which is still up for the moment), there is no knockback component.
Now it may be that this is a chance between the final PTR build and Patch 3.1 proper. I plan on testing that as soon as I can log in.
I’m going to start searching for a new pet.
My gorilla was murdered by Blizzard.
Ariamodasu:
I wish I hadn’t vendored my fishing pole. *sigh* Could really use it since Im actually leveling fishing for once.
Neither:
I still don’t see why you’re upset over the Gorillas. How arre they murdered? Cause Thunderstomp is a talent now? Gorillas can still use it! Be glad you weren’t using a Rhino, *those* got murdered; not gorillas.
Honestly, if you like your Gorilla enough, you’ll keep using it no matter what, best pet or not. If you’re just changing because it’s not “the best” tanking pet anymore, then you should be used to changing pets because no one pet stays “the best” forever.
Honest to goodness, if I didn’t level entirely aoe grinding from 32-65 with a Gorilla, I’d totally still be using one today!
They’re going to make thunderstomp suck completely.
Mark my words.
Rikaku: Tell me about it, but if you’ve done Nat’s quest he’ll give you one now which is a nice up from the crappy +10 I got from a vendor :) I only level it when it’s croc daily and I’m a proud owner of a single bucket….
Neither: But right now it’s fine. How about a little less pessimissm and just enjoying whats there soon as the servers come back in the states hm?
No because I know for a fact it’ll suck. And pummel is almost worthless pvm.
Neither:
No, you’re just assuming it’ll suck. Have you even *been* on the PTR? Did you even *try* a Gorilla on the PTR? I doubt you did. Pummel does NOT suck. It is one of the *best* PvP abilities a pet can use. Thunderstomp does *not* suck. I didn’t see much of a difference on my lvl 75 Gorilla’s thunderstomp live to PTR.
So before you going saying “it’s going to suck”, why don’t you try it? Or at least if you’re going to insist upon it regardless of what people are telling you with actual evidence, give some facts as to why it’s going to suck instead of just whining about it.
That’s more then enough, Neither. Have you tried it yet? Have you tried pummel yet? No, and it is very obvious from your statements that you just want to complain about SOMETHING. Why don’t you just knock it off until you’ve tested them? There’ll be a bit more weight to your words when you can say “I tried them, and I think they suck.” As opposed to “I just know they are going to suck!”
……I heart you, Rikaku…..
I was just thinking about how great minds think alike Palla <3
I’d like to see Cower gone forever! I also hate that if I dismount or log in my Cat automatically has cower and steath on. I have to right click to make them stop re-casting and then left click to make the cat uncast them! That’s so annoying!
And pets making the talent tree reset. It’s so annoying when I’m looking at say the Unholy Tree on my DK, dismount and my ghoul makes it switch back to Blood. Bah!
Nooo! Cower is way too important for me for it to be gone forever o_o My advice is this, the autocast only effects those spells that are NOT on your pets spell bar. I personally keep Cower, Growl, Prowl(or other family skill if the pet is not a cat), Heart of the Phoenix on my pets’ pet bar. That way those abilities are never affected by the auto-cast bug. It’s a temporary solution, but they work.
going back to warp stalkers, instead of a poison bite how bout either an attack like rake or stun using its huge tail? think he could just swing it and knock an enemy over for 1-2 sec…..dunno but what do u guys think bout it i think the tail should be used for something =P
Well, I have a battle.net account, and I’m able to log in and stare at the little “Developer” checkbox, so… seems they’ve got that working now. :P
…And why should they remove cower? Sure, it’s not always necessary, but it’s saved my pets before – especially at lower levels, since my newbie hunter is way overgeared and a lot of lowbie tanks can’t even keep aggro over my pet without it. :P
sry double post but got 2 more questions? does anyone know if w arp in arcatraz was ever made tamable? and was blighthound animations ever fixed? the animations is what made me keep one for like 5 min b4 goin back to my snarler
I REMEMBER WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY!!!!
Heart of the Phoenix pretty much ALWAYS autocast for me. What the !@#$ is Blizzard talking about, saying it never worked?
And Pikaley, I brought up poison bite because some warp stalkers already do something similar, and that would let it be like rake or spirit strike.
Pikaley:
No, Blighthounds still can’t run. Neither can devilsaurs (majority anyways). Not sure if Warps in arcatraz was made tamable.
Arnen:
Cower, I never used to use it pre-3.0 XD Now though, my poor Spirit Beast grabs aggro (in heroics mainly) like crazy if I leave Cower and Growl off. Not to mention my wolf did the same on the ptr XD So yes, I agree. Super useful.
Bah I wish class was over so I could go play and re-do all my friggin’ options and setting for the millionth time again.
Frelling, Neither, I got on the PTR before it broke for me. Erebus with Thunderstomp, by himself, was doing 400-500 dmg per stomp, when I buffed him up completely he got off nearly, a 1.5k crit.
So unless you really know the damned numbers behind Thunderstomp, please be quiet. All you are doing is being a troll, sir.
And yes Cower IS to important to keep- and if I was a serious raider I would probably invest in imp cower as damage reduction is always good :c
realms are starting to come back online.its sticking on the character select load screen though…
Mania’s Arcania » Patch 3.1 is Live! - April 14th, 2009 @ 6:52 pm UTC
[...] Patch 3.1: Pet Ability Changes [...]
Heart of the Phoenix never auto-casted for me… but after the few tries, I never set it to do that anyway (what if I didn’t WANT my pet alive right that second?), and now I just don’t have the points to toss around to take the talent anyway. :/
As for Imp. Cower, I’ve never bothered with it, because I’ve always seen Cower as something you use early to avoid your pet getting aggro in the first place, and not usually as a last-second “Ohcrap, Fluffy got ahead of the tank” button.
I’m able to get into my realm, too, but I also am stuck at the “Retrieving Character List” message. …For some reason it’s listing Argent Dawn as high pop, though, even though no one I know can get in. Hrm. If someone ninjas Old Cliff Jumper I’m going to be angry – got up earlier than usual and everything for him.
Arnen:
No it never did, but I keep HotP on my pet spell bar for quick clicking when my pet does die.
OCJ camping, ahh I rememebr when I did that. Camped for 3 month to get him, took me longer to get OCJ then it did Loque’nahak. It’s doubtful OCJ would even be up when the realms come up. Generally maintenace are realm restarts, so consider his timer to be re-done.
Yeah, that’s why I’m hoping he’s there right away, and that I’m the first one there… xD Otherwise, hey, if I’m here I’ll know what time the server came up, so I’ll know what times to camp… And Ironjaw is a good second choice, I think. :)
Curious…anyone know if they ever fixed that “Call Stabled Pet” bug where it was losing pets?
O.o Losing pets? Like… permanently?
…
…
well I’m not ever using call stabled pet. And I won’t learn it. So I don’t risk it.
@ Arnen: I use it all the time since it doesn’t require focus and doesn’t set off any real GCD for other pet talents. That and I got tired of warriors complaing to me all the damn time.
Bare droods? Never.
DKs? Never.
Paladins? Heaven to betsy, never.
Besides I don’t use Jupiter and Jareth or Abyss or Aurelius for farming [or well I wont] so having them with Cower on and Growl off doesn’t bother me. Hydralisk all the way.
The only problem I had with Call Stabled Pet ‘losing’ pets was a temporary display problem that happened early on and was solved by shifting the pets around. I don’t remember hitting it later when I was using Call Stabled Pet regularly, although I also can’t say for certain that it was fixed.
Yay!
My guild will no longer be mad at me for not having a gorilla!
rip aoe gorilla.
Im upset about the gorilla change. My hunter is only 36, and loved his gorilla, but now i have to wait 8 more lvs before i can retake thunderstomp. its unfair to the lower levels that now the pets we were used to playing with are not as good untill we get higher level. from what i can tell, my pet has no AoE. if im wrong, please let me know.
Hey Mania… Sorry to point stuff out but Silverback has two ranks and is listed as only one on your talents page:
2 Ranks
Your pet’s Growl also heals it for 1% of its total health.
Should be:
2 Ranks
Your pet’s Growl also heals it for [1%/2%] of its total health.
Really cant wait to get home from work and get rid of my stinky-butt-scratching gorilla… FINALLY!.. yehhhh…
@ Xaldin
Yeah Thunderstomp wont be available now until later levels for you.. I guess you’ll have to get a Bear or Croc is you fancy limited AOE until Thunderstomp is available to you again.
To be honest I think it will help lower level hunters as it means you have to learn how to use a lot more skills and talents than just thunderstomp 2/3 mobs and then volley … rinse and repeat… now aggro must be watched and targetting 1 mob and burn them down then onto the next. Just my opinion anyway…
I never used a Gorilla until they became so overpowered that it was crazy not to have one for farming/aoe… and I believe I’m a better player for it… my scorpion was my pet the whole way through till then and he’s still waiting in my stable for me now..
Mania you need to change Thunderstomp to Pummel on the Gorilla Family page. http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_gorilla.html
Whoops! Thanks, Guntitan. I’ll get that fixed right now.
And thanks also, Jaeger. I’ll fix SIlverback while I’m in there. :>
Mania, great job done! Really don’t know what i would do without Petopia!
By the way – didn’t know where to post it, but isn’t Terror Spinner (rare bonespider) found in ZD instead of Icecrown?
Big thank you to Mania.. even with all the fun im sure your having with 3.1 your still managing to do an amazing job here on the site and keep things up-to-date…
A very big thank you, and you are always my first point of call when I need to research something pet-related.
I know sometimes we might seem ungreatful with requests or pointing out the little things but really we loves you… :x
I don’t know if it was said someone in all these posts but they also changed the Bear’s Swipe move, it now hits all targets in front of the bear instead of just 3 targets
Yeah same as our swipe… Even if it does bug ocasionally justa s fore warning.
I don’t know if someone has mentioned it yet (too lazy to read) xD
But has anyone tried to tame a Silithid recently? They seem pretty bugged, cause you can’t teach them Dash in the talent tree… Because they already got it when you tame them for some reason… And it doesn’t work to go to a pet trainer and unlearn them.
Also, pets that was elite before tamed seems pretty bugged when you point at them with the mouse – example: “Wolf – Someone’s Pet – Level 55 (Elite)”…
And yesterday I found a even “worse” one. I tamed a white devilsaur on my horde hunter alt, and right after I named her Angel, it said: “Angel – Seranas’s Pet – Level 55 Angel Angel (Player)”. I was like O.o lol
“According to the patch notes, that never worked anyway.”
Yep…it worked just fine, and I kicked myself every time it reset to auto-cast and I missed it, ’cause it would automatically go right back into the heat of battle before I was ready for it, rather dumbass excuse, guessing they just didn’t like it.
“Pets can now only absorb damage from the hunter, not from other group or raid members.”
Hunters are less useful, who knew they could be even more of a plain-jane DPS class? I guess Blizzard is hitting them from both ends, at least it wasn’t removed.
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