Let’s Talk Cunning
Last Thursday, Blizzard released the long-awaited Hunter Q&A. I haven’t said much about my own reactions to the Q&A, but suffice it to say that I was a little disappointed with one answer in particular.
Here’s a repeat of that question and answer:
Q: The Cunning pet-type was originally designed to be optimal for PvP use, however, most hunters feel that the Cunning pet-type falls short. How do we feel about the current state of what Cunning pets are offering, and are there any current plans to make improvements?
A: We made an effort in 3.1 to get the Cunning pets up to speed by giving them talents like Roar of Sacrifice, and normalizing all of the pet stats so that Cunning pets had the same stats as the other two types, modified by pet talents. Crabs are still fairly popular and they probably should be a Cunning pet given their crowd control ability, but the carapace also made them feel like they should be able tanks. And selfishly, I had no problem with seeing a lot of crab pets. (No, I’m not serious.)
This is something we would love to see more feedback on. Hunters in the online community tend to focus a lot on overall PvE dps or overall PvP survival and not get too much into pet comparisons. Someone theorycrafts the best pet and then hunters just go and get it instead of discussing what the other pets would need to be more competitive. To be fair, there is some of that discussion, but it’s not always easy to find, and I have looked. It’s not super high priority given some of the other hunter design issues we’re looking at, but we do want pets to be a choice.
I was disappointed with this answer largely because I feel we often spend time discussing what is needed to make pets more competitive. However, I freely admit that here on Arcania, at least, I don’t often encourage PvP-centric discussions, mostly because I don’t PvP myself. (And I don’t actually expect that Ghostcrawler reads Arcania.)
But we’ve got some time today, so let’s correct that! Let’s talk Cunning!
Now as I said, I don’t PvP — so I haven’t a clue what would make Cunning pets more attractive for PvP. From what I hear, though, the problem seems to be that Cunning pets are too situational.
PvP is fast-paced and, perhaps more so than any other type of gameplay, involves reacting to the unexpected. So I can see how in some ways a more general pet — say, a Ferocity pet that consistently does good damage — can be more flexible when it comes to dealing with unexpected situations than a Cunning pet who relies on a couple of long-cooldown tricky abilities.
Of course, this is largely the same reason that Ferocity pets are popular in PvE as well. No matter what you are doing, a hefty does of consistent damage is always welcome!
But rather than spent more space just talking out of my … err, hat, why don’t I be quiet and let people who have more experience than I do comment on this topic?
So tell me, in terms of Cunning pets and especially (although not necessarily exclusively) in terms of PvP — what’s the problem and what would make it better?
132 Comments
First and foremost, all pets need to be able to take a hit better in PvP. I assume with the Re silence change, this will help some. But it’s still unclear just how much will make a difference. I think you pointed out another important fact. Cunning Pets rely alot more on situational uses, such as the Cornered and Feeding Frenzy talent. If your pet is already down to 35%, you’re going to either be popping Mend Pet’s like crazy or your pet is going down. In my experience, a pet doesn’t stay at 35% for very long before its either above the threshold (healed) or dead.
That said though, I’m not quite sure what can be done (as I’m not a serious PvPer). I’m not well-versed in the Cunning pet-family.
This is approaching off topic, but the bit that says “normalizing all of the pet stats so that Cunning pets had the same stats as the other two types” really galls me. Seriously? You balance thing by making everything a carbon copy of each other? Sure, you can make them different with the talent points, but there should be more to it then that. Looking at player characters, the tank classes don’t have the same base stats as the DPS classes or the healing classes. I liked it better when, say, the Tenacity pets had a little more base armor then the Ferocity or Cunning pets. Why not figure out which stats PvP pets would need, and give them a boost to that?
Mr. Perfect: I think that’s a valid piece of this topic. :> Do you have any suggestions on which stats PVP pets would need in particular?
As a non-pvper I’d say they really need something to make them more survivable. I agree with Mr. Perfect, it’s idiotic to have a tank with the same stats as a dpser. The Cunning pets I have used and teamed with are the most squishy pets I have ever seen, especially when used by a non-BM. Add to that the often situational attacks and talents and you got a bunch of pets that is way down on the wishlist.
I seems to me that most PVP hunters pick their pets based almost entirely on their special ability. Crabs are popular in arenas because of Pin, which is used to stop a wounded target from moving out of LoS so they can be finished off by the hunter. The current climate of high burst, fast kill PVP favors long CD abilities that help you score the first kill.
Crabs being Tenacity is just a small bonus (it gives them access to the Intervene trick, where the hunter waits for a Sap from a rogue and intervenes the Crab onto the unsapped teammate, which will cause the Cheap Shot opener to be ineffective); if crabs were ferocity or cunning, I don’t think it would make much difference in their arena popularity.
I don’t know if anything “needs” to be done to make hunters use more diverse pet choices in PVP. Ferocity pets are pretty common in BG’s / Wintergrasp, where long CD abilities are less favored and small, but “passive” damage boosts are welcome. I’d hate to see them dilute pet abilities and making them all the same, in the name of diversifying PVP pet options : /
I haven’t really tried out Cunning Pets much yet. I’ve had a Chimaera for a few levels and it kept dying all the time. It could barely tank two mobs for me, and if a third one came, the end, while my ferocities have no trouble with tanking 10 or so.
Though, i must say, in Battlegrounds, i have a lot of trouble with Ravagers. I hate when i’m just scaring a druid, while suddently a ravager dashes in a knocks me down. So i don’t know much about cunning, but i am seriously thinking of taking a ravager for the cool looks and ability.
Oh and i forget to say this, i don’t see a reason against Ghostcrawler reading Mania. Sure, there’s tons of other hunter blogs, but, to be honest, pretty much every hunter i know does visit your page, wherever it is my real life friend or a computer friend from the other side of the planet. But they know no single bit about other pages. So, i really wouldn’t be surprised if he really did read this blog.
See problem i see is that there a lot of useful abilitys for our Cunning Pets, but either their duration ist too short, their cooldown as a none BM (or even as a BM) is too long or both. For Example a 2 Sec Stun from a Ravager or Bat won´t make me feel that i want them for PvP a Crabs oder Spiders 4 Sec Root sounds much better.
Personally i like a Chimera most cause its Froststormbreath really helps alot against those nasty Melees trying to get in touch with you ;)
But well its an Exotic so only one third of our Speccs can use it.
Sometimes i even use my second Spiritbeast (the one from ZulDrak) just for more DMG.
This is just from a BG point of view cause i don´t often do Arenas and maybe on larger teams another Stun oder Silence (hi Nether Ray) would be useful enough to bring such a Pet.
ps: Giving them a shorter cooldown or a longer duration of their skills would probably not fix it cause a 4 sec stun with less than 40 sec cd and an Intimidation together will maybe be to strong. I would suggest to change their skills in something new, a 2-3 sec Silence would fit much better to the Sonic Screech of a Bat and maybe the Ravager could have something like Impale throwing the target in the air for 2-3 sec (and cause hes in the air he will be unable to move or use none instant spells, but he will still be attackable by range attacks)
oh i mixed up some words xD
Unhook Wolverine bite from the target needing to dodge, but keep the cooldown at about fifteen seconds. This would allow cunning pet’s to use that attack more consistently, but shouldn’t put them over ferocity for damage under normal circumstances. Get rid of roar of sacrifice, for the love of god, and give cunning pet’s their own special talent. Allow a talent deep in the cunning tree that let’s cunning pet’s get an additional amount of dodge and resilience from the hunter. Change cornered to something like “Savage assault” And have it increase the damage of the pet by fifteen percent so long as they are above seventy percent health, or so long as they are a percentage higher then their target in health. Give cunning a passive health restore on the same basis as the other two, except consider making it only work on focus using attacks. HALF THE COOLDOWN ON MOST CUNNING FAMILY ABILITIES. The best ability in the world becomes crap when you can only use it once in a blue moon. Unhook bullheaded from cornered. Give mobility something to make it a better talent, since halving the cooldown on dash is lackluster. GIVE CUNNING PETS CHARGE. I am not sure if there is one, but if there is then either remove or lower the internal cooldown on Owls Focus. Give cunning pet’s a talent that passively lowers the time spent snared or slowed.
Those are just some blanket suggestions. I’ll post again if I can think of anymore.
the only issue I see is that the pet cooldowns are too long if you are not bm…but that is made up for by extra hunter abilities such as wyvern shot. Personally I pvp as bm, and find that the cunning pets are good if you use them properly. When I did pvp a lot I chose pets with snaring or slowing abilities, my top favorites were the Silithid, Spider and Hyena as they really make it hard for prey to escape.
I must be missing a lot from pvp though because I don’t see my pet die unless I am totally reckless with it and I don’t see cunning pets as less effective as the blue posts indicate, in fact I find them more useful. I feel like there is a lot of complaining from people out there that expect their pet to do everything and not get hurt in the process.
I wish we could still choose what talent tree we wanted our pets to be. But, going back to topic!
Yeah, I’ve become frustrated many a time in PvP due to the whole ‘paper-pet’ deal. I send him in, hoping to slow down the enemy, and they tear my pet a new one. They have their uses (Stuns, Webs, etc) but they do really die quite easily anymore. Hoping 3.2 will change this a bit, or I’m staying MM for PvP. :<
Things that would make Cunning pets more desireable in PvP, but not overpower them in PvE, would include stuff like much higher resistances, a spell reflect ability, or the ability to cleanse themselves of harmful effects. If flying Cunning pets had the ability to soar up and attack from above, however infrequently, they would be more desireable.
Sometimes I PvP with my Death Knight. I often find that facing a Hunter pet is more helpful than harmful to me. Players don’t like to stand still, but the pet sure likes to stay right where it is for 3 seconds to let me get off icy touch/plague strike/pestilence to spread my diseases to everything else. It’s way easier to get off all your diseases from a pet than a player. That, or you crit twice and the pet’s dead. Either way, it’s a win.
If a Cunning pet had a Disengage ability, for when a weird melee decides to turn on it, would make that pet more desireable. The pet could charge right back in (or at another target) after, at the Hunter’s discretion. Perhaps the Cunning pet could get a charge more like a Warrior’s, with the 1.5 second stun on it.
Could a Cunning pet gain a feign death ability?
Night Elves and Rogues can stealth in combat. Would it not be Cunning if a pet could as well?
What if a Cunning pet had an ability that gave it enhanced damage against other pets? Or took reduced damage from other pets? Or both? Someone might choose a Cunning pet if they knew it would be a viable counter to other Hunter, Warlock, or Death Knight pets.
What about a static ‘flee’ ability? Once reduced to a certain percentage of health, the pet runs away, and then returns to combat once its health again surpasses that percentage level. Combined with charge and mend pet, this could be well used in some situations.
What about an ability that simply allows the pet to take half damage from poisons and diseases?
I love playing a Hunter. Always have and always will. But in PvP, seriously, I’d rather have my ghoul or my gargoyle because these things they made for the new, totally-balanced not-really-a-pet class seem to me to be superior PvP pets than those of the actual pet class.
And don’t get me started on the ability to have out multiple pets! If anyone should have that ability, it should be a Beast Master Hunter, not a Death Knight. Cry.
Cunning pets were originally a halfway mixture of both ferocity and tenacity until blizzard “normalized all of the pet stats so that Cunning pets had the same stats as the other two types, modified by pet talents”…….. it never really made them better, in fact, it made the other pets “classes” even more killable in PVP regardless of pet class. Their way of “balancing” pets is backwards, and instead of making them better, it actually made them worse in pvp… prior to pet stat balancing, tenacity pets required a bit more hits (as in not much but enough) to kill them in PVP, but it was enough to distract your target long enough for you to unload the first crucial hits…. but the cunning pets were tissue paper against a strong wind in pvp as it is in pve – long CDs and very situational. Cunning pets could never hold aggro good enough even with the hunter using Aspect of the Viper full time, one lousy crit and the target is all over you no matter what spec…. and holding aggro is totally out of the question when it tries to hold more than one target in PVE…. heck, before the pet snafu, the only cunning pet that actually managed to be some sort of halfway decent tank were the birds of prey with their ear-shattering “screech” ability…. until “snatch” replaced it.
I agree with most of you with wanting to have a 3-talent tree deal for the pets like we have for our classes. That, in itself is balancing. It would let us experiment which are the best tanks, dps’rs, and well-rounded-hitters when it comes to different pets and their abilities rather then the sloppy way they went with the currently bloated pet talents.
But of course, you have blizzard’s laziness and illogical way of going about it…. well, its their game, and they have the right to do with it as they please… but if they completely ignore good suggestions and really thought-out player input — all they have to do is seriously pay attention to the forums and weed the good and well-thought-out ones from the moronic ones.
As for GC maybe not reading Mania’s Arcania… while it may not be his job to do so… take it from someone who works in advertising, even I wouldn’t be stupid enough to ignore off-site comments/suggestions/blogs/rants in regards to “my” business…. that’s a sure-fire way to kill it. Even my company employs people who simply search and research the web about any outside info/gossip/rant/fan page/etc. in regards to my “field” for any new ideas/trends/etc. we could go forward with.
I don’t really pvp, but to me, what bugs me most on cunning is the already said CD on special abilities. Actually, on all trees there are abilites that only became usable/cool if you are a BM, and sometimes, not even that(namelly, crocolisks and tailstriders).
Take NetherRays for example: 2s silence, cast interruption and 40s CD. For 40s CD i’d expect the silence effect to last 4s, 5s or even 8s. Even the shadow damage could be taken off. A gorilla would be a better choice for the same purpouse.
That’s the same with ravagers, Birds of Prey, spiders and slithids. I’m not suggesting that CD’s should be 10s, but halving it, as Palladiamors said, or increasing the duration of some effects could be a plus.
Also, some special abilites are too situationals: Serpents, NetherRays, Gorillas and CoreHounds have specifically anti-caster abilities, but IMO, cunning pets fall behind ’cause of the tree abilities of ferocity and tenacity pets. Changing the silence to something else, and making the slow-cast effect also affect attack speed would be better.
BoPrey and Carrion birds have anti-meele abilities, but at least Carrion birds have swoop.
Boars and WarpStalkers have abilities that are used once per fight/target and Rhinos not even once(unless you’re teaming with rogues/druids).
Shortening: Revamp Cunning tree, shorten the longest CDs, change some skills to be a bit less specific and more useful.
Sorry but Ghostcrawler is an idiot. Or whomever supplies GC with his information, is an idiot, and GC isn’t any better for not trying to have his own opinion of the matter. This is as much of a dodge as the druids got, only worse! Ok ok maybe not worse but aurgle fargle margle [turns into murloc and eats GC]
Doesn’t Ghostcrawler understand WHY some pets are now popular, even before the change!? It’s because of special abilities like nethershock or whatever rays’ get, or tank pets special abilities, but again outside Arena it’s probably not gonna work as well in big boy BG. Because A: there’s no healers. B: there’s no healers. C: When there are healers, they ain’t healing you.
So all you have to rely on, is your pet. So what do you take? Ferocity has alot of pets, and even glitchy spirit beast can eat faces like the best of them if you talent for survivability. Same with Tenacity, there are a few pets that can snag and snare or silence. But for cunning?
Well there are only two cunning pets I really did seriously use in pvp, on the PTR it was the Nether ray, the red one, as it seemed perfect with BM; stun, silence, or silence then stun, and casters, including pesky moonkin’s were destroyed. On my belf, I used a Chimera, and its breath is killer.
Oh wait, I forgot about Sithilids/Spiders, but Sithilids are broken still aren’t they? :/
But outside those three pets, they are only useful in pvp cause of their silence, snare or slow. Most other pvp pets either have the same, or they have a worse talent [slows casting speed, really? Casting speed? That's it? lolololol], I mean with Core Hounds, who are ferocity, not cunning, they have a pvp/cunning talent, when instead for LAVA BREATH, I would assume that the target of the attack becomes a flaming fire ball taking added damage from fire attacks and or, a short DoT [maybe same for Dragon Hawks]
And that’s another thing, there are CLEARLY DE PE EZ pets in the cunning tree, as there are cunning pets strewn in the dps tree ['core hounds' and 'hyenas'], why not switch pets, switch abilities, or maybe give Dragonhawks and Wind Serpents, a side effect on their attacks? Like slows melee speed or slows the target, or something. There are several cunning pets I want to use, but if I want depeez, I just get a dps pet.
Cunning provides nothing really for pvp [or pve], sure I’ve seen people boast they have a pet get off a 3k wolverine bite. But is that before the pet dies the first time, or is it before the pet dies a second time? And outside of alot of talents being bulky [carrion feeder] or situational [frenzy and etc], a cunning pet doesn’t really bring much to the table. It’s a fragile little piece of equipment, that looks like it can break if you look at it.
Blizzard admits to NERFING other pets, because of cunning basically. Which is highly stupid.
I suggest either removing cunning period and shifting pets to Tenacity or Ferocity, or fixing pets to the way they were, or fixing cunning or a mix of all the choices.
Just allow us to pick what we want our pet as, Tenacity, Ferocity or Cunning. PROBLEM SOLVED?
Double post;
‘Take NetherRays for example: 2s silence, cast interruption and 40s CD. For 40s CD i’d expect the silence effect to last 4s, 5s or even 8s. Even the shadow damage could be taken off. A gorilla would be a better choice for the same purpouse.’
BM lowers CD on pet special abilities. If the wolf’s howl is now what 40 seconds long? And BM lowers it to 28 seconds, that would mean Netherray’s special ability would be lowered to 28 seconds. That means it would clearly be to op if it was an 8 second long silence for such a short cd. As even intimidate NEEDS A MINUTE TO FULLY CD and think what 40 seconds with Longevity?
And it provides a 3 sec stun.
Do we really want to be the next Loldins and Lolrogues? I don’t.
Well, first off, in the answer, GC said it himself: arther than strengthen cunning, the weakened the other pets by giving all pets a flat 5/5/5 stat base. I don;t see how he can cinsider that a fix. Second, the big problem with cunning is the long cooldowns. There have been so many times where i said to myself, ” geez, if I woould have had my _________ spell available a few seconds earlier, i woould have creamed that guy. Oh well. Would love to see shorter cd’s. Another thing missing from cunning pets, and I don;t understand this, is charge. A 1 second stun can be huge. yet, cunning is the only tree that doesn’t have a charge. Could never figure that out. ok, i think that’s it for now. if i rehashed something from above, i do appologize. Didn;t have a chance to read yet.
As a raiding MM hunter, i tend to go OOM too fast with my rotation. So i decided to try to bring my old vanity sporebat out because of roar of recovery and the 3% armor debuff it gave.. I was pleasently suprised to say that it was better for my spec then my wolf. if only the darn thing had an ounce of survivability, and the talents that gave it that weren’t outclassed by such… Better talents like wolverine bite, or the necessary avoidance to validate having a cunning pet to get to roar of recovery, then maybe we can see some better pets then my sporebat in the cunning tree being viable, but for the moment GC just seems like going around the subject instead of answering whether this will ever happen.
Aspect of the Hare » Shout, Shout, Let it All Out - July 28th, 2009 @ 9:34 am UTC
[...] the editor of Petopia, is looking for info on how to improve Cunning Pets so we can deliver it to Ghostcrawler in one neat tidy package and he can stop saying he’s [...]
I used to use my rhino for pvp, but recently switched to a serpent and I’ve been loving it. The only real problem I’ve had its its HP granted its not lvl’d to 80 yet, but it dies extremely fast if going against a melee class much like myself and that is the real problem not anything wrong with pet types.
Spiders are the most popular pet for 19 BGs because of the web ability on a 40 sec. cooldown. Ravagers are also popular but are not as easy to obtain because there are no 19 Ravagers.
Bats are inferior because their Sonic Blast has a 60 sec. cooldown rather than the 40 sec. cooldown that Ravagers and Spiders have for their CC.
At higher levels, hunters become less and less competitive in BGs so pet choices are of less consequence. I used to often be top damage in the 59 BGs with just Outland greens and the only enchant a +10 damage scope on my gun. Now, at 60 I have the epic PVP gear with all the best WotLK enchants but Paladins and Death Knights often outdamage me by over 100K in Alterac Valley.
There are many hunter problems in PVP that transcend the choice of pet, e.g.
- Pets scale poorly or not at all with many hunter stats, such as crit, stamina, and resilience.
- Each rank of Mend Pet doesn’t scale at all with pet health and heals too slowly. When you obtain Mend Pet at level 12, it heals 125 over 15 seconds, and base pet health is about 370. At level 19, Mend Pet still heals for 125 but pets can easily exceed 1,000 health.
- Pet pathing is very poor. An enemy can easily shake a pet by simply jumping from the second floor to the ground floor in the Warsong Gulch flagroom or jumping down off the roof of the tunnel entrance.
- Most hunter pets have no base stun. Intimidation’s 3 sec. stun on a 60 sec. cooldown requires 21 points in BM, the weakest PVP tree. By comparison, Death Knight pets have a base 3 sec. stun every 20 sec.
Sweet a cunning pet discussion!!! Ok Ok Here is the thing.
With the normalization of pet talents cunning is in a better palce that it used to be. i must warn you that cunning is waaaaaaaay better for a BM hunter than the other specs specifically due to the BW talent. Ppl generally dont trinket the intimidation stun and in that time, I can get them close to 50% health. Now here is the thing, under 50% health my Bird of prey will have
Bestial wrath 50% damage increase
Feeding Frenzy 16% damage increase
Spiked collar 9% damage increase
Along with all of the other Bm goodies.
I see numbers of 1300 white crits and anywhere from 2k to 3k wolverine bite crits, 1200 claw crits all while hitting like a machine gun.
Thing is Cunning hits hard where it really matters! You just have to accomidate your playstyle a little bit. With a ferocity pet I will pop wrath with intimidate but with a cunning I wait a bit Under 50% health is my target area. The way I see it, My cunning pet only has to get them down within killshot range and I am all good.
Also with the resiliance change they seem harder to kill, a ret pally will not 2 shot my Bird at all. I can keep hit up under fire for a good amount of time before it dies. in that time I will have done a decent deal of damage. They last so long in fact that I now have the choice to pop a mend pet and bandage or deal damage. Actually it usually goes like, my pet being raped until 35% health then its a bit of a battle.
As a plus guys I have a mini innervate (bm has limited mana regen abilities) and RoS wich i find helps out alot.
I think they knew they had a weak tree when it was implemented and thats why the wind serpent and ravagers were shifted over (hoping that hunters would loyaly stick with them and give the tree some credibility) The whole naming convention of some of the abilities reeks of bad or little consideration.
If they wanted cunning as a pvp they could have put in a base resilience and not done specail abilities that are too situational:feeds of a corpse to heal how does that help when they res straight away (although I love the idea of my pet eating my enemies after Ive killed them as the final insult) it rarely happens in game. Whilst ferocity gets lick wounds AND hart of the pheonix Hmmm which tree do I pick
Mostly the pet skills seem to be fine aprt from cooldowns but I hate the fact they changed the abilities of ones that already worked I mourned the day they changed lightning breath from the optional focus dump.
If I had to make changes myself wolverine would be boosted to include more avoidance abilities.
Allow lick wounds in the cunning tree and/or
Allow carrion feeder to work on live beasts and humaniods
Include greater dodge chance and physical damage/stun resistance with the cornered ablility
I dont think this really solves the problem of low hit points but believe the health and resilience isssues are being resolved in the next major patch?
As a lot of people are saying, survivability and the extremely situational usage of abilities make Cunning pets very undesirable.
Seems to me that Ferocity pets should be more squishy than Cunning pets, but yet Ferocity pets can last a LOT longer due to the self-healing and self-rez abilities they get. Seems to me that those *type* of abilities belong in the Cunning tree, not the Ferocity tree.
I do like the Mana regen ability in the Cunning tree, but if the pet is not around to use it, it’s worthless.
I always thought having three separate pet talent trees was weak and redundant given that several talents were in all three trees. Some of the redundant talents should be baseline, like Cobra Reflexes and Avoidance.
It would be much more flexible to have one pet talent tree with three branches, like it is for players. Then you could have a Spider with Heart of the Phoenix if you wanted.
I use my wolf/cat a lot in pvp just for the self rez and self heal.
I use my crab for the stun, mostly in wg to get the fc.
I can’t say I ever actually use a cunning pet.
I’d suggest adding some talents that are more useful, or pvp oriented.
Something to heal when they attack, maybe like a vampric bite or something.
Maybe add a humanoid damage bonus.
Cunning pets are a blast for me. I pvp bgs mostly on my hunter, wintergrasp etc. Cunning pets can take the dash/dive talents which is great for getting to players or chasing them in pvp, its pretty much a permanent speed boost once talented.
Wolverine bite hits pretty hard, and cost no pet focus when used. I’ve had WB hit over 1k damage regularly. Cornered is a nice talent adding 50% damage boost and 60% less likely to be crit if your pet gets under 35% health. Roar of recover is great, and refunds me over 3K mana, thats not bad in any situations pve or pvp. Bullheaded removes crowd controls/slows etc to be removed from your pet, and it actually works ok on auto cast, it also reduces damage done to pet by 20% for 12 seconds which is not bad on it’s own.
Spider’s make a great pvp pet. With everything mentioned above, the spider’s web 4 second root range or melee to use it, is pure awesome. Or if your BM specd, a silithid who also has a web,which also causes some damage which the spider’s does not. Chimeras make another insane pvp pet, their breath abililty for a BM hunter is 7 seconds. Either of these pets makes keeping hard hitting melees or frost mages, rogues etc, alot easier to keep at bay, and stay ranged.
Cunning pets have become my pet spec of choice for pvp and grinding/dailys etc, their boosted speed and mana recovery talents make solo/grinding a breeze. For pve raids/instances I still use a ferocity pet,and if I was still leveling most likely would have a tenacity pet. With more stable slots now, if you haven’t tried a cunning pet out, you should give it a go. Hopfully blizz will change some of their pet talent trees layouts, to make it easier to get some of this and that, instead of having to sacrifice other great talents namely the stamina and armor talents in order to talent for each trees special abilities. Its hard to flesh out pets and feel they are balanced when you your so limited on training points ontop of messy too spread out talents.
Tony;
‘I’ve had WB hit over 1k damage regularly. Cornered is a nice talent adding 50% damage boost and 60% less likely to be crit if your pet gets under 35% health.’
That’s the problem. If you let your pet get that low in health, less crit damage won’t do crap, your pet is going to die if you don’t cast mend pet, and it’s going to then lose the boost buff. The only dmg buff that works constantly and safely, is Feeding Frenzy, but that is situational as it depends on the TARGET NOT BEING HEALED.
So instantly paladins, DK’s, droods, shaman and etc are out of the picture unless you can stun them and pewpew them down in the few seconds of cc you’re given, depending on specc and pet.
That doesn’t make a pet good just because ‘oh it can do 1-3k Wolverine Bites!’, yeah only when the target dodges. Again, situational.
And what everyone seems to forget, in big Battlegrounds, such as AV or WG, I’ve seen people gang up on and destroy/obliterate pets, just to cripple hunters, or protect the rare healers. I’ve done it myself, I’ve even continually CC’d a hunter pet on my paladin a few times, to protect squishy healers/casters.
So until pets get survivability, cunning or not, you can boast all you want about your pet doing such imba damage, the fact still remains once that pet dies, you’ve lost it. And cunning has no self rezzing or self healing like Ferocity, so there’s no oh crap button you can push, outside rez pet.
Edit: That’s ANOTHER thing I’ve got to complain about. If your pet isn’t getting jumped by massive amounts of people, and there’s only a few, I noticed if one does enough damage/threat to your pet, your pet will stop chewing the intended target, and then chew the face of the other target.
I think this has happened even when pet is on passive- but I’m not sure. I tend to keep my pets on defensive, but still it shouldn’t be happening no matter the setting. The pet should stick to intended target and not careen off to eat someone elses face.
I am a BM hunter that has spent about 35,000 kills worth of time in the 59 and 69 brackets. So I can only speak to battlegrounds pvp (not arena) but my knowledge there is pretty extensive.
My entire BG experience has been aided by a Tallstrider pet. Why? Because it has a moderately usefull pvp ability (more of a cunning ability really) in the Dust Cloud attack. And more impotantly, the Heart of the Phoenix ability to get it back every so often when an attacker turns on it.
Tim (above) nailed one overall problem: healing your pet scales poorly, so keeping it alive when it is targeted is nigh impossible… particularly in BGs (where healing is almost non-existent). Perhaps a tenacity abilty that ramps Mend Pet sharply and increases resilience (or reduces damage) during the time of the heal would be a good idea.
As it stands now, HotP is more important to me than the ability to heal my pet… since the healing is so minimal and to be honest, I’m usually tanked on mana anyway so healing does not come as often as it should. Fortunately, MOST BGs pvpers do not focus on my pet, or I would be in a world of hurt.
I wonder if the best solution might be to put an end to the idea of there being a singular tree for each pet. I’m not suggesting that the pets have access to all three trees, but maybe allow pets access to two of them. For instance, maybe allow Crabs access to Cunning and Tenacity. Bears could have Ferocity and Tenacity. Allow them a dual spec, perhaps, at lvl 50 or so.
I have no doubt that I’m going to get called an idiot for what I just said.
Hey, I think that’s a cool idea.
Cunning pets just require you to think a bit (again speaking strictly from a BM perspective.) When used right they out dps ferocity in pvp situations. They also provide (in small uantities)what bm tree lacks in cc. There is still room for improvement but so far they are my pvp pet of choice bg, dueling, world, and arena.
I personally think Blizzard should take a hard look at the cunning tree. The tree itself needs to be reworked imo. Also, the cooldowns should definitely be shortened. Not necessarily as fast as a ferocity pet or anything, but down to something a bit more manageable. Survivability is key as well, especially for a BM hunter who does more damage while the pet is around. Why they thought normalizing the pet stats was a good idea is beyond me. Tenacity pets NEED more armor/health since they’re supposed to be TANKS. Ferocity SHOULD have higher damage because that’s their specialty. Perhaps cunning is harder to fit in there, but i’d say if they’re supposed to be “optimal” for pvp, i’d say they need a boost to health and damage stat wise. Resilience would also probably be a good idea, though i know little about it since I don’t pvp.
Also, as people pointed out, I think Heart of the Phoenix would be more useful by FAR on a cunning pet than a ferocity pet. In raids especially, during boss fights many pets die so fast there’s not much point in rezing them…especially if you mana and time is more sorely needed on keeping up damage on the raid boss. Even if a pet rezes itself in a raid, it’s quite useless. In fact, i don’t think i’ve ever used the spell.
Yo Seidouyumi! That’s not a bad idea at all, and it would allow for much more flexible pet’s.
Some one brought it up, and I have to third it because it is a massive point. Mend pet sucks. You tend to not notice as much later because of lick your wounds and bloodthirst and yada yada, but it heals for a paltry amount and worse, far far worse, it doesn’t scale with anything. I think it’s the only healing spell in the game that doesn’t scale. You can make the argument that warlocks health funnel requires you to channel, but…..that’d be a bad argument Warlocks focus on DoTs, which means you press three buttons if your demonology, and then day dream. ((Yes, there is more to it then that….but not by much.)) Not only that, but warlock pet’s are healed by damage done by the warlock. Health funnel channels over ten seconds, is affected by haste, and, on my level 74 warlock, heals for 800 per second. Mend pet, on a level eighty hunter, GLYPHED, will only heal for around 7500 on non-tenacity pets, fourty percent more on tenacity. And my warlock doesn’t even have the highest level of health funnel yet. And death knights get ghoul frenzy! It’s sixty percent over thirty, I realize, but it scales! And their pet is pretty much OPTIONAL!
I use heart of phoenix to great effect. once I need it and its there its good enough for me. only thing I dont like about it is the lag of health return that get the pet killed if hit early enough after rezzing.
pets are not suppose to die but occasionally they do and once or twice per heroic instance it is good to have th option of pet self-rez.
in raid boss fights where the pets die before you can scream “medic” no amount of rezzing will help, heart or no heart. pet running on mines to get to miri-something boss in ulduar is going to die.
anyway if you dont like it dont spec for it. use your points for more dps somewhere else.
I personally think it should have been a tenacity talent, as well as lick your wounds- they are both talents that keep the pet alive and self heal generate wonderful aggro for it.
not that I am complaining, I like it in ferocity. I get to have both furious howl/other damage increasing ability and self healing pet.
as for mend pet- I think it should be changed to “heal % of pet health” so that when pet is buffed the mend pet still means something.
Mend pet needs to AT LEAST scale off of attack power. Lower the base amount, but make it scale in some way. Percentage, AP, SOMETHING. None scaling abilities tend to be less useful as time goes by.
For as much as they may be inferior, I’ve always liked the cunning idea. Maybe it has to do with me being drawn to underdog choices. (Such as the BM, feral and demo trees for my 3 main characters 4 years ago at original launch)
Here are my thoughts:
1. Pet families overall classifications need fixed. Too many belong to one tree who should belong to another.
2. Someone stated a static talent improving dodge and amount of Resil inherited. I agree this would be a perfect cunning talent.
3. Carrion Feeder should either be more in line with the other two versions and automatic, or have some other tweak added on to the talent to warrant an activated ability.
3b. Perhaps a Burrow / Soar talent which can be used in combat which causes the pet remove itself from combat and increase regen by a significant amount. However while in the air or under the ground the pet can not perform actions.
4. Cornered and Roar of Sacrifice should be replaced, since pets die so fast already both of these are lackluster at best at the moment.
4b.Perhaps a Feign Death talent, with the added utility of a dmg bonus or interrupt upon successful attack within so many seconds of coming out of a feign.
5. Feeding Frenzy is lackluster as well, in pvp a target at this threshold is either going to be dead anyways or has popped a shield and is back to full health. This bonus does not help much.
5b. Perhaps an Awareness talent that increases stealth detection of the pet only. Requires you to pay attention still, but would give Cunning a valued pvp utility fairly deep in the tree.
6. As for Selesti’s Heart of the Phoenix thought. To me it is useful for ferocity, insta res at 100% can be a DPS saver for a BM hunter trying to keep up with the rest of you guys should his pet die. If anything it should be shared between the the trees. Currently the only reason it is often not taken in ferocity is folks try to max out all straight up dps boosting talents and hope the pet doesnt die.
Thats what I have for now. It would be great if we could get this together and present it to GC.
over all Cunning, imo, should be less passive and more activate. Utility choices that are not necessarily straight up dps that require more control but have good benefits once you get the hang of using them.
*Scratches his chin* I was thinkin’…..why not just make carrion feeder automatic upon the targets death, if the target is applicable? Decrease the amount by a bit, but just have them gain a buff from killing a target or having a target in the area killed by the party or raid die that restores so much health and happiness? No weird and wonky fidgeting to get your pet into the right place, and the pet stays happy and healthy.
When I PvPed as Beast Mastery spec, I made the decision to go with a Ferocity pet – more specifically, a Hyena – so that I had the option of bringing my pet back to life instantly in a pinch. (not only that, but also other benefits like charge, greater pet damage, and a DPS cooldown for both of us) It worked out pretty well for me – Zwitter kept melee off me very well with his hamstring-esque ability. I’ve only occasionally used a Cunning pet in PvP (I did WSG with a Silithid at level 70), but I can’t say I was all that impressed with their performance in general. Of course, all pets right now are just too easily countered.
Also, this is somewhat a tangent from the topic of the discussion, but I’m a firm believer in that BM hunters should get a talent that benefits them when their pet dies. Something like this maybe:
“Upon pet death, you gain the effects of The Beast Within. This talent can only activate every 5min.”
Obviously cooldown balance/tweak, etc, but any player should have to think about who the bigger threat is, and not simply target and take out the pet every time.
36: “Even if a pet rezes itself in a raid, it’s quite useless. In fact, i don’t think i’ve ever used the spell.” I agree, as it stands now, i dont even waste points in the talent… now granted im MM/SV and dont really have the points to waste in it… but even when i was a BM hunter (a couple weeks ago) i didnt put points into it… it just wasnt worth it to me after seeing how often my pet was dying…
You will all see the new wave of cunning pwners once patch goes live, I for one cant wait
Egad, people! What brilliant ideas!
I admit it — I have a hard time thinking outside the box sometimes. But a lot of the stuff you’ve brought up here has me really excited about the possibilities for Cunning pets — nay, for all pets.
I love the idea of Carrion Feeder working automatically on the death of an appropriate enemy. I love the idea of extending Charge and Heart of the Phoenix — or even Prowl — to the Cunning tree, as well as buffing up Mend Pet for everyone. I adore the notion of a Feign Death ability for Cunning Pets. And I haven’t even touched on the hordes of very specific and valuable suggestions for individual talents, or the multi-tree ideas.
I haven’t got anything to add myself. I just wanted to share with you how much I’m enjoying this thread. :>
What does pet auras sound like to you guys? Each tree should have a buff aura/effect for the hunter
For Cunning my ideas are
Run speed increase
proc to gain a frenzy effect on our crits
Hunter gains a cornered effect or feeding frenzy just like the pet (personal fav)
or mabe a snare/stun/disarm reduction.
any one of these could be useful.
Make it the last tier of the pet tree and link it so that other specs cannot attain. (BM buff put in there lol)
Mend pet healing for % health or SCALING WITH RAP WOULD BE DEVINE. As it is now, it’s a useless thing, especially for PVP. Even on tenacity pets, I have to rely on a GLYPH, Spirit Bond AND my friends to heal Erebus and keep him alive- Silverback really doesn’t do anything. It should do 3/6% or 4/8%, 1/2 is NOT enough, imo.
And it would help Ferocity and Cunning.
But I still stand by what I said about Cunning, it’s to situational and unless you have extreme luck, skill and focus, a cunning pet will be worth less than a tenacity pet.
That shouldn’t be what a ‘Pevepe’ pet is about.
Let the pet trainer NPC’s change the talent tree of our pet. Then, blizzard will see that we love the pets, but hate the talent tree.
I think bliz would be worried about scaling mend pet; it was prevented from scaling with spell power way back when someone took down a world boss with it :S
It might be intresting to see a similar sacrificial element like a demo warlock where hunter and pet share a damage pool for a high cunning talent, that would make things very intresting when pets scale better with hunters after the patch. If I were pvp’ing I would seriously look at cunning for this.
I think Cunning pets aren’t much worse off than other pets in PvP — I’m hoping the resilience change makes as much of a difference as I think it could — but all of the abilities, while great, are on way too long of a cooldown.
My owl can disarm (if it hits) MAYBE twice in a 2v2 arena match, for a total of 6 seconds every minute. Whoopee? And in the meantime, half the classes in the game have passive abilities that he will beat himself to death against in short order unless I spend a lot of time managing him.
Shorten the cooldown for starters.
In the long run, I’d like to see smarter pets or pets able to survive the AI they’ve been given. Fortunately, it seems like Blizzard is already working on this.
While the implementation of the pet classes is a good thing imo, blizzard seems to leave the one defining thing unchanged that causes the current ‘one pet to raid them all’ situation – the family specific skill.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we should just remove it and make all pets equal. With the pet talent exists currently for each pet family, why not expand this further to allow as customize our pet more, including it’s supposed-to-be-special-not-useless family skill?
The talent trees can be more customised for each pet class rather than using the ferocity,tenacity, cunning blueprints. There can be multiple unique skills to choose from for each family, via talents, and probably exclusive to each other without the beast mastery talent. This way, while the theorycrafters will probably still find the one spec of one family that will give the highest dps, at least we have more choices on choosing our favourite pet.
‘Shorten the cooldown for starters.’
For one if they do that, then Longevity will suffer. Remember it cuts down 20ish seconds from a pet’s special ability. Meaning a 1 min cd is down to 40ish seconds. 40ish seconds is down to 20ish seconds and so-forth.
So to shorten the cool down, Longevity would need to be nerfed, or pet mechanics would have to be changed, and Blizzard won’t do that.
I don’t PVP much, but as for the Cunning Pets, I think that their “Healing” ability needs to me something that can be “Auto” selected. So the pet, if it drops below 50% health will auto feed from a corpse. This frees up the hunter from having to click the button. It might help survivability, I really am not sure. Make is similar to Ferocity’s “Lick Your Wounds”. And yes, Cunning pets do need Charge.
@ Ryai longevity reduces the cd by 30% not 20 sec. It wouldnt have to be nerfed. That is why a 10 sec cd chimera special is reduced to 7 sec and a 1 min cd is reduced to 42 sec and so forth.
I would have to say that the two biggest issues with cunning pets is that they just do not hold up against direct attack, they are by far the easyest to kill of the three pet familys. The second is the reliance on situasional abilitys/to-long cooldowns for said abilitys. I’d say that they need to be granted a portion of the hunters resilliance rating when in a PvP zone or better evasion/dodge abilty, or give the cunning pets an ability like the ferocity pets “lick your wounds”. I have seen my poor Silithid Chakrah targeted and killed in seconds while i tried to heal her and kill her attacker(s) yet my Ferocity Pet Humar the black lion can usually hold his own against 2-3 enemys before he dies and even then it takes a while for him to die.
This one caught my eye:
“What about a static ‘flee’ ability? Once reduced to a certain percentage of health, the pet runs away, and then returns to combat once its health again surpasses that percentage level. Combined with charge and mend pet, this could be well used in some situations.”
I like this, and it makes sense as a “cunning” ability; it’s like a “cower that works in PVP”… and I could also see it being helpful in casual PVE – the player would have to be careful to turn it off when raiding though… still, a good suggestion for a deep cunning talent IMO.
Making Carrion Feeder an automatic health and happiness boost triggered by target death would finally bring it remotely on par with Bloodthirsty and Guard Dog – great idea!
I can see how cunning pets are more pvp than pve with not a lot of flexibility in between, although there are exceptions. A bat for example requires 80 focus for its 1 minute cooldown stun so in pve it let’s one go at the beginning of the fight and likely uses its focus for growl and its focus dump the rest of the fight. In pvp using a bat does not require growl so its sonic stun becomes more feasible for a bm hunter who has a reduced cooldown on its pet’s special abilities. If cunning pets are not going to get more dps or pve functionality I think they should add latent but useful secondary skills, water walking/breathing, slowfalling, “warping” the hunter back to an inn, things that would not add more of an edge but to give cunning pets more appeal. Must say though that the exotic cunning pets by grace of their mana restore, think its called roar of sacrifice, can have their place in certain raid builds.
‘@ Ryai longevity reduces the cd by 30% not 20 sec. It wouldnt have to be nerfed. That is why a 10 sec cd chimera special is reduced to 7 sec and a 1 min cd is reduced to 42 sec and so forth.’
Yes but for the long cool downs it’s usually 20ish seconds that is removed, ofc it gets smaller for the rest, but I forgot the percentage but that’s not the point- if you have a special that is a 40 sec CD and you up the silence to 8 seconds, or a stun, or a snare, and you take longevity as BM and all a sudden that 1 min to 40 sec cd is down to 40 seconds to 20ish seconds…
You wouldn’t call that a bit op? You wouldn’t understand people calling that a bit op? You wouldn’t think Blizzard wouldn’t nerf something like that? Oh they would, they’ve nerfed for less reasons, and harsher for it.
So by cutting off 10 seconds or so, you would still get lower cool downs, for a BM. And if they buffed the effects of it, without changing the CD, for some pets it would be powerful, either to powerful or nearly to powerful.
That is my point, you really shouldn’t focus on the fact I was talking about the longer cool downs.
And Froststorm Breath is really 10/7 second cd? I never noticed- no wonder people are wanting a shorter CD with something like that available :/ that is almost to powerful.
I’m still reading the opening comments but based on the first 5 posts or so, I have to say that Cunning is NOT exclusively a PVP family tree. One of my main raid pets since 8.5′s release as a tier is a bird of prey because of the roar of recovery (my chimaera when in BM spec, BoP in MM). Hunter mana recovery in raid sucks (especially 10 man progression) and it’s cool to not have to tank your DPS by going viper…
That’s my peace =D
Harana
Captain – Political Officer
I remember going MM in a raid with a wind serpent cause its the highest dps non exotic cunning pet. Mana regen was awsome in 10 man.
In my humble opinion they should apply a 25% rule to all three classifications of pet families. Each one could have a 25% boost of stats, such as 15% attack/ 5% armor/ 5% hp for ferocity, 15% hp/ 5% armor/ 5% attack(even 10% hp/ 5% armor/ 10% att) for cunning pets, and 10% armor/ 10% hp/ and 5% attack for Tenacity. Add this to the ideas of putting pet families into their correct tree, and the possibility of choosing their own tree/dual speccing((all three mentioned previously)), and Cunning pets can begin to keep up with the other two families. Then perhaps reduce the cooldown on those skills the cunning pets use most((again mentioned before)) would make them a rather feared pet in the PVP battlegrounds, maybe even enough to compete with the Unholy DK’s ghoul.
Just my thoughts.
Maybe they should make the type of pet affect the hunter, like tenacity gives more stam and defensive abilities (dodge, parry) while cunning gives crit and agi, and ferocity would give attack power and armor pen. While there are merely ideas, I as well don’t pvp so much with my hunter. I do know that when I fight hunters I tend to kill the pet first while I know it’s abilities if they are going to waste me, and leave it alone if it’s stupid, like a moth. As most pvpers and pveers I know agree, they should make each talent in the talent trees do something for both PVE and PVP. So for example, a paladin gets 5% stamina from a talent in PVE, the same talent would give a paladin 3% increased stamina and 1% increased resilience. No need to continue changing every class to make PVP viable. Just edit the talents so that the PVE ones you want don’t work in PVP. (not really a just-hunter rant, but still works with pets).
I dont think we will see huge buffs to pet attack power or base line health.
Bliz have talked about giving us scaleing boosts that will have a greater effect for those fortunate enough to to high end raiding and pvp content; those people are the ones seeing the poorest returns from their pets atm.
Whilst I dont like Blizzards current policy of buffing those already in a good position they are the ones that are not competing as well as other classes in the same situation.
Lets not forget that Bm got a huge nerf because pets were too strong then buffed back to about 5% of the old position but then there was the other nerf that normalised tenacity and ferocity.
This gives us a 15% pet stat balance and 5% (spent)lost hunter talent (being put into Catlike reflexes D:)before our pets become OP again.
Hit points are unlikely to be improved at base because of the scaling with kit improvements so hurry an get your tier kit with the new tokens ^_^
I dont aprove of this as it buffs all pets (lock and DK) but just trying to say If we do see improvments it will likely be in pet family skills or cunning tree talent buffs.
I would love to see a revert to the pet tree stats but that was part of the nerf to ferocity dps and pets tanking too well I dont think its coming back. As far as Bliz is concerned it look like small percentages before they are in a tight spot from other classes QQing again. If we start solo tanking with pets because of boosted healing and health we will be labled as a utility class methinks.
would be nice if we got charge for them, love to see my boo(ravager) charging in and all that
First of all, I didnt read all the comments, so if this has already been mentioned, well… tough :D
I dont pvp myself either, but I think a good solution for any pet selection problem would be to allow us (the hunters themselves) to choose which skill tree the pet will have. This way any pet can have any role and this might also make the diversity of pets out there way greater.
Basically, making the pet’s trees more like the player talent trees would improve usage of all types of pets I think. You’d also be able to spread around points and make sort of hybrid pets… (for instance a tank/cunning hybrid might actually work pretty well for pvp?)
Ofcourse the overlapping talents in the different trees would have to be greyed out once you pick one in a certain tree. This to avoid overpowered combos… I can see for instance a pet having 3x Cobra Reflexes would be too imbalanced. :)
The thing I find most striking, is your comment that you don’t PvP much yourself. The interesting thing is I’ve found this claim to be shared amongst most of the major mainstream Hunter bloggers. Maybe therein lies the problem. Hunter PvP is horrible horrible, thus there’s simply no research and experience in the community as a whole on things like Cunning pets. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I’ve EVER seen a hunter PVP centric blog. You can get blogs specific to pets, pet tanking, TWO dps spreadsheets, Hunter Tanking, and more. But nothing on PvP.
The problem with Cunning pets as I see it is this:
1) They’re squishy and die quickly, so this is bad for PvP
2) Their DPS is sub-par for raiding
3) Their use is extremely situational and cool-down dependent for successful use in PvP
I love my Spider pet and Web is really great for PvP but I find that it’s never up when I need it to be. Managing a pet’s cool-down in the middle of a laggy Wintergrasp madhouse is really not feasible. Sure it can be done and I’m sure there are dedicated Hunter PvP’ers out there who have no trouble, but one shouldn’t be a dedicated PvP’er to be able to use a Cunning pet successfully in PvP.
FatCharlie also dies very very quickly, so I have two choices in a BG really – keep him with me for Roar Of Recovery, or use him for a bit of extra limited-time damage and crowd control. It’s like having half a pet.
I’d love to take him raiding with me as he’s my favourite pet, but Cunning pets are just not useful for raids as Blizzard has never been able to successfully balance pets for raiding. There’s always one pet or family of pet that is the clear choice (right now it’s Wolves).
It’s not that Cunning pets are *bad* for raiding, but when my job is to provide as much DPS as I can squeeze out, I don’t really have any option to bring my Spider as much as I’d love to.
Now how to fix Cunning pets? I’d say make them less micro-management heavy and boost their DPS. Those two can more than compensate for a lower survivability rate.
Some of the neatest pets are Cunning and as such they are very poorly represented in-game and I think that’s a clear indication that they need to be fixed. Blizzard want pets to be a choice, so they need to boost Cunning and diminish the requirement of Wolves as raiding pets. I would love a choice that isn’t a “good choice or bad choice” situation which is the current state of pet selection.
I think that a PvP pet needs shorter cool downs on abilities and loads of damage. I want my pet to be doing serious damage while the other player is attacking me. Right now I have a moth for my PvP pet. I get the good dps (which really blows my mind since moths irl are not exactly high damage creatures) and I also get something that is going to get in the other player’s face. It is also a more sturdy pet since it’s special ability heals it.
My first BM hunter went from 11-70 with a ravager… back before the “normalization”. She is 80 but never comes out of the stable these days. I’d love to have her playable again. Instead I use my warpstalker for soloing/BGs and my blighthound for instancing.
What people have said – shorter cooldown, more survivability. And better mend pet is truly needed for all trees.
Thanks for a great question. I hope Blizz listens.
There are several talents to boost the dps of the cunning pet —
Feeding Frenzy
When at less than 35% health, your pet does [25%/50%] more damage and has a [30%/60%] reduced chance to be critically hit.
Cornerned
Your pet does [8%/16%] additional damage to targets with less than 35% health.
Wolverine Bite
A fierce attack causing [pet level * 5 + 5] damage, modified by pet level, that your pet can use after its target dodges. Cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried.
Surviability is the big issue — Here is where something like Heart of the Phoenix would help the cunning pet in PVP.
Cunning Pets do have — Bull Headed – Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your pet, and reduces damage done to your pet by 20% for 12 sec.
But it lacks due to the CD timer.
I do use a Chimera for PVP as a BM. Otherwise its the wolf or bear as a Surv spec and then its situational.
I am still a support of taming a pet and then specing it into any tree you want rather than X pet goes with Y tree. That way it keeps the PVP opponent guessing.
Sadly, Satyr, a talents existence and effectiveness are two different things. : (
I do like Bull Headed however, I’d take it if it was not hooked to Cornered.
My cunning pet of choice is a sillithid, (the yellow rare spawn from shimmering flats). It’s venom spray is much like the spider’s web. The cooldown isnt as much an issue for me as I turned off auto-cast and created a macro to cast it via keybinding manuelly.
When Avoidance gets removed I think that Ferocity and Tenacity should get additional DPS and Tank talents respectively. Cunning could then be given the choice of either Shark Attack or Blood of the Rhino, while removing the useless Carrion Feeder in the process. This move could enable Hunters to spec for either more damage or more survivability. Right now they’re too middle of the road to be of much use for anything.
If Cunning pets had Blood of the Rhino they’d then be viable for PvP. With the addition of Shark Attack, it’s possible a few of them may show up in raids as well. While they wouldn’t necessarily be on par with either family, they’d be very close, with their unique ability and special family talents being the x-factor.
I think a few of the pets abilities need some attention as well.
Sonic Blast should be brought back to 20 focus – 80 focus is absurd. As it stands now, no one uses bats anyway. If they’re worried it’s too OP, then stick it on a 1min CD, but reduce the cost FFS.
Snatch should be on a 40 sec CD. 1min is way too long to make that pet useful enough.
Wind Serpent’s Lightning Breath needs something. A DoT would probably be most realistic here, plus it would also make it a viable choice for PvE again. Other possibility could be to include a snare like Froststorm Breath, but on a 20 second cooldown.
Those are some of my initial thoughts anyway. :D
Oh yeah… let’s get rid of Great Resistance too while they’re doing away with Avoidance. That could give all pet families some more options and really help the flexibility of Cunning. I mean does anyone ever take that talent..?
I recently considered trying great resistance on my cunning just for the heck of it and see if it helps prevent him dieing vs a moonkin druid randomly.
Well first of all I really like Palla’s carrion feeder idea!! Personally I hate the pet talent trees what was so wrong with the old way?? Seriously? i like traveling all over taming the pets learning the skills!! Hell think about it lot of the exploring achievements would have been filled up quick back then!! and Back then it was hard to kill a pet regardless But for some reason there came the talent trees and they are none effective till 20 but even then!!! Cunning pets I had nurmuroc the purple Chimera and he rocked till the nerf of his frostfire blast and and had him spec’d for avoidance and wolverine etc,,But cunning pets have to short effects with too long of CD’s and they need to be balanced out better!! Yes survivability needs improvement but in all trees I like the idea of a pet get away like a soar/dig/run to replenish some health!! I also agree that mend pets needs a major overhaul I was kinda thinking what about a shadowmeld talent for the pet just to avoid attacks while healing in non combat + healing boost When I lookedin my stable the other day while leveling Punk (Devilsaur) i noticed something i didnt want happen but my stable is all ferocity something i didnt want to happen but being SV/BM of I think DPS and I dont wanna get rid of my 2 Spiritbeasts wolf and Rakshiri why cant dual specc’d hunters get 2 sets of stables? lol
Here is part of the problem your going to have to face, Mania. The opinion on whether or not pet’s are good in PvP or bad in PvP seems to be split. From my personal experience as BEASTMASTER, my pet’s do very well in PvP. Tenacity, Ferocity, and cunning all three bring something interesting to the party. For example, you’d be surprised at the effectiveness of a worm thunderstomping in a crowded BG or Wintergrasp. On the other side of the coin, however, my ferocity pet’s tend to be the king of the castle still. One of the primary reasons for this, aside from high DPS, is charge. Any ferocity or even tenacity pet can aquire this skill, and it operates on a 25/21 second cooldown, which is well under half of what most cunning pet’s can manage. ((Chimera’s aside.)) It stops your target from moving, which for a hunter, can be insanely useful. Having an enemy inside your target range for even one more auto or steady shot can save your hide.
Fawatam, you said it yourself. Hunter PvP is kind of rough, and it always has been. I harp on this quite a bit, but it has everything to do with having a weakness, IE can’t do our damage up close and personal. This is worse for Marksman and Survival, but still bad for beastmasters. My issue with that is, how is it okay for say, a demonologist warlock to be able to still do their full array of damage within melee range, but not a hunter, any spec of hunter?
This isn’t really about cunning persay, but having it happen twice is very god damned annoying- Why isn’t Blizzard fixing Pathing problems, it does affect PVP and it’s just caused my orc to die twice :D my pet got stuck. On nothing.
You know in Coldarra, how there are those nice big platforms on the ground where three quest mobs stand? My Raptor got stuck on the human platform twice :D I died the first time, was able to survive the second glitch, but ofc my pet died CAUSE IT COULDN’T MOVE.
This has sadly made me realize Blizzard isn’t going to really listen to whatever we say if they’re allowing pets to get stuck, on nothing.
Cause I mean come on people afaik, the ‘cower’ bug is still going on, Blizzard admited to nerfing other pets, because of cunning, they nerfed pets again by giving us bloated trees, or in the case of Cunning pets, situational abilities that depend on luck more than anything to pull off as much as if not more dps, than a ferocity pet. GC is a puppet and I’m just so ticked off right now.
And Palla:
‘This is worse for Marksman and Survival, but still bad for beastmasters. My issue with that is, how is it okay for say, a demonologist warlock to be able to still do their full array of damage within melee range, but not a hunter, any spec of hunter?’
Because evidently for Blizzard it’s ok to compare us to casters, aslong as we’re in pure range. Outside of that they give us weak melee skills, GC puppets out we might be given a OOOH SITUATIONAL MELEE SKILL TO USE BEFORE FLEEING. And it’s like .. lol?
Give us back imp Wing Clip- Rogues can sap and blind us to hell. DK’s can almost constantly snare and grab, druids can snare/root us too [granted not if you're big and red but if you're not suspecting it..]. Retrilols can stun and then just.. slaughter almost anything in the time their stun is on the target. And by the way, we take fall damage from Disengage, when it doesn’t fail if you’re not in the perfect situation.
It’s like every single little chance we have to escape Melee, they break it or they give other classes to get around it.
Why not make Scatter Shot a standard hunter shot? Give MM or SV an imp talent that increases duration or whatever. I mean something, anything.
Sorry for the rant just, so… so frustrated atm with hunters.
1. Do not make crabs something other than tenacity… there are hardly enough tenacity pets as is – and on a personal level, I would very very much miss having my pet tank-crab who keeps me alive.
2. Cornered. Remove it, replace it with something else.. it’s true, if you let your pet get below that many hp, you will either heal your pet to get it above that, or your pet will die in the next 5 seconds. Useless, remove it or replace it.
3. Speed. As far as I can tell, what I want most in pvp is speed (agility).. Cunning pets already have access to that lovely “increased speed” abilities (reduced cooldowns, cobra reflexes, etc).. Let’s see some more of those. Reduced cooldowns, increased agility, faster attacks… Ferocity is “fury warrior”, Tenacity is “prot warrior”.. by all means, let’s make cunning, “rogue”… no really, let’s do it. Instead of increased armor, how about increased dodge? Chance to hit rather than more damage in a hit?
4. Cunning pets also rely heavily on second-use abilities.. which is the reason everyone uses crabs (and I want to use a nether ray).. they DO something other than damage.. stun, confuse, fear, silence, slow melee, reduce armor, etc… Abilities that just do damage are… they fall short. Add an extra effect to the “just damage” abilities – like the dragon-hawk’s fire.
5. Speaking of stun.. Charge is great for that.. can we add that to the cunning tree? Likewise, somebody mentioned earlier stealth – which is rediculously handy, and can be very, very dangerous (especially with cats and eyes of the beast)… I know, it would take some glory from the cats, but.. that ability would certainly help the cunning to shine.
Breaks down to… Speed, shorter cooldowns, remove or replace cornered, and make sure there are plenty of “secondary effecs” (such as stun, silence, slow, etc).
When I could first get a chimeara I rather enjoyed it, they were fairly decent pvp pets before the “balancing” of the pet trees.
Some ideas i’ve had that always seemed like it would be decent for a cunning pet revolve mostly around say a BM hunter, where a pet actually is basically required. Cunning pets currently, die like nothing and it’s pretty useless when a spec that relies on the pet staying alive is borked over because the pet really is just a glass cannon, yeah it can get off a good two shots and then it’s dead. Tenacity has a stupid amount of armor, threat generation, stamina and the like.
Cunning should in reality in pvp situations be able to reduce its own damage received or the damage of others taken. Yes intervene sounds like a great idea, and I admire that cunning was given RoS, misguided but it was a step in the right direction. I mean really…giving a pet that dies like nothing the ability to take damage to itself and die faster? Yeah…genious. No not really.
As said before, ways to cleanse things, reducing damage (NOT TRANSFERRING) the damage. Having a pet species with the ability to do a 2-4 second blind effect that stops all attacks made by the hunter or pet would be very nice. Similar to the rogue blind, on a DECENT cooldown.
Say the ability to take less damage from AOE would also be another great idea, but sadly something that is put into the Ferocity tree. Don’t give Cunning that talent, but give them something similar. Maybe naturally more resistance to the schools of magic or the like.
Another idea is to give cunning pets it’s OWN stun that is a talented ability in the pet tree…separate from say the crab’s pin or a BM’s intimidation. Something a MM or SV hunter wouldn’t mind having in their arsenal and spending a talent point into their pet to get.
Reading the comment above me I agree totally, Cunning needs to have more “dual abilities” doing damage AND having that sexy pin or that root. More things like the Chimeara froststorm breath please!
Many ferocity pets have what a cunning pet should have, alot of the pets out there have a snazzy stun, snare/root slow effect or the like, but like the silithid. It’s a little bugged or snagged on a really really REALLY long CD. It says Cunning is meant for utility..Where is the utility in a CD that could accidentally be blown and then leaving you sitting there with a dead pet or dead hunter and cursing that 40second CD to the stars and back. 40 seconds? Hell I could be dead in 10 from that retadin over there giving me a nasty look. I’ve more then once blown that 40s CD and left to sit there and take the pounding *shudder*
Its not alot to ask to have a little less CD, specially for specs that aren’t BM and don’t have a choice but to horde that carefully guarded CD and pray that your pet hasn’t decided to bug out as you dismount and autocast it at the first sign of trouble.
Again agreeing with the above comment, more speed granted not so much with attacks, but more agility is a good way to put it, dodging more, more things like bullheaded where it can take itself out of a nasty place and retreat with some form of it’s dignity intact.
Maybe a talented form of “frenzy”. Hell call it something like “Protector of the Pack” only in this case when the Hunter or targeted party member drops below a certain amount of health it goes into a protective frenzy reducing damage done to the player by XX% and increasing the damage of the pet by XX% lasting XX seconds on a reasonable CD. (Sounds like a decent idea eh?)
There are alot of options, most of what I’d like to see from the cunning tree is already mentioned, less damage taken, the ability to remove more effects. It needs something to set it apart from the other pet talent trees something you can ONLY get from the cunning tree. More secondary effects on the pets that already exist in the tree that are sadly lacking on them.
More dodge/agility/speed…
Less ridiculously long CD’s…
yeah, I think thats about it. <3
There have been some great ideas posted on pet talents here is my own slant on some of the suggestions
Feeding frenzy could convert a pet crit into an execute style attack using remaning focus for + damage. As a humor note I would say if this would reduce a player to 0 or lower hits it stuns them for 3 seconds before killing them whilst the pet eats them alive and gains health back (doing away with carrion feeder)
New talent to replace carrion feeder “Eyes of the spirit? beast” passive improvement on eyes of the beast stealthing the hunter while channeld and increasing all beast attack damage
Cornerd keeps its permanant passive abilities but includes a lesser version of lick wounds (on a cooldown)
Sounds like too much fun thinking about it…Im asking too much
Arjuna, the only problem with that is you don’t have the pet gaining happiness. That’s what ALL the pet ‘food talents’ do, either regen happiness and health, or increase threat and happiness. Cunning is the only one to get something that has to be cast by you, is buggy and causes the pet to stay still for as long as feed pet would do really, for health/happiness regen.
And that’s still to situational imo; Ferocity regens via dmg. Even 1 point is useful. Tenacity regen’s via Growl. As said even 1 point in it, is useful.
Carrion Feeder should be reworked so if the target dies while the pet is attacking it, doesn’t matter if pet gets killing blow or not, the pet feasts from the corpse, healing itself and regening happiness. Can work in combat, is auto cast, is a buff so the pet is automatically available for battle right away and not stuck there… chowing down.
Ryai – I like your idea for the Carrion Feeder.
I would like to see an intervene type talent given to this tree. Since your loyal pet would want to come to your aid, it is only naturaly that it would speed to your defense when that stealthed rogue stunlocks you. He would only take one attack that was intended for you, but it might give you time to disengage while the pet now focuses on your attacker.
I haven’t read all of the replies, so some may be repeated, but I compiled some of the comments here with my own thoughts. Thought I’d share what has been a pet peeve of mine since they homogenized the stat boosts for the different trees.
Some of the PVP abilities are only available to a Tenacity or Ferocity pet. A good example is the Wasp’s Sting ability: a 20 second armor reduction that also prevents stealthing. This is why I use a Wasp as my PVP pet instead of a Cunning pet. I found there are only a few specific types of effects spread throughout the pets that are PVP-centric…
6 sec disarm
2 sec stun
Interrupt + 2 sec silence
4 sec root
8 second casting/attack slow
8 sec guarentee next attack miss
20 sec armor reduction + no stealth
My suggestion is to make these all into Cunning family abilities (some of them already are), and make the exotic Cunning pets have a beefier version of it. The Ferocity/Tenacity pets can keep what they have right now, but this way there’s a reason to use a Cunning pet, especially if they fix the tree to be useful for PVP.
The other main issue is the cooldown lengths. IMO a base cooldown cost of 5 seconds per 1 second of effect with an added 10 seconds for the secondary effects (interrupt, no stealth, etc) is best. This would put most of these abilities at 30-40 seconds, with the most wanted skills being 40 seconds. Also, Longevity would only cut them to 21/28 seconds at the “cost” of using a currently-weak-in-PVP tree.
And I have to admit, I would love to see Prowl become a Cunning tree talent, with a Vanish-like talent linked to it. It would open a ton of tactical possibilities to Hunters, and the Vanish would be useful in getting our pets out of focus situations. It’d also solve the “problem” of Cats and Spirit Beasts having two family skills (and maybe would give Blizz incentive to fix the stupid thing!).
“Night Elves and Rogues can stealth in combat.”
Um…no. I wish,but we night elves just stand their quietly and hope nobody notices us while our pet chews on their legs for a bit. As soon as we attack..”Hello! I’m now dead!”…”lol”
Rogue’s stealth on hunter’s?…”drool”.
Totally off topic and I apologize.
Kitairra
I’m a little late posting to this discussion. Some great ideas here.
I would like to take a slightly different perspective by addressing the basic design concept behind Cunning pets. I would like to see the focus shift from “A PVP pet” to “A general purpose pet with some PVP abilities “. Of course I am just surmising that this is the design concept.
By focusing on creating a PVP pet you wind up with a pet that is so specialized that it is of limited use in any other role. This means that a third of the available pets are seldom used.
In a previous Mania discussion (RFC: What’s the Weakest Leveling Pet?), Cunning pets were frequently cited as a very poor choice for leveling. Why does this have to be the case? Why can’t Cunning pets be decent leveling pets while also providing some abilities that are useful in PVP?
As an example of pets like this, just look at the Crab and the Hyena. Their movement impairing family ability is useful in a PVP situation but their Tenacity and Ferocity tree abilities make them viable in other situations. An alternate way of stating this is that cunning pets should be a good choice for leveling on a PVP server. That is, they support leveling plus they have some abilities which are useful in a PVP encounter.
What would help achieve this (echoing ideas from previous posters).
1.Better survivability. Tenacity pets have Blood of the Rhino and Silverback. Ferocity pets have Bloodthirsty, Lick You Wounds and Heart of the Phoenix. There should be similar skills for cunning pets. Replace the almost useless Carrion Feeder with an ability that heals during combat. Also add a skill similar to Blood of the Rhino or Lick Your Wounds to the cunning tree.
2.Allow Cunning pets to learn Charge in tier one (like tenacity pets).
3.Shorten the cool-down on some Cunning pet family skills (Snatch, Sonic Blast).
4.Increase the triggering threshold of Cornered to 50% health.
5.Replace Wolverine Bite with a passive damage increasing ability.
Jaysee, just about anyone who has heavily used a cunning pet will disagree with number 5. Maybe add in another damage increasing talent, but leave wolverine bite, it’s amazing.
As for number 1, Carrior feeder has potential, but right now it’s just to much of a hassle.
umm? Have they announced any change to wolveinne bite (ie, the pet being hit and expert capped)for 3.2? I don’t usally run the ptr, but unless they fixed that situational use of something dodging or parrying or missing… it’s gonna be useless.
but as for the topic, I think they just need to rework the situational things to be less situational in the tree.
and personally, I like carrion feeder, I kinda wish every tree had it, or all pets.
Usless in PvE, but not in PvP, where it really shines. But yea, one of my suggestions, especially with the new changes to pet scaling, was for Wolverine bite to become unhooked from the dodge requirement.
I want to see this for cunning tree talent
Improved Kill Command – While under the effects of Kill Command, each special attack by your pet has a 1/3/5/7/9% chance of applying Open Wound, allowing your Kill Shot to be used. Seeing as the chance to execute for Warriors is far above this, it doesn’t seem unreasonable. And if you’re looking for a special shot for BM, increasing the proc chance for this may just fit the bill
riojin – that a very interesting idea, good one, i like it!
Riojin, why would a cunning pet have a quite blatant hunter skill? :/ and 5/5? Good christ man, if anything it would be 2/2 [for either 1/2 or 2/4 percentages] and most likely pushed to a last tier so only accesable to BM. And if this was a hunter talent, then well where would it go? MM? SV? BM?
I’m sorry but I have to disagree with this, this wouldn’t solve anything imo and would just start to cause blizzard to bloat the cunning tree, and have it as broken and bloated as Ferocity and Tenacity is :/
I pvp a lot on my hunter (never got him past 59), I use a DragonHawk for mostly Pvp, and a Windserpent for Pve, I would rather have some of the cd’s lowered (like the two pets i listed class attack) and there dmg boosted a little (they don’t do much, but perhaps it’s only at my lvl) you could raise there stats a little to be lower than a Tenacity survival but higher than a Ferocity and dmg higher than a Tenacity but lower than a Ferocity but that might make them too desirable. to remove some of the situational use from the ability’s they use and perhaps open all trees to all pets (but keep the stat differences i mentioned earlier, to more distinguish the trees, or even just give them extra points for those trees they match) [ex: the Windserpent being able to put more points in the Cunning tree, like an extra 2pts or so]
Sorry but Raegon;
‘[ex: the Windserpent being able to put more points in the Cunning tree, like an extra 2pts or so]‘
That kinda defeats the purpose of the BM 51 talent, would allow non BM at a top teirish talent, possibly, and it really wouldn’t fix Cunning overall as tbh it’s NOT the amount of points spent in the cunning tree, it’s where and how they are spent. And the lack of any survivability.
Cunning talents need to be reworked, to be sure. Most of their abilities have such long cooldowns, they’re not useful, even in the situations they’re designed for. A cunning talent to reduce those cooldowns would be far more useful than owl’s focus.
Actually Epacsten, Owls Focus and a cunning only talent to reduce cooldowns a bit, would go hand in hand well, I never really talent for Owls Focus as whenever it goes off it’s either A: when I dismount [sometimes when I've FED my pet], or B: it goes off but the only talent available before it disappears is the cunning pet’s spam skill.
But an ability to lower a cooldown + Owls Focus, would be a good combo. It would also allow cunning pets to have the shorter CD’s everyone wants, but wouldn’t be op or cause longevity to be nerfed.
That’s a real good idea you had Epac!
I had some recent thoughts on the talents I suggested needed changed.
In place of Feeding Frenzy I have two suggestions
A. Instead of a %threshold for the dmg increase, make it a on kill (honor or exp), the pet gets a dmg increase buff for X seconds. With an internal minute cooldown.
or
B. Frenzied Strike, when the target is at or below 35% health your pet strikes at the target doing dmg +X%. (with a cooldown)
This could easily be balanced so that if you were to take a cunning pet to a boss the general dps would be the same. And in pvp make it a more sueful ability as your target wont be at 35% health for long, you might only get one shot (which is why its current form is lackluster). So why not make it a one shot ability with a cool down? Similar to Kill shot
Also I had a idea for Cornered.
“Your pet has a _% chance when hit by direct damage to begin lashing out for extra damage. Increasing all damage done by _% for _ seconds. This effect can stack up to _ times but is removed upon the pet receiving a heal.
This idea has a lot of knobs that bliz can turn to balance it and fits in well with their view on how the game should work, using abilities at the right time and making choices. It only procs off direct damage meaning something has to be hitting it, so a player could choose to kill the pet but have to deal with the dmg increase till it dies, and a hunter can gauge how long to let the pet continue lashing out for increased damage or heal it depending on the situation.
You could also had armor reduction to the pet while lashing out as a balance for pve, and for heal over times it could a heal tick per stack removal instead of the whole thing. So like I said a lot of ways to tweak but would provide a good utility to the utility pets.
I tried to keep pve and pvp in mind with these ideas with a slight bias to pvp probably.
Tenacity pets are much better for PvP than Cunning.
For example, Tenacity has Intervene and Roar of Sacrifice all in the same package, along with the ability to Charge at the target to keep them away from you. Also with the 40% extra healing. A few other goodys.
There pets family specials usally dont have PvP in mind, but the Tree makes it worth it.
Cunning, you have a pet that can dash everywhere. If you specced right, is harder to kill at the last 30% hp (but wont save it from a 2 shot).
You have to specc 2 points into a useless talent in order to get somthing useful like Roar of Sacrifce (no intervene).
Along with its only healing ability depends on you finding a corpse, which, in Arena, is like asking for your pet to die now.
Most Cunning Pets have PvP Specials, but is usally ignored becouse the Tree sucks.
Feroicity is good for burst, but was never really desined for PvP at all, and is usally avoided.
It does have some good PvP Specials however, like the Wasps Sting which makes rogues have trouble going into stealth, and helps MM Hunters.
Cunning needs work in order for it to work for PvP. Currently, everyone has a Tenacity pet for PvP
(Wrote quickly, and by a tired person)
Daginni, my two most successful pets are my wolf, and my rhino pre-nerf. Now it’s my wolf and my chimera. Each pet has something they can bring to the mix, but on the over all it feels like cunning are the most lacking. Doesn’t mean they are bad though.
Tbh any pet can do well in any situation, or almost any situation depending on how you talent it. But the only reason tenacity pets are being used, is because of RoS probably, or for thunderstomp in crowded BG’s. Or like a crab, for pin, but I find it can be broken, it seemed to be broken whenever Aria used Typhoon.
And tbh on my orc before I levled her and ditched the owl.. that I may go back to, it’s snatch ability WAS useful, it saved me from a few DK’s. It’s just after lv 60 pets, scale horribly still and by 80, cunning pets are the weakest, thanks to poor talent choices, situational abilities that you talent for, yada yada.
I think maybe after Blizz fixes the scalling problem, cunning pets might be a bit better, but they still need work. I just wish they would take some of the better ideas I’ve seen suggested :/
Intervene is not well designed either, and RoS is being changed in such a way that I (just personally) don’t like it. So I don’t use either talent anyways : /
Kroxis, it seems counter productive to me. RoS is being changed so that it prevents critical damage, but from a PvP standpoint, that will just be less and less useful as you garner more resilience, and will ultimately not be anywhere near as useful as it’s current form.
Something Nimizar said reinforced a point, and kind of has me irritated. The serious issue with pets and the reason why they aren’t getting buffed as much as they should is because of buffs, or rather because pet’s get a large benefit from them. A pet get’s their buff, and then a goodly portion of their masters buff added. From a raiding perspective, that’s all good and fine, but from a regular PvP situation, that sucks. At most in a BG you’ll get buffed maybe twice, once at the start of the fight and maybe in passing, which means that, if Blizzard does indeed give pet stats a slight nerf to compensate for double buffing, then any situation where the hunter isn’t being double buffed will be sub-par for the pet, and that’s just stupid. I know it wouldn’t be easy, but the best solution for this would be for Blizzard to not make stats from buffs transfer from the hunter to the pets.
Palla: Or they just leave it as is and don’t bother with it, I really don’t see what the problem is, because outside of ideal situations, it doesn’t matter. And if you ARE in an ideal situation, well blamo it’s needed. Tho I DOUBT they will make it where stats from buffs don’t transfer from master to pet- but worse make the pet unbuffable and I do NOT want that, I like Erebus getting double buffed from GotW/MotW when I use him as our personal tank.
And if they do take the easy way out, as really Palla that’s what blizzard would do, they could end up making it where pets wouldn’t be able to be healed/etc by party members too, and I don’t want to risk it :/
Blizzard should just leave it as is, because honestly as you said in pvp, you rarely get buffed after the first death. Granted I TRY to buff people when we rez at a GY, but on my pally I hardly get any thanks or buffed if there’s another paladin or mage or priest and it just makes me think, why bother.
That’s kind of my fear, Ryai, that Blizzard will try something like that and totally bork it, as per their usual. But the alternative is that they nerf pets, which they are already talking about doing. At least in so much as pet hit points, which they, for some stupid reason, seem to think are to high.
Lmao. To high? To high? I have 22kish hp in my pvp turned ‘tank’ gear for our suicidal runs thru mgt/mgt hc and sethek halls or whatever- tho Ryai needs rep to get the key so we can grind the raven lord, dear lord.
But while Ryai has about 22k, Erebus only has, the most I’ve ever seen is 20k and that’s WITH Last Stand :/
My pets are like 14k or so. And Blizzard is saying that’s to much? And Blizzard is going to nerf pet damage again? WELL HELL WHY ROLL A HUNTER. I mean I rolled Rosa to MM, abandoning Dante as a devilsaur that’s not green, even if black just doesn’t feel right next to her, and I was pulling aggro off my pets, outside the temp tank pet I got, with auto shots! Holy hell if they nerf pet damage more just. christ how bad is it going to be for pve grinding for mm and sv who are tired of constantly kiting? As I’ve started to notice it at lower levels even, and it’s not the hunter doesn’t have pet using growl or cower on either :/
Just..
Blizzard is breaking my favorite class, and they have no idea what the hell they are doing.
I’m starting to fear for my Warlock. What if they break demons next? I mean they took away my felpup’s paranoia buff, tho granted if I’m good I can still pwn rogues- but if they’re going to bork hunters and pets over, just cause of lulz double buffing, what about warlocks?
God just, are the only speccs and classes Blizzard plays anymore, Retrilols, DKs, and rogues?
I mean hell Palla, they basically told Droods to roll Resto for pvp!
What are they doing to WoW, it was a fun game and now? :/
Damage is still okay for pets……I think. But that is something they have been batting around the past half or year or so, and it makes me nervous. Seems they have some misgivings about so much of the hunter’s damage coming from pets, and being lost if they pet dies. SO FAR they haven’t decided to try and ‘fix’ this, though they have discussed dropping the pets damage abysmally and making them a lot harder to kill. But the hit point thing is something they are currently looking at, Nimizar and I had a small discussion about it in another post.
Why….are they trying to ‘fix’ the wrong things? From a PvE perspective, hunters just need a way to get pet’s out of bad situations, and from a PvP perspective, hunters need help in melee range, disengage needs some tweaking, and pet’s and hunters both overall need a bit more in the way of survivability. But I haven’t really heard a whole lot about any of that, and I have heard to much of the ‘hit point issue’ that GC may or may not be confused about.
I don’t think GC is confused as much as, he’s being a puppet/tool for Blizzard. I mean he did the drood Q&A right? And Aria showed me and it was just appalling, and if I hadn’t have seen the hunter one, I would have thought ours was bad as it is. But after seeing it and hearing of the others, I’m just wondering, does Blizzard know what they’re doing anymore- just repeating what I last said.
And WHAT is wrong with the hitpoints, why does blizzard think they have to much? I mean they’re fragile as it is, if I’m not careful I’ve seen my pets lose health dangerously fast in some situations, causing me to cast mend pet/passive/call back quickly, and if I’m not quick enough I lose my pet. I know that’s partly my fault, but I get tunnel vision, and all I can focus on, since I don’t use macros, I don’t like macros, is managing my shots and occasionally glancing to my pet. This was ofc while I still instanced.
If they lower pet health, they sure as hell better compensate with more damage. If I’m going to have a glass cannon for a pet, I want it to explode and take out half of Azeroth with it, that’s the only way I’d accept downing hitpoints or anything else they want :/
hadn’t seen the druid one*
I can not multitask lol.
The problem with pet health is the double-buff conundrum I was telling you about before. It originally started with voidwalkers, and I’d heard tell of a full buffed voidwalker having sixty thousand hit points or so, and doing a good deal of main tanking. Whether or not I believe that particular tale is up for debate, but legitmately speaking with appropriately layered buffs pets, voidwalkers and ghouls in particular, can have a good deal of hitpoints to eat through. In PvE it……doesn’t make a huge difference. If your pet is in the wrong place at the wrong time, then it’s dead in anyway. In PvP the only time it can even kind of be an issue is if the hunter is using eyes of the beast with its glyph, ironically enough. But seriously, who uses that? Otherwise, if your focusing on a pet with a truckload of hit points while a hunter/warlock/death knight beats the snot out of you, then your issue extends beyond the fact that said pet had 25,000 hit points double buffed.
Yeah I heard tale of that, wasn’t it on erf Sarth? it might be possible if the warlock specced for just pure stam gear and stam buffs and all that and same for the VW, I guess with every buff available .. well …
… actually I don’t think a VW health could exceed 30k really even with, does the glyph for VW give +stam?
I mean that’s more hitpoints than a tank has, that’s more hitpoints then I think is possible. And tbh I think someone could have hacked somewhere, I mean if a keylogger can hurl fem orcs down from the sky infront of the AH in org …
And yeah that’s the point, so what if a pet is eating your face, if you find the hunter, bam dead hunter. I mean this sounds like someone lied and people are QQing and Blizz instead of looking into possible ToS abuse, no lets bork everything!
And not the Swedish Chief style :(
I mean seriously the only times I’ve seen my pets get insane amounts of hp? In Wintergrasp. When there’s 400 alliance and only 40 horde.
It hurts. It hurts hard. The lag hurts so much.
Er, I mean anyways, and even then I’ve only seen, I think, Erebus get close to THOSE numbers, and only when I was in full pvp gear + stam gems + tenacity 20 + buffs + buffs on him ..
..
maybe this is just complaining about Wintergrasp Tenacity.
Increases the Voidwalkers total stamina by 20%, and previously my level 74 voidwalker had close to eighteen thousand hit points, so I guess sixty thousand with good gear and loaded with buffs isn’t to unreasonable. Still, the nerfs hit ALL pets at the time.
Now if voidwalkers could only keep aggro. Mine never do t_t
And holy hell 18k at lv 74? I wish Erebus had 18k at lv 80.
And yeah. Blizzard just doesn’t really want to seem to fix pets reasonably. I am still hoping they take some of these suggestions, but now? I’m not holding my breath :/
Well least my pally is lv 68. So hopefully I can faceroll thru northrend, maybe respecc Ret for it, and my friends won’t have to suffer incase they do break pets. Again.
Cause now I’m re-re-re-remembering the whole Growl fiasco of 2.4.0 was it?
When Blizz and blues and other hunters denied Growl was broken t_t oh yeah picking aggro off a mob in one shot is noooormal.
It was around eighteen thousand, yea, back when Wrath first came out. Glyphed mind you, but still…..it was a lot. Personally I hope they make voidwalkers and especially the succubus more fun. They totally overhauled the felhunter and buffed up the imp, now they just need to make succubus’s ((Succubi?)) useful again. I don’t even really see a point in seduction anymore, even though I used to use it all the time in instances. What she really needs to do is contend for top DPS with the felguard, except more in the glass cannon line. Give her a DoT lash, up the power of lash of pain and halve the cooldown, and maybe, MAYBE turn seduction into a repentence type deal, just fire and forget, no channeling. And god ALMIGHTY, give them a better glyph. “Removes all Dots on the target of seduction”…..I….I realize that means it won’t break…..but…..how useless do you get?
As long as a ‘% of total health’ Mend Pet would be boosted by Blood Of The Rhino and/or the hunter’s talent which increases healing (God, I don’t remember its name; I’m a horrible BM!), I think it could well be a good idea. This would be an excellent spell in PVE as well.
As a hunter who tanks, I have a lot of tenacity pets in my stable. These are actually what I tend to use for PVP, as opposed to Cunning or Ferocity pets. Cunning pets are just too fragile; they don’t have enough abilities to help keep them alive. Their abilities could be quite useful, but there are also Tenacity (crab, anyone?) and Ferocity (hyena and core hound, anyone?) abilities that are extremely helpful, meaning you don’t see as many Cunning pets around. I’m definitely up there with reworking the tree. And I don’t mean reworking it so RoS now makes an opponent uncrittable. Frankly, I find that idea to be pretty stupid; RoS was fine the way it had been. Now, the ability is purely for PVP. And while I understand that you want to focus on PVP with a pet, ‘Only useful in PVP’ should not be the way to do it. At least not IMO.
…. of course, this could also be annoyance because in the Tenacity Tree, you need RoS to even get to Wild Hunt, and with RoS being useless outside of PVP… well, yeah. But this avenue is for Cunning pets, so I’ll let that be my only ‘Tenacity’ bitch. ;)
For the record, my primary pet when in PVP is my crocohydra, Glitch. His Bad Attitude encourages people not to attack him, as they would end up taking more damage. I’ve killed rogues with my pet before because their super-speedy attacks meant they were taking a crapload of ‘snap back’ damage. Blood Of The Rhino means that he’s healing for over 2K per tick (level 80) which doesn’t make him completely unkillable, but attacking him often becomes less than an ideal use of time. Sure, he won’t do the massive damage that the Ferocity and Cunning pets do, but I’d much rather have a DOT that can keep DOTting rather than something that will die in two or three hits. Therefore, some survivability in the Cunning Tree would be a good idea. Heart Of The Phoenix is an excellent idea.
PVP favors burst damage. The idea with the Cunning Tree seems to have been to try and make ‘burst damage’ without being overpowered. The problem here is that the way they were implimented, as a lot of people pointed out above, isn’t very helpful. Burst damage when the pet is at 35% of its health is ‘one hit and my pet is dying’. Burst damage when the other player is at 35% or less of its health is much more helpful, but not *enough* if it’s the only damage you’ve got going on. Especially when you consider the big changes in the next patch that will make this ability obselete in PVP *and* PVE.
Firstly, people don’t focus in dodging in PVP. Especially not when resilience will *lower* player damage in the next patch. People are going to ignore dodge for the most part and stack resilience. So it’ll be useful in PVE, right Kura? Right! …. unless your pet is Expertise capped. And what does it take to have an Expertise capped pet? Why, a hit-capped Hunter. Now, tell me how many raiding hunters are *not* going to be hit-capped. …. yeah, exactly. Wolverine Bite needs a rework for the next patch. BIG time.
I think the reason you’re not seeing more people talking about Cunning pets is the big, obvious reason: no one’s using them. You don’t complain about something that you don’t use. It’s just… there. You complain about what you *do* use, and is broken. Therefore, yeah. Cunning is broken. Very, very broken. And I don’t mean in the ‘IMBA OMG’ way.
Except, Kurasu, that you don’t really PICK your gear in PvP. It isn’t like PvE, where you can kinda say “Do I want to do this, or this?” In PvP, the DPS classes have one set, healer and damage dealers two, and triple hybrids three, and agility figures heavily on several physical DPS sets, which, as you know, amounts to dodge. Not only that, but PvP gear doesn’t feature hit as one of it’s stats, so dodging, especially when your pet’s attack speed is .98, is still going to happen fairly often against anything sans casting casters.
Part of the problem with what your talking about is that you yourself admit to never using cunning. The problem with cunning is that it doesn’t do anything outstandingly. It doesn’t deal the best damage, it doesn’t take damage the best, it doesn’t have a reliable self heal, and both of the other trees have at least one pet with a PvP-centric skill, in other words hyenas and crabs. Cunning were supposed to be more PvP or jack-of-all-trades oriented, but that fell through with lick your wounds and baseline thunderstomp. My wolf generally outlives me in PvP, even in Wintergrasp. Why? She is constantly regening hit points at a pretty good rate. My worm simply takes forever to die. My cunning pet? “MEND, MEND DAMMIT!!!” I do enjoy my chimera in PvP, and think he does great, but PvP is SUPPOSED to be his focus, and he isn’t really shining there. Aside from the occasional “Okay, how much did wolverine bite just critical for?” and the obvious yumminess of thunderstorm breath, he just feels like a weaker version of the other two families.
That being said, Kurasu, this entire thread is people suggesting fixes for the tree. Things that would make people actually USE them more, instead of just saying “That’s pretty, but I don’t want it.”
Personally? If they are going to say it is a PvP pet family, then MAKE IT A !@#$ING PVP PET FAMILY. The only REAL PvP focused talent in the darn tree is bullheaded and MAYBE, just a little bit, feeding frenzy. Roar of sacrifice WAS great, next patch it becomes mediocre at best, and owls focus is a good ability for either or. Give them MORE PvP oriented skills, additional stats from the hunter such as dodge, additional protection from magic damage, BETTER protection against critical hits, LICK YOUR WOUNDS, higher attack……you get the point.
Blizzard needs to decide what to do with the family, and DO IT, not jerk around like they have been with hunters for the past while.
I’ve never read a better dialogue between two hunters than I have just now. Bravo.
Even the Oboards…well,enough about that cesspool…ahem…
On topic…I have one Cunning pet…a beautiful Black and White Wind Serpent from
Zul’Drak. She’s stabled now,and I really can’t see myself having her for long.
“Paper Cannon” is such an apt descroption I may just name her that.
Fix Blizz,k? thx.
Kitairra
Double Post ftl…
I meant “all hunters” in this dialogue…need moar coffee…/sigh
Kitairra
For base stats its clear that tenacity pets should, overall, have more stamina, armour, and survivability.
Ferocity? Easy. Sustained damage.
Cunning? At first glance it seems difficult to place what stats, etc. should be highest and most desired.
You can discover this easily by looking at what players want themselves in PvP.
Resilience and burst damage.
In fact, its clear that cunning pets should have talents/base stats that provide resilience and burst damage.
Cunning pets could also use a silence and heart of the phoenix in their trees to allow them to combat more efficiently. Having a HotP ability would allow talents that require the pet to be under 35% health to be able to stay low and not need Mend Pet. Also, the 35% thresholds could be raised to 45%, so allow for a longer and more common use. (One or two hits with the boost, instead of none.)
In PvP, you’re dealing with shorter encounters that rely more or less on hitting hard quickly. You need resilience to give yourself some survivability, but ultimately you’re looking for burst. Giving pets abilities like several melee swats that hit hard with longer cooldowns would work well for this. It would give burst, but not take glory from sustained PvE damage of the ferocity pets. Another problem in PvP is healers. In arena, all the top teams have an invincible resto druid. Again, emphasis is placed on the utility of a silence.
In my honest opinion, silencing effects should removed from pets who have them naturally (Nether rays etc.) and replaced by alternate abilities, and then placed in the cunning trees. Burst damage abilities with longer cooldowns should be added, and a heart of the pheonix ability should be granted.
Another thought.
They could change and link the dodge talent to a new mini evasion ability talent like the rogues, and/or change and link the resistance talent to a new mini cloak of shadows ability talent, maybe call them Evasive Maneuver and Infused Carapace
‘In my honest opinion, silencing effects should removed from pets who have them naturally (Nether rays etc.) and replaced by alternate abilities, and then placed in the cunning trees. Burst damage abilities with longer cooldowns should be added, and a heart of the pheonix ability should be granted.’
Sorry but no. What about the OBVIOUS pvp talents of SNATCH and CASTER SLOW then? Would you have to talent for that also? Or just Silence. Because then what would the silence pets have? Nothing. They’d be useless like Wind Serpents and Dragonhawks, unless talented. This would cause you to waste points. Again. Or an Owl with Snatch and Silence? Hooo boy.
Even Ariamodasu just commented to me how they screwed us over, a PURE DPS CLASS, she then suggested something I don’t think anyone else has; if a person gets in melee range, you can shoot and be sent flying backwards. I then took the idea and thought, what if it’s an attack, sorta like ‘explosive’ shot that all hunters can learn. You use it, and bang both you and melee opponent/target are sent flying xx yards away, allowing for BETTER survivability.
There’s also the fact we can’t melee shoot, and no ammount of pvp pet fixing is gonna fix that. Blizzard compares us to just casters, but we aren’t. Our stat stick is NOT our ranged weapon, like with casters [but then all their weps are stat sticks], it’s our MELEE WEAPON.
As the saying gos ‘this is my rifle, this is my gun’. Yes bad, but ignore that part. Our rifle, is our ranged weapon, no matter what it is. It’s our life line, it’s our damage dealer. It can be DISARMED FROM US FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE.
Blizzard needs to fix hunters in pvp. Then Blizzard needs to fix cunning pets. As said there are several very good suggestions going on, Cunning only cooldowns for pet talents, making abilities a bit less situational. Giving survivability talents to the pets. This could easily be done by taking out RoS and putting lick your wounds and heart of the phoenix for the minus crit and RoS talents which are not really needed imo.
By fixing cornered to be less dangerous to the pet as I’ve said and others, if the pet is that low in health, you’re gonna be spamming mend pet or trying to get it back to you and keep it alive. And by fixing Feeding Frenzy, for pve, 35% is fine [it is 35% right?] but for pvp? Hell no, if it’s a big massive thing then you might have a chance, if it’s not some class with a healing talent .. which I think is rogues and hunters … maybe locks and mages.
But for others? And smaller battlegrounds? If there’s a healer then this talent is screwed, yes it can be pulled off but I’ve only seen it at low levels and when I had the advantage, no matter how slim or short.. or rare it was. For pvp it should both be made a flat 50%, cause at 50%, the pet would still not be getting a mend pet probably, and the target probably wouldn’t be the center of focus of the healer yet, giving you a better chance and a less ‘perfect window of oppurtunity for only 5 seconds’.
Btw Kit, I think the saying is only really only Glass Cannon, not paper cannon. No offense meant, I’ve rarely heard it used myself.
I think Kit was saying that they are worse then glass cannons, since it doesn’t take much to tear through paper, and certain classes can look at pets funny and they flop over.
Hunters are the sole ranged physical damage class of WoW, and are the only class that has to adopt a totally different playstyle from PvE to PvP. A HUGE part of the problem I’ve noticed is that Blizzard is very apt to change what they consider us. One day you’ll hear us compared to casters, the next ‘ranged’ rogues.
Do y’know what I LOVE? ((Note the sarcasm. Lots and lots of sarcasm.)) Blizzard stating that moving in PvP should come with a penalty. Casters shouldn’t be able to cast, for example, aside from some instant casts. The problem with this theory? How are melee classes penalized? Aside from having to get INTO melee range, which every melee option has, they can do everything in their arsenal on the move ((Except for slam, and even deep fury can do that.)) with no negative impact on performence. I’m not saying you should be able to cast on the move, or that we should be able to fire arrows on the move, but impose SOME kind of penalty onto melee for being able to attack while moving. Decrease chance to hit, decreased damage, SOMETHING to balance things out a bit more. I mean, maybe it’s just me, but it looks like melee classes are kinda beating the snot out of casters and hunters at the moment.
Casters beat the snot out of me.
Yeah I remember in a BG when I was trying to earn some marks on my pally for a BWraptor, a twink DK gloated about how he got a 5k crit and oneshot a poor nelf hunter with a melee swing .-.
And ah well that makes sense. I mean I’ve seen my pets wtfpwned sometimes by retrilols :/
Tbh I’m starting to realize, our problems isn’t just pets, it’s the fact that well pvp is blatantly unbalanced, unfair, and well geared to those who have instants and melee abilities- or better abilites to escape. I mean mages can frost nova and blamo, we have to be SV for frost/explosive trap to work like that [as our only AoE's], rogues can vanish. Death Knights can heal themselves and oh my god it’s horrible, just oh god, get it nearly dead then it kills the rogue with you and all a sudden it’s healed and coming right for your oom face COMPLETELY IGNORING PET.
[still greatfull the rogue actually did come to my hunter's aid tho]
They either need to balance caster, and hunter classes, with melee classes more, or just strip us of everything and give us a choice, you can wear a loin cloth and a stick and be a damage dealer, or you just wear a loin cloth, spamming heals. I mean when you go into a pvp situation.
As a hunter, I wipe the floor with casters IF I see them first. If a caster way lays me in the middle of a fight, that’s generally it. As a death knight, second verse but with mages being a pain. I HATE blink. Twenty yards away AND it breaks all CC. !@#$ing blink.
It breaks CC as is? I thought it had to be talented- or am I thinking of rogues?
[warriors/mages/rogues are classes I never really leveled]
Tbh the only casters I have fun with are well warlocks, cause half the time they try to fear me, and it’s like LOL BIG RED PET. They try to dot me, and I just fd and pewpew them. But sometimes some just come along and I just get .. wtfpwned.
I am also now confused. CP from MMO as seems ptr crap is going live soon.
‘Roar of Sacrifice: Damage transferred to pet is now considered Nature damage.’
Um what?
Teleports the caster 20 yards forward, unless something is in the way. Also frees the caster from stuns and bonds.
Thats what Blink does.
I think that change means that the pet will take reduced damage based on magic resistance, but I honestly have no idea for sure. Maybe it was being dealt as physical damage before and being reduced by a large margin? Maybe it was just a coding issue?
As my warlock, beast masters are the only hunters that usually give me trouble, and even then it isn’t to hard to run away while my felguard happily om noms their face. Otherwise you ignore the pet and eat the hunter as fast as you can, while trying to get into melee range. Or if you are feeling particularly nasty, Dot, DoT, DoT, demonic circle out of range. Hunter begins dying from DoT damage and a demon eating their face, and you can just run back in to reapply your DoTs. In fact wait thirty seconds and you can just teleport away again, while Fel armor restores what health you DO lose. Nasty, cheesy, and unfortunately effective. Especially if you put your circle some place high up and not easy to reach.
That reminds me! Why is it that hunters talent for spirit bonds to have it restore a measly 2% health every TEN seconds, while warlocks get an armor spell later that restores 2% to 3% talented health every FIVE seconds, that also increases spellpower by varying ranks plus 30% spirit BASELINE?
And Ryai, all the hints point to the Patch going live soon, if not tommorow/today. Now I haven’t been on in a few weeks, but the last time I was it was so buggy that Stormwind had no water in its canals, and at least a few redone talents weren’t working. Sooooo we’ll see what happens. That being said, scheduled server maintence wouldn’t have as large effect as it used to. We’ve all been downloading the solid parts of the patch for weeks now, that only leaves a small portion left to download.
@ Ryai
Sorry about that…lol..my father was an old Air Force man and used that expression all the time.I’ve heard Glass Cannon as well..same thing,isn’t it?
Poor little things are going to wind up the same…/cast Revive Pet.
Off topic…now that patch 3.2 is live,and every hunter going after Skoll,the new Spirit Beast,maybe now I xan finally get the laser kitty! Woot!
And guess who I’ll have to abandon to make room in my stable? Yup…Paper/Glass Cannon…/sigh…Ah well,’tis the life we chose when we became hunters.
Kitairra
Double post ftl…again!
@ Palla
That’s exactly what I meant,Palla..lol…too many times when I’ve PvP’ed (which isn’t often,thank Elune! ),I’ve seen Mimzi get two-shotted by (insert bad language+
class here) when she’s just GETTING to her target,never mind about actually attacking it…bah! The less I think about PvP right now,the better my head feels..lol
Maybe I’m doing it wrong,though…Mimzi is such a huge target (Jorumonger Worm,or however you spell it..lol ),it’s not that hard seeing this thing undulating towards you..and like I said,I don’t PvP that much,and I really dont want to get a PvP-centric pet just for those “once in a blue moon” moments. “shrug”
Kitairra
Maybe it’s cause Blizzard things +healing counter balances it/makes it op Palla.
/facedesk
I have a lv 76 Warlock and never noticed this. I fail.
You probably didn’t notice because it was just changed in Wrath. Fel Armor went from boosting damage and the healing done to you, to damage plus spirit to damage PLUS healing, while Demon Armor got the boost to healing added onto it’s armor bonus. And the counter balance I can think of to Spirit bonds is that it is always active while your pets alive, and that it affects two targets, pet and master. Still feels lackluster to me, but oh well.
Cunning pets have always felt like they didn’t know what they wanted to be. They’ve got talents focused on damage, they’ve got talents focused on survivability, and then they’ve got odd little talents like Roar of Recovery and Roar of Sacrifice that are extremely situational in their use, particularly in PvP. The problem, I think, is that Cunning pets can’t excel in any one area even if they focus in it – a Cunning pet that takes talents to boost its dps, for example, is still going to be noticeably behind a Ferocity pet, and a Cunning pet that focuses in survivability still can’t take as much punishment as a Tenacity pet. That leaves Cunning pets in this odd little niche where they’re supposed to be hybrids between Ferocity and Tenacity but fail at doing both.
The solution, I think, is to figure out exactly what they want Cunning pets to be. Given the various pet family skills, as well as their use in PvP, it would seem that the most obvious role for them would be crowd control. Instead of giving them these odd talents that restore mana or absorb damage for a friendly target, give them abilities that help them control and enemy target.
First off, give them Charge like the other two trees. It’s a very reliable ability that’s useful in most situations, and there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t have it. Next, either reduce the cooldown on their family skills to more reasonable levels (there are very few abilities that deserve a cooldown of more than 40 seconds) and/or give Cunning pets a talent that does the same thing. The cooldowns should not be reduced too much, however, or Beast Mastery hunters will be running around with stuns on 20 second cooldowns. Put a talent deep in the tree that gives the pet an ability that cuts the target’s movement speed.
Just my 2 copper.
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