I was only away from my desk for a couple of hours, I swear, but while I was gone Blizzard brought the Public Test Realms (PTR) down, presumably for a new build. At the same time, they updated the PTR patch notes for Patch 3.3 with some fascinating new information.
I’m going to post the cool hunter additions. As always, you can find the complete PTR patch notes on the WoW website; in addition, I am using MMO Champion’s handy guide to the differences between the old and new notes.
General:
- Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
- Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.
- Taunt Diminishing Returns: We’ve revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after 5 Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter. [I assume this applies to the pet skill Taunt as well, right? -ed.]
Hunter:
- Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. [Yay? -ed.]
- Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
Hunter Pets:
- Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
- Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
- Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
- Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
- Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.
Hunter Bugs:
- Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
- Point of No Escape: This ability no longer stacks and now only functions for the hunter.
Mania’s always-insightful commentary: Egad.
I’m glad to see pets get 100% of their masters’ resilience, even though it won’t affect me much, and I am even more glad to see Avoidance become innate even if it doesn’t affect PvP. (I do wonder if they’d be amenable to adding an optional non-free PvP version for PvP hunters at some point.)
As a replacement, Culling the Herd looks very interesting. And the Cower redesign … well, good riddance to the old Cower, I say. (I suspect not everyone will agree.) And the other changes all look quite nice.
My only hesitation here is the change to the cooldown of Call Stabled Pet. Last I tried it, switching between specs and back again reset the Call Stabled Pet cooldown, so I am concerned that they have ‘fixed’ that behavior. This is a benefit for hunters without dual specs, but remember that you must be level 80 to learn Call Stabled Pet. I’d be a lot more excited about this change if it was combined with a lower level requirement — say to 10.
But overall, some very interesting patch notes! I hope the PTRs are back up soon so I can try this stuff out.
And as my double, not happening Nim. You can’t get three people to agree on what time it is on the WoW boards, let alone enough people to get Blizzard to budge on much of anything.
….The problem on most bug reports – and this is from experience – will get the standard replies on more than half of them as “….is working as intended….”, or “…you need to reset wtf folder, etc… clear all add-ons, etc….. blah-blah-black sheep-have-you-any-wool-rigmarole of excusess, etc…. and then it’ll a while for them to acknowledge it finally and either fix it or break it some more. I admit I tend to be biased on bug reports because sometimes blizzard won’t acknowledge it right away unless it is seriously affecting the game as a whole (no, I won’t make the obvious pun on that word the way I said it)… small glitches like that tend to get ignored/shelved for later perusal and they tend to concentrate more on the game-crashing bugs.
*it’ll take a while… is what I meant… typos and omissions tend to sprout when I am posting a reply while dead on my feet after a exhausting Ulduar run can do that…. time to go to bed.
Why? Even with absolute BIS gear for a BM Hunter and a Devilsaur, you’ll see at most about 4200 DPS from your pet (part of a composite of about 9k). If your tank can’t generate 4200 TPS (dunno if Hunter pets get the 15% innate threat reduction that every class but Hunters gets), then they ARE doing something critically wrong and any other DPSer will pull threat long before your pet will even think about it.
Personally, I don’t use cower. I don’t even want to, but I do know about the need for better threat reduction in regards to hunters. I’ve run with a tank with the highest gearscore I’ve personally seen in our realm and there are times I do drag aggro away (albeit rarely). Paladins who know what they’re doing rarely have that happen to them when they tank, but event they do acknowledge that there can be slip-ups when threat can go down. All this math talk aside, I’ve noticed that some dungeons have been acting strange lately (probably in my server only). For instance, I’ve started to notice some mobs do knockbacks more often – most importantly in places where they weren’t able to do before. I just did AN and the ads on the spider boss didn’t despawn when they should’ve died, they litterally whupped our collective butts with a literal unending stampede.
Anyway, back on topic. If threat in hunters have slowly become a problem, then I think it partly has to do with some of the Arena changes they’ve made that somehow uintentionally altered some things in PVE for hunters in regards to pets.
The redesign of cower to damage reduction is partly welcome, but can you really still call it cower? The avoidance change and the change to cower should have at least been one and the same in regards to damage mitigation and reduction. Why change two abilities into something that almost mirror and completement the other one (although avoidance is now an innate skill)? Avoidance mitigates AOE damage reduction in PVE and from non-player AOE while the new “Cower” mitigates actual all-around damage (most likely including some small form of all-around AOE damage reduction as well because it was not specified in the new Cower) for a few seconds. The 50% movement speed penalty is ridiculous in my opinion and completely unecessary when the next two tiers below that point in Improved Cower gets rid of it. That makes the tree a heck of a lot more bloated and clunkier than it was before, because you have to actually WASTE talent points just to get rid of the penalty when the points are more useful elsewhere. In fact, damage reduction is a TENACITY trait, why put it in ferocity?
Culling the herd is a great addition, yes, but the change to Cower is clunky as all hell. Get rid of the penalty, and make Improved Cower something of an automatic threat dump when talented for the threat conciouse Ren and Stimpies out there.
I think I get what you’re trying to say Black. Now here’s a thought.. we have natural armor for pets that increase pet armor by a certain percentage… why not include the damage reduction there since having armor does reduce damage by a small amount? Some spells in the pet trees are indeed sort of redundant, therefore making it bloated. Now that I think about it, no wonder why it’s clunky. I could almost say the same for our own hunter talents and wonder it is so.
Rilgon, no offense intended but you must play in a perfect WoW world. Things happen that you just can’t predict, and it’s not just been one or two people mentioning it here. I realize that, like Nim, you know the numbers, but that doesn’t mean that these things are impossible. I am sure there are plenty of other hunters out there who get a use out of cower. Personally I’m NOT one of them, but that doesn’t mean I think the skill should be removed. What’s wrong with having an aggro dump, and the damage reduction? Would that really hurt you, or anyone else in anyway?
Rilgon does indeed live in a perfect WoW world, and is the best hunter in it! =D
Seriously though Rilgon, even some of the best tanks on my server managed to lose aggro to me and my pet when I puged heroics with them. Why? Just cause they usually think they’re the *bleep* and don’t need to be at their best when tanking with lowly casuals in a pathetic heroic instance. Then there’s always the fact that when you pug you might end up with a so-so tank, or one that just plainly sucks.
I know you have your opinions on the game man, but it is far from being as perfect as you claim it to be. Not every one is walking around with BiS gear, and putting out +10k dps on everything out there (yes I took that number out of my behind). Unless you do everything with guild members, you end up puging with all sorts of people. I can’t count the numbers of MM hunters I saw with no pets, claiming that they’re rangers and don’t need one, or SV hunters that refuses to send their wolves out there in fear of it dying and lowering their dps, or BM hunters wearing STR thinking it gives their pets more attack power, warriors wearing spell power trinkets, mages with trinkets that have on melee or ranged attack procs (mah spells r ranged lulz), and the list goes on.
I am happy that my pets are getting a mini Shield Wall, but at the same time I wish the old 5 secs cooldown Cower was still in the game. Right now with it’s 20 secs cooldown (14 if BM), it’s really not enough to make the pet lose aggro if it pulls it from a tank.
ok so read thru all comments pretty much anything i was gonna say has been said lol i kno this is off topic but i was curious about the upcoming expansion and whether well see some new types of pets? curious to see what others think or if Mania has heard anything thru secret hush hush channels lol, seems only natural wi,th the introduction odf two new races/starting areas as well as the changes to all of azeroth that somne new species would be found. what do you al think?
Nameless:
“…wi,th the introduction odf two new races/starting areas as well as the changes to all of azeroth that somne new species would be found. what do you al think?”
What a fun topic to dwell on though! No really, it is. It sounds like a whole bunch of fun. Fromw what we do know, there are some new species running around the Worgen Goblin areas(including confirmed Mastiffs and Monkies). Also, we did hear some word that Zhevras are a possiblity for Cataclysm.
As for other (new) families, I have no idea. But I’m hoping against all odds that foxes are added. *squeal*
Unfortunately I don’t have access to any secret hush-hush channels for WoW. I wish I did. :>
I know that! *Laughs* I meant just in general. Take some of the ideas you like and think are plausible and post them on the suggestions forums. Lord do I wish some of us had access to hush hush channels….
@Palla: I’m not disputing that people are seeing their pets take aggro when there is no way that should be happening according to the mechanics of the game (as several people have chimed in to say they have seen such glitches, suggesting that their experience differs from that of folks like myself that can attribute every case of our pets being targeted instead of the tank to a mistake on our part or just to the random number generator coming up with the pet’s name on it).
What I’m disputing is that Cower (in its current form) is actually making any difference in the frequency of occurrence of any such glitches. It only affects pet threat, and there is no way a tank should be losing threat to a pet unless the tank is generating minimal threat and the hunter is failing to manage their pet accordingly. There are plenty of cognitive biases that may lead folks to *think* that an ability is helping, when the reality is nothing more than “random glitch is random”. The human mind is really, really bad at determining cause and effect for low probability events for a whole host of reasons (that’s why scientists spend so much of their time on experiment design in order to tease out real correlations as opposed to mere coincidences). In the case of Cower, it’s perfectly possible that the same tank failings that lead hunters to go “Hmm, maybe I should turn Cower on” lead to them being more careful with threat and general pet management anyway, and that change in behaviour is the determining factor, rather than the activation of Cower.
I still don’t think the removal of the current form of Cower is going to cause any serious problems, even when running with PuG tanks. It may be necessary to put your pet on passive and have it spend most of the run parked beside you, but that’s the kind of silliness that can result when trying to cope with poor tank threat generation. It’s similar to melee DPS dropping back to just auto-attacking with only the occasional special thrown in, just so they will stay behind the tank on threat.
Basically, I believe the “OMG, but I need Cower” reaction is pure superstition or results from a refusal to use the pet Passive button when it is appropriate (such as when the tank can’t out-threat a wet noodle). I realise that opinion is probably going to offend some folks here, but how much do you really care if some random guy on the other side of the world thinks you’re being superstitious about a game? :)
Oh great so now I have to have pet in Passive to l2p. I’m sorry but I came here just after having a real big headed fathead shammy try and insult me on Rosalyn for using AotV every other trash pull in VH and I left after the first boss; if I’m gonna get slack that quickly I aint doing crap to help.
But here you’re telling us, even with proof of cases where Cower is needed by some hunters, it’s a case of L2P passive?
Ok fine have it your way. Pet getting aggro is a GLITCH. So then me getting aggro off a tank IS A GLITCH. Or the priest over healing and pulling aggro accidently IS A GLITCH.
I’m just I’m mad and your post is pretty condesending. You aren’t aknowledging there could be errors that ARENT IN THE GLITCH WAY, but because of your perfect math and your perfect luck and your perfect pets performing perfectly cower isn’t needed.
Until I hear a blue saying that pet threat has been resolved in instances- which is where this is heading I bet you ten to one, if you can accept that and which will nerf pet tanks majorly probably.
Or didn’t you think that’s why Growl was broken for boss fights?
:/
In only ONE fight when I had a dragonhawk, did I ever have to have it on passive, unless I had to revive it after sacrificing it to save a healer :/
Stopping (or otherwise severely throttling) DPS when the tank has no idea WTF they’re doing isn’t a glitch – it’s just part of playing a DPS class (and fortunately, a much rarer situation these days, now that Blessing of Salvation and other passive threat reduction abilities have been baked directly into tank threat multipliers instead).
And isn’t that what cower does? It controls your pets aggro- to an extent. And I sure as hell needed it in my UK run just about 30 minutes ago- the tank wasn’t bad but he was still gearing up and I only realized tank DIDN’T have aggro when lol, Frost lost 4k hp in the span of a handful of seconds. Ofc I had to spam cower cause the tank had spammed DG BEFORE the fight, so yeah I had to use COWER. And while it didn’t drop threat imidiately, I doubt that Frost would have survived if I hadn’t of used cower because I was in my ‘ten sec window’ that BM now gives you and I barely have time to pop everything off let alone use mend pet.
I was also unofficially given duty to smack down the icebarriers the first boss of UK throws onto other players.
So yeah I don’t think I’d be able to micromanage a pet on passive, and I doubt dragging Frost away from the boss would have done anything really :/
But no you are basically saying the only reasons pets are pulling aggro, outside of A: tank is gearing up. B: tank is generally bad. C: both of the above, but that we, the hunters who are experiencing this, are just generally playing bad.
I’m sorry, when was it required to have addons to help prevent a tank lose aggro. Or to know when pet gets aggro? Cause as far as I know, you really only need the WoW threat meter as up until Wrath instances, my pets never dragged threat off the tanks, in the rare few instance runs I did. But now, they are pulling threat and while I gave off the bad idea that it was only bad tanks or wars having this happen in the pugs I was in, no, even good tanks have suffered some insane pulls, in VoA 25 Jareth somehow got aggro twice, of the first boss before the others were added. For Brewfest it was the dorf that refuses to drop anything but useless trinkets.
And managed in DTK, UK, UP and a few other places- as it’s mostly all a blur for me.
But the fact remains, you’re basically telling me it’s my fault, if the tank isn’t bad, that I need to ‘l2p’, because my pet for some freak reason, obtained aggro when it never has before. That I’m at fault because I want a sure fire button I can press that can help the tank get aggro -faster- so my pet doesn’t, maybe, possibly die.
I -know- how to throttle my dps, I know how to control my pet. I also know that sometimes pets need a threat reduction to help get the heat off them faster.
You also didn’t read that if they are planning on taking Cower out- look at what they did with Growl. INSTEAD of fixing the cower bug, they removed Growl’s ability to work on bosses. NOW they are removing and reworking Cower basically.
Are they planning from having pets generate any threat or aggro in a dungeon?
And btw what about Succubus’s for warlocks, they have a cower essentially, or are they exempt because they’re not a hunter pet :/
So yeah I’m sorry I can’t micromanage every little thing as a hunter, I don’t like using addons ever since several I used in the past and now have either been retired/stopped working or interfered with my pet; that I don’t use macros. That I can’t control my pet every single second and expect to have a couple of fail safes before my pet goes squish like a clothie in a wave of furbolgs.
Nimizar, why are you unable to look at this a different way? You have your mind locked into “This is your fault, and an aggro dump won’t help.” And I honestly have no idea why your not willing to be more open minded about it. To coin the phrase, $@#$ happens. Just because it hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And as far as that goes, even by your own admission! You shouldn’t have to throttle your pet DPS. As a BM, actually, you shouldn’t have to throttle you OR your pets DPS since the spread is fairly even. I am sure Ryai and most of the other hunters here know after the first pull or two when a bad tank is bad. I don’t think it is necessarily those types of situations that we are talking about here. Its when, for one reason or another, our pets get a little ahead on aggro and need to tone it down a bit. In fact it’s a great prevention method, turn it on and you either don’t have to worry, or it’ll help when it does happen.
Wow, Nimizar, even if you tried to sugarcoat it, you still just insulted most of the hunters in here in regards to being hunters when they KNOW what they’re doing. Most of them have been playing since WoW started and KNOW their class inside out throughout the changes and the nuances it brought to the class as time passed by. I’ve been playing a hunter long enough to know when I am bad at threat management or not. I have my pet on passive ALL the time in instances and send them in with a macro at choice targets… and they STILL manage to miraculously grab aggro every now and then even on the best tanks. Does that make all of them bad tanks? No. Does that make me a bad hunter when I did the best I could in threat management and they still come after the pet and then me? No. So write that down.
“It’s similar to melee DPS dropping back to just auto-attacking with only the occasional special thrown in, just so they will stay behind the tank on threat.” Reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyyy?? The difference to a pet and a live melee player is that the pet is just an AI… it keeps attacking with no thought of backing off unless the master calls them off the target… that is if we can get them off in time… they have no way of “slowing” down on a target even when you notice (with an add-on) that they suddenly got threat off tank. Passive does not help because the moment threat is transferred to a pet, even when you try to call it back or cower sometimes, they’re still squishy enough to die faster than a mage blinking off to a safe distance. One “silly” (to you) way of completely eliminating pet threat is just to have pet beside us all the time in the instance/raids and have them not do anything at all…. or send them in on auto-attacks only – NO specials and regular pet abilities being used at ALL… just a steady stream of pew pew pew that looks like smacks akin to a lazy void walker. Who would want a pet to be that completely ineffective? And yes, even buffs can generate a bit of threat – furious howl is a buff that wolves can cast on them and their masters that greatly increases hunter overall dps in the few seconds it is up… in all fairness, priests don’t attack when healing and they still get threat doing heals and buffs… they’re like on auto-passive simply because they concentrate on other players and not on the actual fight. I doubt you would call priests bad players when they get aggro off tank and save your @ss even when they’re not fighting alongside the tank but healing them. I don’t think so.
What superstition? There is no superstition inside and outside of playing the game, just facts, only those maligned enough to start caring about the game in a very creepy and obsessive way and start saying “my precious” over and over on their characters and exclude the world outside of it would say believe in superstition. I sure as heck don’t dig a sacrificial pit in hopes of a good run in Uluar.
Cause and effect? Cause: Tank loses aggro, and you pull your pet back… doesn’t work? Try blowing cower… mob immediately goes after someone else or goes back to tank: Effect. Is that superstition coming from an addled mind after seeing that scenario repeat itself? Hell NO!
But hey, since you’ve already made up your mind that the aggro dump issue is a non-issue and it’s the hunter’s fault when it happens to them (veteran player or no) then you really must live in a perfect WoW world. Can we get an invite to it?
Easy Rowdy. I know Nimizar well enough, I don’t think he meant it to be insulting, though I fully understand how it came off that way. I nearly said as much myself, especially since his reply stung Ryai so much.
I think that’s enough talking about the issue. There are two dedicated camps here, and neither is going to convince the other. Why don’t we just leave it there, before tempers rise anymore? Come on, a cookie for everyone who makes peace! Chocolate chip!
A cookie? I can sacrifice something…… or someone for a cookie. *evil grin* Oh wait… it’s about peace…. I’ll let someone else hide the body. LOL
I agree to disagree. We all play the game our own way, what works for one does not mean it will work for another…. it’s the way life is, math be damned. That’s how it should be. Freedom of choice.
No human sacrifices! No! Nor animal! But you can sacrifice vegetables. Just be gentle! *hands Rowdy a cookie*
It looks like we’re going to have to agree to disagree on the overall value of pet Cower in hunter threat management (never used it in 4+ years, won’t miss it in the slightest when it is gone, don’t agree that it can make a difference in any scenario where the tank isn’t already in danger of losing aggro to other players).
Perhaps folks will reconsider their opinion in 3.3 when even hunters that currently use it will have to play without it.
@Palla: Actually, it was kinda late and I was pretty tired. I wouldn’t bet I wasn’t trying to be insulting ;)
I may have regretted it somewhat in the light of day, but I’m still a little nonplussed at the idea of anyone particularly missing such a situationally useful ability (particularly when the situation where it is useful is worth avoiding for so many other reasonds)
You guys are allowed ONE parting shot a piece! No more! *Hands Nimizar a cookie* And we’ll just have to wait and see.
@Rowdy: One minor point – I never said having your pet sitting beside you doing nothing was silly from a tactical point of view. If a tank had truly terrible threat generation, that’s exactly what I would recommend doing (at least until the tank had a really solid threat lead, anyway). Sure, it’s a silly way to DPS overall, but working around poor tank threat gen gets like that sometimes. It’s why you’ll find *all* DPS classes hate it when they end up being threat limited – having to back off from doing your best is just plain annoying.
It’s why I don’t see a great deal of value in Cower – it takes a scenario where you have to do some pretty silly things to work around tank threat problems, and lets you do some slightly less silly things instead. The irritation level induced by “turn Cower on” and “recall pet” isn’t particularly different for me.
On a completely different note, a question that should have occurred to me sooner: did anyone here ever train Cower on their pets prior to Wrath? For many hunters, the idea of having Cower at all only happened in Wrath when it became free, so 3.3′s removal of the current form of Cower will be a return to the pre-Wrath status quo for them.
(Gah, I was going to let this discussion die a natural death, but I really want to know the answer to that last question! C’est la vie…)
@Palla: I’m trying to stop, I really am… but I thought of an interesting question :(
Nimizar:
Just answering the question peacefully cause I’m here for my cookie XD
I actually did train Cower on my pet back in TBC times. Though, I will admit, there was never really a reason (like now) that I had it other than for precaution on my raiding pet.
HOWEVER.
I can’t accurately compare the two differences (TBC-Cower Cat & Wrath Cower-Wolf) for a multitude of reasons. One, I never did any raiding past KZ in Outlands. In Wrath, I’ve been more into raiding (still casually but alot more raiding than I ever did in TBC) and thus I have better gear. I realize BM was more powerful back then overall, but it wasn’t as “bursty” as it can be now in Wrath (given all the new pet abilities).
So your question is a good one, but I think it’s not exactly a fair estimate only because there is alot of variables between patch 2.0-2.4 to 3.0-3.3. But if you’re just asking on an “interested” basis, well then there’s your answer.
And with that, I’m done with Cower talk and all it’s relations *munches on cookie* =)
I don’t really want any parting shot as I don’t really ‘want to be right’ hell I would love to not worry about my pets to not get aggro, but I really didn’t want to be, what I thought, was reciving belittling treatment from a fellow hunter for my want of usage of Cower in instances.
ESPECIALLY after as I said I had a Shaman insult me and call me ‘fail hunter’ basically for using AotV ON TRASH so I would have mana FOR BOSS.
I know how to play and I know how to control my pet but I shouldn’t have to always have my pet on passive, and give me something else to micromanage, and I know not all the tanks I group with are bad, but the majority of the problems I experienced with were either gearing up tanks or bad tanks tho there were the few where pet DID get aggro off good tanks, and I can really assure you my gear is not the best, I can’t even get into a Naxx-10, my dps seems to flux at 1.8 to 2.1k depending on the sitatuon too.
But I have come to rely on cower as a failsafe so I don’t have to worry about my pet to much. On trash I try not to have it on incase of ohcrap the tank lost aggro of one and the healer pulled!
Cause w/o healer we would die.
But as said the pet has a basic AI. To attack and keep attacking the monster you tell it to, unless otherwise. That’s it; and being told it’s my fault for that, that it’s my fault I have enough on my plate as it is, that it’s my fault I don’t want to use addons or macros or other such things when I shouldn’t have to unless I want to, that I deserve to have my pet squishing basically.
That’s what stung me, I don’t really mind if there are hunters that don’t need cower I mean grats to you for never having my bad luck with threat- but I have needed it and I just like having it around as a failsafe as I said, because of those what if’s.
And I’m BM AND pet is 40-50ish% of my dps, so I like my pet staying alive :/
I don’t really feel like their IS a right here. I think it’s just a matter of experience, and everyone tends to see things differently. It isn’t uncommon that people can’t see eye to eye on things. That’s why I am trying to resolve this as peacefully as possible. It may be that come 3.3 the hunters who currently use cower won’t need it anymore, or it may be that they are screwed, glued, and tattooed. It’s a perfectly rational fear if they are already having problems with pets pulling aggro and ‘smishing’, as Ryai puts it.
So c’mon. Pitchforks down. You too, Nim. You’ve made your point, Rilgon made his. Rikaku, Rowdy, and Ryai theirs. We’ll just sit tight, and wait and see. Meantime, cookies for everyone!
@Palla: Indeed.
On a more helpful note, in relation to the reactive use of the current Cower to try and give a mob back to the tank after grabbing aggro (as opposed to just leaving it on autocast when trying to cope with generally bad tank threat gen), it may be possible to macro an approximate equivalent with the new Cower:
/cast Cower
/petstay
/petpassive
/cast Mend Pet
The idea being to let the pet survive long enough for the tank to grab the mob back (or to give the hunter a chance to try to MD the mob back to the tank if the tank isn’t particularly quick with their taunts or general threat gen). Obviously not as effective as actually shedding a bunch of threat (and hopefully dropping below 90% or so of the tank’s threat in the process), but it should help a bit.
I like cookies as well…
REally, I also never used cower pre-wrath. That, and Mongoose Bite, (which I still never use!) were left as ‘Don’t care, don’t want, why spend money?’. Albeit, I instanced very, very, little pre Wrath, but still.
Now, I use cower and just have it on without growl and then go nuts, yet Iorek will still occasionally pull aggro from our very well-geared, skilled tank. He’s even earned the infamous ‘Wolf tank’ nickname.
After 4 years of hunter-ish activities, I can’t remember EVER using cower (on purpose anyway).
Despite that, I was one of those crazy OCD hunters that didn’t rest until I had trained in ALL pet possible abilities (back when you had to tame to train). MAN am I glad they got rid of that stuff!
And a small glimmer of hope side note on pets getting the whammy from PvP AoE stuff: It looks like AoE damage caps are making a comeback (to a small degree)… it still won’t be good for us, but big clogs in AV MIGHT not be 3 second death for our pets. I guess we will see.
I was noticing that, Netrallo, and it did give me some hope. It’ll make AoE less devastating in PvP all around, and that is a very good thing, in my opinion.
Hmm, I hadn’t thought about the impact of the AoE cap change on mass AoE fests in PvP.
However, note that this isn’t about bringing back AoE caps, as the current hard cap system has been in place for ages – it’s about replacing the current hard cap with one which scales with gear. (GC posted on the forums to clarify how this was going to work)
Currently each AoE spell has a maximum amount of damage it can do – once the number of targets is sufficient to hit that limit, the spell will never do any more damage regardless of gear improvements. The change in 3.3 is to make the damage cap on each spell 10 times the single target damage. Up to 10 targets and each takes full single target damage, more than 10 targets and the per target damage is proportionally reduced (as with the current hard cap).
To match the old Avoidance (i.e. only taking 25% damage), the AoE spell would have to be hitting 40 targets at once. To match the new Avoidance (10% damage), the AoE would have to somehow be hitting 100 targets!
Whattabout me Palla? I didn’t make my pitchforky riot!! but then again, i agree that we should sit back and see how this one plays out so /pitchfork away
Dammit, Nimizar, you just rained all over my parade with your math….
And cookie for Gimilion! *Tosses him a chocolate chip*
The thing I hate about this is, a Rogue can now kill your pet with Spam-o-Knives without even targeting. Only way to prevent it is to put points into Cower so your pet can actually keep up with the Rogue and stay alive.
… so much for Ghostcrawlers BS about making pets a mild challenge to kill.
I see why I play my druid now…She’s a lot harder to kill then my hunter’s pet, or my hunter really….even if the hunter is better geared. xD Fgures.
Spam o knives never gets my pet.
Cause the rogue’s weapons are always ten inches into my back 8D
Tbh what about direct damage I mean aka Retridins GOLDEN SHOWER OF PAIN my god, I’ve had them -one shot- my pets more than any other class has been able to.
@Firewing: yeah especially since it seems I can’t scare beast druids now, seriously 80% of the time I try even when the drood is on someone else, it fails.
I have more fun on my DK. Even against retridins.
Unless twinks Dx
@Nimizar
Yeah, I had similar numbers running through my head when I wrote that. So I wasn’t kidding myself to think it was “fixed”… just that large AoE fests won’t always be instant death if this applies.
Ultimately, I just can’t see how Bliz is going to be able to keep this new Avoidence rule for PvP… unless they simply hate the thought of BM PvPers (which seems silly, but who knows). I could probably see them settling on a 50% value for PvP… it’s not great, but possibly viable.
Playing for as long as i have ( since start basically) I never seen a class so torn apart and reconstructed and nerfed !!! As I have seen with the hunter class…
I play all classes but my most played are my hunters and most are dual specc’d I never tried to worry about the numbers the most part but just played to play the game..I enjoy the group of people in here and agree and respect most of them cause I myself have gone or been thru what they have!! So I will help Palla hand out the cookies and Ryai I agree with many of your post as i do with others!! I dont believe all hunters should play the same way wheres the fun in that??@ Rikaku Tahiti sounds great you bring the mix I will bring the Capt.Morgans lol
off topic, but tier 10 sets are now viewable. I think I’m the only one who looked at hunter as a visual downgrade, lol. Like we went from chainmail in pve and scalemail in pvp to plywood in pvp and level 50 greens in pvp. With troll feet! (except for trolls!!)
(I just got a t9 looking helm back sunday night, I’m gonna miss it when I have to change it out for that… Marvel Universe helm thing. Then again I was one of the few who loved the Scurgestalker Gasmask too.)
(I guess the one flip side about the t10 helm is that if you look at it from the side long enough and squint your eyes it ceases to become a phallic rhino thing and more a Secutor hood or some Gladiator ridged cap.)
On topic; quoted from MMOchampion
‘Hunter
Pet
* Culling the Herd – When your pet’s Claw, Bite, or Smack ability deals a critical strike, you and your pet deal 1/2% increased damage for 10 sec.’
I guess 3% was TO IMBA.
But guess this would solve bloat a bit if it’s now just a near useless 2 point talent :/
I was just thinking that, Ryai. At the very least they could have made it 2/4 or an odd 1/3. But eh, it’s one less talent point that I am required to spend in order to get something I want. Now if they could just clip down a very other areas, I’d be a happy hunter.
a few other areas*
Or, if they could cut pre-requisits [I can not speeeeeell atm], but anyways, flipping thru Wowhead, it has culling cut off completely from wolverine/Rabid/Last Stand.
Is this actual on the live servers? Mean all these points are free standing?
Cause if they did this I would -love- Wild Hunt to be cut off from Roar of sacrifice… Mean it’s not even connected in the cunning tree- or maybe they could connect it to Last Stand?
RoS is useless when tanking old instances or PvE imo since the change.
And doing up a quick draft omg it gives BM one extra talent to use … where … is the question…
And non BM can get 1 talent point in Wild Hunt/Shark frenzy. Hm.
Getting rid of Avoidance now that I’ve sifted thru Wowhead pet talent trees, seems to have been very benificial- even if they nerfed the replacement from 3 to 2. Guess I can’t complain ‘that much’ if this is a slight solution to pet bloat.
Now hopefully Blizz realizes this is a GOOD thing, and don’t mess with it. Or give us more options.
Bloat really shouldn’t be defended ever :/
mean the PTR servers not live. Doh.
The 1/2% thing is from MMOC’s datamining scripts which are occasionally a little dicey (not showing info for all ranks is a particularly common error with them). Without confirmation from someone that has logged in to the latest PTR build and checked it has changed, I would guess that CtH is still going to be 3 ranks.
Hopefully Wowhead are right that all 3 trees have had the post-Culling dependencies cut for 3.3 though.
Interesting question, does anyone remember how long after the Isle of Quel Danas came out until Wrath came out? I think 3.3 will be the last major patch before the bridging patch, and I’m a little curious about how long after until we can expect that….