PTR 3.3: Faster Pet Leveling
The patch notes for Patch 3.3 on the Public Test Realms have been updated. You can find the full notes on the PTR forum or the normal PTR notes page, but as usual MMO Champion has been kind enough to post a notes comparison.
So what’s new for hunters and pets? Just this one note:
Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
Nice!
Table of Contents for Series: Patch 3.3
- PTR 3.3 Notes Posted
- PTR 3.3 – Unnoted Hunter Changes
- Ghostcrawler on Pet Avoidance
- PTR 3.3: Culling the Herd, Cower Revised
- PTR 3.3: Faster Pet Leveling
- PTR 3.3: Spectral Bear?
- PTR 3.3: Northshire Wolves Getting Sick
- PTR 3.3: Arcturis the New Spirit Beast
- Patch 3.3: Arcturis the Spirit Bear, Diseased Wolves in Elwynn and More
109 Comments
Woot :D this is perfect!
Still levelling my hunter (lvl 28) so this should help when getting new pets :)
Nice, I still have 4 other pets to level up to 80 so this is a good thing
This is much better… but still not as good as Locks and DK’s have it. But, it is better than no change at all.
Amen. I’m happy it got looked at period. XD
I’m still a bit disgruntled you still have to level pets but eh after musing over it I admit it is better than it was, and it really should help my other hunters, who only have a couple pets their level and the rest are 2-5 levels under.
Now if only they could share in quest and BG exp…
That’s really the big thing, Ryai, they don’t get any other form of experience. Halving it again is nice and all, but it doesn’t do much good for areas in Northrend where your pet isn’t out all that much, or BGs in general. I personally think you should just get experience for honor kills in BGs, but maybe that’s just me.
Actually, if your going to steal an idea, they should probably just go whole hog and have player kills in PvP drop money to be automatically picked up, and items. You can already loot player corpses for paltry sums of money, but it’s unrealistic to try and grind from 1-80 in PvP if it’s your first character, which is kind of sad.
And coding that can’t be that hard, I saw a hunter benifiting from that recruit a friend deal, and going shine shine shine as it leveled AND THE PET LEVELED WITH THE HUNTER; sure the pet was a couple levels lower, but every time the hunter dinged, the pet dinged, and this was BEFORE pets got the mandatory 5 levels lower and they level up to 5 levels below the hunter.
And yeah I know Palla, got kicked out of a group by a real … lets just say he ruined an entire UK run for everyone, when I was on Yas, just because I decided, I’ma gonna bring Sunscale, since my poor worm needs exp :/
mean yay my pet did ding before I got booted; but I shouldn’t have to drag my pets thru instances or grind my butt off to keep ontop of two pets atleast.
I am just happy that they’re actually doing a bit more about pet leveling. I dont mind leveling a pet, infact it gives me a good chance to look at how good the pet is function wise. Also, it gives me an excuse to run around the basin killing things (helps that I skin to :P)
“mean yay my pet did ding before I got booted; but I shouldn’t have to drag my pets thru instances or grind my butt off to keep ontop of two pets atleast.”
That’s been the problem with this expansion honestly. Like, I’d love to go back and get a sweet lookin’ red lynx or white-wolf from Ashenvale, but those 5 levels are a PAIN.
Now personally, I don’t mind leveling my pet. That’s fine for me, not for everyone, but again I don’t mind.
HOWEVER,
at level 80 it just seems like for-freaking-ever to level a pet 5 levels. Everytime I get a new pet to try out I get this ‘ugggggh grind-time’ feeling. And sure, I could just drag him along guild heroics, but even then it’s still alot of runs before they’re max level.
Wrath didn’t seem to have many lvl 80 pets. I mean, a few saberworgs, ghost worms and Skoll. That’s pretty much all there is for level 80′s. At least TBC had some close (by close I mean within 2 levels of cap) cats and hawks and whatnot. There was some variety.
Hopefully this next expansion Hunter’s have more pets to choose from at 83-85 or whatever. That way I don’t have to get an ulcer thinking of 5 levels XD.
God…I still remember leveling my ghost wolf from 30 to 70 in Shadowmoon. >_< good times in no way!!!
It takes anywhere from three to four hours of non-stop killing for me to get a pet from 75 to 80 killing level eighties in Northrend. The thing is, this is mandatory grinding time for a hunter. You HAVE to have your pets on eighty if your a beast master. It’s kind of like having a mandatory profession that you have to build up just in order to be effective.
Eh, halving it will help out a ton, though it is still annoying.
I second that…. faster leveling or not, it is still a pain in the behind to level a pet who is at least 5 levels lower than you. MM or SV don’t matter much because it’s usually the buff you’re after – especially the wolf’s furious howl… if they did away with required ammo bags and if they’re doing away with mana for hunters later on, why not include this in the trash bin as well? Weren’t they even toying with the idea of replacing ammo with a trinket/relic-like device to eliminate ammo entirely once upon a time – or was I dreaming it? In any case, while faster pet leveling is a nice, but slow addition… I wish they’d lower the “5 level below you” rule and make it at least 3 or 2 levels below you to make it even more bearable.
They said lvls 80-85 will be something you actually have to work for….. how does this go for pet leveling at the 85 cap? Would that make the 5% feel like nothing past lvl 80?
As far as I am aware, Rowdy, ammo is going to become infinite and MAYBE give certain ‘buffs’ to the hunter, like elemental properties. Then again, this is Blizzard we are talking about, so it’s possible that this will just disappear by the way side like so many things. Guess we’ll see, eh?
Palla, if that is where they want to go…. then that is where I think the “relic” part will come in to fill the ammo slot. IF the ammo does become infinite by itself with every weapon as standard, then the relics will be the best likely bet where they will add the “buff”, for example:
“Ice relic: adds frost damage to ammo fired by a certain percent. Fire relic: adds fire damage to ammo fired by a certain percent (also increasing fire damage to explosive shot if talented). and so forth…”
….they could also tie that to spells if they go that route… like maybe an arcane relic that adds damage with every shot fired and increases arcane shot also “by a certain percentage”.
This is all wishful thinking though, so again like what Palla said, we’ll all have to wait and see. But so far, not really impressed by what they have done so far after literally dragging the hunter class and the BM tree through the mud and beyond. Maybe we’re getting there, but it sure is one heck of a slooooow climb back.
Hunter pets got a pretty good rework during Wrath, but for the most part Blizzard doesn’t know what they want to do with Hunters. Buff this, nerf that, nerf this, then that, minor buff this, wait do we really want pets to be such a large part of the damage for beast masters? ((Still a WTF moment for me.)) Should we do this, do that? Oh, we’ll change them over to focus, and do that. Maybe we’ll do this…..
All in all it’s been a lot of talk, a lot of shuffling, and a lot of BS. We’ve seen Blizzard nerf hunters fairly hard from day one of the expansion, and give us a lot of fluff reasoning for it. Some of it was actually valid reasoning. I felt a lot of it was unjustified, though a certain degree of nerf was in order. Scaling issues would have put BM a great deal ahead come 3.3, after all. But the reasoning used for it “We want characters with more skilled playstyles to be able to deal more damage” was a load of crap.
Thats why I’m not really holding out hope for the future. Like I said, we’ll wait and see.
Rowdy:
“They said lvls 80-85 will be something you actually have to work for….. how does this go for pet leveling at the 85 cap? Would that make the 5% feel like nothing past lvl 80?”
I’m going to assume that by “work for” that they mean, you’re going to feel these levels. Essentially while its only 5 levels, their aim is going to be making those 5 levels last as long as 10 levels. Essentially they wanted 60-70 to be fairly long (and originally it was quite a haul at TBC release). 70-80 was just as long, despite the level gap. I think it’s fair to assume that even though its only 5 more levels, these are gonna be some ROUGH levels.
After saying that, I think the 5% will feel a little different for those currently leveling. For those of us at lvl cap waiting for Cata. We probably won’t notice. The EXP for lvl 80 is what, roughly 1.6 million according to beta info. (not sure how correct that is now). I might be way off in numbers, but that’s still about 80,000 exp your pet will need.
Given that we don’t get pet-exp from quests, this could become increasingly problematic. I know a few times in Wrath I would ding my next lvl and my pet had just dinged to my previous lvl 5 mins prior (if I were doing alot of questing or had one of the notoriously long delivery quests OR had a vehicle quest). I mean, it’s almost like they’re going to be near or perpetually close to being left behind.
Blizz know what they want to do with hunters: turn them into ranged rogues with furry DoTs ;) (I kid, I kid, but I couldn’t resist that one…)
As far as pet XP goes, there are two major problems with the underlying mechanics:
1. A pet that is the same level as its master gains no XP at all. When the master next levels, the pet finally starts gaining XP again and has to catch up.
2. The pet only gains a share of kill XP. Quest XP, exploration XP, rested XP, heirloom XP, battleground XP, none of that helps to level the pet.
Simply allowing pets to get to (XP for next level – 1) before cutting off their XP gains would help with pets keeping up with characters that are not yet at the level cap – once the hunter dinged, the pet would typically ding on the very next kill.
To help hunters at the level cap, pets need to get their XP from more sources than just kills.
@Palla: What part of “We want characters with more skilled playstyles to be able to deal more damage” did you think was rubbish? I’ve raided as both SV and BM in Wrath, and outside of fights with LOL-pet-died-again mechanics (e.g. Sarth/Heigan/Mimiron), BM is *much* easier to get right. Although even BM these days requires more concentration than the TBC days of topping meters with mere Steady Shot spam.
Is it just that you object to Blizz choosing BM as the “easy-to-play but limited top-end damage potential” tree for hunters? With so much damage tied up in a pet that is fairly fire-and-forget in most PvE encounters, it’s a choice that makes sense if hunters are going to have such a tree at all.
My problem is that it isn’t OUR fault, as beast masters, that our tree is easy to play. ((And I say that subjectively, since it isn’t that easy to PvP with if you want to do it right.)) It’s the way they designed the tree and that part of the class, and I feel like we’re being punished for something we can’t change. Believe me, if I could make BM more intriguing and require more skill to play, I’d have done it years ago. But instead of taking the time to change that tree and that aspect of the class to require more player interaction ((Aside from “Go here Fluffy!”)) instead they nerfed the crap out of the tree, then said “Whoops! Sorry, we screwed up!” And then proceeded to rebuff in a way that just added passive damage, which is the opposite of getting the hunter more involved.
For that matter, and I am going to bring up something that annoys me to no end, the BM hunter at LEAST requires the intelligence to know what to fire when, and how to pull the pet out of bad situations. I don’t want this to sound demeaning, but have you played a retribution paladin lately, Nim? I have. You have far less to do, and you have a far greater life span. I’ve played a death knight, whom can be played with roughly four buttons, with a totally disposable pet that levels with you. I’ve played as a warlock, with a minion that comes pre-stacked and with a virtually limitless mana pool who also levels with you. I’ve played as a warrior, and aside from extremely skilled kiters torn through most everything in my way with very little ‘skill’ needed.
In the end, Blizzard are the ones doing it wrong. They say they want classes or specs that are more complicated to play to do more damage, and yet you have three or four button specs like retribution or arms doing massive amounts of damage. The answer has been tossed about time after time. Make the beast master more involved without totally wrecking pet damage. More skills like kill command, intimidation, and beastial wrath that require actual input on the part of the player. Have there be attacks like this, or more defensive abilities like masters call. But just nerfing the damage and saying “Lulz, BM is ez mode, roll SV and L2P.” doesn’t solve anything.
And as an aside, I am afraid I can’t take your fire and forget seriously. I’ve SEEN the mods out there, and even with that aside, it isn’t hard to macro in most of what you want to do into one or two buttons. Pet’s may be ‘fire and forget’, but at least they require you to think about how to use them. And I PvP, Nim, I HAVE to be aware of where my pet is at all times, and what or who they are doing. It isn’t just a matter of “Sic on boss and BW when it’s up.” for me, or any other PvP worth their salt.
As a second, I don’t think that’s a fair label at all, Nim. Why does BM have to be a ‘leveling tree only’ deal? You can level just fine in just about any other non-healing spec in the game ((And I’ve leveled just fine, if a bit slower, in healing specs before too)) and yet BM is going to be restricted to not having good top end damage because of it? Bullshit. Plain and simple. I don’t see demonology or unholy relegated to that role. I don’t see Frost mages relegated to that role ((They are, by the way, about to be able to acquire a permanent water elemental via a glyph at the cost of freeze)). Saying that one spec should do less damage because “It’s easy to play” When you’ve got a myriad of other specs that are easy to play AND level with is just idiocy.
“Fire-and-forget”? Really? As in? Don’t make me laugh. Yo, even in PvE I still have to keep an eye on my pet to see if it’s ALIVE since it is 50% of my damage as a BM, especially on fights that matter…. most especially in groups where healers don’t help heal the pet…. don’t even try to say that pets are the owner’s sole concern in groups because that’s utter BS, even pets can contribute to a whole group’s dps and healing them is a nice way of helping make sure the boss is dead. I pop off a HOT the moment I start to see my pet’s health go down in between shots, sure it lowers my overall dps when I do that, but it keeps me up longer as a whole with both me and my pet still working. The only thing I would agree with is that BM is the easiest to pick up and learn…. but it definitely is not completely an EZ mode…. I blame the “spam steady shot” (and to some extent: Volley) laziness for that, but BM is far more than that. I take what Palla said in regards to BM PVP and can confirm that it is also that way in some ways in PVE. Only an idiot BM hunter who isn’t aware of what his/her pet is doing at all times in any given fight is most likely a very dead BM hunter…. especially if you and your pet’s target brings along some friends.
NICE.
Wow Nim just wow.
I would say something but that would be something equivalent to killing fifty people in pvp for G.N.E.R.D.S RAGE achivement.
Cause really, what you said, made me rage. You basically are saying BM doesn’t deserve to be ‘top end’ dps or any top dps at all, just because we have a shorter rotation and rely on our pet. You think this makes it easier? You think this makes it more fun? Oh 18 second TBW was easy. Have you tried doing a rotation for a 10 sec tbw? OH HO HO HO NOW THINGS GET MESSY. I have to sort out WHAT I’m going to shoot BEFORE TBW and what I will shoot DURING TBW. Ontop of that I have a trinket I am still using that has to manually go off, then there’s call of the wild, rapid fire, yada yada and I have to still manage myself AND MY PET DONT FORGET PET!
But no you’re saying that just because I can’t manage the rotation of SV and I detest the thought of going MM for Ryai, especially now with 3/5 pets EXOTICS 1 a Hydra and the last a Wasp, all rare/retired btw, that, I should suffer?
Well gee willikers thanks buddy, I really feel the love. Really, I do.
Really.
So kind of you.
I’m gonna go and put you in the special spot I put the healer who LET ME DIE ON THAT DAMNED SPIDER IN AN for being BM.
Maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see how BM is an easier playstyle then MM. SV I can see since SV has a rotation that can really only be topped in headache-inducement by feral-kitty druids. If we just look at rotations, sure BM is the easiest.
But look at the playstyle as a whole. Your pet does anywhere from 35-45% (depending on gear and whatnot) of your total dps. You end up having to manually control your pet during raids much like you do another player. You call them back to you if something bad is gonna happen and you all have to get out. You tell them specifically where to go if you do a target change. You heal them, decurse and depoison them as generally your healer is focused primarily on the tank and others.
And then on top of that, you follow your rotation. Personally, I think MM is the easiest spec to play, but that doesn’t mean it should be dropped completely out of the running as a spec.
So no offense Nim, but you did pretty much slap everyone in the face by saying BM is fire and forget and that we pretty much deserve to be mostly uncompetitive DPS compared to the other specs.
Sure, we can be in last place, and that’s fine with me. But where’s the whole policy of “Bring the player, not the class” if BM can’t even be competitive with it’s fellow specs?
I want more slots in my stable plz :-)
I have to agree… as far as rotations go, MM and SV take the cake on difficulty, but MM other than that is relatively easy(coming from a current MM raider, with BM as a 2nd raid spec) I agree that it is as ‘easy’ if not easier than BM, b/c BM, you have to manage when ur pet buffs go off like Fur. Howl or their self enrage or even the talent counterpart to Fur. Howl (in ferocity tree, dunno what it’s called… 10% dmg or ap buff for like 20 sec. or smthng) those all have to be managed WITHIN the PET. ntm KC, BW, and Intimidate for when a strong healer pulls a big nasty that it needs to be saved from, so before when you could just pop BW and KC when they were off CD, i did think BM was a pretty easy spec to play, but right now, with the new 10 sec BW, it is a pain to manage all the buffs/cds, WITH a rotation AND keeping yourself AND the pet alive all at the same time.
Sweet Jesus, “fire and forget”? Considering that BM has most of the regular shots we have since we level one that never changed, it could be considered easy because of those alone. Now, however; bring in pet management, KC, BW, intmidate, pet healing, misdirect to pet – not necessarily in that order – you’re still telling us that BM is “fire and forget” and too-easy-to-be-top-cheesy? Words cannot say how disappointed I am when that connotes that being a BM hunter is also rated as being a mediocre hunter player. Honestly, it’s no wonder why some people want to do a Christian “Bale Out” style rant on you.
There are other classes with “easy-to-play-mode” specs, and they still get away with being top end damage. You’re statement holds no water in light of that fact.
I’ve done a little experiment. Y’see, I’d only ever been a beast master before, and I wanted to SEE how much more complicated SV is then BM. Now I will state up front that this is NOT a PvE experiment, since I do not do instances or raids anymore, but I ground out a few elite mobs and a bunch of normal mobs in Icecrown, and did a total of ten BGs.
Harder to play my shiney white rear. Scatter shot, entrapment, and wyvern sting shot my survivability WAY up, and the burst damage from a well timed explosive shot, freezing shot, explosive shot, explosive shot was insane. Black arrow ((oh how I loathe thee being SV only)) insured that my ‘immolation trap’ was always active on a target, and I seemed to have a lot less mana issues. It added a grand total of one new button to my hot keys ((I had two for beast master, three for SV)) and only the awareness of not clipping my explosive shot ticks during L’n'L. In exchange I was able to almost completely forgo my spatial awareness.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel dirty. I need to go take a bath after that ordeal.
Another thing: “We want characters with more skilled playstyles to be able to deal more damage” – HA! That can mean anything from the way you play to how you spec. They never really strictly clarified that one…. and that is one reason why I never buy into whatever Blizzard says 100% until I see it with my own eyes. I always take whatever blizzard throws out with a grain of salt, period.
Well i don’t PvP, and with all the Survivability adding attacks/spells in SV i can imagine that it is much easier to play and survive in pvp as a SV, but the reason it gets called difficult is b/c in a raid situation you HAVE to time everything perfectly, and it becomes MUCH more difficult to squeeze out your dps, and before anyone says anything, i have tried all three specs in raids, (currently my fav is MM) and SV is def. the hardest to get correct.
And you know what I just realized? If you’re BM, Steady Shot Spam is ALL you can do; with flavorings of Multishot, Arcane shot, auto shot and serpent sting, unless you have Aimed shot, but that just replaces multi. And even BEFORE that, before Blizz really fixed anything it was best to pretty much spam Steady.
So yeah kick BM when it’s not really the players fault but Blizz, then Blizz again and then again Blizzard. /rantrantrantrant
meh.
And Palla: SV is still a challenge for me :p
why I’ll probably have to level up a hunter from SV like I had to do for MM and redo for BM to get the feel of pvp and shot rotation since the change urg.
Gimilion, what timing are you talking about? Not clipping explosive shots? Keeping Black Arrow up on the target? Serpent sting reapplications? Rapid fire? What? I don’t see it. And if you think raid timing is harder then PvP timing, then you my friend are very, very wrong. PvP requires a constant amount of attention to not only what you are attacking, but what is attacking you, and how best to get out of the way of said attacker. It requires you to have a trap down EVERY TIME the cooldowns are up for just those occasions. It requires, and this goes for all classes, a constant knowledge of the battlefield, and where you need to be. All the while trying to maintain that DPS that you mentioned on a target, as well as trying to maintain your pet.
Am I saying that one is harder then the other? Not necessarily. But I am saying that you are dead wrong about SV being easier to play in PvP. That sort of attitude bothers me to no end. The PvPers think they have it harder, the PvE’ers think they have it harder…..it’s the same deal, different rules.
Calm down folks, I never said the status quo was fine, I was asking what it was about the status quo that bothered people (and, by and large, it does appear to be the fact that they simply don’t like Blizzard’s design decision to cap the top end damage of BM relative to MM and SV – as others have pointed out, almost certainly an overreaction to the OP nature of BM Steady Shot spam in TBC).
It’s important to remember that, for sustained damage Blizzard are mostly worried about PvE, while for burst damage they’re mostly worried about PvP. I was talking about sustained damage potential of the three specs, and hence about PvE. I haven’t got a clue how the 3 specs compare to each other in PvP (since Wrath launched, I believe my PvP experience consists of one game in SotA, maybe a dozen or so Wintergrasp battles and a few other BG games for the Merrymaker achievement).
So, on the PvE front…
Melee DPS classes are much more of a PITA to play in PvE than any ranged DPS class. Not because of the buttons you have to press, but because of the increased movement and positioning requirements. Ranged DPS have a much easier time of it because the positioning is so much more forgiving. The discrepancy is significantly less in PvP (especially for hunters) because the opponents are actively trying to close range instead of staying over by the tank like a good little raid boss.
Despite the existence of pet insta-gib fights (giving my usual list of Sarth/Heigan/Mimiron, although there are a few others kicking around in the currently available raids), my pet dying isn’t a concern most of the time. Target the kill target, press 1, pet is sorted until the kill target changes. Maybe push Mend Pet occasionally if there is a bit of AoE flying around. On fights like that, a BM hunter can do 30-50 percent of their damage without firing a shot and without doing anything other than keeping themselves alive so the pet doesn’t despawn. For multi-add fights, the new-in-Wrath Defensive mode along with Wrath’s improved tank AoE threat works wonders. Sure, I have just as easy a time of it keeping my pet alive on those fights as SV, but I don’t get as much damage out of it.
On shot rotation, a BM hunter only has a few things to worry about for max damage: hit BW once a minute, hit Serpent Sting shortly before (or just after) it wears off, hit Arcane Shot whenever it is off CD, hit Kill Shot whenever it is available and off CD, use every remaining GCD for a Steady Shot. Timing appropriate use of AotV is important, as it is for any hunter, as is keeping Hunter’s Mark up on the target.
For an SV hunter, most of those concerns are the same (hitting BW every minute is replaced with hitting trinkets every 2 minutes, whereas BM just aligns trinkets with every second BW, and SV keeps track of Explosive Shot CDs instead of Arcane Shot). The main additions are in keeping Black Arrow up on a target that isn’t going to die before it runs out and keeping an eye out for Lock&Load procs in the scrolling combat text, and then firing 3 Explosive Shots in 6 seconds without clipping the third tick of the first two (or possibly slipping another instant attack in there if one comes off CD while the L&L buff is still up). SV also has more stringent positioning requirements, as every time you need to move you lose Sniper Training for 6 seconds (which becomes most annoying when the tank drags the boss out of range). SV rotations also bring Aimed/Multi into the mix, since they don’t have Cobra Strikes and Serpent’s Swiftness to make another Steady Shot the preferred attack. The fact that firing Steady Shot will typically take longer than a GCD also creates some difficult choices (should I fire Steady Shot and delay my next Explosive/Aimed/Black Arrow by a second? Or am I better off wasting part of this GCD to wait until the other attack is ready? Decisions, decisions, and the wrong one will cost me DPS).
You may not see any significant difference in the complexity of those two Palla, but with the amount of PvP you do, you’re *used* to keeping track of a whole pile of things at once (as you yourself explain). From a purely PvE point of view, keeping track of just a few more things (Black Arrow CD, Aimed/Multi CD, Lock&Load procs, finding good places to stand for maximal Sniper Training uptime) is a fairly substantial increase in the number of things you need to worry about. For a lot of us, it’s enough to make a substantial difference (I know *I’m* much less likely to accidentally stand in the fire when I’m running as BM than when I’m running as SV).
I’ve never raided as MM, so I can’t really speak to the relative complexity of their rotation. They at least have Aimed and Chimaera shot CDs to worry about and a Steady Shot that takes longer than a GCD, but they have the luxury of Chimaera refreshing Serpent Sting for them. I would say the damage/complexity ratio is a bit off on that front – I’m having a hard time seeing how MM could be harder to manage than the SV rotation. (Then again, depending on how mana hungry it is, they may have to trade-off more AotV time, which is another way of introducing complexity into a spec under the current hunter resource system).
At the moment, Blizz have a situation where all 3 hunter specs are being played across a wide range of activities. GC has *said* they aren’t particularly happy with the status quo when it comes to BM failing to provide avenues that reward skilled players of the spec in PvE, but from a development priority perspective, I can see why they might want to focus on other things first (especially when anything they might do is going to be completely overtaken by the change to focus and the mastery system in Cataclysm).
@Palla: you’ve seriously encountered people that think PvE is harder than PvP? Huh. (I’m not saying PvE is *easy*, since it isn’t, but at least it is somewhat more predictable and hence easier to learn over time)
You kinda nailed me to the wall on that one, and Ryai pretty much backed you up. I’ve been PvPing for a while now, so I am accustomed to having to pay attention to ten different things at once, sometimes while eating. Uh, don’t ask.
And yea, unfortunately Nimizar there are a lot of people who think that PvE is harder then PvP. The reason I say they are equal is because PvE requires a lot more time and dedication to do, and I think that’s a fair part of the process to add in. I will say that initial PvE is harder, since your probably going to wipe learning the ropes, and more then once. On the the overall I think PvP is more complicated because your facing other people. On the overall I think PvP is simpler because you are facing other people. *Chuckles* PvP is never the same twice. Even facing off against the same person can result in some drastically different results. In fact if the player has any brains then it WILL result in drastically different results, as they learn to counter you, and you learn to deal with what they have to toss out. And then you get bulldozed because of gear. *Laughs*
I’ll be honest. I play multiple classes, one of which is a warlock. Because of that, I am used to tracking anywhere from three to five DoTs on multiple targets while managing a pet. Without addons. I might have a slight advantage.
One thing I am going to have to semi-refute though, Nim, is that while melee classes actually have to get into melee range, most of them are well equipped to do so. Where I will agree with you there is that you have to be intelligent enough to pop your trinket or related skill at the right time in order to play well. That being said, on the overall melee classes are also better equipped to take or otherwise avoid damage then most casters. ((Frost mages not withstanding. Those are weird…..caster/damage absorption quasi tanks. God bless tranquilizing shot.)) It SHOULD balance out, but go watch a well geared, well played Arms warrior in a BG some time. Sometimes even two on one doesn’t make a difference to them, and it shows. And we’re not even going to go into death knights here.
As for burst PvP damage, that is where SV absolutely trumped BM, and by more then a little. As BM I can deal out close to as much damage over a period of time as SV….but I can’t come close to matching the burst damage. And unfortunately as a long time PvPer I can tell you that sustained damage doesn’t kill healers, or people being healed. The nerf to BW was another nasty nail in that coffin as well, since we lost an entire eight seconds of what might have been considered our burst. We have no special shots, no special stings, and the lackluster intimidation. Short of an arcane critical, an aimed shot critical, and a sniper shot going off before a heal, they aren’t dying in that time span.
I guess what I am trying to say Nim is that right now BM has just been relegated to a leveling spec, and for no good reason. I am asking you honestly, can you think of any other specs that are good JUST for leveling? Because I can’t, and I’ve tried. And like it’s been pointed out before now, there are plenty of other classes who are three to four button -I-Win- specs that require even less attention to play, and still do top end DPS. It’s frustrating on so many levels, especially when I can log onto other characters and cause so much havoc with so much less effort.
“On fights like that, a BM hunter can do 30-50 percent of their damage without firing a shot and without doing anything other than keeping themselves alive so the pet doesn’t despawn.” — that’s only partly true until your pet gets killed first. You keep forgetting that while not on shot rotation…. mend pet is the one other most important spell for a BM in the fight…. efficient damage is held by both master and pet being alive on all fights. Keeping both master AND pet alive to do damage is key to being a good BM other than the shot rotation… so yes, there are more than just a “few” things to worry about in a fight as BM than just shot rotation for max damage. MM and SV out of BM can do well even without their pets more than the BM can because of the ingrained-into-the-hunter specific talents whereas the BM tree is all about the pet… IN BM we micro-manage between pet and master to bring our meat to the table…. that is one such reason why our dps isn’t that high because we also have to keep our pet up for us to work effectively… therefore, we thread mend pet in between shots to keep pet up while also hoping for a friendly healer to help us keep our pet in the playing field.
Heck, as BM, I wish our “mend pet” even when glyphed can become something of an empowered “renew” or “flash of light” to make up for the health deficiency our pets have even when fully talented and whatnot because some bosses can still lucky-one-shot kill them from time to time.
Oh no Palla, PvP timing is MUCH more difficult than Raiding, i know that for a fact.
and SV seems easier in PvP for its CC and slows and traps, thats what i meant by that part
Then I apologize Gim, I misunderstood you. I am sorry.
Ugh, don’t talk to me about mend pet, Rowdy. I just wish they’d let it scale with RAP.
Oh yes, SV had scatter shot, entrapment, Wyvern sting…..I am probably missing something that I pulled out of my ass while fighting, but it honestly made surviving in PvP a lot easier. The only real difference I noticed was that I was boned by rogues again, but so it goes! Can’t have everything.
And for Nim. on the MM rotations, the Chimera CD really only replaces having to refresh Srp Stn, only with damage added to it. MM goes KS>Srp(if down)>Chimera>Aimed>Arcane>Steady until CDs off (the last two[besides Steady] switched around depending on ArP rating, and if high enough Arcane gets taken out completely)
…..you know, I totally forgot about trinkets….they are always positioned above the relative hot keys, so I just naturally tap them whenever I am about to unload and need the extra firepower…..
@Palla…. I know what you mean. The HOT still isn’t fast and good enough to my liking even when glyphed when pitted against a mob with a mad-on complex… the 40% effectiveness should have been bumped up to 75%-85% or maybe even 90%.
MM rotation is also much easier than a SV hunter’s rotation Nim, idk where you got that it was harder, and i’ve raided as both. They also are a bit mana thirsty at times unless you are spec’d into Efficiency, which i am not, so i tend to AotV more than i did when i was SV, unless i have enough batteries in the raid, but also get back faster b/c stacking ArP makes my base attks hit harder = more mana back
…agreed. MM rotation is a lot more forgiving than SV…. I’ve done both, and while MM is lower in dps, I find it more comfortable to use than SV (even though I actually got top marks in raids as SV and was good at it, it wasn’t fun for me) ….but this brings me to one quibble: why is sniper training in SV when it is obviously an MM buff technically??? It’s very strange when SV is where you usually do lots of hit-and-runs with shots and traps…. rarely did I sit still when I was tasked with CC back then as a SV. In fact some of the talents don’t make sense when some shots like black arrow is better suited to MM (sorry Palla, just trying to make a point here even when I also wish black arrow was standard). Sniper training – in my opinion – has no business in the SV tree… because other than Explosive shot, most of the other buffs for Sniper Training increases damage for steady shot and aimed shot…. in fact, unless talented, aimed shot is a no-show in SV.
Oh I agree with you, but I do think that if Black arrow had to have a tree then it’d be SV, being a ranged trap. That being said, it is weird that sniper training is in SV and not MM.
excuse moi…. “because other than Explosive shot, most of the other buffs for Sniper Training increases damage for steady shot and aimed shot…. in fact, unless talented, aimed shot is a no-show in SV.” …. I’d like to also add back arrow into it….
yeah, Sniper training is def. more of a MM related thing, if not by talent tree name alone… but sometimes blizz doesn’t make sense, at all… and back when i was SV, i did more moving than sitting still, like Rowdy, so it didn’t help me a whole bunch… i do a good deal more of ‘just sitting and shooting’ as a MM
True that, Gim. I find it really funny that we have to sit still as SV for sniper training to proc when a Suvivalist – even in real life – is mainly about movement and placement, then moving again rather than sitting on one’s shiny rear to unload. Even the top tier “Hawk Eye” deals with MM as it enhances ranged reach… something MM always had to have talented, mandatory even.
Leveling a pet is so much easier now, which is good and bad.
Good is, of corse, quick level 80 pet.
Bad is, for me at least, I feel a bit unattached to a pet that I didn’t have to level from level 8 to my current.
“Quick level 80″ pet? No such thing yet unless you have one that is close to level 80 (or already level 80) but not on one that is level 75. In a way it is good that even when you take a pet – like say, the lvl 26 blue armored pig from rfk (or was it rfd?) – then tame it, it instantly levels up to 75 – then yeah, that is pretty fast leveling. But at level 80 (currently) the lvl 75-80 pet grind is still heavily felt because all you’re doing is getting kill xp for your pet while you get none for yourself. The downside of that is at level 75 and you’re level 80, even with AotV, you’ll take more aggro often away from pet until you and the pet are as close to even in lvl (78-79 is where they really start to hold their own in terms of aggro) for them to hold it completely.
I distinctly remember we start taming and getting pets at lvl 10, not 8, unless you were level 10 at the time and the pet you happened to tame was a lvl 8. In any case, pet attachment varies from people to people… like Ryai (and me to some extent)… we have pets – regardless of the where/when/how we got them – that we can’t part with due to some sentimental value. This is especially true if we happen to have certain pets that were retired for some silly reason or whatever and we’re never gonna see the likes of being able to tame them again…. Ghost Wolf pet FTW! But yeah, I get what you mean about attachments.
I think Dag meant the pet being on level eight, not himself.
As far as that goes, eh yes and no. On the one hand I do understand the desire to be connected to your pet in that way. But on the other, I tend to pick my pets based almost entirely on looks. I have to like the look of my pet before I’ll tame one. After that, the leveling up is just a nuisance to me.
I also think it is fairly rotten that hunters are the only pet class that has to do something such as level a pet up.
Speaking of which, Frost Mages as a quasi pet class are just going to be weird.
Frost mages with quasi pets…. what next? A fire mage with a red elemental… that’ll be like having a destructo-warlock with a perma-enraged red flame-throwing VW.
…on second thought, can I have one? lol
And Palla, you’re not the only one who wants hunter pets to level automatically along with the hunter. No offense to those that want to experience on leveling a pet alongside you – role play and all that – but after playing the game for so long and going through as many pets as I have on my alts…. all I can say is that I am getting tired of having to spend time to grind a favorite pet back up to my level once I hit cap when I want to get to the heart of actually doing something other than grinding. I’m one of those that see WoW only after work and almost always on the weekends when I got nothing to do and have free time. With that schedule, I usually find the “grind” as a black hole for time when I could be raiding and whatnot.
Yes, I have a few favorites and I know I spent a LOT of time taking care of my virtual pets as they grow with me to max cap level – but sometimes, when stuff like the Worgen pet incident totally made a pet useless… I, sadly, have to ditch it and tame a different wolf that actually works. And no, I am not fond of the Northrend Worg models (except for the cute hellhound – and how can a hellhound be cute, I have no idea, and only blizzard got one that IS)….. Worgs are not really my preference in terms of looks for a wolf (the original wow ones though is a different story, I rather like the Rema or Dun Murogh-type wolf skins – sleek, and sexy!
…. sadly, the only time I liked having a worg-skin even as a pet was when the vanity pet worg you get from LBRS actually helped out and was even able break traps by walking into it…. until blizzard nixed all vanity pet attributes/buffs/smart AI and left them simply as “vanity” pets.
Ok I had a nightmare day for the WSG holiday weekend!!
Well I have played all three trees of hunters it take concentration to play all 3 well!!! and BM is not a send pet and forget!! I agree with Palla and ryai but i know what you are saying too Nim!! all trees have to have a rotation and patients to play..
As for me i dont care which i am playing i never just send my pet and forget!! To me my pet is important to me at all times period!! and Yes i hate the 5 behind at level 80 and pulling aggro from the pet!! Now as to my pvp earlier!! when playing today I was in a battleground against 2 monster warriors these guys was Incredible ones hp was just barely over 70k while the other was 66k I mean OMFG My pally on his best day hits maybe half of that? so what chance does a hunter have?? Nada trust me!! And they had their own priest too between them and I swear they had something in it for me cause it was double charges a hit or 2 and I’m pushing Daisies I mean with hunters burst damage as survival what good would it have done unless we get a howlitzer? and they wanna take our pets attack power away come on blizz lets get real I have never seen hp that high before!!
I wanna howitzer……
*coughs* Anyway, that is one thing I am talking about, as far as survivability goes. While I have not encountered a warrior with that many hit points, it isn’t uncommon to see bear forms with sixty thousand or more, and most highly geared warriors hit or break the thirty thousand mark. Same goes for paladins and death knights. Not to mention those two have plate. It isn’t impossible to kill them by a long shot, but it takes a lot of patience and some kiting, and no outside interference. It’s really preferable to shoot them while hiding behind some one else……
And Snowtiger, let me give you the best advice I can give as a PvPer. If your alliance, don’t PvP on the weekends. It is NEVER pretty anymore. That will probably vary from server to server, but on Scarlet Crusade ((You know, I don’t recall what Battlegroup that is….)) something happens to the alliance on the weekend, and we go retarded. All weekend long. I went last weekend, two days! And scraped out three wins over something like thirty BGs. It was painful.
There was a topic on the Damage Dealing forums last week asking for pet BG leveling, hopefully blue saw it. I have a level 54 hunter using BG’s primarily to level. After catching the ghost saber and cliff jumper up to my level, it’s only a handful of BG’s before it’s time to grind mobs again. Other than very specific quests, I only grind mobs and do BG’s. It would be very nice if this were changed and it wouldn’t go against the stated desire that pets should feel like a companion to the hunter.
Palla, I have no idea why suddenly some of your posts are getting flagged for moderation, but I’m clearing them as I see them and I’ll keep an eye on the situation.
@Gimlion: I’m not sure where you thought I said MM was more complex than SV – in my last post, I said I thought the damage/complexity ratio was off since MM looked like it would be a simpler rotation than SV, but the spec does more damage. C’est la vie… (although MM is a poster child spec for the unintended consequences of armour pen on gear).
@Rowdy: the bit you quoted was explicitly restricted to fights which don’t have nasty pet insta-gib effects though (which is thankfully still most of them, hence why the exceptions stand out so much and are so annoying). When a fight just has ordinary AoE, the combination of Avoidance + Mend Pet covers pet survival pretty well – it’s the random single target attacks (can’t think of any current examples, but Shade of Aran did this in TBC), the AoE attacks that apply single-target DoTs (Sarth/Heigan) and the avoid-or-die AoE (Mimiron) that can be problematic.
@Palla: melee DPS are a lot worse off in the PvE world. There are plenty of things that are a problem for them that ranged DPS just don’t have to care about (ensuring they’re behind the boss, reacting when the tank has to move the boss, obeying minimum ranges from other players while still staying close to the boss, avoiding point blank AoE effects that ranged DPS are already well away from, avoiding standing in the fire while staying in range of the boss without getting in front into parry/cleave range, staying out of Tail Swipes). While Blizz occasionally put in fight mechanics that have “hole in the middle” effects near the boss so that melee don’t have to worry about them while ranged DPS are affected, melee still cop the worst of it. It’s just an outcome of the fact that PvE is often about positioning and a 30 yard circle around the boss gives you a lot more choices in where to stand than a 5 yard semi-circle around the back half of the boss (and if the boss has a tail swipe, that becomes two part circles on either side).
I’ll give you that, which is why they NEED that survivability, but it has a nasty side effect of making them over powering in PvP. Not necessarily over powered per se, but things that can only be effectively countered by either another similar melee or being over geared. And sometimes over gearing them doesn’t work either. So it’s kind of a difficult situation to balance, which I understand. They have to be able to withstand BEING in melee range of bosses in PvE, whole not being so beefed up in armor and hit points even in DPS spec that they can’t be killed in PvP.
A stick situation, to say the least.
sticky* Blah on minor corrections.
I love how we almost never manage to stay on topic, while somehow managing to stay ‘on topic’… =D
@ palla Yeah i know am a gluton for punishment at times but love the action the two where both tiered and buffed and enchanted out ( warriors ) And doe able yes if it was one on one but no chance when its 3 on one.. Well i played my baby hunter today
and i gave him a ravager and didnt touch the cower just to see how it goes did well in the low wsg love it when the ravager knocks them on there butts lol
There’s a topic? *blink*
Oh, yeah, pet levelling… my devilsaur that I tamed pre-Wrath (post 3.0) has finally made it all the way to level 77! (I have forgiving guildies that don’t complain if I bring a dodgy pet to a farming run, so I have still been soloing with a Tenacity pet instead)
Oh, and it’s only been recently that I’ve been running dungeons or raids as BM at all – for most of Wrath those runs have been as SV, initially with a cat and then later with a wolf. Otherwise the dino would have been 80 long ago :)
Snowtiger, at 70,000 hit points I’D have a hard time wearing them down one at a time, even if I were equally geared. And with them having that many hit points, that means they are probably already in the most updated season of gladiator gear, enchanted, and fully buffed. Tranquilizing shot can help, but….not….not three on one….
I been leveling my lower hunter and the pet when i tamed him was 3 levels down and it took no time at all to get him same level I was shocked and pleased!! This is just my Opinion and i dont want to offend or upset any but i think giving exotics to BM only was a big mistake I wish we could have gotten an improved TBW or BW or an interevene for the hunters control.. Dont get me wrong I love my exotics but its also saying look I’m a BM hunter now ya know how to affect me on the field.. granted not all BM play their exotics but whats the point of having them if only for vanity or using up stable slots I would love to use my Devilsaur while spec’d SV the burst damage would be incredible.. Or a corehound with MM the possibilities are so appealing what combo of pet and hunter would work y spelling and typo’s are showing long days of classes and work tends to dry or fry the brain.. lol
@Snow: giving BM hunters the freedom to use non-exotic pets is the reason Blizzard shied away from tying up any kind of DPS increase in the use of exotics. Instead, the numeric gain is meant to come from the 4 extra pet talent points (and in these days of Wild Hunt and Shark Attack, it does).
And while this doesn’t apply to the low level PvP brackets, at higher levels, the lack of Explosive Shot and Chimaera Shot will offer a pretty quick tip-off to smart opponents that they’re facing a BM hunter no matter what pet the hunter is using.
Aside from that… yep, there are plenty of people that collect pets just for fun without really caring about the numbers or the “best” pet at all (*coughManiacough*).
Back on topic (what, again?)… yes, the reduction in pet XP requirements combined with the reduction in character XP requirements definitely make pet levelling much less grindy in the 1-60 range. Especially since 1-60 quests are still so much about “go here, kill 10 whatevers, come back”. Once you hit Outland and Northrend, where each character level needs hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of XP, and you’re getting a lot of that XP at 20k+ a pop from quests that often don’t involve killing things, then it starts getting a little painful. This is especially so if you prefer to use the trick of flying over intervening mobs to get to quest objectives – that’s a fine tactic for hunter levelling, but lousy for levelling your pet.
I very openly use my spirit beast, devilsaur, and chimera. I also use my wolf and cat. It depends on my mood.
I kind of hope they don’t continue the trend of “quests that don’t involve killing, and are often long quest chains” like they introduced in Zul’Drak and Storm Peaks. You could get close to a half a level off of quests that didn’t require you to kill much of anything, or killing things while having an NPC pet out, and that could jam up whatever pet you were currently using for a bit, and make it harder to level more then one pet.
I don’t really find myself focus-fired more because I am a beast master. Every now and then some enterprising individual will take it into his head to focus solely on my pet, usually during a mosh pit session, and I’ll end up with a dead furball. And so far the only real tactic I have seen people using for beast masters is “Pray that BW is on cooldown.” I don’t see classes changing up tactics to deal with me until after they realize I am a threat. And usually at that point I have to delay my arrival into the battle, lest I be focused upon….*Chuckles*
On an interesting note, Frost mages annoy me. Aside from the occasional shadow priest running up for a fear, they are the only casters I know who will run up to me with the intent of freezing me, despite having so many alternatives. Water elementals freeze and several talents revolving around frost bolts come to mind. But instead of having a ranged battle with me, they’ll run up, as I pelt them and they are eaten, into melee range, frost nova me, and generally expect me to just sit there and die like a good night elf.
As long as BW isn’t on cooldown, this earns them a really, REALLY nasty beat down. Like other hunters ((Usually survival)) Who think I am going to sit there and let them run up into range and trap me. Like I don’t know what they are doing….
Wild hunt is still buggy; half the time I don’t think it even stacks or works the way it should, and shark attack just basically puts pets at what pre nerfed status? I am talking about the BM talent AND the Ferocity nerf.
So really the 4 extra talents are a bit worthless tbh. We have no burst shot, we have no real burst damage. That, as has been said isn’t how you win high bracket pvp anymore. So really, the 4 talents? Useless. Oooh shiny pet talents.
Shiny.
… oh look explosive shot.
and actually Nim, exotics DID have increased dps. Why? to reward BM for being BM and being so heavily BM, but no they took it away so. What’s the point in being BM? Those four talents?
Eeeeh… no. The reward for being BM is just the ability to be all -Look ma, I tamed me a T-rex! And this wierd two headed bird that shoots lightning!!!!-
How does BM reward me? Having to turn on my head to try and get a shot rotation just right, to work in TBW, keep my pet alive cause if it aint alive I’m as good as dead dps wise.
And the sad thing, the very sad thing?
I’ve gotten a recount addon via Aria, and been testing it out, unbuffed outside of self buffs and trinkets, Ryai pulls off an astounding 1.4-5k dps on average. [with the right buffs she can evidently do 2.4-3k] now. Zeldei, my warlock who is in mostly quest gear, craftables and ONE item from the brewfest daily, can, shockingly, pull off 1.2-1.4k dps when I don’t fudge to much on my rotations.
So how is BM rewarded? well it aint by those shiny 4 talents, I’ll tell you that.
I think we’ve more or less come to the conclusion that Beast Mastery is mainly a cosmetic talent. Don’t get me wrong, I dearly love my spirit beast, devilsaur, and chimera, but I don’t know that I feel their family abilities and those four points really bring it up on par with other 51 pointers. I am not saying we have the worst, just…..another passive buff in what is mainly a passive tree. In addition to it’s current effect, it should either heal our pets for a percentage of our damage done, or add on an actual shot. Not something on the level of chimera or explosive, but a tree defining shot none-the-less.
As an aside, I was reading a bit around the MMO-Champion forums and happened to come across a fellow that felt like hunters were favored because a designer played one.
I laughed. And was sick. AT THE SAME TIME.
Palla: It was probably because of the rumor the scare beast change to instant cast was coming around because of supposedly a dev played a hunter and was steamed at a feral he fought against.
AND WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT WENT DOWN.
like fear from warlocks isn’t spamable…
I’ll be honest. I spam fear like no tomorrow in PvP.
That’s a stupid rumor. And even if it HAD any merit, around that same time feral druids got berserk, which made them immune to fear for a period of time.
I’ve seen the opposite more then I’ve seen this. Hunters are far more likely to be nerfed because of whining then just about any other class in WoW.
I’ve been thinking about something. I thought I’d see how far that four points goes, so I’ve been fiddling around with some pet talent calculators. As far as ferocity goes, that four points is 20% additional stamina and 15% additional AP garnered from the hunter ((This is under the assumption that a non-BM goes down to one point in wild hunt)), and then the possibility of 6% more damage, heart of the phoenix, or rabid. Some of you may disagree, but I just don’t think those four points are make or break. They don’t add anywhere near as much depth as…..well, as just about any other 51 point talent in WoW. Our BM is one of exactly two passive talents in WoW, with the other one being the insane Titans grip. I don’t think anyone can argue that BM is no where near the DPS increase that Titans grip is.
In re: faster pet leveling – generally I seem to get about 1.5 “pet levels” for each of my own (e.g. usually I can keep 1 pet more or less in step with me, the next pet gets some scraps and leftovers, and pets 3+ are SOL till I hit cap and get around to them); like most I tend to focus on the quests… so at least in theory if pets are going to level twice as fast, that (could) mean that I could keep 2 or even 3 pets in step with me. Here’s hoping…
In re: complexity of play. I’ve played all 3 trees in PVE, very limited PVP experience… so just speaking in terms of PVE, I’d say SV is the most complex, with BM and MM being about even – I’ve found that while MM (arguably) has “more stuff to do”, their moves also tend to be more macro-friendly, on the whole. Back when I started my MM hunter, I felt like I was playing with 10 thumbs, but eventually once I figured out what could be bundled with what, what had to be left separate, and so forth, it became very smooth.
That being said, I hope they try to make BM talents/spells more “click intensive” a la LnL and so forth in Cataclysm – while as above I don’t feel BM is by any means “easy”, I would nonetheless like to have more in the way of setup moves, procs and so forth… maybe that’s just the primate in me longing for more pretty icons flashing on my screen, but regardless I do sometimes find myself wishing for more of a “hands on” experience with my BM hunters.
Exotics doing more damage didn’t make it through beta though, precisely because the BM hunters in the beta pointed out that leaving it that way would essentially force BM raiding hunters into using exotics for the extra damage. A talent meant to expand choice (BM hunters can choose to use either a normal pet or an exotic pet) would have ended up perversely limiting choice (BM hunters using a normal pet would be wasting some of the intended DPS benefit of their 51 point talent). Blizz were right to yank that feature and put the extra DPS into the pet talents instead (although it took them until 3.1 to add the extra tier of pet talents needed to actually make that work out properly).
And regardless of what prior or subsequent nerfs have been inflicted on the BM tree, a pet with 2/2 Shark Attack and 2/2 Wild Hunt *will* do more damage than one with only 1/2 Wild Hunt. When you multiply even just the 6% damage increase from Shark Attack by all the other damage multipliers that BM pets get it’s a fairly solid increase to overall DPS (for a pet contributing 33% of the hunter’s combined damage, it would be a 2% increase to overall DPS, and BM pets can fairly easily be doing a greater proportion of the damage than that. The talent is at least ahead of the 1 talent point -> ~1 DPS increase rule of thumb even before taking the extra point in Wild Hunt into account).
Beast Mastery definitely isn’t a massively exciting talent, nor is it as spec-defining as many 51-point talents (no need to rehash the entire discussion we had last time this came up), but once you’ve already committed 50 points into the BM tree, picking it up is the best return you’re going to get on that next talent point.
@Scott: indeed, I’m fairly hopeful for Cataclysm as well. Blizz have been making the right noises in terms of wanting to make the tree a bit more interesting, but with focus and mastery just around the corner, I can understand them not wanting to mess with the talent trees too much at this stage.
@Palla: Cookie cutter non-BM PvE pet DPS builds only take 1/2 Bloodthirsty in order to free up the points needed to take both Rabid and 1/2 Wild Hunt. The extra BM points first go into finishing off Wild Hunt, then into picking up Shark Attack and then the 20th point is basically filler (I personally put it into 2/2 Bloodthirsty, but getting a point of Stamina or picking up Charge or Boar’s Speed are other popular options).
@Ryai: if you have solid evidence of Wild Hunt ever not working properly, then you should file a bug report with Blizz – if players don’t report a discrepancy like that, Blizz aren’t likely to go looking for it (and hence will never fix it).
Umm, that would be the “~1% DPS rule of thumb”. Getting 1 DPS from spending a whole talent point would be kinda lousy :)
Also on a different subject… am I the only one who finds the “Foo Pets – They Are Alive” advert on the main page sort of creepy?
“Lulz, BM is ez mode, roll SV and L2P.” lol Palla, this is my server, or most runs mm because of the hunters mark buff. me on the other hand, i dont run with trends and yet in raids.. im around 4th to 5th on the dps charts. so to make those numbers for Bm, it does take more skill than it did in BC when most hunters ran BM. and im very glad for this new change comeing up if it does.. it fells like it takes a million years for a new pet to lvl to 80.. but heres the thing no one said.. if hunter pets dinged with the hunter.. it wouldnt be fun rolling a hunter, it would be like playing a lock or even a dk.
Nim, the last time I reported several major bugs I either got ignored, or worse got ignored with a ‘Working As Intended’ drivel. So I don’t see the point in reporting it; and besides the pets appearing with only 7k hp for several minutes, or appearing with unbuffed hp, should alert anyone that Wild Hunt is NOT working properly. My friends and I have had to wait around 5/7 minutes once for Erebus to finally cough up his full 21+k once I dismount.
So yeah I think that’s proof enough Wild Hunt is buggy, don’t you agree? :/
And.
‘Exotics doing more damage didn’t make it through beta though, precisely because the BM hunters in the beta pointed out that leaving it that way would essentially force BM raiding hunters into using exotics for the extra damage’
Like how BM are forced to use wolf or cat? Or Devilsaur..?
I’m sorry but really that argument is moot. And if you’re going BM and you really wanted to use another pet, you could, but if you’re a min/maxer then why should you care? You’d be minmaxing for dps anyways :/ and BM exotics are usually just upgrades of non exotic pets, aka Cat – SB, Raptor – Devilsaur, Wasp – Worm.
So no I really don’t see how BM being forced to use exotics is any different from SV or MM using cats, raptors and wolves all the time, or bears, crabs, etc…
I don’t trust Blizz, I don’t belive Blizz, I don’t listen to Blizz, Nim, because concerning Hunters they have flipped and flopped and handled our class, our speccs, with the worst PR and reasoning ever.
Oh dang it, stupid Firefox shut down and I lost what I was saying. What I was trying to say was that while Beast mastery IS a DPS increase ((Or defense increase, depending on pet tree)) it isn’t an increase on the same level as other 51-ers. Though you are right in saying that it’s worth the one point when you get there, that’s more or less because where else would you put it?
Here is the thing as far as “Forcing people to use exotics goes.” Blizzard KNOWS that people will use the best pet, even if that pet is even just .5% higher then the it’s next closest competitor. That isn’t forcing people, per say, to use said pet, but around 65% of the hunter population will use said pet anyway. As it stands, beast mastery is kind of a point that you pick up “Just because.” Oh, and because readiness doesn’t work with BW anymore. ((It should now! Ten seconds twice in a row is twenty seconds, and that’s what, two seconds more then the old?))
Ok it could have been a fluke but my low level wolf dinged in wsg freaked me out..
@Vronshy personally i think low levels can level to fast and your range and melee skills do not in any BG!! and at the speed its been going I notice lots of low ends in the BG’s which i have no problem with if ya know how to play your toon and be helpful more power to ya!! But the marks are coming too slow of course I could pay 10g to stay that level for the reward I want. but to me not worth it then pay another 10 to level again? sorry to pricey.. I dont care about the ranking like scout capt etc..And been playing as long as i have I’m glad they did away with the major twinking at the low levels I admit i would get the leggings and an agility enchant but that was for being able to have a better chance with the major twinks
in the vanilla days you won with your skills not major twinkage.. Before the patch
I had a 19 paladin comment to me I was no twink and I never claim to be!! Unlike her lvl 19 with 2600 hp but what would make me laugh is her unbelievement that all that money she paid for twinking would be wasted when the patch came out and she said i failed? But yes my level 25 wolf dinged to 26 in wsg maybe because it was almost 26 before i went in?
Blizz don’t know anything of the kind Palla – they know if they can get things close enough for people to be able to do what they want without feeling like they’re holding their teammates back, then that’s as good as things are going to get from a balance point of view. While theorycrafters are always going to be able to come up with a “best spec”, there are a whole host of assumptions going into those numbers that just don’t work out in practice. So in a real situation, a player that is engaged and enjoying what they’re doing is going to do better than that same player trying to play in a way that they don’t like.
Wolves, cats and raptors are all pretty close these days. Devilsaurs and spirit beasts are up there as well. Wasps come into play as a valid option if your raid is lacking the minor armour debuff from a druid or warlock, and carrion birds are useful if your raid is lacking the AP debuff (especially once it is upgraded to match Demoralising Shout/Roar in 3.3). Hyenas, moths and core hounds have obvious utility in PvP, and even tallstriders have their fans. Being in a situation of being able to make a case for nearly all of the Ferocity pets being the “best” (or very close to the best) pet in different scenarios is the best place pet family balance has been in since WoW started. (Think back to TBC when every raider had a cat or a ravager and boars were the best soloing pet by far).
Now, if you’re convinced that Blizz hate your class and are just going to screw you over again and again, then I doubt there is anything I can say to change your mind. But similarly, you aren’t going to get me to deny the evidence I see of steady improvement in the whole design of WoW, including the design of the hunter class and our pets. If I didn’t see such a trajectory of improvement, I would have quit this game a long time ago (hell, these days I think I stick around as much to see where the development is going as I do to actually play the game).
Ah, but there you are wrong, Nimizar. Ghostcrawler himself stated as much, that min/maxers and the majority of players would always use what was decided to be the ‘best’. That’s not brain surgery, it’s just common sense.
You may not have been directing it at me, but at what point have I said Blizzard hates us? I’ve said on multiple occasions that I don’t think they know what to do with us, and that they’ve made mistakes, but that’s a lot different from saying they hate us. Hunters are very, very hard to balance. When a regular caster goes out of mana and are out of tricks, that’s it. A melee class has to get into range to do their damage. Hunters are unique in that the brunt of their damage is ranged physical, and even without mana standard auto-shots can deal some damage, not to mention pet damage. So you have to make their damage respectable enough when up against armor, but not to overwhelming. You have to make them survivable enough in melee range without making them impossible to kill if a player knows how to kite. It’s this, it’s that, it’s the other thing. I know it isn’t easy to balance.
That being said…..c’mon. Look at some of the other class changes. Look at the change for retribution paladins, and enhancement shaman. Look at the changes for assassination rogues, and all tanks. Look at DEATH KNIGHTS. Death knights are anti-ranged ((Heck, anti-everything.)). In Wrath, hunters got pet talent trees, and that was cool and all, but what happened to our promised improved CC? Bear trap was removed, ice trap was improved, and then later killed again. What happened to our promised melee range boost? What happened to unlimited ammo? What happened to getting the hunter more involved? Why are we still plagued with the auto-cast bug? Why should one design philosophy apply to one class or area, but not to another?
You see a steady design improvement, I see a steady design decay. One which focus’s more and more on the gear you have, the class you play, and less and less on individual skill. I see stat inflation on an insane scale, as numbers double or sometimes triple from one expansion to the next. I see Blizzard forcing people into aspects of the game they may not enjoy in order to do well at what they want to do. I see Blizzard screwing over numerous aspects of the game in an attempt to balance ONE aspect. I see Blizzard steadily dumbing down Warcraft on so many levels, making it easier to play, more ‘accessible’ to new customers.
I’ve been with Warcraft for four years now. I’ve played it because I enjoy it, and because I had friends with me. But my entire guild stopped enjoying it around the time Cataclysm launched. A lot of the players who have been around for as long or longer then I did the same. I myself quit this year, and have canceled my subscription after this months time. Warcraft has simply become a game that I can’t enjoy for long periods of time anymore. It’s that way with a lot of people. I still enjoy checking out what’s going on, to see the new changes, but until something big happens, something that makes me feel like WoW is really worth playing again, I’ll just have to pick it up one month at a time when I feel like playing.
And no, I am not trying to change your mind about anything, Nim. This is just how I see things, and how I feel. This is also why we’re always debating, because we view the game in two very different lights.
‘So in a real situation, a player that is engaged and enjoying what they’re doing is going to do better than that same player trying to play in a way that they don’t like.’
Yet Blizzard does cater to hardcore players and raiders the most, only recently did they give casuals a glimpse of greater things [like me, I'm a casual and Wrath is really the only time I have seriously come about for running instances, PuG phobia or not], then there’s that fact, Blizz goes ‘bring the class not the specc’ and then goes around and says, SV is doing to little damage. Wait people are still playing BM to much and their numbers are to high. Lets over nerf them; then admit we over nerfed them. Thus forcing people to play SV or MM- or try and figure out a solution that was slow to surface.
Then their fix to people unhappy with cunning pets? Or not using them as much as we evidently should? Nerf all pet stats and make all pets have 5% across the board. They then, admited to nerfing SB damage because ‘oh we didn’t want people to camp it just because a raid guild yelled at them to do so’, isn’t it their choice to camp or not? Like it’s their choice to raid with that guild? How is that fair? That we suffer because someone doesn’t mind raiding in an obsessive guild like that?
Or how is it fair BM gets nerfed and SV rewarded because ‘SV is much much more complicated’ or how this AFFECTS PLAYERS MIND YOU.
Do you know what it’s like to have a healer let you die because they DON’T LIKE BM? Or be constantly ridiculed in BG’s FOR BEING BM. OR have other classes mock and insult you for having AotV up on trash? No. And why has this all started to happen? BECAUSE OF BM BEING NERFED like it was. Before Blizzard came in and stomped about, I WAS having fun on hunters, ALL my hunters. But if I can, in weaker gear on my warlock who has only upgrades from Coren and the Horseman, can do as much dps as my hunter, who has BETTER gear AND Gems then wtf?
Blizz obviously has to have something against BM if I can so easily outclass Ryai on an ALT.
Then you mention the utility of pets, granted I’ll give you that; but have you been in Dal? Cause in Dal on my server? It’s wolves, northrend wolves, white worgs, black war wolf, red worgs OR CATS! cats of every color and size and such a variaty that atleast it’s better than every hunter having the same purple or spotted riding tiger model. And you know strangely before the nerf? Most BM’s I saw, had devilsaurs. Now, I’ve seen BM’s with common pets, aka wolves/cats/occasional carrion bird.
But they’re far and few between unless showing off an exotic, cause most I see in Dal are SV and MM.
SV gets buffed, MM gets buffed, BM gets buffed- then nerfed so heavily it hurts and causes serious ill effects on players, and we can’t be allowed to think that Blizz hates hunters, or atleast BM?
And I can deny your evidence of a steady improvement because so far there has been little, if any improvement for my gameplay. I have managed to gleam a bit of less scrambling for rotation under a new squashed TBW, but it doesn’t make it fun. And tbh, I am considering dropping my sub for a bit, because this is just taxing and tiring tbh, sure it’s fun to play my other toons, but it’s not the same :/
But seriously IF Blizzard REALLY WAS going to attempt to improve BM or improve gameplay, they’d not have nerfed it and punished it just because ‘it’s a leveling specc’, they’d not have rewarded SV so much if they truly cared about balance and bringing a class not the specc, [I don't mind a slight increase but not so much as they have been trying to do], and they’d have given BM a shot of it’s own; the 51 pointer sounds like it’d be more tied in with TBW [first is intimidate, second tbw- sending you and pet into rage, third would be this], but no we lack a shot and SV gets craploads, Black Arrow AND Explosive? And MM gets Aimed/Silence/Chimera
Mean explosive shot HURTS. Hurts ALOT.
yet we get 4 shiny pet talents that just increases ‘sustained pet dps and thus cripples us further if pet dies’ and just
I’m not a happy hunter atm, and unfortunately you are going to be unable to convince me that Blizzard actually cares about its players.
Palla: Speaking of Bear Trap, wasn’t there supposed to be a hunter vanish ability too? Camaflauge[sp?]?
I forget was that a real spell?
lol, it’s funny how a topic on halved time for pet lvling turned into how BM 51 talent sucks and mend pet doesnt scale etc. If you cant beat them, join em….. Anyways, ill through my 2 copper in, i think replace with mend pet with lick your wounds, and reduce it to one minute, have all hunters learn it, replace it with a new skill. Blizz said they wanted BW skill to be more defensive? how bout raising it to 14 sec and making the pet invulnerable while enraged? in pvp it despawns if hunter is focused on, not a proble that way, and in both pvp and pve it can save your pet from being focused/one shot’d if timed right. Or just have the pet not despawn for 40 sec after you die, they have eyes of beast skill, and did that ghoul thing for DKs, it shouldnt be too hard. these to suggestions make the 51 point skill unique without overbalencing or just increasing dps.
I want to finish my thoughts by saying that if pets were always your lvl like locks and DKs i wouldnt be a hunter. theres a reason they called ‘minions’. i LIKE naming, feeding and lvling my pet. im the little kid that saw a couger and rolled hunter for the cat pet, lvling makes it unique. As one anonymous WoW player once said: “a lock’s pet is a page in thier grimoire, a hunter’s pet is a companion for life”.
Ryai I know exactly what ya mean and feel the same way.. I remembered when exotics first came out they were everywhere but now i might see a devilsaur occasionally but like you said its cats wolves and raptors and a few bears and turtles!! I dont see Corehounds or birds of prey or slithids sorry for the bad spelling there I had Nurmoroc Myself and he was a cool pet till they nerfed him down I see the hunters who just get the BM talent with an exotic but very very few high end players unless just to show them off around town.. and I too had the rhino until they screwed with stampede LONG LIVE RHINO BOWLING LOL So we the BM hunters got exotics to help us out
then came grippers and whinners of other classes saying they are to OP and now the exotics which I said was a mistake for the 51 point cause why give us help just to take it away And when i use Gondria or Rak Shiri I see no power increase of the spirit beast over Rak.. Most the time Rak does way more dps and spirit beasts was suppose to be stronger?
Just throwing this out there, on my server Crocs are by far the most popular Ten. pets for their massive AOE abilities… TS + BA = beast AOE. Me personally like using my Warpstalker
Oh we’re pretty much convinced Nimizar….. I’m pretty much convinced that blizzard has no effing clue as to how to handle hunters, BM in particular. What steady design improvement?? Was there actually one that made sense and actually worked right? What we had at the start of Wotlk was as good as it got (minus a few of the bugs) before they started breaking things down. And exotics WERE supposed to be the pinnacle of the BM tree along with the extra 4-point pet talents… THEN they nerfed exotics…. Chimeras had a very decent damage ability that is now laughed at, Spirit Beasts were close to that category and fell lower than a regular cat (which made no sense when spirit beasts are supposedly close to animal demigod-status)… and so forth. The only exotic that survived almost unscathed is the Devilsaur since it was allowed to keep its “powers”. And for regular pets getting steady design improvements?? 5% across the board to accommodate cunning classes is just wrong… and you call that an “improvement”? If they were trying to make all pets viable in any situation, then that was the wrong way to do it…. it just made them more squishy, regardless of the talents.
I’ll grant you that there are parts of WoW that may have seen some “improvements” – even a lot of improvements with other classes in some ways – I don’t see it completely evident in the hunter class, especially their pets. Oh sure, SV shot through the roof and MM was close behind, and BM …. holy… they took BM on a roller coaster ride and we’re still upchucking stuff from time to time. They bring us a few steps forward…. but not before pushing us further back. IF Cataclysm does nothing for the hunter class in terms of actually moving forward…… well, that will probably be the last straw on the camel’s back and I will officially retire my hunter.
Whoops, just noticed that I only said Palla in my last post when I was actually responding to posts from both Palla and Ryai (got my message headers confused). So yeah, parts of that post were misdirected a bit.
@Palla: I took GC’s point slight differently than you did. Yes, there are folks that slavishly follow the theory crafted numbers and will switch specs and playstyles just because “the spreadsheet” says that dancing on one leg while rubbing your belly and patting your head gives 5 more DPS (despite that being less than a 0.1% change in the character’s overall DPS). I took GC’s point as being that trying to balance things finely enough to stop such players switching to a ‘flavour-of-the-month’ spec was an impossible goal, and hence not something they were really striving for. Instead, they were aiming for a more realistic benchmark with different DPS specs staying within a few percent of each other on most fights, allowing more reasonable people to choose the playstyle they preferred.
@Ryai… people on the internet are twits (some might say, me included). WoW isn’t unique in that regard and the only thing Blizzard can do about it is to improve their support systems in helping people find (or create) like-minded guilds.
@Everyone: if the game is getting to the point of annoying you (or feeling like a pointless grind), then I *highly* recommend cancelling your subscription, at least for a while. There’s no point in paying for something that you aren’t enjoying, or that is causing you undue angst in real life.
I did that for a few months earlier this year and it was great (my subscription was paid far enough in advance that it never actually lapsed, but the automatic renewal was switched off while I wasn’t playing). Even today, I still don’t play anywhere near as much as I used to. Going a couple of weeks without logging in isn’t all that unusual – instead, I’ll usually play in bursts, spending several hours in game once or twice a fortnight, but otherwise avoiding it. I still get plenty of value from my subscription (which costs me less for a whole month than I would pay for a single trip to the movies) and get to take a more relaxed perspective on the game, allowing it to be fun again.
Nim you still don’t get the point, the people I’m talking about and have dealt with that have caused me grief for being a BM hunter because seriously have you ever run across healers or people that insulted you or refused to heal you and let you die, for being BM before Blizzard’s change to BM/MM/SV? I sure didn’t.
So yeah I’m gonna blame blizzard for the grief I get for being BM as I NEVER got it before; tho luckily it seems to be disappearing but the point still stands.
Then the other fact; Blizzard really can’t control guilds. Blizzard really doesn’t do anything against ninja’s- and I mean the serious ones. And their solution to bad tank situations and cower bug, was to nerf growl for boss fights. So, why should I believe they really care about guild relationships or anything, when they made the SB? As said even if it was a normal pet, even if it wasn’t an exotic but still rare and if it still gave a minimal increase to dps, if they were min/maxers they’d go for it. If they were in a guild that demanded it of them, they’d do it. I’ve seen hunters who bend over backwards and respecc just because their guild told them too; so we suffer because Blizzard doesn’t realize no matter what they do or what their excuse is, hard core guilds of retardation [no offense to guilds really just, the ones that take it way, way to far], would punish hunters for not having the best pet?
I’m sorry but I didn’t know WoW was supposed to be Russia :/ or Big Brother-y. If they won’t stop griefers, gankers, quest hub destroyers, ninja guilds and the ilk, then what right does Blizzard have to attempt to improve guilds?
Also Joe I don’t think you understand why myself and a few other hunters wouldn’t mind a pet auto leveling alongside with the hunter; it’s because even with the change, pet level grinding is a challenge. Sure at early levels you can ask a friend for a boost or two to level up your pets, as usually that works. But outside that? At 80? For a 75 pet? It does take more than a few simple runs in a heroic, I had one pet take two instances just to get one level, then ofc I had to be careful so she wouldn’t pull anything cause of her level and squish..
There’s also the fact Joe, that pets do not get exp from your quests, BG wins/losses or anything of the sort; meaning like one of my alts, who is 35 and all of her pets are lv 30. Now while she’s MM and doesn’t depend on them that much, it is going to be a bother later on for when I do eventually wish to quest, cause I have 5 pets- tho reasonably I know I can only level 2 up sanely.
And um pet auto leveling wouldn’t make them minions Joe- mostly demons are called minions as they aren’t pets but more like servants. Tho I call my Felhunter a Felpup and it’s why I rolled affliction.
Don’t like VW, succubusses slap their rears to much, and I’m to tempted to kick my imps.
to Ryai: i dunno what you mean long time for lvling pets, i lvled mine in 2-3 hours killing converted heroes, just basically sniped down one by one, i grant its tedious, but the fun im talking about is the 1-80 part, not afterwards. Besides, you missing the bigger picture here, Blizz could’ve just made it auto lvl instead of the 5 lvl below you thing, but it’s there to keep the uniquesness of the hunter class there. It’s like, just try any pet, and toss it at the first sign of trouble or boredom. I know you think it’d be easier to have them auto lvled, but it also would make the hunter less attached, they might be looked as just tools, not something to enjoy. It’s there so that if a hunter gets rid of one pet for another, they will have thought it through, and dedicated to training it for whatever type of play, like pvp or pve. pets aren’t flavors of the week, to be swapped in and out at a moments notice, the hunter should put serious thought into getting a new pet. Anyways, i get your frustration but auto lvl is just making the hunter like any other pet class. It would be the easy way out and i think bizz does enough of that already ><.
Joe, unlike some people that can devote a large portion of their time online, some of us can’t….. so I get what Ryai is saying, there are those that want to get a lot of things done in the shortest time possible while online. I get home from work, relax and play wow by logging on and hitting raids, dailies, pvp, etc… My greatest peeve is pet lvl grinding, I simply don’t have the time for that kind of tedious “work” when I want to have a pet with the same level as me to go help me bring our power to bear. Currently, some pets are kind of flavor of the week… in fact, most of the times in other specs like SV or MM, pets are not a huge deciding factor to their dps. Also in BG’s pets can’t level, but you can…. and no offense, but I know that some hunters just swap pvp pets once they get way higher than their pets since all they do is bg…. that’s where auto-pet-leveling can come in handy. Personally, I don’t quite believe that an auto-leveling pet will cheapen what it is to be a hunter, especially a BM one.
…..And while I get what you’re trying to say about hunters needing to think about what kind of pet to actually get, but for some like me……. we don’t over-think it too much. I have my favorites, and I know what I do and don’t like….. As attached as I am to my hunter and my pets…. in the end, it’s just a game…. something that can be frustrating from time to times with the craziness blizzard brings into it.
BTW… the hunter is almost like any other pet class, more so now than before… we no longer need to tame pet skills just like warlock pets no longer need to be bought spell books. The line between the hunter as a unique pet class is already blurring, and if you just remove the individual pet skins, their base AI is quite similar to those of warlock pets and death knight ghouls.
English isn’t my native language, please forgive me for my spelling/syntax errors.
My first character created was a hunter and I’ve always played within the BM spec.
I like BM and probably will stay BM. I don’t want to be forced, directly or indirectly, into other specs.
I like to be a hunter with a major input from my pet.
Also, I solo alot. I don’t do alot of PvP, but I go on raids occasionally.
I finally found and tamed “Loque’Nahak”. I grinded for hours to level him to 80 and in the process gathered some nice items and gold and a few artic fur even.
But I have to admit that the last 2 levels of the pet (78 to 80) was a bit annoying.
I had to encourage myself and saying to myself ‘come on, just 2 levels to go’.
On a personal note, I do think that ‘autoleveling’ a pet should be 2 levels below and not 5. 5 levels is just a bit too much imho.
2 levels below is also reasonable I think.
At low levels it’s not a problem. At level 10-12 you can level a pet from 5 levels below to the hunters level in no time. But at 80 it becomes a grind for about 3-6 hours (depending on what kind of gear or weapons you have).
Good thing about long grinding time is that the loot covers the repair bills, bullets or arrows you have to buy and you make a profit along the way.
If you’re a casual player because you have to work for 8 hrs a day and have a house-hold to run or have little personal time for whatever reason, then I can imagine the feeling of ‘lost’ opportunities or time that could have been spend in a different way (raiding, BG or something similar).
I hope that the 5% xp is going to work out. Since to reach level 81 from 80 is going to take about 1.691.630 experience points.
Also a thing I thought about:
Why not have a scroll that players with ‘inscription’ can create and sell that states: “instant level a hunters pet to hunters own level”.
It’s just a general thought, would create some tremendous job opportunities ?.
I only hope that prices will not be outrageous though. lol.
But I’m willing to pay some decent gold to have my pet leveled instantly via the means of a scroll that someone with inscription can create for me.
But to be ontopic: 5% down from 10% is always better then nothing at all.
About the inscription scroll “instant lvl pet to hunters own level” idea:
Scrolls should then have a minimun sell price, that you can’t sell this particular scroll below a certain gold price to prevent people selling scrolls for 1 silver to eachother.
Whoever said that minions were just a tome in a grimoire got it wrong. I am just as fond of my felguard, voidwalker, and succubus as I am of my wolf, and that is saying something. A companion is a companion, no matter what title you give it.
That being said, I have played all three pet classes ((Using pet class to loosely describe unholy death knight’s)) and I have to tell you that the differences are minimal. Obviously you won’t be as attached to, say, the ghoul as you will to your pet dinosaur or your sultry succubus, but that’s to be expected. ((Go explode, Eyegouge! or Die and make me feel better while I consume your rotten soul! kinda take away the chumminess.)) But either and all ways, your still relying on your companion to some extent, no matter what your spec. ((Unholy aside.))
Now I will get down to brass tacks. The root of the problem is that, no matter how you look at it, pets of any sort are TOOLS. You use them to further your own ends within game. And further, they are specific class tools. That’s what make the pet classes PET classes. Among the pet classes, only one class has to take three to four hours every time they want to try a different ‘tool’ just to get the said tool up to level. I realize that they want to try to preserve the feel of having to work to make your pet into your companion, but it is a dated concept at this point. They should try to find other ways of managing that, one’s that aren’t quite as time consuming for people who don’t always have a lot of time.
As an aside, does anyone else remember when crowd control was important? When it wasn’t just a matter of ‘Kill kill kill!”, when planning before a fight was important, to know who had to do what TO what? I just remember runs where I had to keep one target constantly feared, while my succubus had to keep something else seduced……what happened to those times?
Oh, RYAI, funny you bring that up…..that was a datamined possible ability for hunters. But then Blizzard said “Well, we don’t want to give away to many class specific abilities to other classes.” AND THEN THEY GAVE ROGUES MISDIRECT.
Just wanted to say first off, i work a job, trainging for college, and help at a group home + fall chores like daily leaf raking etc. i hardley get to do raids cause i AM a casual player, that said, it’s not a question of who’s right here. Both sides of this issue have valid points, maybe the best thing is to let hunters choose? Like 500g for a pet lvl up at your trainer? or maybe have an option for petx to auto lvl to 80, like the experience on/off thing. that way both types of hunters are happy. just a suggestion, but i doubt blizz will do anything no matter what we think.
Also wanted to say, i aggre with what Jan feels, I dont change from BM just cause people think its the fail/broken spec, stick with what ya like, i still do raids with my spirit beasts. As to what palla said, i think that was a mistake on thier part, training pets with unigue skills was the best thing about hunters. I remeber tameing a panmther for prowl, then taming that cat with thew dash skill, then taming bangalesh, and laughing as it wrcked allys on mounts, and ambushed anything in sight. I dunno bout the lock pets, but i liked that training, now they all coocie cutter like. i dunno how many others feel that way, but thats how i feel.
plz excuse my horrendous spelling on my last post lol
My first cat I ever tamed was Brokentooth and he/she was my main pet but i tamed every animal i could for skills and It didnt bother me! Thinking of it now you could fill a couple achievements if it was still the same.. Anyways Brokentooth at the time and the ZG bat had the fastest attack speed of any pet granted not the strongest but the quickest and I loved him in battlegrounds or pve for disrupting the casters
but then casters whined and complained and they took the attack speed from brokentooth and the ZG bat and made him a normal cat attack wise I still wished they would have left a good thing alone cause now that attack speed could help the hunters survival. So when they took his speed I let him go cause he didnt have the attack powers that King B or other cats did I have had Rakshiri for a couple years
now and he I’m attached to the Ramparts wolf Ive had since he became avalible had the black mastiff worg from darkshire before liked the looks better and these 2 I use alot i do have Loque and gondria both 80 and the devilsaur the last of any I tamed he’s cool but the 5 lvl below is just too time consuming granted he is at 78 and I been farming with him but guilds like Ryai said are picky not only on your spec but also what pet they want or dont want in the raid and many gripe about a devilsaur in the raid..
@Ryai: I’m still not seeing how any of the examples you describe are anything other than people being jerks. And, yes, I do recall plenty of hunters being told off for wanting to play BM even during TBC when it was far and away the highest DPS hunter spec (SV only got a look in because Expose Weakness was a compulsory cutting edge raid buff – the increase in DPS from the rogues and DPS warriors more than compensated for the loss of DPS from the hunter). Back then, those comments came from ignorant people that were still stuck in a vanilla WoW mentality of BM being a terrible raiding spec. Similar comments will always come from similarly ignorant people, regardless of the current state of class balance.
Being able to avoid having to deal with such jerks on a regular basis is why I consider my guild such a major part of being able to properly enjoy WoW. If guildies are going off to run instances, or if I happen to be free for a scheduled raid, then I’ll join in. Otherwise, I’ll go do my own thing. On the rare occasions when I do PuG a run or head into Wintergrasp or a BG for some PvP, if someone does start mouthing off, then I generally won’t pay any attention. If it gets too bad I might even put them on /ignore, but I don’t recall anything ever getting to that point.
WoW is like life that way – I can’t control what other people do or say. I can only control who I choose to associate with and how I react to what others say and do (and, of course, what I say and do myself). I’m not perfect at managing my own reactions by any means, but why should I feel angry or upset just because some random idiot in WoW doesn’t know what they’re talking about? However, as I’ve said before, that’s one of those perspective things that is fairly easy to achieve from the point of view of a successful engineer that is just playing WoW for fun rather than any kind self-validation. I recognise that there are plenty of life situations where it wouldn’t be anywhere near as easy to just dismiss in-game criticism from a stranger.
As for Blizz not having the rights to provide better tools for guilds… without Blizz creating it, there wouldn’t be any guild system at all. Beyond that, they do largely leave it to players to manage their own play experience, precisely because they *don’t* want to be looking over everyone’s shoulder policing every single social interaction. They’ll ban players that are reported enough times by enough people for violating the ToS, but otherwise they’re pretty hands off (of course, there are also the practical limitations of managing a player base measured in the millions that favour the laissez-faire approach).
Back on topic…
Regardless of auto-leveling, hunters get to:
1. Choose which pet to tame
2. Choose a name for our pet
3. Spend pet talent points as we choose
Those are some pretty significant difference from warlock pets.
Figured it was worth making this point on the Suggestions forum again.
Palla: Rogues have Misdirect? What? O_o
And Nim: I had a big rant but it’s just a pointless argument because you’re not really listening when I said ‘-I- never experienced hunter grief until after the BM nerf’ as I was speaking from personal experience :/ or that ‘Blizzard should have no right trying to have a stance in controlling guild interactions to an extent because they don’t do anything anywhere else, so SB should have been on par with cats from the get-go, abusive/controlling guilds non withstanding, as no matter the pet, if a hunter is in one of those guilds, they probably wouldn’t be BM anyways’.
And if they ever do implement auto leveling, it probably won’t happen untill Cat, if at all, this exp change seems to prove it; or hell I’d be happy to within 3 levels of the hunter’s level, but yeah again I doubt they’re gonna touch pet exp/leveling anymore than they have.
I am a LITTLE off, Ryai. It’s actually MUCH BETTER then misdirect. It’s on next attack for 6 seconds, AND increases the damage dealt by the target of tricks of the trade by 15%. There ya go.
Eh, I still consider Tricks to be mostly different rather than outright better (mainly because rogues are primarily melee, so it doesn’t work anywhere near as well as a pulling tool). The one element that was genuinely better was the lack of charges, which is being corrected with the update to MD in 3.3 so that it will also use the time based duration mechanism.
But then I have that annoying habit of insisting on seeing my glass as half full and not really caring that the guy over there might conceivably have a glass that is 55% full ;)
@Ryai: *shrug* fair enough. I still think you’re blaming Blizz for things that are actually the fault of other players, but that’s your call.
You’re thinking of it as just a pre-combat tool as opposed to an in-combat tool, Nim. Pre-combat hunters have the edge because shot for shot they’ll do more damage, but in combat rogues will have the advantage due to being able to release a five-combo point move to start the ball rolling. Not to mention we don’t have the 15% damage increase that also makes it some what useful in PvP.
Also, as far as time based goes, rogues is still six seconds to what will be our four. And this isn’t even really about whether or not it’s better or not! This is about Blizzard saying “We don’t want to give a class another classes mechanics.” And then turning right around and giving rogues was was, until that point, a hunter class mechanic. Am I saying we should have gotten camo? Eh, that’s debatable but that doesn’t change the fact that Blizz said one thing and pretty much immediately went against it.
class fixed! thank god!
Palla, I think we mostly differ in what we saw as the key element of Misdirection from a class point of view. For me, Misdirection brought back the role of the hunter as a designated pre-combat puller – tank gets in position, hunter MDs target to tank, the fight gets rolling.
Tricks duplicates the in-combat effect of MD (and does indeed do a better job), but to me that was already a fairly ancillary part of the skill (one that had already been significantly devalued by the tank threat generation improvements in Wrath).
i understand wht evry1 is saying BM does very bad damage unless u hav a good pet thats high level but still u got to learn to play around that take time to level ur pets and fight with them its easy but unless u get the flow down u cant do shit. i mean i still only have a level 30 hunter and im starting to think about respecing but then i rember y i chose bm i want to get the good pets like devalsaurs and corehounds i dont care if they dont do good damage thats what i want
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