Patch 3.3 is going live today. The big news for most players is probably Icecrown Citadel, which seems to have something to do with the Lich King. But there’s lots more of interest, from the long-awaited built-in quest mapper to a new fishing tournament.
Most exciting for high level Beast Mastery hunters is the new Spirit Beast Arcturis, who happens to look like a ghostly druid bear but is, in every way, a proper Spirit Beast. (That’s him to the right.)
We are also seeing what is perhaps the first impact of the upcoming Cataclysm on the creatures of Azeroth as diseased wolves invade Elwynn Forest and the Thistle Boars of Teldrassil shed their pretty orange fur for a new grey look.
You can find the full patch notes on the official WoW site (when it gets updated) but here’s the sections for hunters (clipped from the official forum post):
General:
- Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
Classes: General:
- Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.
Hunters:
- Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
- Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
- Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
Talents: Beast Mastery:
- Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
Pets:
- Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
- Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
- Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
- Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
- Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
- Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.
User Interface:
- Confirmation box added when buying stable slots.
Bug Fixes:
- Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
- Explosive Trap: The damage from this trap will now scale properly with the hunter’s attack power.
- Glyph of Immolation Trap: Now properly increases damage by 100%. In addition, this glyph will now modify the tooltip of Immolation Trap correctly.
- Glyph of Mending: This glyph will now modify the amount healed in the tooltip on Mend Pet.
- Point of No Escape: It is no longer possible to gain benefit from this talent multiple times by having a target affected by multiple of the same hunter’s traps. In addition, Freezing Arrow will no longer incorrectly provide a critical strike bonus to players beyond the hunter with this talent.
- Roar of Sacrifice: Corrected tooltip error.
- Silencing Shot: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
- Volley: The tooltip for this ability will now update properly from haste.
Enough changes for you? *grin*
I’ll be updating Petopia sometime today, if I can. I haven’t had much time lately but things have slowed down a bit, so I hope to get caught up.
Jangalian: the problem is- unless it’s been changed or has become more frequent like the unable to ignore player for player not found glitch [really damn annoying as there have been some BAD PLAYERS that need to be ignored :/] it seems to be random. I mean when LFG first was implimented I used CSP atleast three times that day. And I used it most recently, when I finally finished a HoR run because in my first attempt I realized, no, Jareth is not built for close quarter combat and he gets in my way -and- everyone elses way.
Tho granted I’ve not recently played Ryai for several days or LFG’d with her, so things might have changed.
So deal is really just if you don’t need to change your pet, don’t risk using CSP, but if you absolutely must change your pet, do so.
I have to disagree with you, Ryai. My demonologist, and especially my unholy death knight are ahead of my BM as far as damage goes, and my demonologist also brings a much better, albeit also shared buff.
In response to an earlier quote from Blizzard about shit-tastic BM dps, they just poseted (and sorry for the copypasta, btw) –
“I know some of you were reading into my comments a bit much so I’ll try and explain things a little more.
The wolf is overpowered when compared to the other available pets, mostly because it buffs the master. Buffing all of the pets to that level would require a number of different changes to different pets and the chance that one of those buffs would be too much or not enough is reasonably high. When you have say 10 or more things all roughly equal and then one that is outside of that group, the one that’s outside is called an outlier. Defining it as the new normal isn’t smart game design and just like we do with classes, we are likely to nerf the single thing at the top than buff all the others.
It might not be possible to ever get the pets completely identical (see comments below), so very competitive raiders will probably still only take the best one. But if the best one is only slightly ahead of the others, then it will feel more acceptable to some players to run with the pet they like. For most players, improving their own game will have a larger effect than picking the “best in slot” pet if they are comparable.
As far as the Spirit Beasts are concerned, there are several reasons why they would make a bad “best” pet. There are not very many options to choose from and all of them require “farming”; a rare spawn that is more of a testament to blind luck than any kind of player skill. As we said before, there is no advantage to having a wider spectrum of pets to choose from if there is only one right choice.
We have talked about literally making all the pet families identical and letting the player just pick one based on looks. That certainly homogenizes the game quite a bit, which is why we haven’t done it, but it would ultimately allow pet choice to be cosmetic.
In the end, yes, we do want to get BM competitive with Survival and Marks. We even did some buffs in 3.3 to help them get there but the reason for my comments earlier is that we’d rather have two viable raiding specs than just one so Hunters as a whole are not in terrible shape. Eventually we do plan to get all 3 there. Just remember that when players obsess about 1% differences in dps you can understand why that task is pretty gigantic. There are probably more raiding BM hunters in 3.3 than in 3.2 and probably a lot more than there are Subtlety rogues (sorry for the example rogues, but you/we know it’s true). It’s far from a dead spec.”
Now wait a tic, I just thought of something.
If a SB had the same lvl of dps as say, a raptor, then they would still be sought-after pets and worth farming. If they were the top dps for a BM, then you could always give the SB’s a debuff that comes with owning such a flashy pet to lower the personal dps of the hunter who owns it, and thus put it on par with owning a devilsaur, or something of the like. Or, they could increase the amount of available SB’s, or cut down on the spawn timer should they buff up the beast a bit to make it worth more than a status symbol.
Right now, it’s kind of like owning a solid gold Jaguar (the car, not the cat). You can brag about it, you can show it off, but you can’t win any races with it.
Palla: Wait wat, I never said they didn’t D: I meant that they weren’t ‘penalized’ like BM for ‘bringing a raid buff’ D:
I meant to say when I was Demo, his personal DPS wasn’t cut at all, and when I didn’t screw up rotations it was better than Ryai or when he was affliction. And before Ryai got some more upgrades, he was on par with her dps on target dummies. [2.1kish] And I don’t really raid so don’t really care about what I can bring to the group now- unless I’m grouped with Aria and her friend as they are boomkin thus spellcasters thus benifit from my Demoness.
I just didn’t like the rotation even if it was simpler, it felt to much like BM; IE spam three things then spam SB or Incenerate? Or whatwever it is that fire wave is. But why spam SB, you spam the fire cause it does added dmg if the fire DoT is up and .. just reminded me to much of my Aimed-Arcane-Serpent-Ssteady rotation.
Not saying that it doesn’t bring the dps or doesn’t bring the raid buffs, just was saying, or forgot to say, it was far better at BM for the buffs and the dps and wasn’t penalized at all, so it doesn’t make it right for what is going on with BM.
Jang. They could also make two seperate trees of five viable pets each for dps. For SV and MM it would be wolves/cats/raptors/other/other, probably moths/wasps/etc. You know a nice big grouping of ferocity pets. Or hell even Wind Serpents and Dragonhawks. Or Normal Serpents. Ya know?
Then for BM it could be; Devilsaurs/Spirit Beasts/Core Hounds/Sithilid tanks/Chimeras or two other exotics for the last two.
This way a BM wouldn’t be shoved to only having one exotic or one of two normal pets; and SV/MM would still be able to have a pick and choose deal with their pets. And BM again would be able to choose something on equal with an exotic that’s not, if they enjoy being BM but not the exotics that come with it.
I mean idk there’s so many suggestions people have given out. IE change Furious Howl to a Ferocity talent. IE make common spirit beasts. IE make them more common or spawn times have shorter times in between or not hinge them on having to vie with others to spawn, etc etc.
Mean Blizzard seems to always dig their toes in the sand and wail about spirit beasts being nerfed for what they are, or try and say they’re fine, and point the real problem is at the wolves then try to blame the raiders who would always go for a pet that would give +1% dps and it’s like what what what?
Blizz seems to forget we are not asking for a spirit beast that is ‘the most poerful thing ever’, we are asking for a spirit beast that is viable and worthwhile to tame and use. I mean sure Jupiter and Neptune are good for heroics, but they’re never really going to see much in the way of raiding anymore :/
BTW, is anyone else having alot more issues with skidding pets this patch?
Oh, right, right, sorry Ryai, I misunderstood. It’s been a long week. You are absolutely right, Demonology is still alright, it hasn’t been cut in the slightest. They still suffere from the same pet scaling as BM, but with a slight buffer in the glyph of felguard. SO yea, easy leveling spec is a load of crap excuse.
Hadn’t taken a look at Snarler since they nerfed him – and, actually since I tamed him ages ago. was wandering for Explorer and there he was. did a quick beast lore and he still is 100% resist on all schools. nice specs. Too bad he doesn’t keep em :) that would be a very nice instance pet.
/shibumi
It’s alright Palla, my fault to for not wording it right.
my fault too*
really wish there was an edit feature D:
What I don’t get about the wolf being OP and needing to be nerfed is this:
80 AP from howl is not much. Considering my Surv hunter has 5600 AP unbuffed. And the more we get better gear, the more this buff diminished in comparison to our base AP. So the wolf gets nerfed automatically. Couple of weeks ago I opted for a sporebat and I’m loving it so far. The 3% armor reduction is a nice debuff and that will always scale with my damage output. It also benefits the whole raid. I have no exact numbers to prove it is better, I just think this sounds more logical.
What do you think?
I think Sporebats or any cunning pet would be better with a fixed carrion feeder. As After reading your post I went to tame a bat on my belf hunter [one who is high enough at anyrate] and after fiddling around I find it more fun than a wolf, as I never have Furious Howl on for normal pve mobs and I don’t have to worry about switching it on and off.
Tho it makes me wish my dragonhawk got a better dot or something for it’s fire breath :| at anyrate.
It is a bit more fun to use with a wolf- especially with HOW MANY WOLVES ARE ON MY SERVER. Seriously two months ago it was the BWWolves. Next month, the Vargul blighthounds. This month it seems to be a mix of those two and grey/white northrend wargs.
Anyways at anyrate the only downside with the bat imo? Carrion Feeder.
‘No nearby corpses to eat’
BUT I AM STANDING ON A DRAGONKIN I JUST KILLED!
‘No nearby corpses to eat’
BUT I MOVED ONTOP OF IT!!!!
‘No Nearby Corpses To Eat’
etc.
Then if you move- pet decides to STOP channeling and follow. Thus breaking Carrion feeder. I’ve also had Carrion feeder go off but DO NOTHING.
Which is really frustraiting as when wolverine bite procs it’s more fun than Call of the Wild; as like with furious howl I leave it for dire situations OR boss fights.
And I mean it’s a really good pet but CARRION FEEDER causes auuuurg.
Edit: My sporebat decided this time to not follow me and continue channeling Carrion Feeder.
why does this have so many glitches. Why.
Here’s my thought on the whole BM mess…
First, Blizz is keeping BM down just because they know everyone would flock back if it really was on par with the others. Same with the spirit beasts. Hunters are still hurt the most due to scaling, and by the end of Wrath, we are going to be hurting.
That being said…
My pally is my raiding main, I actually like tanking. So he’s my primary raid toon. My hunter is my farming toon, and I go out with him and do heroics and stuff, and I run as BM. If I get into a situation were I need to go MM, I have a cat, and will run with that as MM (red lynx from the BE starting zone). My other four pets are KingKrush, Loq’, Skoll, and my new spirit bear “IceCube”. I’ve yet to be in a raid were I couldn’t be BM, or MM with the cat. I’m not in the bleeding edge of raiding guilds, so it just doesn’t matter.
and where is Mania?
@Ryai: cool you tried a sporebat as well :)
Apart from the Carrion Feeder which bugs a lot indeed, I love the fact that I now stand out in a hunter crowd which solely consists of dull wolves. Also the Roar of Recovery gives me advantage over hunters using ferocity pets. With a well balanced use of viper sting I can keep running in instances without having to mb all the time. And on long boss fights I have 30% extra mana at my disposal which is huge now that hunters have a manapool of sometimes 15k. So less time in Aspect of viper is more dps. The spore cloud which does 2 things at once: apply a DoT nature damage AND reduce armor by 3% is very cool in combination with our volley.
I’m set with my Spore Bat until Cataclysm I think. We’ll see what happens then :)
oh forgot to mention: I hardly use Carrion Feeder anyway, I have which produces enough to feed him everytime. It’s free ;)
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone.
Day 2 of camping da bear. No luck yet. Saw an ally hunter on AD with it running around and trying to show off. We get it people. You tamed it. Don’t have to flaunt it. Wish me luck.
Amrasillias,
I have been using Sporebats for quite some time in raiding and have loved them. The armore redux is awesome and the nature damage to bo0ot is noce…. and it’s all wrapped up into an AoE blanket. So yeah, I have likes Sp[orebats for quite some time, and the change to Wolverine Bite was a huuuuge, nice addition. I did very good dps with them, and have no complaints about them. the only problem I did have was on multiple mob fights… the spore cloud would draw aggro and my Sporebats would die. Other than that, no complaints at all about Sporebats.
Quick question…
My little BE hunter has used a dragonhawk as her pet ,and I noticed it does awesome damage and things die fast. It’s like having a little fire mage. But these guys focus more on dishing damage and not taking it, or stunning and running, meaning it isn’t meant for multi-mobs. So is it a good idea to convert ferocity or tenacity, or stick to my guns and continue with Phoenix?
Okay. Maybe not so quick. But still. What are folks opinions?
Um, there’s a difference between “it could be worse” and “it’s fine”. Blizz have said they aren’t happy with the fact that BM isn’t “viable” for the hardcore min/max crowd. However, it is already plenty viable for normal modes, as it will still wipe the floor with badly played SV hunters (and presumably badly played MM as well, but that rotation is nearly as simple as the BM one, so the difference in effectiveness probably won’t be as large). BM is also far and away the best leveling and farming spec (with CSP still bugged to hell, I currently farm and do dailies as SV with my wolf, and I definitely miss my normal BM farming spec and tenacity pet).
For me personally, my raid and dungeon DPS will vary far more based on which buffs are available in the group than it will based on my own DPS (at my level of gear, buffs can account for 1000 dps or more, while spec only accounts for a few hundred).
The main thing is that Blizzard are right in saying that it isn’t as simple as just whistling up some extra DPS for BM hunters. What kind of fight do they want to add the DPS for? Do they want to tie even more BM DPS up in the pet? Or push things back towards the hunter again so loss of the pet isn’t quite as crippling? Will such a DPS increase unbalance BM in PvP again? That’s not to say they won’t try to make some small tweaks to bring BM raid DPS closer to parity in Wrath, just that I’m not really expecting them to try particularly hard until Cataclysm rolls around (now that the minor relative buffs in 3.3 have proved insufficient).
@Firewing: You can level with pretty much any pet, but the Thunderstomp tenacity pet talent is *really* nice. (Apparently it is even better when combined with a bear’s AoE swipe, but I’ve never actually tried that myself).
Hmmm. I might pick up a bear later on for those tough-to-solo quests. I suppose I’ll keep it up with Phoenix and see what happens later on.
How was BM unbalanced in pvp to begin with Nimizar? PVP is now about burst damage- surviving that burst damage. BM =/= burst damage but sustained damage and relies HEAVILY on the hunter’s ability to CC and or kite the target.
At lv 60 my orc hunter was able to go toe to toe with DK’s, wars, paladins and even rogues [which surprised me]. My other hunter [Ryai] at 80, when everyone had just about the same level of gear [before ulduar and etc as not everyone had every single set of pvp gear], I mostly got facerolled by just about every class or specc EXCEPT for other BM hunters.
And this was ‘while we were still unbalanced’.
And Blizz could as I said fix pet dps [as in fix spirit beasts finally?] or, OR, revert the one talent they left unchanged, give it back the what +5% dmg they took away? Or hell throw in the +5% boost exotics got? I mean I’m sorry but if I go so far deep into BM for exotics I want to be rewarded.
OR.
The BM talent provides a +5% boost to ANY pet you tame.
And do you really trust Blizz to fix this by Cat? I mean it took them so long to fix Deadzone issues and they still are denying us auto attacking -while- moving. I could even deal with an ingame irl equivalent of downs your accuracy/hit rating XX% [I suggested a penalty of 30 to Aria as that's what I think it is like irl]
I mean having a Dev at first flat out say basically ‘Oh sure BM sucks but you still have SV and MM so go roll one of those speccs’ is about as insulting as my friend being told to Reroll Resto :/
I always seem to have some problems when using a non-tank pet. It does damage, alright but as soon as it got multimobs on him and I have to throw a heal or two at him, I usually gain the attention of those, who aren’t in my pets target.
Therefore, I have a bear for soloing and a Wolf for instances and raids. And I kept my first ever tamed pet as well, although he’s only out on roleplaying purposes, because everyone knows him.
Been reading thru this thread. I too see a problem spirit beasts DPS. I had Loq, dumped it to tame Skoll (like the look better). But I almost always take Takk on all runs with me. Sometimes I take my devilsaur, but he just seems too big at times.
But I agree, the spirit beasts need to have better DPS. My raptor does better than my SB. I thought all exotics got a boost? I have not seen it in the SB. The devilsaur does better than my raptor. I used to have a wolf on Joly, but not anymore. I have Takk, devilsaur, Skoll, Sapphire Hive Queen (when it was tamable, use her for PVP), and Sewer Beast for tank pet.
For the Cunning Tree, I think they should combine the Carrion Feeder and Feeding Frenzy. This would make it so you don’t have to move over to the corpse, the pet is already there, have the “feeding/healing” happen during the last part of combat.
Or, if not combined, then when you tell the pet to use Carrion Feeder, it will move on its own tot he nearest corpse to feed. You don’t have to find the sweet spot to get it to work.
Just my 2 cents.
@Regash
I notice this too, with my Dragonhawk. On my main, however, her wolf and/or cat do fine. Infact, my wolf has earned the infamous name ‘Wolf Tank’ because sometimes right after the tank pulls he pulls aggro, and holds on pretty darn well for the duration the tank gets it back.
It could be though, dragonhawk doesn’t have great stam while the others do. Hmm.
I see many of you complaining that the last point in BM isn’t even worth getting because “SB’s damage is too low.” The spirit beasts might be sucking but you’re not limited to JUST taming Spirit Beasts. SB do LESS damage than the Devilsaur, by far. It IS the top dpsing pet in the game, even over a wolf for BM hunters. And then there’s the Worms. Their dps isn’t the greatest but it quickly applies the 20% armor reduction to your targets, much faster than a warrior can hit Devastate/Sunder Armor 5 times.
Exotic Pets are very useful, granted BM hunters don’t do a lot of damage but that’s solely due to the lack of the BM spec having a nuke. MM gets Chimera, Surv gets Explosive. Blizzard has said in blue posts that for cataclysm they want to give BM something that mixes up their rotation a bit. Hinting at giving them something similar to Survivals “Lock and Load” talent but they weren’t 100% yet.
BM is nothing without the 51st talent. Rawrawrawr. <3 Devilsaurs…I miss mine being MM/Surv for raids. (MM is higher dps btw!)
Actually, I am finding more and more that I’am climbing the dps chart as a BM. Though I prefer a hyena as my companion. I am not into the best dps pet, I am more for the “I like this pet look”. I think a big part is just knowing the full depth of your class and being able to time your abilities accuratly. Toggeling between hunter and pet abilities can be tricky, but thats half the fun!
Even as BM, I am actually starting to pull aggro from tanks (that are much better geared-and know how to tank) it really surprised me when the tank told me to slow up a bit lol. I’ve never had a tank tell me that before.
I’ve noticed this dps increase since I stopped relying on Beastial wrath as my main dps ability. I’ve had to improvise, and it seems to be working. I use hunters mark, a macro for steady-shot/auto shot, Kill command sequence, and keep a scorpid sting up, hiting aimed shot when ever it needs a refresh. I do time my BW with Arcane shot, for a bit more burst, but otherwise just use arcane as it becomes available.
Hyena’s are a nice steady dps, low to the ground so they dont get in the way of anyone else, and he seems to survive quite well it any run/raid. (I’ve had him since I was first able to tame him in SM)
My baby hunter (with spirit bear <3) can pull a consistent 1.1-1.4k dps around level 75. Given, this is with the pug buff, but other hunters in the same bracket get that buff as well and do half that. (This is not a criticism of them, since they definitely don't have the raiding background I do.) But yeah, the point is, it's all how you play. :) A hard-working BM hunter can still put out solid dps; it's just not optimal personal dps.
I understand Makoes, liking pets will often get you farther than ‘oooh good deeps, hello’ fortunately for me, i love all of the top dps pets, cats the most, so i don’t have a problem choosing a good pet to use. But when i pull out my Warpstalker for soloing and such, then people start to think im crazy b.c most hunters believe that bears and crocs are the better of the tenacity pets b/c of their second aoe’s…
I am loving Culling the Herd, it really helps up the damage for a BM Hunter, especially when combined with Go For The Throat. Innate Avoidance is a godsend for raids.
Funny thing, my first ever Heroic run in Violet Hold, and one guy said that he had never seen a BM Hunter pump out as much damage as I was doing. I was like O.o “Seriously?” and he was “Yeah, you’re kicking butt”. Made me feel good, especially since I was in practically the baseline requirement to even do a Heroic XD
And on a really happy note, I tamed Skoll two days ago! :D I practically tripped over him, wasn’t even looking, and there he was by the frozen river in Bor’s Breath. Use Call Stabled Pet, picked my least-used one, released him and BOOM, now I have an electric wolf. I happy :3~ Gotten some whispers and questions, and people think he’s the bee’s knees in raids.
Question, though, I read in another post that Spirit Strike wasn’t leveling or scaling properly, is that still the case? It seems to do a good amount of damage.
‘I see many of you complaining that the last point in BM isn’t even worth getting because “SB’s damage is too low.” ‘
Uh no. That’s not why. It’s because when you put yourself that deep into the tree, you basically only have three pet choices afaik. Wolf. Cat. Devilsaur.
It should also be Spirit Beasts- but first they were doing less damage than cats, and afaik are still doing less dmg than cats, and we have a hunter saying they do less dps than a raptor. Which is what a Devilsaur is basically [glorified raptor aka monsterous bite]. Spirit Beasts equiv are cats, Rake-Spirit Strike. But Spirit Strike doesn’t scale correctly and Blizz first tried to cover this up, as we all know to ‘prevent grief to hunters in hard core rading guilds’… yeah. Right. If they wanted to do that, the beasts wouldn’t be in the achive and wouldn’t drop ‘blue goodies’.
‘The spirit beasts might be sucking but you’re not limited to JUST taming Spirit Beasts.’
As said; cats, devilsaurs, wolves. I rarely see a hunter with anything exotic that’s not a devilsaur or a spirit beast as unfortunately, nothing else I think comes close to a spirit beast. Well possibly a core hound, but I’ve only seen 2 lv 80 core hounds.
‘SB do LESS damage than the Devilsaur, by far. It IS the top dpsing pet in the game, even over a wolf for BM hunters.’
We know they do, this isn’t the point about it. I would be more inclined to take my SB’s into instances for more than ooh shiny moments because I love them dearly, but I can’t. I would probably be better off with my wasp. Tho again, I can’t use her, even for HoR as that is not an instance/dungeon that is friendly to large pets, especially at the begining of the fights when you have to hide in a small enclosed space.. [am I right or am I right /sigh].
‘And then there’s the Worms. Their dps isn’t the greatest but it quickly applies the 20% armor reduction to your targets, much faster than a warrior can hit Devastate/Sunder Armor 5 times.’
The problem is… I’ve never really been in a dungeon when that is required. And even in a raid, there are other debuff pets you can take, tho admitedly the wasp doesn’t stack with faire fire, or does it now?
And last time I used a worm, my alt got kicked from a group :/
Anyways the point of our complaints isn’t ‘we go 51 points and we can’t DPS extremely with our spirit beasts!’ it’s, we go 51 points into BM and our only really competitive choice for a pet, is a devilsaur.
And Mitsuhide, that unfortunately is still the case. Cause that Dev post pretty much showed they aren’t touching spirit beasts with a 30 foot pole. Tho admitedly spirit beasts are one creature I will always still try to tame because I do like them, for novelty purposes or for moonfire spamming.
double post:
Gim ignore them, there’s nothing wrong with a warpstalker, and I love them :D and even if I don’t find them as useful [as I just love the security of the AoE threat or extra dmg tho bad attitude doesn't stack with thorns it seems :(] they are still a good pet.
Tho admitedly do watch out. I’ve had my warpstalkers warp into the air, off cliffs, to their deaths…
I ticketed it once got ‘working as intended’
Blizzard doesn’t know jack when it comes to Hunters. And when they say stuff like “Yeah one tree sucks but you have two others to play with”, that’s when I get pissed. If that’s what you believe then just take out all of the trees and make everyone exactly the same. Problem solved.
Though I’ve never had any problems with people bitching about my pet choices in instances and Heroics. I’ve had one person go “BM? Fail XD”, but she was a rogue and I have low opinions of them anyways. I’ve taken my Ironhide Devilsaur (Ranmaru), Nuramoc (Masamune), The Kurken Core Hound (Tadakatsu), and most recently Skoll (Mitsunari) into them and no one’s complained. Heck, I’ve had people compliment me on my pets or be all “oooooooooo” when they saw them, especially seeing them in action (love it when my screen fills with lots of big yellow and orange numbers from both me and my pets, 21%+ critical strike for me and however much for them FTW). Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Ryai,
Of course a warpstalker is working as intended. If a mage blinked off the cliff, it’s fine! :D
Actually, on my BM hunter,I dop the best dps with a wasp. My wasp even out-dpses my devilsaur… now let me explain my theory on why this is so. First off, it’s really hard to make a wasp work because their Sting goes off every 4.9 seconds… I think that is the correct number. You may think that having a quick special like that is good, but if your pet is always out of focus, it’s not a good thing. So, untill you get your crit per cent to about 40%, your pet won;t have enough focus to use it’s abilities. naturally, the more point you put into Go For The Trhoat, the better. I have about 41% crit rate, and my wasp is a killing machine. If you think a devilsaur is godly dps, wait till you get to about 40% crit and try a wasp. once you keep his focus up and available., they are amazing. Just my two cents worth. I personally think the wasp is the best dps for BM hunters… after your crit is high enough to keep their focus up.
*Chuckles* Ironically three of my favorite pets are Devilaur, wolf, and cat. I enjoy my spirit beast, obviously, but for now that is neither here nor there. I’m going to say what I have always said: Use what you enjoy. If you are a min/maxer, then wolves and devilsaurs are the way to go. If not, then use what you will.
I know that Palla but it still won’t stop the flak, it even happened on my server last night as trade settled down after a real, real whiner of a healer whined about a supposed ninja. Or it was before this. Anyways. Once again it was the ‘MM/SV and BM brings nothing/is useless’ talk.
I just want that to stop. I mean I only get snoopy and nosey when I notice a hunter is wearing cloth [not heirlooms] or rolled need on melee weapons or armor…
or is trying to melee like a rogue, seriously. But I don’t tell others how to specc :/
MM/SV is greatest* bleh I really shouldn’t be allowed to type sometimes.
Ryai, I was in a group last night and had taken my bear with me. The first thing some rogue did was insult me about that. He stopped by the end of the run, when I was first in damage and DPS.
But yes, if you see a hunter with cloth gear or gemming for SP, say something kindly….
You think it wouldn’t be so hard for Blizzard to make all three Trees roughly equal in terms of damage output, but in different ways. Seriously, Hunters are the only class right now who suffer from one Tree being very short-changed compared to the others.
Still, I’m perfectly happy with being a BM and with my damage. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve never seen the kind of damage I was putting out as a BM Hunter (which made me smile :3 ). Right now my spec is most of the points in BM and some in MM. In MM I have:
5/5 Lethal Shots
5/5 Mortal Shots
3/3 Focused Aim
2/2 Go For The Throat
And I have between 24%-26% critical strike chance, which goes off a lot. So satisfying seeing a bunch of huge yellow numbers popping up when I Volley. My pets are never short of Focus, which they use to get a lot of Culling the Herd and Ferocious Inspiration going. At the moment my limiting factor is my bow, I have the Trophy Gatherer (and no guild to help get others, I hate how most of the best ones are fricking Arena rewards). Still, I’m getting around 2K per critical hit with Volley, 5K with Arcane Shot and over 9K with Kill Shot. Not too shabby.
As far as damage is concerned, unless you are an end-game raider, BM is quite fine if you know what you are doing. With a gearscore of 4900, I can pull 3.5k in heroics and 5.5k fully raid-buffed. And I do that with a macroed rotation. Yeah, I’m not top dps in a 25-man raid, but I’m also not on the bottom either.
I use my hunter as my “escape” alt, when I don’t want to be in guild and constantly asked to go tank something. :-) So I need him to be viable, but doesn’t have to be the best in the world.
Remember, some of the new gear is fantastic. Get the 50-frost-badge cloak, and the crafted boots, those are fantastic items for anyone that is not end-game raiding.
Palla: Do you use Tstomp+Swipe or just swipe, with your bear? As an alt has one and I do enjoy bringing her into dungeons. And good job for putting that rogue in his place :D
Tho this might sound stupid but what does ‘Gearscore’ mean O.o
Thunderstomp and swipe, any self respecting tank will be able to keep aggro through the stomp. I haven’t had any problems with it yet. My next experiment is going to be with a spore bat…..
I’m not sure if this is a trend, but within the past week or two, I’ve seen a good number of BM hunters with a variety of pets and reasonable dps (even on borked Recount meters) in randoms. The last one was using a purple tallstrider! (I’ve never seen one at 80 in person before, so that was really cool.) So as far as I’m concerned, keep it up, all you BM hunters.
I hope the call stabled pet bug stays fixed on my end; I’ve been enjoying bringing my cat out to play, but like having my wolf nearby in case we need a srs bsns pet.
Thanks Mania for updating Petopia.
@ Ryai
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12245-GearScore.html
This is the page for the addon Gear Score. Basically, it takes a look at your equiped gear and gives you a rating in number. The higher it is, the better gear you have. It’s main purpose is to give people who invite you to group / raid an idea of how well geared you are. Unfortunately, too many people think it also gives them an idea of how well you play, which is completely bogus.
However, even if a skilled player is wearing crappy gear, there’s some places they can’t go into until they have better gear, no matter how good they say they are. If you want to raid ICC and someone wants to come, and that said person has a low gear score, there’s a good change he/she is still in greens and or blues, and will be the first to die horribly in there.
Though as a good friend of mine said:
Good gear + skills > bad gear + skills > good gear + no skills > bad gear + no skills
@Mitsuhide: Subtlety rogues would probably take issue with your first point :)
And while frost PvE effectiveness has been improved significantly, I don’t believe it has reached the point of being a genuine competitor to Arcane/Fire/Frostfire for raw damage output. (No idea about warlocks)
In regards to hunter weapon upgrades without raiding:
- rifle from an Engineer
- crossbow from Heroic Utgarde Keep (Ingvar)
- rifle from Heroic Trial of the Champion (Black Knight)
- crossbow from Heroic Pit of Saron (Krick & Ick)
- rifle from Normal Pit of Saron (Tyrannus)
- bow from Normal Halls of Reflection (Lich King)
Turns out there is also an iLvl 200 epic gun available for 25 champion’s seals if you’ve done enough Argent Tournament stuff