Today we have a Deviate Plainstrider from the Southern Barrens, a Sunburst Adder from Tanaris, and a Bullmastiff from Western Plaguelands.

All three of these beasts can be tamed right now in beta. (Of course, it’s beta so things may always change.)

Unfortunately, the Deviate Plainstrider does not keep those sparkly bits after it is tamed.

I think this serpent has got to be one of my favorite new pets. I can’t wait to tame one!

Now that’s a big dog!

From: Mania's Arcania

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• Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd.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.

From: Mania's Arcania

His name is Arcturius. He is, indeed, a Spirit Beast — complete with all the Spirit Beast skill, including Prowl. Like other Spirit Beasts, he is a non-aggressive rare elite. Unlike them, he’s only level 74.

Hunter safrienaer tamed him in Grizzly Hills just north of Amberpine Lodge — you can find a map and more pictures on the forum post. safrienaer also notes that:

As of now he doesn’t have any special sound effects – he sounds just like any other bear.

But we probably have many builds left before Patch 3.3 is ready for prime time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up with unique sounds and possibly some more glowy effects as well.

We’ll have to keep a careful eye on this bear!

[edit] More great pics from nobbie at WorldofWar.de: just follow the Gallery link at the bottom of the Arcturis post and scroll down.

[edit] And because I think it’s very cool, I’m reposting info that Jangalian dug up:

Side note – thought his name looked hella familiar, so I put it into Wiki. Here’s the first answer it gave me…

Arcturus (α Boo / α Boötis / Alpha Boötis) is the brightest star in the constellation Boötes. With a visual magnitude of −0.05, it is also the third brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus. It is, however, fainter than the combined light of the two main components of Alpha Centauri, which are too close together for the eye to resolve as separate sources of light, making Arcturus appear to be the fourth brightest. It is the second brightest star visible from northern latitudes and the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. The star is in the Local Interstellar Cloud.

An easy way to find Arcturus is to follow the arc of the handle of the Plough. By continuing in this path, one can find Spica (α Virginis) as well—hence the maxim, “Arc to Arcturus, then speed on to Spica.”

Other uses include the following –

• Arcturus, a star known for its brightness.
• Arcturus in works of fiction, for fictional references to the star
• Arcturus (planet)
• Arcturus (band), an avant-garde Norwegian metal band.
• Arcturus (steamship), a passenger ship of the Finland Steamship Company.
• Arcturus, Zimbabwe, a village in the province of Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe.
• Arcturus Mengsk, the leader of the Sons of Korhal and later Emperor of the Terran Dominion in the StarCraft computer game series.
• Project Arcturus, a failed Ancient power-source project in the Stargate Atlantis television series.
• Arcturus Group, a consultancy based in Brussels

=) Just FYI. And yeah, I know wiki changed the name, but there were no results for the original spelling. That’s the closest I could get.

From: Mania's Arcania

As you can see from this shot of Aisna with her new diseased wolf, these guys do indeed use the diseased wolf skin — which was previously unavailable before level 47, in Felwood.

The Diseased Young Wolf replaces the existing Young Wolf. Like the Young Wolf, the Diseased Young Wolf is a non-aggressive, level 1 beast that seems to hang out mostly inside Northshire Valley (the human starter area) in Elwynn Forest. (I also found a few behind the cat lady’s house just outside the Northshire walls.)

A bit further back in Northshire Valley you can find a level 2 Diseased Timber Wolf, which replaces the Timber Wolf. Same skin, same non-aggression, one level higher.

Both of these new diseased wolves can be tamed. They are also involved in a quest: Eagan Peltskinner, who on the live realms right now asks you to kill Young Wolves and Timber Wolves for their meat, now bemoans the growing sickness in the neraby wolves and asks you to bring him diseased wolf pelts instead.

(But no worries about the previous wolf skin: you can still tame non-diseased Mangy Wolves just outside Northshire, or the Gray Forest Wolves a bit past Goldshire for that look.)

So the question for me is: what’s the goal here? Is this part of the set-up for a pre-Cataclysm event? Setup for Cataclysm itself? Blizzard moving the diseased wolves elsewhere because they’re going to be eliminated from Felwood? Or just a developer who really wanted a diseased wolf at level 10?

[Aside: While I was checking out the Diseased Young Wolf, I noticed that the PTR also features a slick new tutorial system with better text and pictures, plus flashing UI elements to help new players figure out what's going on. I probably just missed this before, but I quite liked it. In addition, the stupid Defias inside Northshire Valley itself are *finally* non-aggro. Man, I hated those thugs before!]

Addendum: I took a trip around Durotar, Mulgore, and Tirisfal but I didn’t seen anything else new in the way of beasts. Two things of interest:

1. All the enemies in the protected 1-5 areas are now non-aggressive.
2. I couldn’t find any abomination guards in Undercity. Instead all I found were Kor’kron guards.

From: Mania's Arcania

There’s nothing particularly interesting to hunters in the patch notes, but MMO Champion did notice a new skin in the data: the Spectral Bear.

Is this the newest Spirit Beast? Stay tuned … and let me know if you see him on the PTR!

From: Mania's Arcania

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!

From: Mania's Arcania

I’m going to post the cool hunter additions. As always, you can find the complete PTR patch notes on the WoW website; in addition, I am using MMO Champion’s handy guide to the differences between the old and new notes.

General:

• Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
• Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.
• Taunt Diminishing Returns: We’ve revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after 5 Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter. [I assume this applies to the pet skill Taunt as well, right? -ed.]

Hunter:

• Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. [Yay? -ed.]
• Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.

Hunter Pets:

• Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
• Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
• Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
• Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
• Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
• Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
• Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
• Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Hunter Bugs:

• Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
• Point of No Escape: This ability no longer stacks and now only functions for the hunter.

Mania’s always-insightful commentary: Egad.

I’m glad to see pets get 100% of their masters’ resilience, even though it won’t affect me much, and I am even more glad to see Avoidance become innate even if it doesn’t affect PvP. (I do wonder if they’d be amenable to adding an optional non-free PvP version for PvP hunters at some point.)

As a replacement, Culling the Herd looks very interesting. And the Cower redesign … well, good riddance to the old Cower, I say. (I suspect not everyone will agree.) And the other changes all look quite nice.

My only hesitation here is the change to the cooldown of Call Stabled Pet. Last I tried it, switching between specs and back again reset the Call Stabled Pet cooldown, so I am concerned that they have ‘fixed’ that behavior. This is a benefit for hunters without dual specs, but remember that you must be level 80 to learn Call Stabled Pet. I’d be a lot more excited about this change if it was combined with a lower level requirement — say to 10.

But overall, some very interesting patch notes! I hope the PTRs are back up soon so I can try this stuff out.

From: Mania's Arcania

We certainly don’t think pet resilience is useless. We are considering increasing it to 100% of master’s resilience to make up for the increased AE damage pets will take in PvP. We don’t want pets to explode on contact (neither do we want pet classes to be twice as difficult to kill) but we did think it was a little goofy and unintuitive that pets could just shrug off AE attacks in PvP. We’d rather make pets tougher against all types of damage than be vulnerable to some and nearly immune to others.

He doesn’t mention if this is a chance they might make for Patch 3.3, but that would seem to me to be a reasonable time to make it.

From: Mania's Arcania

It is likely we will just replace the hunter pet Avoidance talent with one that increases pet dps. It is too situational to have as a talent now. Hunter pets will just take 90% less damage from creature AE the same as other pets do (meaning “for free”). We offer that avoidance as recognition that Fluffy doesn’t have the AI to get out of the fire on boss fights and likes to go in straight lines between you and a target, even if that means crossing fire.

Ninety percent avoidance should be enough to survive almost all boss AE attacks for a second or two — enough to get a heal or move your wolf (or sporebat). It isn’t intended to let your pet just ignore AE completely and stand in void zones. If you’re a pet class, you are going to have to manage the pet a little in dungeons and raids.

It was never our intent that pets just shrug off AE in PvP situations. In fact, it’s a little goofy if you think about it. We just technically couldn’t distinguish between creature and player AE before. We only go to that distinction as a last resort, since we like for PvP and PvE to work similarly. However we thought it was necessary in this case, since the complexity of boss encounters just doesn’t always leave pets with a way to avoid the AE damage. We think PvP AE damage often is avoidable (dude isn’t literally Bladestorming the entire arena at once), but we still understand that this is a PvP nerf to pets and we may buff them in other ways to compensate.

From: Mania's Arcania

(Technically a number of the mana changes were mentioned in the patch notes in general, but we didn’t get details on which hunter spells would be affected.)

Beast Mastery

• Mend Pet, Scare Beast had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

Marksmanship

• Silencing Shot additional tooltip text – Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 sec.
• Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Serpent Sting, Volley, Hunter’s Mark had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

Survival

• Explosive Trap now burns all enemies for [ Ranged AP + 900 ] additional Fire damage over 20 sec. (Up from 900)
• Point of No Escape now increases the critical strike chance of all of your attacks on targets affected by your Frost Trap, Freezing Trap and Freezing Arrow. (Old – “Increases the critical strike chance of all attacks”)
• Misdirection redesigned – The current party or raid member targeted will received the threat caused by your next damaging attack and all actions taken for 4 sec afterwards.
• Lock and Load now has a 22 sec cooldown. (Down from 30 sec)
• Wyvern Sting, Mongoose Bite, Raptor Strike, Counterattack, Freezing Trap, Explosive Shot had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

Personally, my legion of low level hunters is pleased that Mend Pet is getting cheaper.

From: Mania's Arcania