Mania’s Arcania

Yesterday I posted a long article about distintive design vs. normalization in pet family design, prompting by a recent post on The Mysic Hunter called Inevitable Normalization.

I advocate a middle way between these two extremes in which we distribute existing pet skills among the families in order to alleviate some of our problems. This is really meant as a stop-gap while the slow, slow wheels of design turn — a compromise that improves our lot while we wait for the final answer.

But I stopped before getting into the nitty-gritty details — because honestly that post had already gone on too long. So today, let’s look at the specifics.

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Znodis at the Mystic Hunter has written several very good posts about pet normalization. His latest, Inevitable Normalization, is another well-written and interesting read on the topic. But while I agree with much of what Znodis says, I think he misses the mark in some (admittedly small) ways.

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You may remember from my scattered and annoyed comments that I was not satisfied with the data I was getting last week testing Growl on the Public Test Realm. My method of testing was indeed faulty and was causing me to gather inconsistent and unreliable data, which was driving me nuts.

But now I seem to have settled on a method of Growl testing that works much better, and I wanted to share it with you. (You know, just in case you have a sudden urge to investigate pet threat or something.)

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RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on which resistances are useful for pets, and when.

It used to be that I ignored resistances on my pets entirely. I trained Natural Armor all the way up, plus whatever ranks I could afford of Great Stamina, but I skipped all the resistances. There wasn’t a good reason; that was just how I did things.

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RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on hunter pets for Battlegrounds.

Last time we did an RFC it was about Arena Pets — and largely what I learned is that there are an awful lot of different strategies! But the Arena is merely one type of PvP, and today I’d like to learn more about how pets can be used in Battlegrounds.

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RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on hunter pets for the Arena.

I was extremely impressed with the great information I learned in our last RFC thread, RFC: Raiding Pets, and I’d like to pick your brains again — this time for the Arena. With the advent of the Tournament Test Realm (TTR), there has been a lot of renewed focus on hunters in the Arena, and I freely admit that I know nothing useful about this!

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RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on hunter pets for raiding.

As many of you know, I am a very particular — and in some ways peculiar — sort of player. I am a strict soloer: I don’t group except under extraordinary circumstances, and I don’t raid or PvP. But while I am personally happy with my playstyle, it does unfortunately cut me off from a wide swath of hunter experience. So when a reader writes in to ask me for suggestions about raiding pets, I’m at a loss. I need your help.

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In-between packing for my cross-country move and searching for my husband’s escaped hamster, I spent some time this weekend continuing my research on loyalty. I now feel that I have a basic handle on what it takes for a hunter pet to gain a level of loyalty, although a good bit of verification remains to be done.

Summary:

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Since I now have some data on Scorpid Poison, I decided to continue gathering data on the spell-like pet abilities. Last night I spent some time investigating Fire Breath 2 

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Since I was testing how Scorpid Poison scales with a hunter’s Ranged Attack Power recently, I decided to extend those tests and see what other pet skills scale with RAP. My results were … mixed.

Pet skills that appear to scale with the hunter’s RAP include:

• Fire Breath
• Lightning Breath
• Scorpid Poison

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