Mania’s Arcania

Good thing I am still checking the Test Realm Forum, eh? Hortus just posted that:

We have decided to put the 2.4.2 PTR up for some additional testing. The realms should once again be available for play.

[edit] Blizzard changed their mind. [/edit]

According to Hortus on the Test Realm Forum:

We will be taking the 2.4.2 PTR down shortly and ending the 2.4.2 PTR phase.

Presumably this means that Patch 2.4.2 will be hitting the live realms tomorrow or next Tuesday.

An Alliance hunter from Llane, Juvial of the guild Kobayashi Maru, sent me this great screenshot of himself with his entire family of pets. (Click the pic for a full-sized view.)

Shadow the ghost wolf is Juvial’s normal hunter pet, the baby gorilla Bananas is a non-combat pet, and the red hyena Tracking Hound is a temporary combat pet summoned by the Dog Whistle from Scarlet Monastery.

I think this is the shortest request for pet-naming help I’ve ever gotten. Frootloop writes:

Here is my character with my beloved cat. I want a silly name. One that makes people laugh :D My character’s name is Frootloop …

And really, that tells you everything you need to know.

The PTR was updated sometime today with a minor new build (8278) for Patch 2.4.2. The patch notes in the download have also changed slightly, although the patch notes on the web site have not caught up yet as I post this. Of most interest to me is the minor modification to the Growl note, which now reads:

The pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power and now scales with the hunter’s Attack Power.. [sic]

Unfortunately, the note is still not correct: a quick test on the PTR confirmed that Growl is still scaling directly with the pet’s attack power.

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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Final Name: HalfVisible

Halfdragon, a young Blood Elf hunter from Ysondre, sent in this request:

So I recently rerolled a BE hunter. I did the taming quest, got a dragonhawk and hated it. After realising it had caster stats (thanks to the handy Petopia website) I read the Choosing Your First Pet: Eversong Woods guide. I got an Elder Springpaw and have leveled it all the way to 26 or so.

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Hortus is looking for our help on the Public Test Realm!

We would like to request some focused testing on a bug that we believe to be fixed in 2.4.2

Using a macro with several instant cast spells can break targeting and the Escape key.

This is most often reported as happening with hunter kill command macros.

Please test your macros and report here if you encounter any of these UI lock-ups.

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