Oct. 8, 2009
Alternative to what?
Just so it’s clear, just because Call Stabled Pet had its recast time reduced does not mean it’ll be a viable way to get another pet out in arena (in those times where you could actually get out of combat).
Call Stabled Pet cannot be used in Arenas.
Even though you can on PTR doesn’t mean you will be able to once it migrates to live servers.
Oct. 7, 2009
I haven't cried like that since Titanic!
Lots of updates (go go datamining!)
- Hunter T10 2P Bonus – Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for until cancelled.
- Hunter T10 4P Bonus – Your Shot abilities deal 4% increased damage to targets afflicted with Viper Sting, Serpent Sting, or Wyvern Sting.
PTR additions (and some recap).
- 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.
- Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes.
- 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.
- 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.
- Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd.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%.
- 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.
- Glyph of Immolation Trap: Now properly increases damage by 100%.
- 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.
- Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.
And in case there was some misunderstanding about the AE change…
I think you’re misunderstanding the change (which could certainly be our patch note). What we’re doing is making sure that your AE damage will always go up if you increase gear. If you do a fight where you AE a lot (cough Onyxia) you could very well be at the cap already which makes additional gear feel lame. With this change, the cap itself will scale with your damage.
I guess it’s a moderate nerf to solo farming but AEs still rock for blasting apart raptors in Stranglethorn.
Although this was posted and doesn’t specifically mention Hunters, it doesn’t mean that it won’t apply to us sometime down the line.
We are trying to make haste a slightly more attractive stat for classes that utilize a lot of damage or healing over time spells, specifically Shadow priests, warlocks (though especially Affliction) and Resto druids. We realize other classes use hots and dots too, but I think we can all agree that it’s a bigger problem for the ones I mentioned.
I’m going to share with you an idea that the class and item designers came up with for 3.3. This is a work in progress so it’s possible we’ll end up going a different way after we see how it plays. However I also wanted to explain our logic here in case it wasn’t obvious.
We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster — the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we’re not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case.
Because of this, we are planning on introducing the concept through glyphs. Glyphs represent a great test bed for new ideas because they are easier to change (and easier on the players when we do change them) compared to core spell functions or even talents. If we like the way it feels and players like the way it feels and the glyphs prove popular or fun, then this may be the kind of thing that shifts from glyphs over time — not unlike the way some favorite set bonuses eventually become talents.
For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we’re not sure how we’re going to resolve those yet. For Shadow Word: Pain, we are likely to rename the current glyph to Glyph of Mind Flay, remove the old Glyph of Mind Flay, and increase Mind Flay by 10 yards in the base spell.
Again, these are not promises (nor ponies). For a variety of reasons, you may see these changes on the PTR or you may not. If you do see any or all of the three glyphs implemented however, we wanted you to have some idea of what we were trying to do. Feedback is certainly appreciated, especially if you get to try them out.
We might eventually apply it to more dots and hots if we (and you) think it’s a good change. We feel like we may need a patch or two to make this conclusion though.
We might apply it to more dots and hots originally, especially DP and VT.
It looks like it won’t involve fitting in “extra” ticks, but it’d collapse the time between however many ticks you get from the spell by default so that the duration of your spell is shortened.
Exactly. That is how direct spells work. You have to cast more of them. That means more mana per second but also more damage. This is why we think haste is an interesting stat (for casters anyway) when compared to just straight damage. More haste makes you do different things than more crit or spellpower would.
It might get to be tricky with dots (and hots) because eventually you will lose another GCD. Fortunately Corruption and SW:P can be pushed into the autorefresh category.
You are assuming our goal is to make all stats equally attractive to all characters. It isn’t. We have no problem with say mages valuing haste more than Shadow priests. The problem is just that the difference is too large right now. When an item drops you should have to consider whether it’s a good item for you or not. We like that different specs might approach the same item differently. We like haste in part because it has a lot of depth – did you reduce your cast time by so much that you can squeeze in an additional spell? — that sort of thing.
And did I save the best for last? Yeah, I don’t know either (but it’s looking sweet in comparison to rogue armor).
Oct. 4, 2009
And now for something completely different
Another possible change for pets’ resilience.
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.
Oct. 2, 2009
Dude only has to do it once
With the change to (pet’s) avoidance on PTR, we got this comment from Ghostcrawler.
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.
Does this mean we might see an overall buff or consolidation of skills to the pet talent trees? Probably not.
Before we added the bottom row of pet talents, BM hunters felt that their 51-point talent wasn’t attractive because they couldn’t actually improve pet dps with those points. If we made it too easy to cherry pick the dps talents, I fear we’d be in the same situation again.
You can have 5 different pets now, so even if you find a talent somewhat situational, you can probably find a pet to give it to.
Besides, judging from these responses, most pets already had the points in Avoidance, so you should just see pet dps increase with the current build (assuming we stick with this plan).
I’ve already made the comment in this thread that rather than more DPS talents, now might be a good time to revisit the old Spirit Bond in Avoidance’s place or perhaps put the T5 set bonus there in 5/10/15% increments.
Oct. 1, 2009
3.3.0
Get your motors running, the new 3.3.0 patch notes are available for your viewing pleasure.
- Default Equipment: Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped. All other classes except shamans start with a 2-handed weapon equipped and the required skill already known. Shamans start with a 1-handed weapon and a shield, as they benefit more from the shield than they would from a 2-handed weapon.
- Racial Attribute Bonuses: These bonuses have been recalibrated to even out the amount of starting health on the various races. All races start with a standardized level of stamina, except for orcs, dwarves, and tauren who now start with 1 extra point of stamina. For each class, bonuses and penalties to all attributes have been adjusted so that each race has an equal attribute total.
- 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.
- 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.
- Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.