March 4, 2009

Conformity is the only freedom

Should pet leveling be a thing of the past?

In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you’d be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you’ve earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

And yes, Piercing Shots is bugged on the PTR at the moment.

It’s a known bug. It should work exactly like Deep Wounds, which is smart enough to average in any new damage applied to the existing dot.

Standard caveat applies that we could run into trouble when trying to do this for some reason.

March 2, 2009

Never guess. Unless you have to

Rejoice Marksmanship hunters. Your mana problems have not gone unnoticed.

Marks running OOM too often we feel is a legitimate problem and something we plan on improving.

And, Wild Hunt, too good to be true? Yep.

Wild Hunt is being changed to 10/20% extra AP from the master. There was a bug where the talent was just applying the hunter’s AP to the pet twice, which is too generous.

If you have 6000 attack power, your pet probably gains 1320 attack power from you. With 2 ranks of this talent, it should gain 1580 attack power instead. Your pet’s attack power will be higher than this by a few hundred from other sources.

Feb. 28, 2009

QC > BF

Additions to the official 3.1 patch notes.

• Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.
• Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet’s abilities based on its specializations.
• Pets now inherit more spell hit from the hunter. Pets with magic attacks should not require a player to stack additional hit compared to pets with physical attacks.
• Viper Sting re-designed: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster’s maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.
• Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
• New Talent: Black Arrow: Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and doing periodic shadow damage for 15 sec. 30 sec. cooldown.
• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
• Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 sec along with its current CC-removal effect.
• Cornered: The crit reduction when this ability is active has been increased.
• Feeding Frenzy increased to 8/16% damage up from 6/12%.
• Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn’t up 100% of the time.
• Gorillas now have a new family ability, Pummel, which works like the warrior ability and has a single rank.
• Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are now also available to Cunning pets.
• New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.
• New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.
• New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.
• Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 min, down from 6 min.
• Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.

Does this mean that steady shot is no longer effected by the haste bonus?

No. We just wanted to remove the quiver without losing its haste bonus. Except for inventory changes, you should not notice a difference.

And about Explosive Shot:

Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high. MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

I’m not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE.

For anyone who thinks pets are receiving more attention than player classes:

I understand the sentiment, but the pet data is very simple to change. With actual classes, you can run into tons of ramifications for changing where a talent is located or what it does. You have to think very carefully about the change, and in some cases making the change itself can be intensive. Classes have lots of spells that affect other spells, etc. There is definitely such a thing as prioritization, but we also try not to let a hundred quick and dirty tasks get bottled up behind the long and hard tasks.

Feb. 25, 2009

We start getting proof and we stop believing

More shake-ups regarding pet talent trees.

The Cunning pet tree has received a slight infusion of Tenacity abilities. Grace of the Mantis has been moved to a 5th tier ability and is now a pre-requisite for Roar of Sacrifice. Wild Hunt remains where it was.

Furious Howl (a bit more detail about it), now reads: Increases melee and ranged attack power by X for the wolf and its master for 20 sec. (20 focus, instant, 40 sec cooldown).

And Savage Rend now reads: Slashes the enemy with the raptor’s talons, for X damage and causing the target to bleed Y every 5 seconds for 15 seconds. Successful critical strikes with this ability temporarily boost the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 sec. (20 focus, instant, 1 minute cooldown).

Shark Attack, in the Ferocity tree, no longer has any pre-requisite, besides spending 15 points in the talent tree. Silverback, in the Tenacity tree, also no longer has any pre-requisite besides spending 15 points.

And how is it that worms can Thunderstomp? They’re worms!

Annelids have feet called setae. I’m not entirely sure what phylum a Jormungar is but they have little bristley bits that are probably similar in morphology. Whew. Dodged that one.

Feb. 25, 2009

SKY IS FALLING. NO WAIT

So before everyone starts FREAKING OUT about Gorillas no longer having Thunderstomp (yes, I know you’re already freaking out – STOP!)

SKY IS FALLING. NO WAIT I DIDN’T SEE ALL THE CHANGES.

Thunderstomp is now a pet talent available to any Tenacity pet. Now your bears, crocs or ESPECIALLY CRABS can join in the AE tanking fun.

Assume the gorilla pet will be about as useful in PvP as the pets with stuns, of which there are several. Most of those have cooldowns in the 60 sec range. Pummel could probably be less than that.

Rabble, rabble, then:

Don’t obsess over the cooldown. I edited my post above that most of the hunter pet stuns are on a 60 sec cooldown. Pummel could probably be a little less than that. If it’s just the name giving you bad dreams of warriors, then we can find something less frightening. :)

I can appreciate humor in this situation. More complaints (who’s really surprised, players complaining about hunters, more at 11: Ocean is wet, sun is hot):

We have changed the gorilla Pummel cooldown to 4 hours. Relax.

It really wasn’t but the thread is funny. You can read it for yourself, if you’re so inclined. But wait, there’s more!

Nice sarcasm, but really, why do YOU think that many of the DPS casters are miles behind in arena representation at the moment? By which I mean Demo/Dest Warlocks, Elemental Shamans, Boomkins, Fire Mages and Shadow Priests.

Well, I don’t think it’s from hunter pets.

If we need to give the gorilla a stun so that it DRs with other stuns, we can do that. It’s just a bit boring because so many pets have that ability.

TBH, I am being a little sarcastic because the real change was giving more tanking pet choices to hunters. The Pummel is just filler to give the gorilladin something. He could even keep Thunderstomp and just have free talent points. The point was just to get Thunderstomp into the tree, along with several other pet talent changes.

I’m also having a little fun because the response was so swift and a tad dramatic, even after I tried to clarify our intent.

Gorillas now have Pummel: Pummel the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec. (20 Focus, melee range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown)

Can we assume that Thunderstomp stats arent changing? Coffecients etc…

Because of the way pet talents work, we had to covert it to a single scaling rank instead of the multiple ranks it had before. The spell will look different, but we did not attempt to rebuild it or purposely nerf it. Let us know how it feels. The pet abilities are notoriously hard to balance because their stats are so dependent on the exact gear of the hunter, which of course varies wildly.

That’s not the only change. Raptors and Wolves (man, poor wolves), had their abilities changed as well.

Raptor: Savage Rend now temporarily boost the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 seconds.
Wolf: Furious Howl now only affects the wolf and its master, duration increased from 10 to 20 seconds.

I think it’s great that all Tenacity pets get Thunderstomp now. I’d been itching for a reason to use a crocolisk and now I have one. The wolf change… well. Long time readers know I’ve had a wolf since pretty much forever and I was always pro on the “pets providing additional buffs” thing, Furious Howl was pretty limited in terms of use before, now even moreso. Sad wolf is sad. WAIT, sad wolf no longer sad!

The original LK idea was to make it a substitute for Battle Shout / Blessing of Might. We took a similar tact with several of the pets being able to bring great buffs if you were missing them.

Unfortuntely, those buffs tend to be exceedingly common and wolves are such an iconic WoW creature that it felt unfortunate for them to be sidelined.

The new ability stacks with those buffs. It only affects the hunter and her wolf. We changed the cooldown and duration because we thought it was more interesting to try and time your cooldowns (like burn Rapid Shot during Howl) rather than just have the bonus up 100% of the time.

Wolves should be good now. We hope.

Her wolf means Fritti’s wolf! Yay! Happy wolf is happy!

Thunderstomp moves into the Tenacity pet talent tree at 3rd tier, replacing Intervene (no it’s not gone, don’t start getting all edgy again). Intervene is moved down to 5th tier, with Last Stand, Taunt and Roar of Sacrifice.

It will take BM to reach the bottom tier, but those are mostly gratutious dps talents. Utility abilities like Intervene are higher, though you may have to pick and choose since your points are limited.

I believe we changed Roar of Sac to only affect the hunter (we feared chains of hunters keeping tanks alive) but we are strongly considering letting Cunning pets have access to the same talent as Tenacity pets.

You should be able to try out all the hunter pet changes on the PTR soon.

PS. Bad Attitude still has too long a cooldown.

[Previous] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 [Next]