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 the 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.

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.

Feb. 24, 2009

Article 17

So, I managed to get onto the Test server without getting the ERROR #132 (0×85100084) Fatal Exception for 10 minutes, long enough to get out of Daleran and look at the new pet abilities (the extra ones that taking the 51 Beast Mastery can now net you).

All 3 types of pets (Ferocity, Tenacity, Cunning) get:

Wild Hunt: Increases the contribution your pets get from your Stamina by 20%/40% and attack power by 20%/40%. (2 points. Pre-requisite for Ferocity is Call of the Wild, pre-requisite for Tenacity is Roar of Sacrifice, pre-requisite for Cunning is Wolverine Bite).

Ferocity pets get Shark Attack: Your pet does an additional 4%/8% damage with all attacks. (2 points, pre-requisite Rabid).

Tenacity pets get Silverback: Your pet’s Growl also heals it for 1%/2% of its total health. (2 points, pre-requisite Taunt).

Cunning pets get Grace of the Mantis: Reduces the chance your pet will be critically hit by melee attacks by 2%/4%. (2 points – and note, this is, yes, the same ability that the Tenacity pets get, although for Cunning its obviously higher in the tree. Pre-requisite Bullheaded).

Call Stabled Pet, while available to purchase, has been acknowledged as bugged and not working at the moment. It costs 28g50s, sans any reputation discount (24g at exalted).

Feb. 24, 2009

Build a Lumber Mill and possibly a Workshop

There’s been some confusion regarding Trap Launcher (since it appears NYI on the Test Server) and what seems to be its replacement, the previously mysterious Black Arrow. Luckily, Ghostcrawler clarified.

I know this is a little confusing, so I will try and clear it up.

1) Trap Launcher is a very cool idea and something we would love to do. However, it requires a lot of tech and may end up beyond the scope of what we can do for patch 3.1. We don’t want to give hunters a buggy, half-baked ability. If you are going on the PTR to test Ulduar or just mess around with numbers, I wouldn’t worry about this ability, at least for now.

2) Black Arrow is on the trap cooldown timer, and we assume largely for PvE. Black Arrow is your ability to proc things normally caused by traps (like LnL) in PvE situations when using a trap is a pain or the target is immune.

3) Think of Lock and Load triggering from traps (esp. Frost Trap) as a PvP mechanic. Think of Lock and Load triggering from periodic ticks (esp. Black Arrow) as a PvE mechanic. In PvE, you may want to use traps on trash or group pulls however. In PvP, nothing is stopping you from using Black Arrow if it works for you.

So yes, it looks like they don’t really want trap dancing done (in a PVE environment), especially considering the change to Frost Trap that was done in conjunction.

You won’t be trapping raid bosses to get LnL procs, even if they are immune to the effects. You probably won’t be trap dancing much at all in PvE. You should really use Black Arrow for that purpose.

If the proc rate ends up being too low, that is certainly something we are willing to adjust.

Feb. 23, 2009

It doesn't feel natural. There's that noise again

PTR is available for download. These aren’t exactly the notes I was expecting but here you go. There’s a few general things snuck at the bottom, after the Hunter specific notes.

• Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, Avenging Wrath and Hysteria damage bonuses no longer stack together.
• Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.
• Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range. It can now be used in melee range.
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
• Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
• Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
• Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.
• Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
• Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
• New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%, and gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.
• Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.
• Disengage cooldown increased to 30 secs.
• Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
• Stampede (Rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.
• Players with pets who attempt to use the Obedience Crystals in Naxxramas will have their pets dismissed automatically so they may possess an Understudy.
• Many items with 110 attack power now correctly grant 110 ranged attack power.
• All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
• Players at maximum level will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent spec feature.
• A new Gear Manager feature has been added. Players will now be able to save gear sets for easy gear switching.
• Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location.

As always, the caveat that all this is subject to change. MMO-Champion has updated their talent calculator. As you can see, Black Arrow is now a Survival ability (fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [10% of RAP + 2765] Shadow damage over 15 seconds). It replaces Trap Mastery which has been moved down to where Improved Wing Clip used to be. And no, these aren’t all the changes, at least, so we’re told:

The class changes are not nearly complete. We want to get the test realms out to begin testing the new content, but that means launching without all planned class changes ready. We’re making numerous new class changes each day and will continue to add them in future PTR builds.

[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 57 58 59 [Next]