Pet Review – Scorpids (almost)
My Scorpid is 4k exp from 70, and my wife is working overnight tonight, so I expect to be done tomorrow. So far I’m loving it. Scorpid poison seems pretty cool. Even without claw it was generating a surprising amount of agro/damage. The biggest problem is when an application of poison misses. Man it sux to see those floating yellow numbers go down to rank one again. It actually seems to happen quite often.
It also occurs to me that the higher the application the more threat it will generate for the same amount of focus. With no +spell damage and constant 4s refresh, it would be generating 110 threat/damage for only 30 focus. Provided you’re claw is already capped (like me) that’s a great use of focus. I’m going to try it out on some elites tonight and see if it can hold agro. There are a few that basically require me to stop DPS while healing or I’ll pull agro, but then the fight takes even longer until finally I’m OOM with a dead pet and FD on cooldown.
So far, I’m impressed.
Exalted and Pet Review – Crocs
I almost abandon my croc too early. Twice. I finished my testing on Friday and was getting ready to dismiss before I realized something. Since he hit loyalty 2 before 70, I had trained Asthmatic in Cobra Reflexes early and not taken a SS of his DPS without it. So off to the pet trainer to unlearn skills and take some screen shots for posterity. Mouse over AP for DPS, train CR, mouse over AP again, train bite, train growl 8. Wait. Growl 8?
Dagnabbit. I had done all my level 70 testing with growl 7, because I had forgotten to teach him 8 when he dinged. Grumble grumble.
So back we went on saturday rather than starting a new pet.
/Tap /Tap … Is this thing on?
I encourage you to let Blizzard know how you feel about how they’re communicating with the hunter community. It’s not the place to complain about the changes themselves, but for how they communicate those changes. Think back upon Ghost Stalkers, Spirit changes, Charge nerfs, buffs to AotV, and the current threat issues and let them know in a constructive manner, what they’re doing right and wrong.
It doesn’t need to be as long as this, actually it probably shouldn’t be this long at all, but a quick note to let them know you’re not happy from enough of us may be what they need to hear. Just keep it polite. Heck, copy and paste this in an email if you really want to.
Sent to: WoWcmfeedback@blizzard.com
Subject: Pet threat changes and CMs
Reformat
I’ve changed the way the Pet Review is formatted and given each family their own page as you can see to the right. The main page was already starting to get really long and I wasn’t quite halfway through. This allows you to directly link to a page, and me to make changes to a family without worrying about screwing the whole list up. Eventually, I will be making the main page into several ranked lists including base DPS, Survivability (health+armor), solo, instance/raiding, BGs, and arenas. I have a bunch more ideas for helping choose pets, but those will have to wait for now.
Pet Review – Sporebat
I have added sporebats to the pet review. As you could probably tell from my previous post, I’m now working on crocolisks. Taming Sporewing was the reason I started this review to begin with. I wanted to know, how bad was a ‘bad pet.’ Turns out, it’s pretty bad. Every try to run underwater?
If you are never in a hurry, never want to just finish a quest, if you always take the backroads instead of the interstate, maybe you wouldn’t get frustrated with this pet.
On the otherhand, if I was given an extra stable slot. I’d grab one immediately.
They’re just so cool looking and peaceful.
Rumor Update
The rumors section has been updated. If you’ve been given any suspect advice and always wondered if it’s true, post in the comments there and I’ll check it out. No question too silly. For instance, I have just finished testing the following (with probably expected results)
- High level crocolisks do not reduce size when tamed: FALSE
- Naming a pet helps it gain loyalty faster: FALSE
- Emoting to your pet (/hug /pat) helps it gain loyalty faster: FALSE
- Feeding your pet to keep it at max happiness (ie: force feeding) helps it gain loyalty faster: FALSE
The 4th was the only one that I figured could possibly be true as I’d heard it forever, but never saw it tested. If you’re interested in what I did to test these, I tamed a croc (obviously), didn’t name it, fed it tons, and added a /hug /pat to my /petattack macro. It still gained it’s loyalty level at ~62K exp as expected. So even if there is still a difference, it’s not enough to matter (1-2 mob kills). Since the croc is level 69, I will continue to test these until loyalty 3, but I’ll now name him to take that component out of the equation. He shall be known as ‘Asthmatic.’
Did I mention I finished sporebats?
Stats Follow-up – HIT
Ghanur said,
Never forget: crit rate is worth zero, if you don’t hit the target ;)
Actually, that’s up for some debate right now. MOST WoW classes operate on a 1-roll system rather than a multi-roll to save on processing time. Here’s the difference. Multi roll rolls to see if you would hit, then it rolls to see if you were dodged, then it rolls to see if you’re parried, then it rolls to see if you got blocked, then it rolls to see if you crit. That’s a lot of random numbers generated and comparisons.
What happens in Warcraft is an attack table is generated by placing categories according to result and filling in what’s left over with hits (I’m going to ignore dodge, parry, etc): Read the rest of this entry »
Some good news
Aspect of the Viper has been buffed. Previously, it generated mana equal to up to 55% of the hunter’s Intellect every five seconds; now, it generates up to 55% of the hunter’s Int plus 35% of his or her level. This means a boost of up to 24.5 mp5 at level 70.
I lost ~30Mp5 with the spirit change. This almost completely makes up for it. It’s too bad that hunter’s below 64(?) will still have to deal with Blizzard’s mistake.
I’m Tired
I spent ~ 15hours driving over Sunday and Monday, and got very little sleep Monday night and last night. Could someone tell me if I’m dreaming?
1) From the 2.4.2 patch notes
BUG (?!?!?!) – The hunter pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.
What the heck. I have definitely been over the growl AP cap of 734 often in reviewing pet families. I have no idea if this means I now have to start over…
S3 weapons will require 1800 personal rating and S4 will require 2050
I was really looking forward to a new bow to replace my noisy gun, and the only thing really open to me was the arena weapons. Even if I wanted a techno-chicken Xbow, I will never see 150 badges. I’ll also never see 1800 arena rating.
Neither of these is really a surprise, but they’re both official now. Depending on how effective the growl change is, it may be time to take a break until 3.0. The only thing I would have left to do is get the SSO cloak.
UPDATE: I’m screwed
Growl was scaling incorrectly before so it’s been changed to scale with the hunter’s AP starting at around 1200 AP. Other pet abilities such as bite, claw, etc will still scale with pet AP.
So at my 1610 AP with test gear, that 400 AP difference does anything other than grant 200 threat, I will have a huge headache. I think I already have one.
Still Alive
This made me feel all warm and fuzzy after a very long weekend of 1000 miles on the road.
…And Znodis, I can always expect some good feedback from you…
Still catching up from taking yesterday off, but I did manage to get my sporebat to Unruly (for all the good having training points does me.)
I feel fantastic! And I’ve never felt as good as how I do right now except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day when I felt that way that I do right now. Right now.
The Mystic Hunter 