hunter-pets
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Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. We all know by now that talents are going to work a lot differently in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, but what we don't know yet is exactly what's going to happen with our pet talent trees. Not only that, but Blizzard itself isn't entirely sure what it's going to do about them, other than not wanting to leave them the way they are now. We do know that we will get to choose what family our pets belong to. If you tame a cat, you can choose to make it a tenacity, cunning, or ferocity pet. But pet talents are a bit up in the air. There are currently two possibilities for pet talents. The first is to remove pet talents entirely, making your pet's special abilities and spec -- tenacity, ferocity, or cunning -- the only unique features of the pet. Thus, every ferocity cat is the same as every other ferocity cat. This option is dull and dreary with nothing interesting or engaging about it. Call it the Shaman Option, in other words, or the Blah Option. The other possibility is to revamp the pet talent system so that it more closely resembles the new character talent system in MoP. In this system, we turn some pet talents into spec abilities, and then give an abbreviated tree of meaningful choices. I call this the Awesome Option -- or in other words, the Hunter Option. You're going to love it. Here's how the Awesome Option could work.
Scattered Shots: Improving the hunter pet trees
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Several weeks back, WoW Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler made a passing comment about the input of the community in continuing to refine the talent trees, and since then, we've run with it. We've talked about improving the BM tree, improving the MM tree, and improving the SV tree. We've been swarmed with fantastic suggestions in the comments, including lots of things I didn't think of but made me say, "Oh, yeah -- that's exactly what the tree needs!" Now if we were rogues, or mages, or some other support class, we'd be sitting on the porch with our lemonade patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. But as hunters, it's not enough to just examine the hunter trees -- we have our pet trees to look at, as well. Join me after the cut as we dig into the three hunter pet talent trees and discuss how they could be refined, added to, and improved to complete the hunter experience.
Patch 4.2: Skarr and Karkin are hunters' newest pet taming challenges
We've already previewed the first 8 new, rare hunter pet taming challenges that are coming in patch 4.2, but Blizzard was not yet done adding to the list! Two new hunter taming challenges have appeared on the PTR -- Skarr and Karkin. Skarr is an obsidian black cat with glowing eyes and what appears to be a molten temper. He lives on some floating rocks beyond Fireplume Peak in the Molten Front and requires some tricky jumping to get in range to tame. Since flying mounts are not usable in the Molten Front, you had better put those Super Mario platforming skills to work. Skarr's attack start off weak but ramps up over time, so you had better get moving.
Patch 4.1 PTR: New hydra pet available for hunters
Hunters have campaigned and begged for it, and now it appears to be on the horizon. According to a post on MMO-Champion, the patch 4.1 PTR contains a couple of spells that should be of interest to hunters. First is a tamed pet passive with a hydra icon, and the second is the ability Bellowing Roar, which includes the following: "The hydra lets out a bellowing roar, increasing the critical strike chance of all party and raid members by 5%." So get ready, hunters -- that elusive hydra pet you've been craving will (potentially) be yours soon, in patch 4.1. I'm going to name mine George. Editor's Note: Please keep in mind that this is datamined information from very early in the patch 4.1 cycle. That does not necessarily mean that the hydra will be a tamed pet in patch 4.1, only that Blizzard was exploring the possibility of allowing it. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
Scattered Shots: Hunter changes for 4.0.3a
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. It's been coming for a long, long time: Deathwing has finally shattered old Azeroth. It was kind of a jerk move on Deathwing's part, and frankly, he's just asking to be punched in the face. Along with the visual changes and host of sparkly new pets available to tame, hunters are also seeing all those beta changes finally brought over to live with patch 4.0.3a. If my poor, overworked email box is any indication, a lot of hunters out there have not been following the constant beta changes and are confused about many of the changes -- and while our abilities are basically the same, there have been a lot of meaningful changes to the way our DPS works. Join me after the cut for a rundown of the hunters view of patch 4.0.3a, including pet changes, ability changes, and just what Blizzard means by our shots being normalized.
Cataclysm Beta: Chromaggus tameable by hunters
Here's some pretty awesome news from the maven of all things hunter pet-related, Mania: Chromaggus is tameable on the beta servers. Chromaggus is a boss in Blackwing Lair known for keeping healers on their toes with a variety of debilitating debuffs, for making magic users curse his name thanks to a shifting resistance shield, and for dropping the coolest-looking shoulder armor in the entire game. You need be a beastmastery hunter to tame him, as he is a member of the exotic Core Hound family. Not only is he a great pet for a nostalgic, old-world raider, he also has a very nice-looking, unique skin, and he'll be in high demand for certain raiding groups, as Core Hounds now provide Ancestral Hysteria, a Heroism replacement. For my own part, if he remains tameable when Cataclysm goes live, I know I'll eventually be pulling my old hunter out of the mothballs and calling in a few favors. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Officers' Quarters: Patch 4.0.1 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Most major game patches have a significant impact on guild officers, and in the past I've tried to give an officers' perspective on how the changes to the game will affect the decisions and plans that we make moving forward. Unlike previous patch-perspective columns, however, a reader actually requested this one. Hey Scott, I'm a guild leader for a rather small 10-man raiding guild, and I got to thinking today about the upcoming pre-Cata patch that's going to change everything. See, Wrath was the first expansion of WoW that I, and many members of my guild, were ever really active in (a lot of us swapped over from another MMO, together), so I was wondering -- once the pre-Cata patch hits, should we continue raiding? From the grumblings I've been hearing on the PTR, numbers are all out of whack, and with some of the class changes coming, I was wondering if it'd even be a good idea to keep raiding once 4.0.1 hits. I've never experienced the "conversion" from one expansion to another on the raiding front, so I really have no idea what to expect as far as people's attitudes (not just guildies, but possible PUGs, too). In the other games I'd played, an expansion just meant new zones, storyline, etc., but WoW's expansion features a level cap increase, and in this case, a major overhaul in how we play.
Scattered Shots: New hunter pet skins in Cataclysm beta
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. While the pet design pass has not yet been done for hunters in the beta, we do have a handful of new pets in the game, as well as new skins for old pet families. Also, our fox pet is no longer in the wolf family -- it's in the new fox family now! Monkeys also get their own family. This video will give you a look at a handful of the more impressive new pet skins in the beta. If you want a complete list of changes, Mania is keeping up to date with every pet change over at Petopia. Be sure to watch to the end of the video -- the most impressive pet ever is saved for last! [Update: in the last beta build (after this video was made) that last pet was indeed fixed.] Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. See the Scattered Shots Resource Guide for a full listing of vital and entertaining hunter guides, including how to improve your heroic DPS, understand the impact of skill vs. gear, and getting started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101.
Scattered Shots: The right pet for the right situation
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. When you get down to the philosophical basics, every class has the same goal in a group or raid: do as much as you can to help clear the instance and kill the bosses. This of course is where the hunter obsession with DPS comes from. Most of the time the best thing we can do to help our group down bosses is to become a radiant beacon of death, to undergo an apotheosis into a DPS god and accept the adoration of the lesser DPS classes. But there are times when it helps our group or raid more to sacrifice some of our personal DPS for the good of the group. Whether it's kiting blood beasts or blistering zombies or shooting down orbs, we are always happy and willing to take the hit for the good of the team. We're just noble that way. And our noble pets can help out the team too, boosting the team's DPS as well as our own. Join me after the cut as we take a look when a different pet choice might be best thing for the team as a whole, even if it means a DPS loss for us personally.
Ghostcrawler says no buff to Beast Mastery hunter pet damage
Beast Mastery is the least viable raid spec for hunters, falling about 20% - 30% behind the top DPS specs. BM hunters have long been calling for some kind of a buff, and a favorite preference is a buff to their pets. Ghostcrawler responded today saying that while they want to buff BM, they do not want to buff BM pets. He highlighted some of the problems with balancing the BM spec -- including that it's easy to play. "We don't want to buff the pet damage for BM any more for a couple of reasons. One is that it puts too much dependence on the pet... Secondly, the pet doesn't require that much babysitting. Few players are clicking their pet abilities on and off. As such, it just acts like a dot with cool art. When we talk about the risk of BM being too easy to play, we don't want to over-reward players for just doing Steady and having the pet attack." Blizzard has acknowledged before that BM isn't a raid viable spec (though we've seen that in the right circumstances they can pull their weight, though still be far behind) and they've stated that they would like to get to a point where all three hunter specs can raid. Ghostcrawler gave us one idea at what a BM buff could look like, saying, "The damage would have to be more of the slowly stacking / sustained variety..." and also gave us a peek into where they think pet damage should be -- at about 30% of hunter damage in high end gear. However, today's comments make it sound like they aren't likely to just let BM do MM-level damage with their current play style. If BM wants more damage, they'll probably have to work harder for it.
The Art of War(craft): Introductory guide to fighting hunters
Zach once sat down with Thrall and Varian Wrynn and had a laugh over some glasses of cold, green tea. Two weeks ago we kicked off a series of introductory guides in PvP intended to give players a general idea of what to expect when facing certain classes. Understanding the behavior, capabilities, and limitations of a class puts players off to a great start in PvP, and after discussing the druid and the death knight in the first two installments, we now turn our attention to the hunter. Hunters have long been a force to reckon with in the Battlegrounds, an environment where they thrive. Also, as strong as they were back in vanilla WoW, they're even more powerful in Wrath of the Lich King, gaining new tricks, losing old limitations (e.g., traps can be deployed in combat), and having access to diversity of pets that make PvP encounters more interesting than ever. Hunters are the game's premier pet class. More than even warlocks, hunters rely on their pet to accomplish their goals, with the best hunters mastering the art of micromanaging their pets and its varied abilities. Recognizing a hunter's spec is only aspect of identifying a hunter's strength and weaknesses. Part of learning how to deal with hunters involves recognizing a hunter's pet type who now even have their own talent trees. Let's take a closer look at this master of beasts after the jump.
The Daily Quest: European style
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. This week's EU forum watch brings you the best of the official forums, European style. OutDPS has a cure for the lagging hunter pet, increasing their DPS by a bit. Shields Up really likes the two piece tier 10 bonus on the resto shaman set. Killing 'em slowly looks at his elemental shaman twink gear. The German WoW fansite buffed.de is collecting photos of the players and their avatars for a large gallery. Go check it out and contribute if you want! Cynwise's Battelgrounds takes a look at heirloom gear for the lowbie battleground player. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Ghostcrawler adds to Hunter Q&A
As promised, there's a new version of the Hunter class Q&A up on the official forums. Very little has changed from the previous version, actually, but they did add the following question: Q: Do we have plans to increase the number of stable slots available to hunters? A:Obviously we increased it a lot in Wrath of the Lich King. We want to try and keep the pet as some kind of decision - they aren't supposed to be like mounts or titles where you just collect as many as you want. We expanded the size so that players could have say a Tenacity pet for soloing and a Ferocity pet for raiding, but we don't want every hunter to have every family available here. Now one potential problem are the Spirit Beasts, which are collected by hunters and not trivial to replace. We have also discussed expanding the Spirit Beast concept to have rare skins of other pet families (that otherwise don't convey a combat bonus). If we do that, we'd probably have to expand the stable slots. We've also considered a model where the hunter doesn't even need a stable and can work more like a warlock where they can just summon their pets whenever they want - with the remote stable ability from the dual-spec feature, we're pretty close to that already. If we went this route then maybe the stable could just become pet storage in the same way your bank has all those Invader's Scourgestones and Zul'Gurub bijous that you don't use often but can't bear to part with. That's all we can see that's changed with the Q&A.
Mining the armory for Hunter pet statistics
With Hunter pet information recently added to the armory, Data Miner Zardoz has wasted no time getting his hands on the raw Hunter pet data and breaking it down. The data is only for level 80 Hunters, and only 10,000 of those at that, but it still gives a very interesting snapshot of what's going with the Hunter's best friends. It might not be too big a surprise that Cats are far and away the most popular pet at a count of around 9500, nearly doubling again the amount of Wolves, who come in just under 5000, which are in turn used in numbers over twice as much as the next popular choice, Gorillas, who are just above 2800 in number. Now mind you, this information does take into account pets that are in the stables as well, and there's certainly the possibility that a lot of them have just stayed in the stables for a long time.
Worgen Garwal hotfixed, now untamable
Our tip lines have been buzzing recently with news about a tameable Worgen. If you haven't been paying attention, in short, Garwal (a quest NPC that starts as a wolf, but turns into a Worgen) could be tamed as a Worgen if you get your timing right, and then you'd have a very unusual pet following you around. Note that I say "could be tamed," not "can": apparently Blizzard has hotfixed the NPC so that he can no longer be tamed, stating that they never intended players to have a humanoid pet. Players who have already tamed Garwal will find that they have no talents or abilities for him, nor can they feed or buff him rendering him effectively useless except as a vanity pet. I would expect him to be removed even as a vanity pet soon.
Hunters discover "new" Worgen pet
As the holiday weekend rolled around, we started to get a number of tips that Hunters were successfully training themselves a...Worgen pet? Worgen?!? How was this level of cool allowed into the game without anyone knowing about it until now? Well, it turns out that the Worgen pet is in fact a very clever use of game mechanics somewhat akin to those used by Hunters in order to tame the (now sadly vanished) Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Garwal, a warg NPC in northern Howling Fjord who can turn into a Worgen as part of a questline (the link is the Horde version, but it's the same for both Horde and Alliance) can actually be tamed and kept in Worgen form if the timing is right. Mania's Arcania has a look at the process used here, which involves a little math, a little guesswork, and the strategic use of Wyvern Sting.
Patch 3.2 brings some Hunter love
I discussed last week about how Hunter trapping and crowd control had gone the way of the dodo. And now as reported earlier today, we have much to celebrate with the release of the official Patch 3.2 PTR Notes. Ghostcrawler and the development team are really showing us Hunters some much needed luvin. Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16. I was really wondering what we were going to do now that mounts were available at 20. It seems we are in good hands. We only have 16 painful levels of slow run until we can get Aspect of the Cheetah and start zipping around. Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect. New graphics are always cool.
Scattered Shots: Where to find Hunter information
WoW.com decided it was time to bring back some Hunter luvin'. It was that or they just needed a new Dwarf to pick on. So now you got me Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from The Hunting Lodge. Make sure to drop by here every Thursday as we explore what it takes to play a Hunter. Have you ever caught yourself wondering, "Hmm... where I should go for my next upgrade?" Or how about "I wonder what pet I should get for raiding?" Another favorite of mine is "What spec should I use for raiding?" (This is always a trap. Even if you give a solid spec, someone will always find a something wrong with it.) For these types of questions, I feel it's always better to follow the maxim "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." What's my point? Well, it seems that many Hunters don't know that there is a wealth of information out there. I would bet that there is probably a resource that can help answer all of your questions. You just need to know where to look. For solid information, we all know about Elitist Jerks. But sometimes finding you can't help but say to yourself, "There has to be an easier way." Believe it or not, there is. There are many other resources and sites out there.
Pets to scale from resilience and other stats
I don't PvP, so I'm going off the reports of others here, but apparently Warlock and Hunter pets are often proving ineffective and short-lived in PvP. Until recently, this was often the case in PvE as well, but pets have much more avoidance now in a PvE environment. It looks like an improvement will be coming in PvP as well: Ghostcrawler said last night that they "think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen." In fact, he says they have a new pet scaling system, and "assuming it works" (which seems like something they ought to be able to make work), they should be able to make the pet scale off of "all relevant stats" of the master. Players have been asking for more pet scaling for a long time, especially resilience. Obviously how big of a change it will be depends on what "to some extent" ends up meaning, but it can only help pet classes.
Scattered Shots: Pets for raiding
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skill, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be discussing which Ferocity pets perform the best in a raid environment. It's no secret (or shouldn't be!) that Ferocity pets are where it's at for raiding pets. They provide the most overall damage of the three pet types, and for Hunters there's no bigger priority in a raid environment than delivering dps like it's Dominos. There are a wide variety of Ferocity pets to choose from, though, and each have their own unique abilities. Which is the best type to give you the biggest boost to your damage? Let's do a quick comparison and find out.
