Pet Scaling and Stats, Part 0: My Lovely Assistant

Pets, much like life, do not come with an instruction manual. Well... they do, but it's from Vanilla WoW, everything's way out of date, and it's pretty nebulous anyway.

Those numbers from the PTR really got me thinking though - just how much of a buff is Wild Hunt? A 40% increase in Stamina and AP contributions sounds good... and speccing into it sure looks good (even if a certain crab has alluded to problems with their original PTR implementation)... but what are those points really adding up to? The first step here is knowing what the current numbers are. The most solid numbers I had for pet Stamina and AP were ~45% and ~22% of hunter values respectively, gleaned from Mania's pet scaling page over at Petopia, and a brief, semi-accurate note over at WoWWiki. So, I sat down with pen and pad, and came up with some numbers. I'll be covering pet scaling in two parts, the first dealing with current hunter/pet scaling along with the talents, set bonuses, and abilities that affect it. In part two, I'll cover the 3.1 abilities and how they'll impact pet scaling, as well as gems and consumables aimed at making the most out of scaling.

Imeut will be my lovely assistant, and we'll look at both Survival and Beastmastery talent specializations in each part.

Changes to Shark Attack

The newly added 6th-tier pet talent Shark Attack saw a reasonable update with this version of the PTR (9626). The original version granted 4/8% increased damage to all attacks, while the new version is only 3/6%. Wild Hunt remains unchanged, still granting 20%/40% increased Stamina and Attack Power contributions to the pet.

Given the astounding numbers from the earlier version, this isn't a terribly surprising change. Shark Attack is still an awesome buff. With 3.0.9, Kindred Spirits was returned to 20% damage increase at max rank, and Serpsent's Swiftness 20% pet attack speed. In BM-specific changes, this left only the nerf to Unleashed Fury, from 20% pet damage to 15% lingering from the painful changes of 3.0.8. Shark Attack, even with this latest change, more than makes up the difference and still leaves a point to be spent in Wild Hunt.

Of course, these are PTR abilities, and both may change dramatically before 3.1 drops.

New Pet Talents, BM unnerfed. (Updated)

I love BM. This is not at all evident from my earlier entries, but Beastmastery is definitely my spec of choice. I even have The Laser Kitty.

But, it was nerfed horribly.

Then, it was unnerfed acceptably.

Now, it's being buffed... massively.

Ferocity Pets now have two new talents, Shark Attack and Wild Hunt:

Wild Hunt
Melee Range

Increases the contribution your pets get from your Stamina by 20/40% and attack power by 20/40%

Shark Attack
Melee Range

Your pet does an additional 4%/8% damage with all attacks.

Each has two ranks, and is in a new 6th tier of pet talents.

What difference do they make? Let's compare.
BEFORE:

Attack Power: 1602 Damage per Second: 396.4

AFTER:

Attack Power: 2445 Damage per Second: 592.7

That's an 843-point jump in AP, and nearly two hundred more DPS on white damage. I'll be looking more carefully into how these stack up in the near future, but it looks like BM is back in business!

Recount isn't working correctly on the PTR at the moment, so I'm at a loss as to how these numbers pan out, but I can't imagine it's anything other than beautiful.

Update: According to this post over on the WoW forums, the original implementation of Wild Hunt was done incorrectly, and granted too much extra AP. So, these numbers aren't accurate at this point in time. But... I'm leaving the photos up, because PTR bugs are always fun to look back on.

Survival Build: Black Arrow + Resourcefulness

On the current version of the PTR (9614), the benefit from Resourcefulness does, in fact, impact the cooldown of Black Arrow, lowering it to 24 seconds. This allows for 62.5% uptime on the LnL proc DOT (rather than 50% without Resourcefulness).

This pushes me to favor a Survival build along the lines of this one. Along with the points in Resourcefulness, this build drops three points into the revised Hunting Party, which now grants 3% agility in addition to its current mana-battery effects. The bonus from Hunting Party multiplies your total agility *after* the Lightning Reflexes bonus (15%), which is lovely.

So, the formula looks like

Agi * 1.15 * 1.03 (as opposed to Agi * 1.18)

If you start out with 990 agility, Lightning Reflexes brings you up to 1138, and Hunting Party takes you to 1172. Nice.

Not-so-nice things about this build: No Improved Aspect of the Hawk, only one point in Go for the Throat. There are a lot more crits to be found in a Survival build, but not 50% more, so Imeut (the black not-Pitch lion) is likely to be pretty focus-starved. /grumble

Also. Sea Kodo! <3

Gummy Tigers?

o.o

Am I supposed to want to lick the new mobs?

Misswhatnow?

I wanted to get the posts about Black Arrow and the revised Lock and Load up right away (before I lost my notes, forgot what I wanted to say, or, you know, procrastinated to the end of my days...), but I'd like to take a moment to explain the blog, its name, and my little obsession with the hunter class.

Level 70 came for me around the end of Burning Crusade. I ran a few Heroics, but never really got into raiding. I enjoyed the game, but was the definition of casual. I remember the very first heroic I ran - Underbog. I was horribly undergeared and absolutely terrified. I pulled agg and caused at least one wipe, but chain-trapped like a pro, and did reasonable DPS. I had this really confusing spell, though. Misdirection. It sounded neat, but really tough to make work in the hectic environment of an instance.

So, I ignored the it for a while.

Eventually, though, I came upon a macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection
/Assist focus

Until that point, I didn't like instances much. Messy affairs, those dungeons. It's hard enough to find a tank who'll mark targets even now (or, especially now), and a hunter who doesn't bother with MD is all too likely to pull threat from a tank who doesn't outgear her (especially if she doesn't Feign Death... /cough).

The Misdirection macro made all the difference. With trepidation I stepped into Mechanar that day, armed with a freshly bound SHIFT+1, and I stepped out of that instance brimming with a new-found love for my class. Hunters, I realized, are utility incarnate, divine DPS, and they're fun!

I had no idea that such a simple change could have that sort of impact.

Since then, I've taken it upon myself to learn everything I can about the class, its mechanics, and how it fits into the ever-changing World of Warcraft. I hope what I've learned (and continue to learn!) can be of use to others, and so, with inspiration from certain bloggers, I hereby claim this tiny piece of virtualestate in the name of The Hunter Class! /cheer

Black Arrow (and its Sordid History)

PTRs: Present Testing Realms or Punishment and Torture Realms? Insofar as Black Arrow is concerned, the PTRs are most definitely the former this time around.

Meet Black Arrow:

5 - 35 yd range
30 sec cooldown

Black Arrow
6% of base mana
Instant cast

Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.

It's another instant shot, it deals nasty, nasty Shadow damage over time, and it increases our damage against the target by a burly 6% (you know, between the DOTs from Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Claw, and Black Arrow, I'm beginning to have flashbacks to playing a Warlock... /shudder). No word yet on the initial damage of this shot, if there is any.

Black Arrow currently shares its cooldown with traps - this seems to be an effort to limit the number of LnL procs you can expect per minute, as well as discourage trap-dancing in PvE. My hope on this one is that, since it shares the 30 second trap cooldown, it will also benefit from talents, like Resourcefulness, that lower the trap cooldown. Will we see raiding hunters in four pieces of PvP gear? No. Will they be talented down to a 24 second BA cooldown? I sure hope so.

With a 30 second cooldown, the BA damage bonus works out to a neat and clean 3%, while a 24 second cooldown would push it up to a 3.72% overall buff (on a per-minute basis). Not too shabby.

That said, we've seen Black Arrow before. In fact, it's been in the game files since beta, in one form or another. Will rise from the dead talents graveyard this time around? We shall see.

Update: Black arrow does share the Resourcefulness cooldown reduction

Lock and Load, Old and New

On the 3.1 PTR, we're seeing a hefty overhaul for Lock and Load.

The current version runs as follows:

30 sec cooldown

Lock and Load
Instant cast

You have a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 10% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. 30 second cooldown.

The PTR version, on the other hand, looks like this:

Lock and Load

You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow, or Frost Trap, and a 10% 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.

So, what's the difference?
- Fire-based traps and Snake Trap no longer trigger LnL
- Immolation Trap and Black Arrow DOTs replace Serpent Sting as the 10% trigger.
- 30 second CD on LnL procs isn't mentioned in the PTR version, but I'll assume that's still in there, and just left off of the tooltip (Lock and Load, Chapter Two: Cooldowns...)

"ZOMG! NARFZ!"
Well, maybe. Maybe not. From a PvP perspective, this will tone down burst damage fairly substantially and pretty clearly counts as a nerf,* but from the PvE side, things might not be so gloomy.

Old
100% of the time, you have a 10% chance to proc LnL (which triggers an internal 30 second CD), at a cost of 27% of base mana per minute (assuming you've glyphed your Serpent Sting).

New
50% or 62% of the time, you have a 10% chance to proc LnL (which probably triggers and internal 30 second CD), at a cost of 12% or 15% of base mana per minute (no glyph needed).

50% or 62%
The Survival Build-o-the-Month does not currently include Resourcefulness, because trap cooldowns aren't terribly important to PvE. Given that Black Arrow is reported to share the trap cooldown, however, it's probable that Resourcefulness will effect Black Arrow's cooldown as well, making it a necessary part of a reasonable PvE Survival build. This would suck out the few points that might have been spent on Improved Aspect of the Hawk, and make all that haste on our T7 tastier.

I'll put up an update on that this evening.

Even so, if Black Arrow's cooldown can be shortened, 62% uptime is a lot less than 100%, so where's the not-ZOMGNARFZ? In Black Arrow itself.

Sources:
MMO-Champion and their shiny, new Hunter Talent Calculator

* A needed one, too. I killed a pally the other day with the current SV spec. Way, way OP.