Pets Scaling in Wrath: Hit percentage is in, resilience and xp bonuses are out
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Aug 7th 2008 at 6:00PM
A while back, class designer Koraa told Warlocks that their pets would be getting their master's hit percentage. Today, he confirmed the same for Hunter pets. This should definitely be a godsend for raid level DPSers of both classes. Conventional wisdom is that reaching your personal hit cap is pretty much the single best way to increase your personal DPS total, and being able to do the same for pets should only provide a noticable increase to DPS, as well as keep any special buffs or debuffs said pets apply coming in with a minimum of interruption.
Unfortunately, something else Koraa said on the same post is a little less exciting -- resilience is nowhere on the table for being shared. They believe that they currently have the right amount of survivability for pets. In a group situation, you or your group should be healing the pet, and in Arena play, any time spent killing the pet provides a benefit in the form "crowd control" while the DPS is focus firing your pet.
Unfortunately, as the player of a level 70 Hunter and Warlock who have both seen extensive 2v2 Arena play, I'm not sure it's that simple.
To start with, the idea of focus firing the pet being considered crowd control is a bit ludicrous. They die very quickly -- less than 5 seconds, easily -- to someone in any decent level of DPS gear, say Season 3 level or so. Then in the meantime, the Hunter or Warlock is deprived of a large part of their DPS, utility, and survivability unless they take the time out to "crowd control" themselves by trying to revive their pet.
In addition, If my 2v2 partner is being stunlocked by a Rogue, I don't consider the Rogue crowd controlled. I consider him killing my partner and my chances at winning the match. It's essentially the same thing when he kills my pet. That pet is my partner in a very real way. He's an integral part of my class. Consider if Counterspell could remove a spell from a caster's lineup for the duration of the Arena battle and you might start to get a feel for what killing my pet does for me in the Arenas.
Beta tester Bibdy put forth another good analogy in that vein. Consider your pet to be a player with 0 resilience and 7000 hp. Back around Arena Season 1, before resilience ruled and Arena gear got incredibly overpowered, pets still had enough toughness to weather your basic PvP players' attacks.
However, as the seasons wore on, gear got more and more powerful to deal with higher resilience -- bu the resilience of pets stayed 0, and their armor and HP has barely budged upward. Consider a pet like a fresh level 70 PvP newbie who hasn't even purchased the reputation PvP gear, and you may have an idea of how weak pets really are.
I will continue to disagree with Koraa. A pet truly is a large part of the utility for both the Warlock and Hunter classes when properly used. To say that a pet that can currently be killed in a few seconds by anyone in good DPS gear is survivable enough seems to fly in the face of all conventional wisdom.
If not more resilience or other forms of scaling survivability, we at least need to some way to quickly recall or dismiss our pets to save them from a focus fire (Simply setting them passive doesn't really work, especially if they're already snared, Mend Pet just doesn't heal quickly enough, and Health Funnel harms the Walock too much). If not, we will continue to be irreparably hobbled in Arenas.
Oh, and speaking of pet woes, Mania's also reporting that Pets won't benefit from the Recruit-a-Friend XP bonuses, which means you'll either have to tame a new pet every few levels or level with an underpowered pet and spend a lot of extra time grinding green mobs to level your pet once your leveling's done.
Here's hoping Blizzard shows some pets some love somewhere on these issues. Despite some of the great changes for pets in this expansions, there's still some key weaknesses and inconveniences that really do need addressing.
Filed under: Hunter, Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Expansions, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Eric Aug 7th 2008 6:17PM
Beast Master hunters, Beast. Come on Blizz not that hard to figure out that hunters need their pets, we cant sacrifice them for some buff. This is why my hunter raids, totally useless for PvP. My 6k hp pet has a higher chance to survive in any raid for a lot longer than in any arena.
Teryl Aug 7th 2008 6:19PM
I think you nailed it on the head. You did forget to mention AoE damage, which is the primary cause of my pet dying. They need to last longer. There's simply too much we hunters lose when they die to not be able to take the time out to rez them, which kills our dps.
Seth Aug 7th 2008 6:52PM
AoE damage seems to have been addressed. Under Tenacity pet lines: Avoidance: Reduces the damage your pet takes from aoe attacks by 75%.
Brian Aug 7th 2008 6:25PM
I think that this (like many beta news items) is very hard to judge. Right now the beta version of my hunter is in mostly T5 equivalent gear and my pet feels extremely OP. I play a BM hunter with a bear. I've specced the bear into extra armour and stamina and the spiked collar as well as dash, and there's not much out there that gives him cause for concern. I was fighting a cat and taking a bit of time killing it, then I noticed it was level 76 where I'm level 70. The cat lost and I didn't even break a sweat.
I think that as far as arenas are concerned hunters won't have a lot to worry about, it will be a lot harder to kill my pet now for instance and he does a fair whack of my damage. Also regarding the resistances; we were told that we'd get the low levels for free. Last time I checked my pet had level 4 in all resistances which is a heck of a lot of damage mitigation. Also all pets have dash so they aren't going to be slow getting to their target.
Hunters have gotten a hell of a lot of attention this expansion, given that we have masters call bestial wrath, intimidate, conc. shot, scatter shot etc I dont think we have that much to worry about. I see you also don't mention that tranq shot will remove frenzy/enrage effects and remove buffs giving us another annoying shot to add to our arsenal.
You say decent PvP gear is season 3, by the time someone had the smarts to get that gear I'd say they were already pretty good at PvP and would know how to get around other players no matter what Blizzard did for hunters. Level 80 arenas are a long way off, I think we should wait before worrying about it.
beatphreek Aug 7th 2008 6:52PM
The internet is no place for level-headedness and critical thinking skills. You sir, have commited a grave sin against all that is sacred about the internet and fan-site blogs. Please consider the order in the world that you may disrupt the next time you think before you write, and please remember to fly off the handle and keep your reactions in the "knee jerk" family.
(don't tell anyone else, but I agree with you)
THE SKY IS FALLING!!!
nikoli Aug 7th 2008 6:43PM
I'm afraid that I have to side with blizzard on that one. The pet hit rating boost is nice, because you could never hit cap your pets previously. However, I think the lack of resilience on pets is a balance for the extra utility they provide in arena matches, when you can "fire and forget" a pet on a healer and keep them from drinking and causing damage/constant dispelling(fel puppy). The only defense (and discouragement from just blindly sending in the pet first) is that they have no resilience, and thus you have to think about how/when you use them. I also agree that pets are a form of crowd control, because you spend precious seconds (or longer depending on the attentiveness of the opposing healer) attacking the pet instead of the hunter/lock, in which time they are free to nuke you. If pets were able to get anywhere near the resilience of the parent warlock/hunter, it would severely imbalance pee vee pee.
infusion Aug 7th 2008 7:27PM
this just proves most of blizz gms dont have a clue how some aspects of theyre own game work.
i guess they dont just know how weak pets are.
Heilig Aug 7th 2008 8:59PM
Oh they know. And they like it that way. They all play Warriors.
Seth Aug 7th 2008 6:49PM
I somewhat disagree. Pets with support and a good healer are near impossible to kill. Some times you sit there chasing one around a pillar for minutes before finally downing it. Then running back up the bridge to find the lock/hunter already resummoned one and sat down to drink.
That being said, sure some classes can competitively down a pet very quickly. Take a Ret vs a fel hunter for example.
With the upcoming "talents for pets" changes, choose the defensive pet line (such as a turtle) and it will be near impossible to kill if the abilities are used correctly.
Blood of the Rhino +20% healing, Last Stand +30% max health, and Shell Shield -50% dam for 12s come to mind which would greatly thwart an enemies chance at a quick kill.
Nick S Aug 7th 2008 7:01PM
healers don't get to do much when i can intercept-swing-MS-WW-swing a pet from full to zero. right now, pets are very easy to kill.
the beta talents show positive steps towards making them harder to kill, but crit vulnerability is still going to be an issue.
Tarbh Aug 7th 2008 6:59PM
On the PvE side of survivability, I hope that they design boss fights that are a lot pet friendlier, there about a half dozen fights I can think off that leave pet classes gimped because a large percent of their dps is disabled. Where alot of the time, the only means of survival is to have healer treat them like a full raid member when it comes to heals. (Which will/should never happen.)
STereo Aug 7th 2008 9:07PM
It's generally agreed on the hunter forums now that developers are approaching hunters as a class they have to play against rather than a class they have to play. This failure to add resilience is just plain silly, and WotLk is looking like another colossal failure as far as the hunter class.
Ahoni Aug 7th 2008 10:15PM
Another colossal failure for hunters? You mean like the last expansion, where they went straight to the top of the DPS meters for quite a while. Yeah, that was just horrible. Man, hope they don't do that again.
Kaz Aug 7th 2008 9:17PM
"To start with, the idea of focus firing the pet being considered crowd control is a bit ludicrous. They die very quickly -- less than 5 seconds, easily -- to someone in any decent level of DPS gear, say Season 3 level or so."
I think either your hunter (or warlock) needs to learn how to control their pet, or you need a better teammate (healer).
I play arena heavily and a well controlled pet is almost unkillable. In fact - killing the pet is often what determines a win or loose game at the higher levels. And even then its problematical. Most warlocks are SL/SL and can instant cast a new pet if they make a mistake with their first, and a hunters revive pet takes about 4-5 seconds to cast. Since damage doesn;t stop it, you need interupt it in some way, but then a good hunter will have already CC'ed you and gotten out of line of sight. Your only hope is to get the pet before it gets healed back up and a good healer won't allow that.
Adding anymore survivability (aka resilence) to a pet would just make pet classes required for arena as you essentially have an extra teammate and thus will never happen - as Blizzard has rightly decided.
One the other side of the coin, in PvE - I agree that survivability is important - especially for a hunter, but as another respondant mentioned, they appear to be addressing this in the pet talents in WOTLK.
Texicles Aug 8th 2008 2:52AM
I suppose that this frees up the Animal Handler talent for BM, or at a minimum, requires it to do something useful.
If I'm hit capped, why do I want my pet to be 4% over cap?
bendak Aug 8th 2008 7:20AM
I'd say the current survivability is fine for MM or SV pets, the real problem is that BM pets do not gain any more survivability. They can take maybe 1 more hit so they die in 5 seconds instead of 4 seconds like a MM pet. If you're not going to give them resilience, I think a BM hunter pets HP should mirror the hunters. A 10% bonus just isn't enough.
Sinthar Aug 8th 2008 7:54AM
This is the old story tbh - there are ALWAYS gonna be classes that can kill other classes. Having Res on a pet would make it truely impossible for some classes to get anywhere near hunters, while other classes will still be able to take them. Why on earth do pets need more buffing? FFS the pet alone can take out some classes - such as mages, and are mostly immune to the AOE they have to use to try to combat it, because the spell pushback means they will never get a spell off otherwise. Giving them res, so effectively mostly uncritable, and 75% resistance to AOE - even if they 'only' have 7k health (only 2k less than my mage) means that i dont EVER stand a chance vs the PET - let alone if the hunter actually shoots at me too.
So lets put this another way, the pet provides you with EXTRA dps, you have a 7k health shield, and interrupts spell casting, the pet itself when viewed this way IS a form of offensive CC vs casters. This is on top of the various shots like scatter shot, aimed etc etc. So tbh i think the lack of res is the only possible 'balancing' feature.
Oh and i do know hunters that perform VERY well indeed without their pets, and yes that will depend on spec (obv BM would not be effective). The 'hit' scaling, obviously for PVE, is a good idea, Res is not imo.
Abe Aug 8th 2008 8:24AM
Adding survivability to a pet is a bit ridiculous. Even if a pet dies in about five seconds, that is time for a mage to get off about two spells, time for an MS Warrior to get a swing off, a whirlwind, and an MS. So, you lose an ability in arena when you lose your pet. You gain five seconds against the other team. While you may feel gimp in 2v2, 2v2 isn't the only PvP out there...
Tychon Aug 8th 2008 1:15PM
In regaurds to pet resil.
Playing priest hunter pretty extensively in 2s. A lot of what we do depends on if the pet lives or dies. At the same time there are talents in place to get your pet back quickly. It should be something that is killed fairly easy, If it wasn't hunter druid 2s would only have to roll there face across there keyboard to be successful. Having an extra target to worry about is difficult but the biggest thing is, unfortunately you have to pay attention to the burst that is being put on the pet, and use CC to get them from killing it and lots of heals. In my opinion it should be like that... its hard to keep that pet up sometimes... if it was easy arena wouldn't be as much fun or as satisfying.
ssh83 Aug 26th 2008 10:43AM
If hunter pets get resil, they won't even need heal. If any pet need resil it's the mages' water elementals. Those are impossible to heal.