Pet Usage Flowchart and Ability Spreadsheet

[Sarayana]

I'm not sure why but I found it kind of lame that Blizz just re badged Prowl as spirit walk just because it's a spirit beast. It's the same thing.

I love it! The new name and description suits the family much more than having Prowl. Who cares that it's the same thing, we get to have prowling spirit bears without giving them identity crises.

[Gimlion]

Where Spirit Beasts may come in - IF you happen to be in a 25-player serious guild - is in the last category of "prettiest pet". We don't know whether getting one of the new AOE abilities will be worth the tradeoff in lost pet DPS against a boss. Probably you wouldn't want to use a cunning pet or a tenacity pet when fighting a boss.

Not true. Last I heard, Cunning pets were competitive if not surpassing Ferocity pets, pending on fights/buffs.

[Malazee]

There should technically be a category for snares as well. >_< While technically a snare, the DK chains of ice ability initially slows a target by 95% and it was invaluable on certain fights, like Saurfang or Lich King....which means other snares should be listed too. :/

Funny story: I started to add snares to a new column on the chart and eventually realized that most of the abilities I put up were actually just slows... so I ask my guildmates if there was any significant difference between a snare and a slow and you would NOT believe the epic nerdfight that ensued in my guild chat. "Well snares immobilize you, and slows just slow you down." "No, roots immobilize you, snares just immobilize you initially and then slow you." "Well then what do you call Chains of Ice? It's just a super-effective slow, then." "No, Chains of Ice is definitely a snare!" And it went on and on and on... I have to say, it was one crazy-epic fight.

Anyway... mostly because I'm still confused about what's a snare and what's not, but also because I don't think there are any hunter pets with snares, I think I'll leave it off the chart for now. ><

Will add Solar Beam and Frost Nova to the chart later though.

[Kalliope]

LOL! Oh my. x_x

Snares and slows are the same thing, actually. There are a few snares that have an immobilize (improved hamstring, for example), and snares like chains of ice that might as well be an immobilization ability, for as effective as they are.

As for pet snares....well....in Cata, crocs (ankle crack) and warpies (time warp) will have them.

[Grigg]

Awesome work.

Now if there was some accomplished addon author aout there that could put something together that would check our stables when we join a full raid group (or once our existing raid group becomes full) and then automatically recomment the appropriate pet to bring along based on the current raid composition, that would be awesome! ...Or I could just print out the flow chart and pin it to my wall... eh

[zedxrgal]

I love it! The new name and description suits the family much more than having Prowl. Who cares that it's the same thing, we get to have prowling spirit bears without giving them identity crises.

An excellent point.

[Anyia]

Now if there was some accomplished addon author aout there that could put something together that would check our stables when we join a full raid group (or once our existing raid group becomes full) and then automatically recomment the appropriate pet to bring along based on the current raid composition, that would be awesome!

I already had a look at that actually. Currently I have a few challenges to overcome:

1) How to dig up everyone's talent specs. There are a couple of libraries around that look promising in making it easy to get at this info without having to do all the heavy work yourself, so should be doable after some more research.

2) I haven't thought of a nice and easy way of presenting the current raid composition in terms of who's bringing what, and who could bring what. The flow chart here is awesome, but that doesn't translate well to a UI. I'm still thinking of how to best present this without having to take up the full screen.

3) The available documentation for the pet/stable programming functions is still out of date. From playing with things I've worked out how to get the information on the pets you have in your five active slots, but I've yet to work out how to query the actual stable these days.

4) It seems that this would really make sense as a full raid composition tool, not just a hunter pet recommender, so I need to consider what the user requirements might be from that perspective too (and whether it might make more sense to simply wait for someone else to write this addon).

Oh, and then there's of course the "must find time to actually write it" challenge...
For now, I've got this thread bookmarked for quick reference!

[GormanGhaste]

The available documentation for the pet/stable programming functions is still out of date. From playing with things I've worked out how to get the information on the pets you have in your five active slots, but I've yet to work out how to query the actual stable these days.

Just having an add-on that would give a list of pet families and their corresponding raid buff/debuffs that are currently missing from the raid would be sufficient. I know what pets I have

[Rhyela]

You know, one thing I just noticed is that while nice, the Exotic skills aren't so OP that if you decide to not run with an exotic, you won't be gimped. It's like, the skills are nice, but not necessary. I like that.

For example, sure, I'd run with Apollyon mostly when BM, but if I decided to run with say.....a cat instead, it's not like the -5% healing debuff would be sorely missed in a raid, 5-man, or even soloing. I'm glad they're doing it that way, because I feared that BM would be limited to bringing only exotics with that extra skill, else risk being called a noob.

[Siliverin]

wow thats really nice im gonna make sure to keep this in mind.

[Victorelle]

loving how orginized this is ^^

[Nimizar]

Not true. Last I heard, Cunning pets were competitive if not surpassing Ferocity pets, pending on fights/buffs.

Indeed. I believe the changes to the way pet focus using abilities work, as well as the Wild Hunt change, makes Owl's Focus far more powerful than it used to be.

As far as the raw scaling numbers go, Mania posted the scaling differences back in August (mastery isn't listed, but we can assume pets won't benefit directly from that - instead, they will gain extra damage through the BM mastery and not benefit for MM and SV). The stat scaling doesn't tell the whole story though, since Cunning gets Owl's Focus, Wolverine Bite, Feeding Frenzy and Roar of Recovery, while Ferocity gets Shark Attack, Spider's Bite, Rabid and Call of the Wild.

So, bringing a buff through a tenacity pet will very likely be a DPS hit, but Cunning and Ferocity should be quite competitive with each other.

[The Insect Man]

See Frostheim's post here on WHU for more on scaling:

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/201 ... cataclysm/

Looks as though at the moment AP scales the same for all families, and ferocity's advantage is in its talents alone, specifically the +crit one.

[Rhyela]

See Frostheim's post here on WHU for more on scaling:

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/201 ... cataclysm/

Looks as though at the moment AP scales the same for all families, and ferocity's advantage is in its talents alone, specifically the +crit one.

Even Tenacity pets still receive the same AP, interesting. Obviously Ferocity is the ultimate "best" for personal DPS, but if you feel the need to bring Cunning or even Tenacity pets for a particular buff or debuff, you won't be gimping the raid.

That's good, because it seems like every pet I'm playing with in beta right now is Cunning. I just noticed today that the only Ferocity pets in my stables are the ones I copied over with.

[Protego]

Hmmm weird that Cunning pets are doing "more" DpS than Ferocity pets. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 0&pageNo=1 "Pet scaling is getting a massive overhaul at the moment. For starters, we still intend for pets to scale with all of the master's stats for things like hit, haste and crit. For the big stats, our current plan is something like this:
Ferocity (damage) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 50% armor
Tenacity (tanking) -- 35% of master's AP, 50% health, 70% armor
Cunning (utility) -- 40% of master's AP, 40% health, 60% armor"

[Kalliope]

It's owl's focus that's making the difference, regardless of the base numbers.

[Anyia]

As already noted, the 50/40/35% AP pet scaling hasn't gone in yet, and it's the same value across all trees at the moment. This would be skewing the numbers in Cunning's favor. It remains to be seen whether things stay that way, or whether "the plan" is followed before Cata goes live.

[Nimizar]

Hmmm weird that Cunning pets are doing "more" DpS than Ferocity pets.

Given the results of Frostheim's testing, it sounds like Blizz may have changed their mind about the stat scaling figures they want to use.

Nominal scaling (as of August 13):
Ferocity (damage) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 50% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit
Tenacity (tanking) -- 35% of master's AP, 50% health, 70% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit
Cunning (utility) -- 40% of master's AP, 40% health, 60% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit

Measured scaling (as of September 28):
Ferocity (damage) -- 42.5% of master's AP, 67% health, 50% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit
Cunning (utility) -- 42.5% of master's AP, 72.5% health, 60% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit
Tenacity (tanking) -- 42.5% of master's AP, 78% health, 70% armor, 100% hit/haste/crit

That makes it a straight up contest between the DPS talents in Cunning and Ferocity when it comes to overall pet DPS:

Cunning:
Owl's Focus (15% chance per Basic Attack to make next Basic Attack free)
Wolverine Bite (free instant pet attack every 10 seconds)
Feeding Frenzy (16% increased pet damage when target below 35%)
Roar of Recovery (additional 30 focus over 9 seconds once every 3 minutes)

Ferocity:
Shark Attack (6% increased pet damage)
Spider's Bite (9% increased pet crit)
Rabid (pet self-buff providing up to 25% additional AP for 20 seconds out of every 45)
Call of the Wild (additional 10% AP for hunter and pet for 20 seconds once every 5 minutes).

[Sarayana]

No that just plain makes no sense. If the talents are what make the difference for dps (and they're in cunning's favour at the moment) and cunning ALSO get more survivability from getting more armor and health, then why would anyone use ferocity? I sincerely doubt Blizz will leave it as is.

[GormanGhaste]

Yes, I agree with Sarayana. And they are obviously not done with pets yet, so we just need to wait and see.