*grumble* Helya as BM? More like Helno

[Boven]

My raid group has been poking at Trial of Valor this week, since we can clear EM heroic in one night and aren't going to try mythic for a while. So far, I'm not a huge fan of it. Odyn is just annoying (and I'm not really keen on the NPC in general) but not too tough. Guarm isn't bad, but the smallish area you fight him in is a bit of a pain. Helya though...

We've not taken her down yet, though we came very close last night. The fight, itself, is interesting and a bit of a challenge. I do think that it's a bit harsher than it should be for the gear levels one expects to see in Normal. My biggest complaint, however, is that it's a really big PITA to do as BM. Pet pathing is just plain awful. I've had Hati and my pet refuse to come up the stairs onto the platforms, meaning I had to stop DPS, dismiss 'em, then summon 'em again. I've also had them get stuck on terrain when the tanks didn't aim Helya's breath well and the adds spawned on walls. My pets got up there just fine, but then they go into Kitten Up A Tree mode and refuse to come down. When they do manage to keep from getting stuck or deciding there's no path available to go up the three steps to get to a mob, they often seem to move danged slow.

As BM, I don't expect to top the DPS meter, but dang, that fight has me spending almost as much time dismissing and re-summoning pets as I spend doing actual DPS. The MM hunter in the raid (who doesn't use Lone Wolf) isn't as heavily impacted when her pet gets stuck so she doesn't really need to worry about interrupting her DPS to get Fluffy up the stairs or off the wall.

[Sukurachi]

sound to me like it's more of a "hell-no"!

(•_•) / ( •_•)>⌐■-■ / (⌐■_■)


ok, I will let myself out now...

*slithers away*

[Kalliope]

Oh dear. :/ I already angst at chess in Kara for pet pathing problems. Just as well I couldn't raid this week, sigh.

[Rawr]

Set ur pets to Passive then use /patattack macro to send them somewhere, like on Helya or on a tentacle near her or on one of the big adds. It's what I do, also regularly heal ur pets on that fight as the poison will kill them both. We one shot her and papa fire-beard on Wednesday, 3 shot dog-faces. Hope this helps. good luck

[Wain]

Oh no

The pet pathing issue was asked multiple times in the Q&A submissions and it appears that they ignored it. It appears they ignored everything to do with Hunters.

If they expect us to have faith I'd point to the fact that Madness of Deathwing had similar issues, making BM (and Hunters in general) almost useless for it. And not only was that not addressed in the life of the expansion, it was still a bug in Warlords and probably still is. So it's hard to have faith when there are concrete examples of them ignoring bugs that pretty much brick a class or spec for a raid tier and hoping that it'll be forgotten by the next expansion.

[Wain]

I haven't found any post where they've addressed pet pathing bugs. If there is one please let me know

I've posted to Warcraft Devs on Twitter, asking if they can please give us an update:
https://twitter.com/WayneGWoods/status/ ... 6144453632

Feel free to chime in or post your own questions. This is a really serious bug and it seems that it's being put in the too-hard basket.

[Rawr]

"Jeremy Feasel ‏@Muffinus 3m3 minutes ago
.@WayneGWoods @WarcraftDevs QA recently investigated these and other hunter pet bugs you all have been reporting and we now have bugs in!"

[Wain]

There's an update already, by Mr Feasel

https://twitter.com/Muffinus/status/797198525310173184

He says that it's been noticed and that there are "bugs in" for this and other Hunter bugs we've been reporting. I'm unsure if he meant "bug fixes in", which would be awesome, or if he meant official bug reports submitted, which is at least still something.

[peanutbuttercup]

Ugh, haven't made it to Helya yet but not looking forward to watching my pet stand around in confusion while I wonder my dps is in the dumpster. I don't even have a second spec as an option. Hope they can come up with some temporary fixes at least, if they can't outright fix it.

[Rikaku]

There's an update already, by Mr Feasel

https://twitter.com/Muffinus/status/797198525310173184

He says that it's been noticed and that there are "bugs in" for this and other Hunter bugs we've been reporting. I'm unsure if he meant "bug fixes in", which would be awesome, or if he meant official bug reports submitted, which is at least still something.

He clarified a bit later, he meant that the bug reports are officially "in and have been read" so that they can be worked on for upcoming fixes.

[Wain]

Thanks. Cross fingers it does get fixed. A bug report is promising but can still mean the coders will decide it's too hard and focus on other things.

[Xella]

I was definitely noticing that my pets were not where I expected them to be during our attempts on heroic Helya this week. Of course, I'd also brought my grey goat and my Hati was transmogged into a blue talbuk so actually FINDING them on the fly was very difficult, since the whole room is that colour (and I didn't have any fluorescent pets on me by the time I realized it was a problem).

Hopefully now that it's on the radar it'll be fixed relatively soon. Also, those stairs... not even human intelligence can get up them sometimes, grumble mumble.

[Sukurachi]

Well, I hope they fix the pet pathing issues, because they don't only affect people who raid or do dungeons.
Today I died multiple times because my pets refused to follow me, or to attack when told to do so.
It seems there was a blade of grass blocking their path.

[Wain]

My one concern is that it's not like this hasn't been reported before. In fact many times since Alpha! So they've made the decision to ignore or delay fixing this bug for a very long time and could well just do it again. The only difference is that hopefully Jeremy's clout makes them pay more attention to it this time

[Boven]

Set ur pets to Passive then use /patattack macro to send them somewhere, like on Helya or on a tentacle near her or on one of the big adds. It's what I do, also regularly heal ur pets on that fight as the poison will kill them both. We one shot her and papa fire-beard on Wednesday, 3 shot dog-faces. Hope this helps. good luck

I did put 'em on passive for a couple of the attempts. Unfortunately, they'd still derp out on me. Standing on a platform and seeing GIR and Hati chillin down below in the waves while I keep telling 'em to attack a tentacle or add is darned frustrating. I wonder if they're doing it on purpose just to get a raise or something.

Even sadder is when a mis-aimed breath resulted in a blob spawning up on top of one of the pillars up on a platform. The pets ran up there just fine, but then wouldn't come down.

[Bendak]

I think Blizzard just needs to take a more aggressive approach with this, and do something that covers any potential pathing issue. If the pet is trying to reach a target but can't, it should just teleport to the target immediately as long as it's in range (25 yards for Kill Command). Another option is just let them attack from range (I know it will look stupid swiping at air) only when in PvE instances IF they can't find a valid path.

When they try to fix them on a case by case basis they never fix them all, and it just leaves the door open to more problems in the future. I just wish they'd fix it once and for all. Pet AI and pathing issues hasn't really improved in 12 years.

In the meantime, you can try spamming this macro whenever your pet is stuck:

/petattack
/petpassive
/petassist
/petfollow
/petpassive
/petassist

It only works in combat, but it'll usually teleport the pet to your side, which is quicker than dismissing. Still doesn't help those situations where the pet just refuses to attack though.

[Boven]

I'll have to give that macro a try next week. I didn't run into any big issues last night with Helya, but that's most likely because I managed to die halfway through the fight.

[Xella]

Another fantastic Helya pet "feature:" my pets were wasting their dash and blink strikes to try to get out to Helya... in phase two. This mostly only tended to happen when the tentacles I'd had them focus pre-add spawns died as I was, say, moving from one platform to the other to try and prevent healers from getting gripped to the Grimelord, but it's so frustrating that even wasting the gold on the tome of clear mind to swap talents doesn't do anything because the talent has an icd that gets wasted on stupid garbage or my pet uses both BS and dash at once instead of alternating them like a sensible person... er, pet.

Not that it matters because Hati is constantly running back to my side and doesn't use/have blink strikes anyway but man. I'm really disliking BM more and more the longer this expansion goes on, and the fact that there isn't a viable second spec* as a pure DPS class is making the whole thing hurt even more.

(* "viable" in this case being purely subjective and not used in the traditional "how does Blizzard balance specs" sense; MM is obviously viable from a "will people take it to raids" perspective, but I can't stand playing it, so it isn't personally viable. SV both isn't fun to play and won't be taken to raids, at least with my guild's roster since we're already so desperately overfull on melee, so it doesn't tick either viability box.)

[Kalliope]

I didn't have any trouble with my pets in LFR, at least. Even the slimes that were up on the sides we had no trouble with. There's even a convenient ledge for pets to dps Helya from!

So either these problems aren't on LFR or they were fixed. It's not a fluke either, since I ran twice.

[Banard]

.