Why Fix Caster Pets

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Voltar
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Why Fix Caster Pets

Unread post by Voltar »

I don't understand why Blizz went to the trouble of fixing the 'caster pet' problem from Vanilla just to make those pets slightly gimped in Classic.
It seems almost worse this way. It was clear before that you shouldn't be using the caster pets.
Now it is viable to use the 'caster pets' but you are still penalized for it with slightly lower melee damage. Why? Why go to the trouble to not give them the default family dps?
Has anyone seen a comment from the devs on this?
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Wain
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Re: Why Fix Caster Pets

Unread post by Wain »

I’m really unsure. I wouldn’t agree that it’s worse, because those pets are at least now viable for standard use, if you’re not raiding. But I wonder if they intended to fix them properly but some bug is still gimping them just slightly, or if this was a deliberate “compromise”. I’m tempted to ask, but also scared to in case they’re reverted to completely terrible.
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Voltar
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Re: Why Fix Caster Pets

Unread post by Voltar »

Yes, you are definitely right about them being viable. I've thought the red skinned Azzere has been one of the coolest looking pets since Vanilla. Now I've leveled Azzere from 21 to 41 with Humar. I'd read the discussion here about caster pets but I had to find out for myself. At 41, after hitting 41 with Azzere, I tamed a Vale Screecher for Lightening Breath 4 and compared the two and could see the 1+ dps difference in the melee stats. It just bugged me knowing the difference was there. So I went to WC, trained a blue skinned Deviate Dreadfang and have leveled him from 21 to 27 so far on my 41 orc hunter. I'm definitely liking the blue skinned wind serpent but I'm mad at Blizz for not making all pets in a family equal and mad at myself for being bothered by the small difference, lol.

The fact is, while dual leveling Humar and Azzere together (I level 'faster' leveling 2 pets because I play more) I used the Recount addon and I usually couldn't see any real difference between Azzere and my cat. The only place I see a damage penalty is on the pet character screen. So for leveling, the caster pets are great if you can manage to not let the small 'penalty' bother you.

It's hard to believe the DPS difference isn't intentional. I always thought the original difference was probably due to a plan before vanilla launch to have actual caster pets that would use magic damage with intellect instead of focus. I figured they decided against that before launch and someone forgot to go through the code to remove the ones that had already been created and there was to much going on after launch to spend the time correcting it. But this time they were looking specifically at these pets and it's doubtful the difference was accidental.

I'm not a theorycrafter so I'm not sure how to accurately calculate magic damage. But I have wondered if there is any possibility that the original caster pets were given an individual 'spell modifier' (as a 'nod' to the vanilla pets) when redone for classic that compensates the melee loss with additional magic damage. If anyone is good at that and has looked at the numbers I'd love to hear one way or the other.
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