Auto-Cast Cower

[Acherontia]

...Anyone else looking forward to this?

Having to click it is such a pain, and I've noticed that on the PTR my pets actually use it when taking damage! Yey! One less thing to have to watch in PvP for one thing.

One small step for pets, and one major leap for Blizzard User Interfacing!

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

YES. Oh my god I love this change.

*gives candy*

[Lohuran]

I believe it's been auto-cast for a while, but the pet used only used it when it was at low health and close to death already, so you never really noticed it. Or I could be crazy. One of the two.

Now it seems to cast the second your pet takes a hit. Much better!

[Altheaus]

yep it has been auto-cast for quite some time.. but I allways had it macroed to my mend pet so that it was off cooldown when I needed it

[Acherontia]

You can SET it to auto-cast, but it doesn't actually cast itself. On the PTR it's doing so consistently, at last!

[Sarayana]

Oh. I always have it off because of the bugs we experiences a while back - just thought it was easier that way...

So with the new change in beta, I want to leave autocast on, and it becomes a smart cast? Or should I toggle it on as I toggle growl off when I enter a dungeon? Would it mess with my pet's aggro when I am soloing?

[Acherontia]

Cower hasn't affected aggro in a very long time! What it does now is reduce the pet's damage taken. If it's toggled on on Live, it doesn't actually do anything--you need to manually click it anyway. However, on the PTR (and I assume Cata by extention!), the pet uses it intelligently. Meaning, it uses it if it starts to take heavy damage. The drawback is that the pet moves slower with it active, so if that bothers you (in PvP for example), you may still want to leave autocast off.

[Sarayana]

Doh! Goes to show how much I've paid attention to that ability... >.> So... as of Tuesday (fingers crossed!!!) I should leave it on autocast? Hah, I should probably write this down somewhere...

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

Wait. When did Cower change? I didn't notice :/

[Pent]

Don't you want your pet to get hit?

The only time I can see this doing what it should is when it gets below a % of health that you can set, and that way it might lose some of the hate so you can mend your pet.... but normally I want my pet to get hit so I do not.

[Makoes]

Cower? Never use it. If I wanted a cowering pet, I'd tame a gnome.
My Pets dont cower EVER!

[Saturo]

Cower? Never use it. If I wanted a cowering pet, I'd tame a gnome.
My Pets dont cower EVER!

*Sigh*

[Kalliope]

Cower? Never use it. If I wanted a cowering pet, I'd tame a gnome.
My Pets dont cower EVER!

*Sigh*

Shoot first, sigh later, Sat.

My pets cower because it's a good survival cd.

[Protego]

I noticed this change, before this topic, on the public test realms. I love the auto-cast change/fix.

[Acherontia]

Don't you want your pet to get hit?

The only time I can see this doing what it should is when it gets below a % of health that you can set, and that way it might lose some of the hate so you can mend your pet.... but normally I want my pet to get hit so I do not.

As said above, Cower hasn't affected pet threat for months now

[Mindsprocket]

Nice! I like to keep my pet from getting low health in the first place. So having it autocast Cower from the get-go is great.

And for all those that missed it, ever since patch 3.3.0 - which came out last year - Cower has been doing this:

Cower [7 ranks]
Melee Range
Instant 45 sec cooldown
Your pet cowers, reducing damage taken by 40% for 6 sec. While cowering, your pet's movement speed is reduced by 50%.

Come on, people! You're on Petopia! Use it!

[Acherontia]

RICHARD

[FuzzyDolly]

I've never used cower. I turn it off the moment I tame a new pet and take it off the pet bar, never to be seen again.

[Foru21dr]

I love cower as I like to do the battlegrounds. It definitely helps my pet survive. The Autocast was terrible though. I had heard the same thing where it would only cast after a certain %of health. I tested it letting my pet die a slow death several times to see if it would actually cast, and it did not. So I wrote a macro and added it to my shot rotation. It goes off everytime it becomes available from it's Cooldown. Glad to hear that the autocast now works.

[Worba]

I love cower as I like to do the battlegrounds. It definitely helps my pet survive. The Autocast was terrible though. I had heard the same thing where it would only cast after a certain %of health. I tested it letting my pet die a slow death several times to see if it would actually cast, and it did not. So I wrote a macro and added it to my shot rotation. It goes off everytime it becomes available from it's Cooldown. Glad to hear that the autocast now works.

In my experience the thing seemed a little too quick to go off, so I used the following macros:

Hunter's Mark + petautocastoff Cower

Misdirection + petautocaston Cower

But this is still kind of kludgy and I'll definitely be psyched to save the macro space.