Pet Usage Flowchart and Ability Spreadsheet

[Nimizar]

I should have specified that I was talking about my level 37 hunter. I haven't done much on Sara yet aside from soloing, where things die too fast for any real "rotation". But that all makes sense.

Ah yes, that would reduce your scope for playing focus games to crank out more multi-shots without stopping

[Narzul]

Hello.

Great charts. Great job

This is my first post here so be gentle

Two tips on raiding with the new pets' abilities:

1. To easily decide which pets to alternate, I use an addon I've found called Raid Checklist. It is a very simple and lightweight addon that shows which (de)buffs are missing in a raid and who can provide them - including pets. It makes RL's life easier and, more importantly, a hunter's when deciding which pet to bring to the raid

2. I don't know if you've noticed, but pet debuffs set on autocast are not being refreshed while up, only when they drop. This is a problem, especially on raptor stacking sunders (3 stacks fall completely), and I hope it's just something Bliz haven't thought about and will correct, suffice enough hunter QQ (wink wink nudge nudge). However, it CAN be applied manually. After realizing the issue on the dummy, I've made a single macro with all of my new pets' debuffs -
/cast tendon rip
/cast tear armor
/cast ravage
/cast spore cloud
.
.
.

I hot-keyed it and apply it manually when it's about to wear off. I use the macro in conjunction with Power Auras with debuff timer on the mob I'm attacking.

I know it's tedious and a patch (pun intended, but that is a subject for another thread ), but I find it helpful and sometimes even necessary, especially when tossing sunders.

Hope this helps.

[Malazee]

1. To easily decide which pets to alternate, I use an addon I've found called Raid Checklist. It is a very simple and lightweight addon that shows which (de)buffs are missing in a raid and who can provide them - including pets. It makes RL's life easier and, more importantly, a hunter's when deciding which pet to bring to the raid

That mod was actually developed by Anyia, based on the spreadsheets from this forum combined with some of his(her?) own research. If you notice, he was very polite and gave some credit to myself and all the Petopians that contributed at the bottom there (thanks Anyia!). You can read more about the development process starting on page 5. We all love Anyia for making this mod and I'm glad to see that people are already starting to flock to it! Its invaluable uses in a raid environment are obvious.

But thank you for bringing to my attention that I should post about Anyia's mod on Page 1. I'm terrible at this!

2. I don't know if you've noticed, but pet debuffs set on autocast are not being refreshed while up, only when they drop. This is a problem, especially on raptor stacking sunders (3 stacks fall completely), and I hope it's just something Bliz haven't thought about and will correct, suffice enough hunter QQ (wink wink nudge nudge). However, it CAN be applied manually. After realizing the issue on the dummy, I've made a single macro with all of my new pets' debuffs -
/cast tendon rip
/cast tear armor
/cast ravage
/cast spore cloud
.
.
.

I hot-keyed it and apply it manually when it's about to wear off. I use the macro in conjunction with Power Auras with debuff timer on the mob I'm attacking. I know it's tedious and a patch (pun intended, but that is a subject for another thread ), but I find it helpful and sometimes even necessary, especially when tossing sunders.

I hadn't noticed this myself, but it certainly makes sense. I'd imagine that it's just an oversight on Blizzard's part and that it will eventually be fixed (since most of these new abilities don't have a focus cost anyway), but in the meantime, macroing the abilities to regularly used spells like you have would be the best bet. For raiding anyway, where min/maxing is a big deal. I wouldn't care so much about it in a 5man or while soloing.

Thanks for the tips and the compliments!

[Narzul]

Figures you were behind that addon (the pet section anyway). I've found it by looking under the hunter addons tagged with Cataclysm on Curse in search of exactly that addon! Nicely done

Edit: Now that I think of it, in extreme scenarios which requires something more then spamming, using a designated macro for pet debuffs alone could prove useful, even if the autocast will be fixed. What I have in mind is a Deathwing raid comprised solely of hunters - a few with turtles \ bears with macroed Taunt \ Intervene \ Roar of Sacrifice \ Last Stand, a few with physical buffs \ debuffs and the rest with spirit beasts with macroed healing. It shall be done!

...and nice signature

[Narzul]

I came to realize something else.

Let's compare a debuffing pet, let's say a raptor, to a warrior.

A warrior sunders when it's off CD until reaching maximum stacks. When that happens, does he continue to apply sunder whenever possible? No, because that would be a waste of his abilities. He will only refresh the sunder when it's about to wear off.

A raptor's sunder lasts 30 seconds, and can be applied every 4-6 seconds (depending on hunter's spec). When the stacks are full, should he reapply his sunder?

I've macroed my pets' abilities to my shots. For example:

#showtooltip Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot
/use 10
/cast tear armor
/cast tendon rip
/cast ravage
/cast lava breath
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Rabid
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

The debuff refreshed without a glitch. Thing is, it shared the GCD with the pet's Basic Attacks (Bite, Claw, Smack). It's not a long CD, but it's still a CD. The result of such frequent refreshing - via autocast or macroed - is a dps loss, specifically in long raid encounters.

This leads me to two conclusions -

1. Refreshing debuffs manually with a designated macro will increase dps, or rather won't decrease it.

2. An egocentric hunter can turn off his pet's debuff ability and do more personal dps. This is obviously not in line with Bliz' "bring the player, not the buffs" vision, quite the opposite. Further more, I don't see a "simple" way to fix the auto casting on the pet's spellbook, other then taking the pet's debuff ability off the GCD.

[Mockingbird]

I think they might keep casting - but not for the same reason.

Sunder (or a bear druid's Lacerate) causes threat when applied, even at max stacks.

In terms of the actual debuff, there's no benefit though (other than having it at longer duration in case of a target-switch)

[Nimizar]

I think they might keep casting - but not for the same reason.

Sunder (or a bear druid's Lacerate) causes threat when applied, even at max stacks.

Prot warriors apply the Sunder effect with Devastate (which also does damage), so they keep using it. DPS warriors hate being asked to apply Sunder for very good reasons.

For pets, not applying their debuff would be a DPS increase only if they're getting GCD locked. With a 3 second CD on their basic attacks and even longer CDs on their other abilities, that can't happen.

[Malazee]

Anyia and I have been working on checking (and re-checking) all the abilities and figuring out which abilities we ought to cover on both these spreadsheets and the RaidChecklist mod. Here's what I've added to the spreadhseet today:

• moved 5% Spell Crit from buff to debuff
• moved Healing from buff to ability
• removed Critical Mass from the 10% Spell Power buff
• added Shaman's Earth Shock to Reduced Attack Speed debuff
• added DK's Necrotic Strike to Reduced Casting Speed debuff
• added Warlock's Curse of Weakness to Physical Damage Reduction
• added Felguard's Legion Strike to Healing Debuff
• added Bonus Armor buffs
• added Burst Replenishment buffs
• added Pushback Resistance buffs
• added Resurection and Combat Resurection abilities
• added various Dispel categories

On the list to do soon is adding all the general crowd control abilities you would use in a group (like Polymorph, Sap, Freezing Trap, etc). The challenge comes in figuring out how to organize all that information, espeically since most of those abilities are race-specific. I'm generating a list right now, and as soon as I can find a way to display all that information in a way that I like, I'll update again.

This whole project is way beyond just Pet Buffs at this point (where it started), but I hope that hunters and other raiders everywhere continue to find our work meaningful. <3

[Kalliope]

It sounds like this is turning into a wonderful all-purpose raid preparation utility!

[Nimizar]

Some variation on the caveat from Frostheim's post on WHU may be worth including in the addon description and this thread (i.e. the flowchart/addon can provide advice only, it's still up to the player to decide which buffs/debuffs are actually more important to their particular group).

The pet buff flowchart is not the best answer. I’ve seen this flowchart as well, and it’s quite nice. The problem with it is that by its nature it must rank the buffs from best to worst, and you can’t do that in a vacuum. Which buff is best is going to depend on your raid makeup. How many people will be taking advantage of each buff? And even more so, how well do they perform? Maybe you have fewer people taking advantage of the physical damage buff, but those people are significantly better dps than the rest so it’s still worth it. Hopefully at some point we’ll get an addon that determines the best pet buff based on your raid composition — taking everyone’s spec into account (and even then it won’t evaluate based on performance of your raiders). Until then we still have to use our brains, sadly.

Perhaps something like:

"Note that the [flowchart/addon] can really only tell you which raid buffs are missing and which pets can supply them. Which of the missing buffs is going to be more beneficial to your group is going to depend on the group make-up and the relative abilities of the affected players, so there's still some personal judgement needed when multiple buffs/debuffs are missing from the group"

[Narzul]

I think it's self explanatory. An addon will never play for you, and a hunter who's just filling in the missing (de)buffs with no regard to the other 9\24 players in the raid has only himself (and arguably the RL) to blame.

Keep up the great work on the addon. I'll gladly help if needed.

[Sarayana]

I agree that it's self explanatory, but since there's room to add the disclaimer on the addon's page on curse, it might save Zee and Anyia some qq.

Zee and Anyia, holy crap, that's a massive project! You guys are awesome!

[Rhyela]

No offense to this Frostheim person, but I don't think Zee's flowchart was ever meant to be taken as biblical; a one-stop-shop for all your raiding composition needs. (Having to use our brains? Who'd have thought!?) It was an easy, at-a-glance tool for people to quickly refer to. I think Malazee and Anyia have already gone well above and beyond with this. But everyone is entitled to their opinion, I suppose.

[Kalliope]

I'm with Rhy; I never read the flowchart as anything but a checklist. It didn't bother me that the buffs appeared to be "prioritized" by the order they were considered, since that wasn't the intention of the chart. Still, I can understand the argument that it's a misleading sort of chart. I bet the whole thing could be redesigned in a way to be clearly neutral in terms of buff priority, but then it wouldn't be nearly as compact.

[Nimizar]

Yep, I took what Frost wrote as being quite complimentary towards the chart itself (as am I), but wanting to caution people against taking it too literally and failing to use their own judgment in applying it to their particular group.

I think it's one of those things that should go without saying, but unfortunately actually needs to be said.

[Malazee]

Just as everyone has already stated, I would think it goes without saying that the Flowchart is merely a suggestion and should be used as a tool to complement a hunter's own thought process, rather than a strictly ordered mandate. I even said as much in my second post on the first page of this thread:

Oh definitely! I certainly don't mean to imply that "OMG 8% spell damage is WAY more important than 30% bleed damage, so you should always bring wind serpents before you bring hyenas!!" for example. It's all completely subjective and based first on what your raid comp is (if you have no casters at all, then who cares about spell damage?), second on how strict/serious your raid is (who cares about having all the buffs if you're doing silly content), and third on your preference (a buff is a buff is a buff, so bring whatever pet you want).

I based the flowchart on what I'd consider to be a pretty standard 10/25 man raid comp that has an equal distribution of melee/ranged and physical/spell damage, and then slightly favoring buffs that affect hunters... but then again, this never happens all the time. So use your best judgment, everyone!

But then again, I can't fit all of that onto all of my images, so the point doesn't get across when they're circulated around the internet like AIDS without any frame of reference. There's always going to be people who don't want to have to think about anything and want their hand held through every decision they have to make no matter how big or small it is, and those are the people who are going to abuse the flowchart and make themselves look like fools for following it too strictly.

Makes me want to march right over to WHU and tell Frostheim what's for!

[Kalliope]

I don't think he meant it as an insult, Zee; just as a limitation of the chart, which you already know. You could tell him that you already know though!

[Anyia]

Here's what I've added to the spreadhseet today

*phew* That was a list and a half to go through and merge into RaidChecklist!
Thank you heaps for those updates!

I left out the resurrection categories since they should be completely well known to everybody by this stage.

[Joh]

Don't forget that we can also "Remove Magic (offensive)" with Tranq shot, its not just enrage.

[taleden]

Just wanted to chime in that I found this resource incredibly useful for updating my addon Auracle, which has presets for all the exclusive buff/debuff categories and had to be overhauled for the 4.0.1 changes. So thanks for all the work you folks put into this, and I'll be sure to credit you in my changelog.

On the list to do soon is adding all the general crowd control abilities you would use in a group (like Polymorph, Sap, Freezing Trap, etc). The challenge comes in figuring out how to organize all that information, espeically since most of those abilities are race-specific. I'm generating a list right now, and as soon as I can find a way to display all that information in a way that I like, I'll update again.

My addon's approach to this was to group crowd control by how it affects the victim and is affected by damage:
- immune: banish, cyclone (victim can't act, stays put, can't be damaged either)
- stuns: cheap shot, etc (victim can't act, stays put, not broken by damage)
- fear (victim can't act, runs in a line, not broken by damage)
- incapacitate: sap, etc (victim can't act, stays put, is broken by damage)
- disorient: poly, blind, etc (victim can't act, wanders around, is broken by damage)
- root: freezing trap, etc (victim can act but can't move)
- snare: daze, exhaustion, etc (victim slowed)

This works for my purposes since mine is a realtime display, so you just want to know at that moment whether you can hit the target without breaking the CC, or when it's time to apply the next stun/fear/etc when the current one wears off. For raid planning, all the various racial restrictions come into play and that makes it a lot more complicated.