Pet Usage Flowchart and Ability Spreadsheet

[Malazee]

I think there are at least two different "goals" at play. On the one hand there is the PvP oriented aspect where even a short stun/disorient/whatever can make a huge difference, and on the other hand there is the slower-paced PvE aspect where the emphasis is more on reliable (i.e. longer lasting) abilities. To cast my mind back to BC, it wasn't all that relevant whether I brought Scatter Shot to the run, but the Freezing Trap on the other hand was crucial. As taleden said, the duration does come into play a lot too.

I'm wondering, and I definitely don't know if this is the way to go or not, but I'm wondering whether perhaps a sensible approach might be to split it into PvE and PvP sections (or a Common-Crowd-Control and If-you-really-want-to-know sections). I'm just looking at it from the usability aspect instead of the mechanics aspect here. If you're being hammered by a pull and want to see who could/should be CC'ing, it is more user friendly to have it grouped by long-lasting CC for that unit type (undead, humanoid, etc).

So a hypothetical view of the RaidChecklist might be:

Code: Select all

+----------+----------+----------------+-------------------
| Buffs    | Debuffs  | Crowd Control  | Stuns/Interrupts/etc
|  Kings   |  Sunder  |  Humanoids     |  Root
|  Stam    |  +Bleed  |  Undead        |  Interrupt
|  +5 Crit |  -Healing|  Beasts        |  Silence
...

Thoughts?

Yeah, you're right, with all this debate I'm starting to lose sight of the original intent of the mod. Thanks for putting it back into perspective! I think there are other mods that are a little better suited to PVP uses, and if we're going to cover "Crowd Control" in a PVE sense, a real focus should be made on both duration and the ability to refresh that duration. That's probably the biggest difference between PVE and PVP abilities. To be honest, I wouldn't be upset if you decided to scrap covering the short duration PVP abilities altogether, Anyia. But it's up to you to determine the scope of your own mod.

I don't think I'll be getting much work done this weekend (at least not until Blizzcon is over ^_^), but when I get back to it, I'll reorganize all the abilities I've got (again) and put a bigger emphasis on those two factors.

At the very least, it feels sorta cool to have a giant list of all of these abilities, what they do, how to interact with them, and (eventually) how long they last in one big place.

[Kalliope]

Was able to get 100% confirmation that the devilsaur mortal strike STACKS with widow venom, making BM hunters the most powerful mortal strikers in the game with 50%.

[taleden]

Was able to get 100% confirmation that the devilsaur mortal strike STACKS with widow venom, making BM hunters the most powerful mortal strikers in the game with 50%.

I can't imagine that won't get fixed. Nice while it lasts though.

[Protego]

I just realized nobody answered your question - RaidChecklist only takes into account the active pet(s) of the player and group members. It's not possible to obtain information on not-quite-stabled pets from other players, and it also seems to fit better into the view of RaidChecklist showing what is currently covered. It's easy enough to mouse-over a grayed out entry and see whether it's something that someone in the group could be asked to bring.

Finally. Thank you Anyia!

[Kalliope]

Was able to get 100% confirmation that the devilsaur mortal strike STACKS with widow venom, making BM hunters the most powerful mortal strikers in the game with 50%.

I can't imagine that won't get fixed. Nice while it lasts though.

Well, my guess is that we won't see a nerf until after the arena season starts and people cry hard about it there. Hunters on their own aren't hugely threatening with a devilsaur at this point, but in a group....yeah.

[Anyia]

Note to self: all non-cc/pvp related updates up to this point in the thread should now be in RaidChecklist (4.0.0beta11, once the Curse packager becomes unstuck *mutter*).

[Rhyela]

I noticed today that Leader of the Pack and Furious Howl seem to be stacking, as in they were not overwriting each other. I didn't have the sense at the time to look at my crit % in between Furious Howl applications, though. If I remember, I'll get my wolf out tomorrow and do a run with a feral druid in the guild to see.

[solitha]

Updated the Flowchart:

• took off all the tenacity pets that were redundant
• color-coded the talent specs
• removed worm/chimaera aoe damage... you'll just have to use your own judgment on these

On your chart, Reduced Armor section should include Expose Armor, a Rogue ability that Assassination especially can keep up pretty much without trouble. The other two specs can give the same debuff, if for a little bigger DPS hit.

EDIT: Now all Druids give the -12% armor from three stacks of Faerie Fire according to wowhead.

Basically, Sunder Armor, Expose Armor and Faerie Fire all give 12% armor debuff, but Expose armor is duration instead of stacking 3 times.

Thankies much! Should be fixed.

Just need to fix it on the flow chart... that still indicates it's based on the presence of a bear druid, instead of any druid.

[Uxul]

Anyia addon looks really nice.
Good job!

[Malazee]

Ooooohkay... I think I've got it now. The spreadsheet is simply too huge to post as an image, so you'll just have to view the spreadsheet on GoogleDocs: Cataclysm CC Categories

If for some reason you can't see the spreadsheet, I've made a composite picture, but it is simply too huge to post on this site, and really I think you'll find the spreadsheet is much easier to view and navigate.

Since I've added the column for "potency" to compare the strengths of the different slows/snares, we could argue that the difference between a slow and a snare is how powerful it is. If we wanted to do that, where is the line drawn? Greater than 50% is a snare, less than or equal to 50% is a slow? This is quite literally nitpicking, but if people think it's necessary, I don't mind picking a few nits.

Anyway... whatever you decide to include or not include on your mod, Anyia, hopefully I've armed you with all of the information you could possibly need in a somewhat easy-to-sort format.

Did I do it right this time? *hopeful*

Also, small changes/additions to the other sheets about to go up as well:

• Added Subtlety Rogue's Waylay to the 20% Reduced Attack Speed debuff.
• Corrected a few minor spec errors on the flowchart (they were correct on the spreadsheet)
• Added Reduced Casting Speed debuff to the flowchart

[Kalliope]

Ha, I love that you made a distinction between slows and snares. xD Good stuff!

[Anyia]

hopefully I've armed you with all of the information you could possibly need in a somewhat easy-to-sort format.

*meep*

This has to be the most comprehensive list of cc/pvp abilities outside of Blizzard HQ!

I really like how you've noted PvP vs PvE usage - I think that's likely to give me something to build on for sure. The one thing I'll probably change a bit is the interrupt, and list interrupters with a cooldown of <=12 seconds separately, since they're the ones you'd be able to have in a solid interrupt rotation. Speaking of which, I thought hunter Silencing shot interrupted as well?

Once again, totally awesome job on compiling all of this information! I'll see if I can spend some time tomorrow playing with getting this into RaidChecklist.

[Kalliope]

Silencing Shot does interrupt too.

I'm not 100% sure on the pet interrupts working on bosses across the board now; I know silencing shot does. But for example, the stuns might not work, but the pummel type "pure interrupt" effects *probably* do.

[Malazee]

Speaking of which, I thought hunter Silencing shot interrupted as well?

Actually yeah, I'm positive it does because I use it to interrupt bosses all the time... and looking at the tooltip it does explicitly say "interrupts" as well. I've confused myself now I guess: Do we assume that all silences are also interrupts? No, because some abilities explicitly say that they do one on all enemies and the other only on NPCs, so apparently there is a distinct difference in the gameplay mechanics.

I originally separated out the "Silence/Interrupt" category because some of the effects had different durations for the same ability and I was getting frustrated, but really the separation is more important than that. There are plenty of mobs and bosses that can be interrupted, but not silenced (Moorabi comes to mind). So Silencing Shot should go up on that list twice really. I'll re-examine the rest of the silences to make sure there aren't others I probably should have listed twice as well.

Oh, and I'm sure you figured this out, but I should probably say it here just for posterity's sake: anything that says "School Lock" is an interrupt that also locks out that spell school for the duration. Come to think of it... do all interrupts do this automatically? There's only three abilities on the list that I counted as Interrupts but not School Locks, all abilities that included the interrupt as a caveat to their main purpose. Perhaps the school lock just wasn't mentioned? This requires further investigation: unfortunately, two of the three only work on NPCs, but a Moonkin should be able to test out Solar Beam at least. Actually, now that I think about it, how can an interrupt have a "duration" at all, if it isn't also a school lock, without being called a silence. Aw, to hell with it... just call them all interrupts. I must be going crazy.

An just as a caution, btw: the folly of my system here is that I'm working purely off of what the tooltips of these abilities say on WoWhead, and Blizzard has a bad habit of not saying exactly what they mean in tooltips (otherwise there would be no need for this huge debate on how to categorize everything in the first place).

So if these abilities do things other than what they say in their tooltips (which I did correct from personal experience in a few cases, like feral charge bear... I know it interrupts, even if it doesn't say that on the tooltip), then this list isn't going to be entirely accurate. Similar to what I did for some rogue/druid abilities that technically have no cooldown but I know require combo points and/or re-entering stealth; which had to be manually adjusted for rather than using the IF(I32<=H32,"Yes","No") formula to determine whether the ability is chainable. Basically we're just going to have to make a few common sense changes to the list as we gather more information over time.

BUT... it's a starting point at least, right? Sorry for the ranting and rambling and conversing with myself here. My brain is running too fast for the rest of me right now. /passes out

[Nimizar]

So if these abilities do things other than what they say in their tooltips (which I did correct from personal experience in a few cases, like feral charge bear... I know it interrupts, even if it doesn't say that on the tooltip), then this list isn't going to be entirely accurate.

Just to confuse matters further, Blizz took the interrupt *off* Feral Charge now that they're adding Skull Bash for Cataclysm.

[Malazee]

So if these abilities do things other than what they say in their tooltips (which I did correct from personal experience in a few cases, like feral charge bear... I know it interrupts, even if it doesn't say that on the tooltip), then this list isn't going to be entirely accurate.

Just to confuse matters further, Blizz took the interrupt *off* Feral Charge now that they're adding Skull Bash for Cataclysm.

-.- GG me... that makes Feral Charge Bear a root instead of a stun.

I have charge and intercept listed as interrupts too, but they're actually just short duration stuns. I'll fix all three.

[Anyia]

I think I've added all the features I was planning on - now I really need to sit down and work out the cc/pvp section, which I guess is a job for tomorrow. No more putting it off, even if that list is of intimidating length!

[Anyia]

Alright, after a considerable amount of deliberation, pondering, fiddling, tinkering, tweaking and extra researching, I think I have come up with the below groupings for RaidChecklist. Note that what I have included is very much a subset of Malazee's full ability spreadsheet. I've picked out the bits that I believe are useful to know about from a PvE raid composition point of view, and this selection has been very much guided by the PvP/PvE notes in the spreadsheet.

Rather than differentiate between disorient, incapacitate and stun, I've opted to group the crowd control abilities by which type of mob they work on, since that is likely a more important distinction.

Crowd Control
Reliable - Beasts ~ Polymorph, Hex, Hibernate, Sap
Reliable - Demon ~ Banish, Repentence, Sap
Reliable - Dragonkin ~ Repentence, Sap
Reliable - Elementals ~ Banish, Bind Elemental
Reliable - Giants ~ Repentence
Reliable - Humanoids ~ Polymorph, Hex, Repentence, Sap, Seduction
Reliable - Undead ~ Shackle Undead, Repentence
Unreliable - Any ~ Freezing Trap*
Fear - Beasts ~ Scare Beast
Fear - Undead ~ Turn Evil
Fear - Any ~ Fear

Miscellaneous
Knockback (cooldown <= 30s) ~ Typhoon, Whiplash
Interrupt (cooldown <= 30s) ~ Mind Freeze, Pummel, Counterspell, Kick, Wind Shear, Spell Lock, Shield Bash, Silencing Shot
Slow/Snare (chain-castable) ~ (long list, see spreadsheet)
Root (chain-castable) ~ Entangling roots
Disarm ~ Disarm, Snatch, Clench, Dismantle, Psychic Horror

*) Freezing trap considered unreliable as it lasts 20s but is on a 30s cooldown, so chain-trapping not guaranteed. Also, I left out Cyclone since it appears to be affected by diminishing returns, giving it only 6 + 3 + 1.5 = 10.5s of total control, making it not really a viable crowd control option.


I'm hoping this grouping will provide the best angle to give an overview of the abilities. What's included under crowd control should be tried and true (and some less used) ways of keeping mobs out of action for a while, even if the mechanics differ between the abilities. I've listed them in the presumed preference order, from reliable to less reliable to argh-the-feared-mob-just-pulled-two-more-packs type reliable.

For the miscellaneous section, I've included the knockbacks since they're really useful on some fights (e.g. We-named-him-Dranosh-it-means-heart-of-Draenor-if-you-didn't-already-know-that-Saurfang). Interrupts is included for obvious reasons, though I'm wondering if 30s is the right cut-off point - maybe 12s is better? Slows and snares are useful for kiting purposes, and I'm hoping we'll see a lot more of that in Cataclysm again (yay!). Root is the odd one out, since there is only one chain-castable root. Maybe I should just lump it in with the Slows/Snares? Then finally, there's the disarm category. While there are very few bosses that aren't immune to it, it can be real handy on those susceptible to it. Even more so in Cataclysm if healer mana is going to be an issue again (yay!).

Right. So. I'll be working on implementing this in RaidChecklist, but I'd love to get some feedback on the way I've grouped things here. And I don't think I've said it enough yet - Malazee, you rock! <3

I should probably apologize for this part not being very pet related, so sorry about being off-topic.

Edit: It is done. Let the fault finding commence!

[Kalliope]

Sounds perfect, Anyia!

[Malazee]

I think you found a very appropriate way of sorting though and editing out all of those abilities for RaidChecklist!

I would say you could put Entangling Roots in with the slows/snares, just because its so unique, and also since some people would call a root a snare (it's actually supposed to be just a very effective slow, I promise...), but I can think of at least one case where mobs can be slowed but cannot be rooted (namely, the Valkyr on Lich King), and I think grouping them together would be slightly misleading.

But then you could argue that most mobs that can be slowed can also be rooted, and that people should be able to use their own judgment for the few that cannot. So if you want to cater to the majority and combine the roots with the slows and snares, I have no problem with that. ^_^

Great work, Anyia!

Edit: Oh yeah, and I'm going to integrate the CC spreadsheet into the main one just for convenience's sake, so that I don't have to update it twice: Now all the sheets are in one spot.

<-- Oh hey... I'm blue. Lookit that. O.o