Very concerned about the future of extreme soloing

[Jangalian]

So, last night before I crashed for the umpteenth time, I tame a sunrise crane. After admiring his shiny feathers for a moment, I went, oh wait I need to train him. So I opened his spellbook, and noticed something that's very distressing.

You don't get to choose the talents. You can only choose the tree.

On the surface, this is pretty cool, so now we can have ferocity wind serpents and cunning turtles. But I thought you'd at least get the chance to tweak your choice a little. This isn't the case. Now, for the average hunter, I'm sure this is all great and awesome, but the majority of things I do are solo so I'm a little bit ...concerned. I need that extra stam and stuns for my beetle, otherwise Kael would eat me alive when I farm TK. I'm hoping and praying that this gets tweaked before release.

(Yeah I know, at 90 I'll be able to plow Kael, but I'm thinking about my future exploits here.)

So yeah...very....worried..

[Ceravan]

They combined a bunch of those talents into each other, sorry but I can't remember where I saw it, but something look blood of the rhino was combined with great stamina and so on as an example. So if you go tenacity, you already have that stamina boost. If I do manage to find where I saw it i'll post it up here.

[Jangalian]

Hm.....I'm just very uneasy about someone taking the customization out of my hands. My beetle Sehmerkhet is the panzer tank for my ranged artillery, and I just don't know what I'd do without his armor plating.

Ps and off-topic, are you cool with a dragon turtle wallpaper? Dragon turtles rock.

[Slickrock]

Hm.....I'm just very uneasy about someone taking the customization out of my hands. My beetle Sehmerkhet is the panzer tank for my ranged artillery, and I just don't know what I'd do without his armor plating.

Ps and off-topic, are you cool with a dragon turtle wallpaper? Dragon turtles rock.

Yes, you are going to loose some percentage of your extreme soloing capabilities. But remember there are a few new added glyphs that would be worthwhile as well. Hopefully the T5 still works for the extremers that use that.

This is one of the reasons that for Pandaland I'll be going BM/BM, with one spec for dungeons/raids, and the other for soloing.

[Jangalian]

Yes, you are going to loose some percentage of your extreme soloing capabilities. But remember there are a few new added glyphs that would be worthwhile as well. Hopefully the T5 still works for the extremers that use that.

This is one of the reasons that for Pandaland I'll be going BM/BM, with one spec for dungeons/raids, and the other for soloing.

They had better be awesome glyphs. >_< I need my 'me' time. And honestly since the latest live patch, I've dropped Surv for double BM. I just don't raid, so it's kind of a wasted talent tree for me. I like to look in nooks and crannies and find unusual things, and if my beetle is gonna turn into a wuss.. /slaps face a few times!

I'm gonna have faith it will be ok! WTB dual spec pet trees!

[Kikanu]

Here's some observations I've noticed, from a BM perspective;

Growl is a full blown taunt, just like a tank has.
The pet has a bit less HP, but Spirit Bond heals for almost 4-5k a tick
Beast Wrath makes it almost impossible to pull aggro from a pet that just recently taunted
Intimidation, if it stuns, generates a monstrous amount of threat
Glyph of Distracting Shot is another taunt for your pet.

Now, its survivability is also worth noting;

With the Endless Wrath glyph, it gives you time to heal your pet when he's getting wrecked.
Readiness is a must for BM, especially if you want to survive longer. Readiness and use Beast Wrath before the previous cooldown is up, and you have an invincible pet for a good 30~ seconds
Glyph of mending makes your pet get a load of good healing from Mend Pet. It also increases the healing with Spirit Bond!
A turtle or Beetle will have that awesome shell shield, and spirit beasts have a self heal that is increased through the glyph's healing properties.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera is useful if you need to res your pet quickly. Macro Deterrence and Revive Pet to a cast sequence macro, and bam; you take little damage and your pet's back in action.


I tested this at 85, against the endless Hozen spawn at the Alliance starting place. Took down a good 50 or so Hozen before my pet died. That was a LOT of gold, I tell you.

[Ceravan]

and yes, I love the idea of dragon turtle wallpaper

[Ana]

as fare as i know they combined the stamina and armor buff into one.. blood of the Rhino?

and uhh very intriged by this bm/bm spec... how does it work with the new talents? would love to see a suggestion for a bm/bm spec

[Jangalian]

@Ceravan I'm on it.

@Tårnfalk I don't know how it will work out YET, but how it worked for me in Wrath was that one BM has DPS out the teeth so that my numbers looked good on Recount and I could afford to be choosy as hell with the raids I let people invite me to, and the other was my tank'n'spank set up so that I could weekly yell obscenities at the blood elf tightwad when my flame bird didn't drop again.

IE - Go for dps talents in one, and mega health, healing and stam in the other.

[Ellaran]

Here's the full list of changes to pet talents so far:http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/201 ... t-changes/

And a snippet from the Tenacity section:

Tenacity Hunter Pet MoP Abilities
* Charge
* Blood of the Rhino – improved in Mists to give hunter pets the +40% healing plus 20% armor and makes pet crit immune. Essentially this is incorporating the current Blood of the Rhino, Natural Armor, Pet Barding (sans the 2% dodge) and Grace of the Manits into one uber pet tank ability.
* Great Stamina
* Last Stand
* Thunderstomp

[Quiv]

Also note that not all the abilities for pets are functional. Tenacity should have more HP and armor than others, but they dont. All pets still have same.

All in all, I am a bit concerned myself but still just waiting to see how it works out.

Edit: I decided to test. On live I am running Vortex for the mount several times a day and so I figured this was a good comparison.

so I do it on beta. I then realized how much I rely on addons. And that MD is bugged on beta (wont go to pet.)

I have same gear I do on live, sans 2h weapon. I used talents Exhilaration and Spirit Bond (others I picked dont affect survivability directly like two).

I used glyphs Chimera shot (5% more healing from chimera), Mending (pet receives 60% more healing) and Animal bond (me and pet receive 10% more healing).

I used a tenacity turtle.

RESULTS!

The overall numbers are lower for pet HP, pet armor (and therefore mitigation from it), resistance, and ticks of mend pet are lower. However I actually feel a little better about survivability.

Ertan:
This was a little tougher actually. It wasnt hard, but I noticed the pet took more dmg. This is probably due to pets having 0 resistances listed on beta, and on live it has 86 resistance (12% reduc).

Altairus first kill:
Pet survivability: I noticed that I had to keep mend pet up 100% of the time as the pet would die REALLY fast if i didnt, a lot faster than he does on live. I assume once he receives the actually stamina and armor boost, this will increase as well.

Hunter survivability: I was pleasantly surprised. Between the chimera shot healing and spirit bond healing me for 3% every 2 seconds, I could outheal the breaths from Altairus. On live, he will widdle me down to death if i dont mitigate some. I didnt mitigate any, and never even used the disengage heal, I was never below 100k hp (max hp for me is 134k right now)

I have been skeptical about the change but this really improved my outlook on it. Once the stam/armor actually kicks in for tenacity, I will test again because right now, my pet is even squishier but I am much more survivable.

altairus second kill:
I stood still, auto shot and chimera on cd. kept mend pet up. It took a while but never in any danger of dying. truth be told, never in any danger of getting below 50%.

No mount didnt drop

[Ana]

Here's the full list of changes to pet talents so far:http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/201 ... t-changes/

thanks for that link



bit worried about loosing •Lick Your Wounds cause i accually use this on my dps pets so they could be a tank which killed really fast :/

[Galaxy]

I know I've been MIA (work and all), but this thread sparked a question about intimidate.

I currently run BM/BM (One for raiding/pvp [pvp build solos like a champ]). However, I have somehow managed a playstyle which uses Intimidation as an interrupt rather than an aggro magnet, especially when in raids/groups. While I know the aggro table doesn't matter in pvp, I'm curious if someone could find out for me:

Will Intimidation pull off a tank in a group situation?

I'm mixed on whatever response I get, tbh. I, like the OP, love to do extreme soloing. In fact, I dueted a little ICC with my dk friend last night with surprising success. Thundering success of Intimidation in terms of threat gen would be awesome for extreme soloing; like Kael. (I haven't gotten skilled enough for that fight!! QQ! You must share with me the secrets to getting the adds to stop being so chaotic!) Though, if I lose the interrupt ability, I can see taking silencing shot rather than a different talent, just to keep another interrupt handy. interrupts

Lengthy post, but what say you?

[Kalliope]

Any tank that's worth their salt should have decent enough aggro on everything to hold off a pet's intimidation. However, if the hunter/pet are on an untanked target or one that the tank isn't generating much threat on, they'll pull. It really depends on what exactly is going on, hence the varied responses.

[Shinryu Masaki]

They removed the threat wording on the Intimidation tooltip in the Mists beta, so I'm assuming that it's gone from the skill, though I haven't tested it to make sure it was.

[Ellaran]

So, at the moment, Intimidate only stuns?

[Shinryu Masaki]

Apparently so. I guess they didn't need it to generate threat since Growl does it as well as having a 3 secs Taunt merged into it.

[Kalliope]

Apparently so. I guess they didn't need it to generate threat since Growl does it as well as having a 3 secs Taunt merged into it.

Which, by the way, was an AWESOME change. Well, except for tanks who get stuck with hunters who won't turn off growl. But at least now it's easier to catch them in the act...

[Ana]

Just curious if anyone have tested if a pet would accually be able to take agro from a tank? i used the agro buff on my tenacity pets to take agro from tanks when needed.. Just curios if a pet could act as an extra tank on lets say the tentacles in DS, so when u turn on growl it would take agro when the main tank have been impaled?

And do the tenacity pet get any AOE threat so it could become usefull as a tank in a dungeon grp ? (i know thunderstomp generates threat but not enough to keep agro on a whole grp if a mage/lock/hunter/druid etc aoes the grp at the same time)

I usually use md to get enough threath but is very curios to see if a pet would acccually be treated as a backup tank with threath..

[Kalliope]

Well, with the change to growl, you'd have to manually hit growl in order to time your taunt correctly and just leave it off the rest of the time...otherwise, your pet would be constantly pulling off the tank!

I haven't looked into the changes enough to know offhand how pet AoE threat will be in MoP, but the growl change alone is going to do wonders for pet tanking...UNLESS it makes the target taunt immune. That would be very very bad. x_x