Help an old man catch up please.

[Vorhees]

Hello everyone.
It's been a while! (my last activity here was 2014, yikes!)
I've had a long hiatus from WoW, about 3 years. But I'm just now returning back....And there has been some changes.
I haven't kept up with patch notes or anything while I was away (I never intend to return, yet I always do).

And now I've noticed some oddities with my pets, that I'm fairly certain was not like this last time I played.
However I have failed to find any information about these issues, but maybe my google-fu is weak. Maybe you guys can clear up if these are known/unkown bugs or intended changes.

1. My pet seems to "forget" that growl was on auto-cast when dismissed.
Whenever I summon a pet, growl is no longer on auto-cast. Other skills remain with the glittery border, but not growl?

2. Pet A.I. Has always been a bit wonky, especially with pathfinding as I recall.
But, my wolf never casts Furious bite when it's on auto-cast...Or maybe he's smarter than me and knows the target dummy isn't going to run anywhere.
I have yet to muster a proper field test, but I will try some things tonight after work.

3. I took note that when in my marksman spec, and with NO pet summoned...I still have access to the tenacity family skill "Fortitude of the bear"
I can cast it all on my lonesome self if I want, when I have a cunning or ferocity pet out, the skill gets replaced with the appropriate one. And it goes back to the tenacity one when dismissed.
Is this truly intended?
Seems bug:ish to me, and it devalues having a tenacity pet a little imho.

Thanks for your time!

[Talihawk]

Welcome back!

Indeed a lot of 'quality of life' and other not so great changes have occurred.

Growl is now no longer automatically on your pet's action bar. You will need to put it in there from your spell book. It also will be turned off automatically when you go into dungeons. If you are soloing them you'll need to turn it back on for that particular instance.


Yes the Pet AI sucks. Always has and likely always will. The below macro format may help some.

Pets no longer do their attacks properly, this supposedly was fixed but apparently not. I've got pet attacks macroed into my spells, here are some examples:


#showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/petattack [@target,exists]
/petfollow [@target,noexists]
/cast Claw(Basic Attack)
/cast Bite(Basic Attack)
/cast Smack(Basic Attack)

We have skill Trees Again so lots has changed!

I don't normally play marksman, so not sure about what skills you get, but you'll want to look at your talent tree to see what options you get. That may be why the skill changes depending upon what pet you have or don't have.


And again welcome back to Wow, PS we can tame Cloud Serpents now and they are a new family! : Lesser Dragonkin. They are not Exotic and they are Ferocity.

PSS : Cunning pets are EXTRA squishy now, Ferocity is not as squishy as it was and of course you get Bloodlust. Clefthoof is still the best tenacity if you want to solo elite mobs you don't seriously out gear yet.

Pet mend and Pet Revive are on seperate buttons now due to a code error on blizz's part. HOpefully it will get fixed soon .

Handy macro to 'fix' issue :

#showtooltip Mend Pet
/cast [mod]Revive Pet; [@pet,dead]Revive Pet; [nopet]Call Pet 1; Mend Pet

[Vorhees]

Thank you!

Growl is now no longer automatically on your pet's action bar. You will need to put it in there from your spell book.

That is such an odd decision, won't this just potentially confuse new players?

It also will be turned off automatically when you go into dungeons

That's understandable....Kind of.
Growl used to mess up tanks often if the hunter forgot it on IIRC.
BUT I haven't noticed this happening, so I'm betting there is NO pop-up warning or tool tip explaining what or why, again only adding confusion to new players.

However the issue I was having is that simply dismissing my pet, disabled the growl autocast.
I was just in my garrison, faffing about, getting used to the game again basically. When I noticed it happening as I was re-organising my stable.
No dungeons or anything involved. I even disabled both my addons to make sure the issue was not from them.

I use this macro, with a new line added to get around the problem.
It seems to work okay at the dummies, but may need some more stress testing, especially with a group and tank to targetfocus.
May take a few clicks to chew through in a worst case recovery scenario. Thoughts and/or suggestions appreciated!

/cast [@pet,dead] Revive Pet
/cast [nopet,nogroup] Call Pet 1
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack
/cast Dash
/petautocaston Growl
/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet] Misdirection

That may be why the skill changes depending upon what pet you have or don't have

There is nothing in the Marksman tree that allows me to have a pet skill without a pet, it's mostly shot related stuff.

The closest thing is "Lone wolf" which gives me a flat 10% damage increase when I have no pet summoned...But that is not the same.
Fortitude of the bear, Primal rage and Pathfinding are tied to the pet families (Tenacity, Ferocity and Cunning) and thus should change depending on the active pet.
What shouldn't happen is the tenacity skill staying in my spellbook with no pet at all out, it's the same tooltip and everything....It must be a bug of some sort, because I do not get the same result in BM spec. With no pet the skill just disappears from my book then.

Cunning pets are EXTRA squishy now

Oh no...What did they do!?
Some kind of weird nerf?
I love my mechanowolf collection or my Dwarf hunter, and I was SO looking forward to having a skeleton dog on my Forsaken hunter...
I'll certainly take a look at Clefthoofers, but I never really liked having huge chunky pets.
I mourn the loss of the glyph that reduce size....And Hati's essence swapper

Pet mend and Pet Revive are on seperate buttons now due to a code error on blizz's part. HOpefully it will get fixed soon

Weren't they always?
Seems like I definitely missed a change there, that then got unintentionally reverted.

Thanks again, and sorry for textwalling. I tried to be brief:ish but....Yeah.

[Talihawk]

No worries! they've always had separate buttons, but they also had it so the pet mend became pet revive when the pet died. But when trying to fix some code for another new talent, that got broken. So now we either macro or have button bloat.
Not sure about the macro, I copy and pasted mine either from here or the forums. Just be careful with the autogrowl because if you dungeon with other folks without having preapproval that's likely to get you kicked.

You are def right tho about the 'unfriendliness to new players' bit. There's so much to learn and mostly from 3rd party sites like here or wowhead or icyveins

[Vorhees]

Just be careful with the autogrowl because if you dungeon with other folks without having preapproval that's likely to get you kicked.

Indeed, hence the [nogroup] condition in the macro, I intended for my pet to be dismissed should I be involved in group activity, since I've read that the 10% damage is more DPS than having the pet along as a MM. And that is intended to allow me to cast Hunter's Mark without summoning the pet by accident.
Looking at it now though, I might have to move the last line up a few notches to avoid errors...But I have not been able to test it proper alone.

Either way, it is not likely I'll be doing anything of current dungeon:ish nature, as I can no longer endure the stress and mental fatigue of random groupings, it's either with guildmates (which I don't have) or solo, so I'm okay to remain 1-2 expansions behind current content where I can go at my own relaxed pace.

[Vephriel]

Either way, it is not likely I'll be doing anything of current dungeon:ish nature, as I can no longer endure the stress and mental fatigue of random groupings, it's either with guildmates (which I don't have) or solo, so I'm okay to remain 1-2 expansions behind current content where I can go at my own relaxed pace.

You might be interested in knowing they'll be rolling out a new feature in the next patch that lets you group up with AI companions to run dungeons with, on normal difficulty. It'll be a really nice way for people to casually go through at their own pace!

[Vorhees]

That sounds great actually....In theory.

But I don't have the greatest confidence in Blizzard making useful A.I. buddies though.
I have this gnawing feeling that:
1. Having said A.I. Buddies along will become mandatory and
2. It will basically be the vanilla escort quests all over again....With them either walking super slow with an unskippable story mode, or running a willy-nilly aggro-marathon all over the place, to really drive home that PUG simulation experience.

[Talihawk]

I tested the AI dungeon. It was fun, the people didn't die too often, and it actually wasn't tedious like the escort quests. I'm really looking forward to them rolling out because it means I can do things in my own time, pausing as needed and trying out healing and tanking

[Vorhees]

I sure hope it rolls out good then, it seems like something I could benefit greatly from aswell.
*laughs nervously as flashbacks from vanilla Wailing Caverns creep in*

[Vephriel]

Their AI has come a long way, these are intelligent NPCs that will switch roles and take actions accordingly, but you get to set the pace. Here's an overview from someone on youtube if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48iZykP ... biB3b3c%3D

While I don't mind running in groups I really love the idea of having these for the future so I can go through and appreciate dungeon interiors and aesthetics without rushing toward a goal at the end.

It also means they can keep dungeons as capstone experiences for a zone quest chain without people worrying that they can't complete it if they don't want to group up with others, it's a great accessibility feature all round.