Early Look at Battle for Azeroth: Pet Changes

The good folks over at Wowhead put together an excellent collection of all the datamined changes to Hunter Pets in BfAz. It represents a big change from the way pets have been done recently, and even a change in the direction that it had seemed Blizzard was taking them. Essentially, pets seem to be going back to having a defined roll, with each pet family being available with one of Tenacity, Cunning or Ferocity.  However, the specs don't really mean what they used to.

Pet Specs

Ferocity

Ferocity Pets give you and your pet 3% leech, and gives you access to the Primal Rage ability, which is a new name for Ancient Hysteria. As they currently exist, there's no real DPS benefit to taking Ferocity pets, however, as Spiked Collar has been added to all specs, which should mean that hunters won't need to exclusively bring Ferocity pets to raid, like in the days of yore.

Assuming the DPS to HP ratio sticks around somewhere around 1:5, as it currently is (remember, the relative amount of HP was roughly doubled in our last stat squish), then 3% Leech is a little more than half a percent of your total health each second, then even less than that for SV/BM hunters, as leach doesn't work as you'd expect it to with pet damage.

Cunning 

Cunning pets provide an 8% movement speed buff, as well as giving you access to the Master's Call ability, which has been exclusive to PvP all through Legion.  I love movement speed anywhere I can get it, though we're still yet to see if this will stack (there's no reason to believe it won't, from the information we have so far), assuming it doesn't, this may be a nice little boost for MM hunters who will be hardcasting Aimed Shots, and need to get where they're going quickly.  

Master's Call will be enough to keep this as the primary spec for PvP Hunters, as they tend to always need access to root breaks.  In PvE, as long as we have Post Haste, it's hard to imagine many situations where Master's Call will really come in handy (though back when it was available in PvE, I do recall a few raid bosses where I used it).

Tenacity

Tenacity pets give the pet and Hunter 10% increased max HP, and gives us a new ability, Survival of the Fittest, which is essentially the Druid ability Ironbark, but with half the duration and twice the CD. 

At the moment, I'm quite frustrated by how squishy Hunters are in the live version of the game (if you haven't recently, take a look at this, where both BM and MM make up the very bottom of the list, by a huge margin); so it could be that I'm just reacting to that, but I'm fairly excited by both of these abilities.  Of course, we don't know how damage will be balanced in the new expansion, but right now, I'm often dying to slight over-kills that I could have survived with 10% more health.  This won't give us crazy high HP like a warlock, and the SotF DR isn't enough to cheese mechanics, but still, I'd love to have these right now.

The Biggest Complaint

The biggest complaint I've heard so far in the various discord channels that discuss this sort of thing, is that Spirit Beasts are now Tenacity spec'ed.  To anyone who's raided as a Hunter at any other point in the game, the notion of raiding as anything other than Ferocity is nearly inconceivable, so it sounds like this change means that you'll no longer be able to raid with a Spirit Beast.  

It's hard to guess what direction Blizzard is going with the pet specs this early in the alpha, but I my prediction is Ferocity will not be mandatory for Raiding.  If it is indeed the plan to make Spiked Collar and Dash apply across all three specs, just like Combat Experience, then there won't be any DPS gain by going Ferocity.  You'll essentially be choosing your spec based on the buffs it gives to you, and/or your party (in the case of brez'ing or Primal Rage).  

That should mean that not only will your Spirit Beast still be allowed in raid, or anywhere else you want to use it, but it will likely (from what we can see so far), be the best option, with an extra Tranq Shot-like ability, it's usual heal, and the survivability abilities that all Tenacity pets are going to bring.  

The Real Issue

The real problem is, I think, that there isn't really any sort of benefit to going Ferocity.  I mean, ok, 3% leech isn't nothing, but it's not really great.  If you've got a healer with you, I'd take 10% more HP and a DR any day. There's really no identity for Ferocity with the new specs: Cunning is still the PvP spec, Tenacity is still the tankiest, and Ferocity is now... I don't know, really just "the one with Bloodlust".  

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.  I'd like to see some sort of meaningful utility added to Ferocity pets, but maybe having higher DPS than the other specs isn't the right answer.  

While I can't say I disliked the convenience of being able to change any pet to any spec I wanted in Legion, it was still a bit of a mess.  We saw many pet families that didn't have any unique abilities after the Ability Prune, which remained a problem for waaaaaay too long.  And really it took away all of the RP aspect of pets.  While during raid, I am of course willing to play with an untextured cube if it does the most damage, I don't necessarily think that's what's best for the game.  A huge number of people play Hunter for the relationship they have with their pets. I'm not advocating that we go back to the days of Hunter pets acting like in game Tamagotchis,  but it doesn't really make sense that they're so well trained they can swap back and forth from their specs the way players can.  What I'm saying is, I like the idea of each class family being stuck with one specialization.  

However, once you give players a convenience like we've had with being able to swap specs, you can't just take it away.  So the only option left, is making the specs not affect your DPS out-put, which seems to be what they're trying to do.  

I find it hardest to decide between Arcturis and Loque'nahak

It's fully possible this will change in the next build, or that I've misunderstood the abilities from the datamining, in which case I'll have to eat my words here, but I think we're moving in the a decent direction. I, of course, fully support everyone making their opinions on this known in forums or wherever it is that people attempt to influence the devs, but at least as far as I can tell, they're not going to stop anyone from using Spirit Beasts.  

If all of that is past us, what I'm really curious about is how they're going to keep Lone Wolf Mark Hunters from having access to everything. Because we will be able to call pets, and just lose our Lone Wolf buff, in BfAz, there's nothing currently stopping us from keeping our pets stacked to give us access to whatever we need in just a couple seconds.  If all the Mages and Shamans die before Bloodlust, pull out a Ferocity pet.  If everyone who can battle-rez is dead, pull up a brez pet.  Perhaps it's enough of a handicap on having more options to lose a sixth of your damage and have to waste time summoning and dismissing a pet, but I'm kind of counting on someone much more creating than I to come up with some way to use this to cheese something. 

Early look at Battle for Azeroth - Survival

It seems we're about to get Blizzard's attempt at a melee/range hybrid spec, in the new Survival.  I don't know if anyone from Blizzard has actually confirmed that that's the goal, but it's what we've all been assuming, based on the abilities and primarily the new cool down.  I'm intrigued by the idea, so I thought I'd start my look at the new Battle for Azeroth Hunter specs with Survival.

My Best Guess at the Basics:

The spec is set up around a very, very simple set of core abilities.  Raptor Strike to spend focus, Kill Command to build focus, and a Serpent Sting DoT to keep running. Wildfire Bomb, for single target, at least, will be more of a filler piece, not doing enough damage to be high on the priority list, unless you don't have enough focus and need to fill a GCD.  

From there, it looks like there's several build options which I predict (with the limited info we have) will rely heavily on your choice of Level 90 Talents.  The Mongoose Bite build will adjust the core rotation to focus on building up as much focus as possible before starting into a Mongoose Fury buff, then dropping as many Mongoose Bites as possible, just like the old Mongoose Bite, but with focus to manage instead of charges. The Arctic Bola build will return to a feel similar to the MoP version of Hunter where each spec had a "signature" ability, and focus builders and spenders to use in between.  And finally, the Tip of the Spear option, which if it is viable, will change the rotation the least from the core.  

From other talents, we'll add in various abilities to gain more focus, or use more focus, or to fill in some extra GCDs with focus-free abilities.  You could set up your talents to focus on buffing Raptor Strike, or on buffing Kill Command, or just to add in other abilities on top of those two.  Without more information about how Attack Power levels will compare to Weapon Damage, there's no reliable way to show which of those will be preferable, yet.  

Core Abilities

• Raptor Strike - Two-handed slash, and our core focus-spender. 
• Wing Clip - Basically Concussive Shot for Melee.
• Disengage - OMG OMG OMG OMG.  I couldn't be more happy to have this back as a core ability, allowing us to tack on Posthaste, too. Not having Disengage was my primary reason for not playing SV at the beginning of Legion.  Giving it back as a talent was better than nothing, but meant I would never use anything else on that tier, because I don't want to play anything that doesn't have disengage.  Good choice, Blizz. 
• Kill Command - Same as for BM, though slightly less powerful, also has a 30% chance to not incur a CD, and generates 20 focus. The no-CD mechanic could be interesting, depending on your haste and talent choice. 40 yard range.
• Wildfire Bomb - Channel your inner Cersei Lannister.  Moderate Damage over Time (a little less than serpent sting) but with some AoE. This is the only core AoE, so far. 40 yard range.
• Survivalist - After killing something, regen 15% health over 10 seconds. Adds a tiny amount of Survival to the Survival Hunter. 
• Freezing Trap - Same old Freezing Trap. 40 yard range.
• Serpent Sting - Same DoT that you know and love.  Basically just gives you something to keep rolling, but isn't going to make anyone excited. 40 yard range.
• Exhilaration - Same old Heal.
• Harpoon - I still wish they'd add a silly, mortal combat style sound effect to this. 5-30 yard range.
• Muzzle - Same old Melee Interrupt.
• Tar Trap - More repeats. 40 yard range.
• Aspect of the Hybrid Eagle - Increases your crit, and lets you cast Raptor Strike (or Mongoose Bite) from Range.  Certain top secret sources let me know that what will actually happen, is you'll use your two-handed weapon like a baseball bat and hit spectral eagles at your target. Get pumped.  
• Misdirection - Why, oh why, did they ever take this away from SV?  Very glad to see it's back.  
• Maces - if the tooltips are to be believed, SV Hunters will now be able to equip Maces.  Of course, Hunters have always been able to use Maces, it's just we use them to play fetch with our pets, not as weapons.  Nice to know they'll have a place on our backs, as well, in BfAz.

New Mastery - 

Spirit Bond - Focus Spending Abilities deal 8% more damage, and you and your pet regen 1% of max HP every 5 seconds. Assuming this isn't just a placeholder, a generic damage buff like this will likely serve us better than the fun, though somewhat convoluted chance-to-proc-a-charge mechanic we had in Legion. The heal likely won't be much, even at high mastery levels, but at least gives us something other than just the Survivalist ability to help us live up to our names.

A DR might be more useful, but then our Mastery would essentially just be Versatility, and a dodge mechanic might be more thematically appropriate, for an Agi based spec, but those are so random that it'd never actually be useful, so a small heal will have to be good enough, I suppose. If we can get it up to the 5-10% range it may be enough to really help with SV soloing endeavors, too. 

It's worth noting here that "focus Spending Abilities" isn't nearly as substantial as it is for Marksmanship Hunters.  Out of our core abilities, only Raptor Strike and Serpent Sting will benefit from Mastery.  For our pets, only the Bite/Claw/Smack ability will benefit.  Even once you add in the talents, most new abilities you can add to your rotation won't benefit from the mastery buff, with only aMoC and Butchery benefiting (as well as talents that buff Raptor Strike or Serpent Sting).

Removed Abilities

• Flanking Strike - This will be sort of returned in the Talent of the same name, though not quite the power-house it is now. 
• Mongoose Bite - Again, this can return in a talent, but a fairly watered down version of it: 20% buff per hit, rather than 50%, and no charge juggling/proc'ing mechanic. 
• Carve - I'm not sure if I'm missing something. 
• Lacerate - We've just got Serpent Sting now.

Talents: How much of Legion Survival can we fit into one talent tree?

Level 15 Talents:

• Terms of Engagement - Reset the CD of Harpoon on Kill, and generate 40 focus over 10 seconds. This is oddly the talent I'm most excited to see. SV, as it stands, is a leveling/questing machine, just destroying everything in its path; however, it is a bit slow moving, even after getting Aspect of the Cheetah.  Having the Harpoon reset mechanic on the artifact weapon was great for doing Legion world content, and I've been waiting for some answer on how they'd incorporate that into the spec going forward. Getting it at Level 15 might be a mistake, however, since we don't actually get harpoon until level 26, but at this point getting it anywhere under level 100 will be a pleasant addition to the spec. Even if this is never good enough to use in raid (though it might be in some target swapping fight), I'm still super glad they added it on here. 
• Flanking Strike - Flanking Strike returns, just kinda weaker.  This is a watered down version of Flanking Strike that adds essentially an auto-attack to the newly acquired Kill Command.  It also gives you 10 focus, which might make it a decent raid ability, especially with focus sucking talents like Mongoose Bite.

Level 30 Talents - The AoE Tier:

• Guerrilla Tactics - Wildfire Bomb now has 2 charges. It's hard to guess at this one without really knowing how the rotation is going to work.  I'm guessing this may end up as a filler talent, or being only very situationally useful.  Adding a charge is best when we sometimes need to use it multiple times in a row, or if it has a random recharge mechanic (like BM's Dire Beast).  
• Hydra's Bite - Serpent Sting hits up to 2 additional targets, and increases in damage by 30%.  I predict, unless the rest of other talents here change drastically, that this will be our top choice in most, if not all situations, AoE or not. I may be a bit biased, as I have fond memories of that brief period during WoD when SV was getting extra instant Serpent Sting damage from Multi-shot's / Arcane Shot's Multistrikes, so I like the idea of a Multi-shot Serpent Sting combo.  But this just seems like the obvious choice: if you're hitting three targets, then Hydra Bite is going to do more damage than any of your single target abilities just from the initial damage (that might not be true for raptor strike, as we don't yet have enough info on weapon damage scaling relative to AP scaling in the new xpac), and it doesn't have any of the cooldown restrictions that GT or Butchery have; add on top of that the rolling 30% buffed DoT that will help you out on both Priority Target damage and during add waves, and we've got a fairly solid talent, at least compared to the rest of the tier. 
• Butchery - 3 charges, but now with an obscene 30 second recharge, and this time it's not replacing anything, just an extra ability.  It's a tried and true ability, and I really like the 3 charges for burst AoE damage without getting in the way of our single target damage the rest of the time, but at such a long recharge time, I don't see how this could really be useful on too many different fights.  Maybe if there were really sporadic add waves... 

Level 45 Talents - The "You can run or you can hide" Tier:

• Trailblazer - Nothing new, maybe for dungeons or leveling, if you're into that sort of thing.
• Posthaste - Back with a vengeance?  I mean, it's really been around all legion, but I wasn't interested in Post-harpoon Posthaste. Bringing it back to Disengage is all I've really ever wanted. 
• Camouflage - Hide and Heal. If disengage/post-haste isn't useful, this is a fine choice.  Also gives you some extra heal after you Feign Death so you don't have to run back after a wipe with the support classes.  

Level 60 Talents - The DoT Tier:

• Bloodseeker - Adds a DoT to Kill Command, and provides an attack speed bonus. I have a feeling this will be one of those things where I spend forever trying to figure out how to optimize this talent to get crazy high attack speed, but then it never really makes my DPS go up... We'll see, though. 
• Steel Trap - Decent single-target damage every 30 seconds. Unless it does significantly more damage than aMoC, taking twice as many GCDs and requiring aiming it on the ground will make it hard to choose this.  If it does significantly more damage, then we're good to go.  It's possible the utility here could make it useful, as  you'll have two immobilizing traps, but that will likely be rare in raids and such.  
• A Murder of Crows - Same old Flock of Birds. 

Level 75 Talents - The Tier No One Bothers With Putting In Guides: 

... really, who cares?

Level 90 Talents - The Raptor Strike Tier: 

• Tip of the Spear - Kill Command increases the damage of Raptor Strike by 15%, stacking up to thrice. If Raptor Strike's damage is high enough for 15-45% to matter, then this could be an OK single target talent, with high haste and decent luck on the no-cd for KC mechanic.  
• Mongoose Bite -  Replaces Raptor Strike with Mongoose Bite.  Similar to its legion version, Mongoose Bite will add a stacking buff each time its applied giving you 20% more damage for 14 seconds, up to a 100% buff. Mongoose Bite starts out doing less than 80% as much damage as Raptor Strike, so this will require a complete reworking of the rotation, relying on getting to full stacks nearly every single time.  
• Arctic Bola - Throw an Icy Bola at your enemy every 6 GCDs. This would kind of make the spec work a little bit like the MoP version of hunters, where every spec had a signature ability, and you just played with focus in between, and maybe kept some DoTs rolling.  It's not super exciting, but it might be interesting. Keep in mind it does frost damage, and won't be affected by armor, when comparing its damage to other talents/abilities.  

Level 100 Talents - The "Shouldn't it be 105?" Tier:

• Birds of Prey - If you hit the same target as your pet with Raptor Strike, you gain an extra second of Aspect of the Eagle. 
• Primal Instincts - Harpoon gives you a 15% crit buff for 12 seconds;  Disengage gives you a 15% haste buff for 12 seconds; no overlapping allowed.  I have no idea how to judge, at this point in development, whether or not this will be worth anything.  But I kind of like the ridiculousness of it.  I'm all for jumping back and forth with Disengage and Harpoon as often as possible, and the potential for stacking these buffs with other things (like AotE) might turn out to be decent.
• Chakrams - I'm still annoyed that they gave my Glaive Toss to demon hunters.  So now we get them back, but they're called Chakrams.  For anyone who grew up in the '90s, I looked it up, and it turned out these are the little weapons that Xena Warrior Princess used.  

Overall Impression Of Survival in Battle for Azeroth

I'd like to say I'm cautiously optimistic.  It's kind of hard to imagine in a game with such rigidly defined rolls as WoW, that they're really going to create a viable melee/ranged hybrid class.  Though, a "melee class that can occasionally play at range" is much more believable, which seems to be what this is.  Several Melee specs have ranged abilities, so it's not too unreasonable the way SV is set up now, and the convert-everything-to-ranged CD, Aspect of the Eagle, is a fun bit of flavor.  

Some of the small flavor changes are kind of exciting to me too.  It looks like our core abilities will require 2 handed weapons, but extending that from one exclusive spear, to any polearm, ax, mace or staff will be fun.  Mostly just the Ax, really. It's not quite as cool as double-fisting axes like Rexxar, but still pretty cool.  

It is, of course, always hard to tell if I'm really excited about playing the class, or if I'm just having a "oh, something new and shiny" moment.  But so far I'm enjoying looking at the class. 

BfAz Proposal: Leveling+

Adding Some Excitement to Leveling

So, I'm having this weird conflicting excitement with the new allied races, and the potential for more allied races in the future.  I've never been a big alt-oholic, but all of the sudden I just want to have a Hunter of all of the new races. Every single one.  I have no idea what I would do with these alts, or what benefit they might give me, but for the moment, at least, I'm excited about them.  

However, the primary fun of leveling a hunter has always been how OP we are at leveling, and trying to take on mobs that were designed for groups, or areas that you aren't a high enough level for.  With the new leveling system, that just doesn't exist. I was lamenting this fact over in Fiannor's blog's comment section, and it occurred to me that there could be an incredibly easy way to fix this, and breathe a little bit of new life into leveling.  

Leveling+

My idea is we take the basic concept of the mythic+ system, with everything getting slightly harder at each additional +level, and adding it to the leveling system.  Just let anyone who has a max level character, have the option of choosing to create a new character in the leveling+ system, so instead of everything scaling to my current level, everything scales to my level+1, or +2, etc.  

Add a few achievements or cosmetic rewards for leveling from 20 up to max level (since most of the excitement about leveling is for allied races, and I suspect we're going to be seeing a lot more allied races in the future. You could use the same system with the old races, though it wouldn't work for DKs or Demon Hunters, but it wouldn't go into affect until level 20, as we'd probably be too squishy at the earliest levels anyway). There wouldn't need to be big rewards, either, something similar to the honor prestige rewards would be perfect.  The goal would just be to add a little bit more challenge, and a little bit of motivation.  

There is of course the problem of each class having very different power levels when it comes to leveling. If playing a prot pally, for example, you probably wouldn't even notice a difference until +5 or +10 levels, other than maybe it taking slightly longer to kill everything.  In the end, I imagine only Hunters, warlocks and tanks would really bother with the higher +levels, but really, it should take such a small amount of development time that who cares?  It'll be fun for those that can do it, and for those who don't want to play those classes, they won't really be missing out on anything.  Perhaps any rewards like a mount would only be re-skins, instead of really unique rewards, just to appease people who exclusively play weaker support classes.  

Anyhow, that's my idea. Who do I need to talk to to make this happen?

No Tier Set Bonuses in B4A.. BfA... Battle... the New Expansion

As of yesterday, Blizzard let us know there would no longer be set bonuses in whatever the next expansion is going to be called.  I have fairly mixed feelings about it.

A lot of my most popular articles on here, over the years have been dissecting new set bonuses, whether mathematically looking into how they work, or giving suggestions on how to optimize your play to take advantage of them.  And that's certainly something I look forward to doing every tier, as otherwise theorycrafting in general can get a bit stale, as I really have no interest in looking into endlessly optimizing BiS lists...

However, it does seem like the old formulas for set bonuses have gotten quite stale.  It's proven too hard to balance interesting tier sets, so we end up with somewhat vanilla, meaningless bonuses in a lot of occasions (such as a buff to Raptor Strike for SV Hunters...) or the same buff that we had just a couple tiers ago (signature ability is buffed, or signature ability provides a buff).

Ghostcrawler used to swear that they did not balance classes around their tier bonuses; that all classes should be viable without the tier bonuses, and then they should again be balanced with the tier bonuses, but that simply hasn't been the case, pretty much ever, aside from possibly a couple of tiers in MoP.  So we often end up in an occasion where a spec is quite dull without it's current set bonus, which means we keep onto that bonus even when the gear is drastically lower than the rest of our gear, which I suppose is the primary thing Blizzard is trying to combat with this system.

Because Blizz is committed to the Titanforged idea, tier sets just don't make sense.  If you can get randomly really high ilvl gear from the previous tiers with a better set bonus, then it takes away too much of the enjoyment of getting new gear in a new raid.

So in the end, I'm fine with the removal of the set bonuses. Put those same changes into a the new artifact mechanic (whatever slots they're in) and hopefully they can keep the specs interesting that way.

Meh...