I did ignore the Hunter benefit. I was responding to the point that BM hunters should stack crit purely for GFtT and KC benefiting pet DPS. We already have math behind what crit rate you want for a focus-dump pet. I was providing the math behind why you won't see big gains to DPS through more KCs. Also, unless you have Mortal Shots +442 AP is probably more DPS than 10% crit until you have 3K+ RAP (I can do the math for this, but I am positive for my gearing level this is true - and I have Mortal Shots).

The numbers I showed were not for a full BM-spec pet, so the +63 damage from +AP would be +132 damage for a BM pet. With the average of 600 damage this means you'll see a 22% increase vs. 19% increase. And again, Hunter +crit provides no white damage bonus to the pet.

I think the PTR notes say that KC procs Frenzy now, I also include it in my calculations, and going from 20% -> 30% Hunter crit rate and spamming KC changes the frenzy uptime from 79.30% to 82.46%, and FI from 85.70% to 88.49%. Not insignificant, but not world-beating either. (All numbers with my weapon and shot rotation.)

I think the underlying math supports the fact that anything BM Hunters can do to help both them and the pet (+AP, +Agility) is better than just them (+crit). It makes sense, and the numbers back it up. We're not talking leaps and bounds better, but if someone is picking gems to min/max as much as possible for DPS it's an edge they can have.

Not to steal Cheeky's thunder regarding KC, but I highly recommend reading
http://forums.tkasomething.com/viewt...=4231&start=57
in which Cheeky, Aesa, and Arcazua discuss modeling pet dps in some depth (the first post in the link I provided is Aesa's post in which he describes a method for computing the average period of KC as a function of crit rate and rate of fire). Increasing crit rate has increasingly diminishing returns in terms of decreasing KC period (obviously, since kc has a 5 second cooldown providing an absolute floor for the period, but I digress).

I wasn't aware that the scaling was a (bad) design choice. The only Blue acknowledgement that I know of that exists is something along the lines of, "That is interesting. We'll look into it." But yes, that was what I was referring to.

As far as I'm concerned, with hunters there is a huge swath of gray area that covers the difference between "bugs" and "bad design decisions." Half the time there is stuff they didn't plan for but kept in the game because they realized it was actually somewhat compensating for mistakes in long-term planning, and it was so FUBARed up anyway that they needed time to "fix" it (i.e. pre-2.0 Aimed Shot, FD->Trap mechanics, hunter itemization and post-TBC talents, changing Spirit Bond to not be affected by pet attack speed thereby making it completely worthless then normalizing pet attack speed to completely nullify the reason for changing it in the first place, etc. etc. etc.).

But if you're right and it was a conscious design decision that they completely screwed up in implementation, then I take back my reference to it as a bug. Is it ok if I refer to it as a "bug"? =P Really messing it up is kind of like a bug, isn't it?

I don't see why it would be labelled a bug.

They saw that, as Hunters get better gear, pets can hold aggro.
Let's see, Hunters depend on Ranged Attack Power, and this already scales to pet spell damage (most likely, Growl gets a boost from the +pet spell damage, not +Hunter RAP, in my mind*).
The scaling of pet threat via Growl is, in itself, not a bad design choice (actually a pretty good one, in my opinion). The way of implementing it, however, is badly designed, or lacking. Serpent's Swiftness should, in addition to haste, perhaps also affect Growl threat?

I'm not expressing this as clearly as I want to
I would not categorize this as a bug, and I've been dealing with that kind of stuff for a while now.
Although neither is wanted, bad design != bug :P


*This could actually be interesting to test somehow.

Blessing of might makes a huge impact to growl when I'm multi boxing with paladin though.

Growl at lvl 60 was brilliant with end game (+4 t3 etc) gear and all buffs on pet. It pulled aggro off maintank on Patchwerk at 75% when I turned growl on at 95%.

I was 20/31/0 btw and pet was wind serpent.

Keep in mind that at that time, a lot more threat would be coming from the insanely powerful Lightning Breath though
Are you sure Growl is affected by Blessing of Might though? Keep in mind your pet's white attacks will see a damage boost --> threat boost, etc.
Anyway, neither scaling with Pet AP or Pet Spell Damage would be hard at all to due, it just seems more logical to me as mentioned above =)

From personal testing, I was also under the impression that it was actually your pet's attack power that scaled growl, and not the spell dmg given to him from the hunter's RAP.

It's easy to prove, just set up a test like this:
Using a growl / petpassive /stay macro once, then finding out how many auto shots (naked with a low lvl grey weapon) it takes to pull off the pet.
Blessing of Might (can also do with battle shout or SoE totem) on the pet seems to make a nice difference in this sort of test.

Which leads me to believe that growl actually scales with the pet's AP, and not the spell damage given by the hunter.

Fair enough, albeit slightly illogical to me =) Doesn't really change anything regarding my main point (bug or not) though :P

I'm not sure why that's illogical - as your pet becomes more powerful its growl becomes more powerful. Rather than scale growl by looking directly at your AP, it looks at the pet's ap (which looks at your AP). Ultimately it still scales with your AP, so I'm not sure what the big deal is (unless you're concerned about the magnitude of growl scaling rather than the source).

I see Growl more as a spell than a normal attack, hence I'd find it more logical to scale with +spell damage (which is still based on your AP) than +AP, that's all =)
The fact that as your character grows stronger, so does your pet's Growl, is something I agree with and see the reasoning behind.
This is all based on a side-comment I made somewhere, anyway, and has no impact on this discussion so
I wonder if we'll ever see more items with USE: Your pet gains x AP / crit / haste for y seconds.

The Hunter level 50 quest could have given Devilsaur tooth, which made the next pet attack crit. The BWL Warlock trinket gave AP/spell damage/armor to your pet.

I know there is an epic mail pants item that gives your pet Armor and Attack power directly.

There is a new Warlock trinket that gives 42 spell damage and gives 100+ resistances to your pet, so the devs have some ideas, but more would be nice.

And that is why the biggest difference in a MM pet's ability to hold agro with growl seems to be from TSA. It's not that the hunter's RAP is so high, it's that TSA gives your pet a significant amount of AP (straight from itself and from the %AP from the hunter). I can get to well over 2000RAP on myself as SV and my pet still can't hold agro for crap, but if it gets TSA (or BoM I imagine, haven't really tested pet tanking with it) he holds agro like a champ.

So, all that to say that my anecdotal evidence supports PhoR's idea

Still, it could be an issue of just higher white damage. You gain 125 AP from TSA, your pet gains 125 AP from TSA directly and 22% of 125 AP from you, for a gain of ~150 AP. If Growl counts as a spell, it would gain 12% of AP from you, so 15 AP. Beyond just that the pet gains more AP from TSA than you do, the relative gain is much greater. Going from 2100 to 2225 AP is a ~6% AP increase, while, just for example, a pet going from 800 to 950 AP is a ~19% AP increase. Your pet's white damage would see a greater increase than your white damage, which may account for the difference.

At regarding the original discussion, I haven't seen anything that says AP is strictly better, or agi is strictly better. It almost seems like a preference issue. AP doesn't need raid buffs to make it reach it's full potential, and just gives you steady, consistant damage. Agi needs Kings, but as such has potentially higher stat value, and gives you a balance of fixed damage from AP and spiky scaling damage from crit. So stack agi till you get to 20% crit for GftT for the pet, then go by feel from there.

I have done some testing with growl and from all I can tell it does scale with pets AP since when it get might its basicly impossible to get agro of it when growl is turned on.

Another thing that indicates this is the fact that if TSA fades pet's ability to hold agro is basicly lost.

I would also say that the reason why a boar have such good agro is that charge adds a ton of AP to the pets next attack, which usually is growl, I think my boar have something like 1300 AP when its charging.

BTW: What is the take on the +20 AP gems from the PvP vendor, since the patch these gems are far cheaper ( 8200 honor iirc ) and might be good to give a boost to AP if that is needed?

The Charge buff is 550 AP and it ends after your pet's next attack. That generally works out like so:

Charge
Growl (with +550 AP on)
pet auto attack
Charge buff fades.

If you could somehow micro and make the pet not auto attack, I imagine you could get more enhanced Growls in before the charge buff fades.