On the topic of Focus management, I feel that it is far too erratic to be effectively "managed".

Isn't the purpose of cooldowns to constrain potential (be it damage or otherwise)? I personally don't want to stare at my pet's focus bar while mouse wheeling Steady Shot. As dumb fire as pets may be, managing their position, health, and using their abilities (maybe don't give non-focus dumps auto cast?) is more than any other class really has to do.

I personally would rather ability weave than focus manage. I don't play a rogue for a reason, and rogues certainly don't have +50 energy on crit abilities or they would be terminally energy capped at higher levels of itemization.

I posted this to the Beta boards: WoW Forums -> Pet Talent Tree Changes - Beta Build #2

Cunning:

Dash/Dive: Now has a 32s CD (was 30s) and a 16s duration (was 15s)
Mobility: Now reduces Dash/Dive CD by 8s/16s (was 15s/30s)
Owl's Focus: Now has a 15%/30% chance (was 5%/10%)
Roar of Recovery: Now 34 Focus, 40 yd range, 20% Mana (was 30 Focus, 30 yd range, 40% Mana)
Wolverine Bite: Now properly shows its damage before actually training it

Ferocity:

Dash/Dive: See Above
Loyalty: Increases happiness by 5% (was 10%), renamed to Bloodthirsty
Call of the Wild: 40 yd range, 10% Atk to party (was 20 yd range, 5%)
Lick Your Wounds: Now heals 50% of total hp (was 25%?)
Rabid: Now has a 30s CD (was 10s)

(Carrion Birds are still missing Dive/Charge)

Tenacity:

Dash/Dive: See Above
Blood of the Rhino: Now gives 2%/4% Stamina (was 1%/2%)
Guard Dog: Replaces "Improved Growl" - Your pet's Growl generates 20% additional threat and 10% of its total happiness. (was just 20% Growl)
Roar of Sacrifice: Replaces "Roar of Fortitude" - Your Pet absorbs damage from the friendly target up to a maximum of 50% of the pet's total health. Lasts 12s. 60 Focus, 40 yd range, 3s CD. (was 100 focus, 20 yd range, 5m CD - increased party members health/dodge by 10%)


Anything not mentioned above is unchanged (or I missed it).


And also:

Thoughts -

Cunning:

Mobility makes more sense now and the Owl's Focus buff is nice. Roar of Recovery had a pretty sizable mana nerf, but it's now much easier to use with the Range increase. Sadly the tree remains a little lackluster to me with its Happiness ability, Carrion Feeder, being pretty much terrible compared to Loyalty and Guard Dog in the other two trees.


Ferocity:

Call of the Wild's focus cost is still a terrible 100. It got a very nice buff and is much more usable with the range increase, but the focus cost is still a big problem. I think 60 would be a little more in line with the other stuff. Loyalty got a little nerf, but it's still fantastic and a must. Rabid's CD makes more sense now. Lick Your Wounds is now better, maybe actually worth using (if you're BM with spare points). Definitely still loving the Ferocity tree all around.


Tenacity:

The Tenacity tree has some good improvements and now I may considering leveling with it over a Ferocity pet. The new Guard Dog talent is pretty much win. Roar of Sacrifice: 3 second cool down? Is that a bug? That CD must be a bug. Anyways, it's a much better ability than the one it replaced.


There's some nice changes over all and it's good that many of the abilities make a bit more sense now. There's still definitely work to be done though and some fleshing out to do.

Yes, it is - now, with top end 70lvl gear. Which won't be top end 80lvl gear, as ratings/formulas will bump up a bit. Expect having 10-15% (if not more) crit less for a long time, till t8-t9 times I think (guessing that i will be about a year after Wotlk comes out, ideally).

Wowhead has an updated Pet Calc for this beta build.

I still can't see Lick Your Wounds being taken, as it puts your dps pet out of action for 10 whole seconds. With an innate healing affect plus a Mend Pet (and any group/raid heals it gets), how often would you really use this?

The Rabid change is welcome. It is a very nice change for BM hunters as the cooldown becomes 21s, giving it time to refresh the ability and not lose stacks. However, for non-BM hunters, I assume you would lose all the stacks and have to build them up again. Perhaps a 25s cooldown is more balanced ?

Call of the Wild changes makes it a better spell, but remembe that totems are 20yds, meaning we'll still be in close to the boss (unless there is a talent increasing its range that I can't see).

Roar of Sacrifice could be a very useful MT mitigation spell in 25man raids, esp combined with +40% heals on your pet.

Roar of Recovery change was needed, as the mana gained was too high for the cheap cost. Although perhaps now its cooldown could be reduced to 5mins?

Blizzard are being very cautious about the exotic pets and I can sort of understand them. However I think they need to realise that it costs us 6 talent points (1 for the talent itself) that we can put in other places for what looks like better damage gains at the moment. So if the gain of the extra 5 pet talent points and exotic pets isnt substantial its not going to be used by the raiding hunters. A possible solution is to make aspect mastery better so its worth taking. If we are encouraged to put 5 points in aspect mastery then beast mastery only costs us 1 extra talent point. In that case a marginally better pet is alright.

Taken directly from Wowhead - dunno is it digged or discovered:

Pets > Cunning > Chimera
Pets > Ferocity > Devilsaur

Devilsaurs... are... AWESOME! Seriously - I am speccing into Exotic pets no matter what.

Also currently, much like the Raptor's ability, it is *not* +Attack power by +Damage on the effect. Devilsaur's Monstrous Bite gives them Monstrous Growth - which Grows them in addition to giving +15% Damage at a 3 stack. They just get big and look awesome and still have their really loud sounds.

Oh man, Bestial Wrath + 3x Monstrous Growth Devilsaur = win.

Could we get pictures of the Devilsaur as a pet? Maybe the pet character screen also?

EDIT: nevermind

Here's one from Mania's website:



Large pic link / Mania's website

I'll get pics once I finish my Chimera search.

So far confirmed that Feralas, Winterspring, Azshara, and SMV Chimeras are not tameable. Checking on the Howling Fjord ones now - if they aren't tameable I'm guessing that they're just not turned on yet.

Edit: Yep, cannot tame the HF ones either. No Chimeras in this build. =(

I noticed something interesting from browsing that list:

Lightning Breath - Spell - World of Warcraft

That would seem to destroy the fast focus dump aspect, no?

Who cares! We have huge devilsaurs !

On a more serious note, Blizzard is trying to give all pets the same focus dump (Claw/Bite) and 1 family ability. I don't think they would have let a pet family have 2 focus dumps.

But as I said before, we now have huge killer devilsaurs !

Oh god.

It's amazing how one screenshot has completely turned me around on this ability. I still won't keep it for my top of the line raiding spec, but you can bet your sweet ass I will respec for Orgrimmar/Dalaran show offs

Well, it actually seems fitting, with all pets getting bite/claw now, those are intended to be the focus dumps...still, disappointed that it happened since Lightning Breath was damn good damage.

Doesn't Monstrous Bite make devilsaurs beat out raptors for the best DPS pet? Ferocity tree, an easier-to-use damage% increasing special that stacks to be a bigger bonus with a shorter cooldown and more uptime? Nevermind once it's fixed to do more initial damage and work with Longevity (12 second duration, 10 second cooldown can make stacking a bit iffy at times if you're using another focus dump, 7 second cooldown leaves more margin for error).

Yet another thing about mana issues. Seems that there will be no potion chugging? Or they will change something with potions' cooldowns?

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...onsickness.jpg

It certainly appears that way. I can't imagine any pet touching the Devilsaur for DPS.
Since it is related to Raptors I think it is fitting that it has a related skill. And just like Raptors I expect it to get nerfed. Perhaps a return to AP boosters? Seems most logical. If we assume that pets will on average do the 'same' 30% of BM damage as now, then a Devilsaur will boost our DPS by a massive 4.5%. That's plain insane. For Orcs it will be even more insane... Now more than ever I am hitting myself over the head for not picking Orc (especially nice Mana Tap becomes ever weaker in comparison to the level).

Eiher that, or we will be stuck. I hope it is to cut the dependancy, and we will have enough mana. But I really don't hope it is about other classes making up for this.

What is the likely outcome for an exotic pet that you level to max level, but then want to change spec for an evening or something? Logically, I'd assume you would have to stable it first, then go respec and the stable would recognise you no longer had the beast mastery talent and lock you out of the pet while retaining it? It worked slightly differently when warlocks were able to do this for Felguards for a while, the kicker here being we'd have to go re-tame and level.

It must be. Cause not only we will be stuck if raid buffing won't give us enough mana.

Anyone know about the "until you rest out of combat" thing with the potion sickness. Does vanish/invis maybe make you able to clear the debuff and be able to pot once more?
maybe even fd can drop it?

Looks like potion sickness is a physical debuff, so no, CoS won't clear it. It might even be an immunity ignore debuff as well ala Mark of Death/Frost/Res Sickness etc...

As for potion sickness, I'm a bit split both ways on this. On one hand, it's good since it takes out a rather significant consumable advantage (Alch trinket users gain 140mp5 by chain chugging) but on the other hand, it means gear and buffs becomes a lot more important since you cannot use say, mana potions to cover a significant mp5 hole or push more armour via stone/ironskins.
It also means that the raid will be less capable of handling situations such as raid damage or self-cleaning debuffs with purification potions.

And OMG! DEVILSAUR! Imagine having 5 of those going on a feeding frenzy in arenas...