Thunderstomp removed!!!

SKY IS FALLING. NO WAIT I DIDN'T SEE ALL THE CHANGES.

Thunderstomp is now a pet talent available to any Tenacity pet. Now your bears, crocs or ESPECIALLY CRABS can join in the AE tanking fun.

Assume the gorilla pet will be about as useful in PvP as the pets with stuns, of which there are several. Most of those have cooldowns in the 60 sec range. Pummel could probably be less than that.

Q u o t e:
So how is adding Pummel to hunter pets going to encourage the use of offensive spell casts in PvP?


CoT being neutered and Eradication and Siphon Life practically being removed tell me otherwise, GC

Yet you want a more powerful CoT? :p

Don't obsess over the cooldown. I edited my post above that most of the hunter pet stuns are on a 60 sec cooldown. Pummel could probably be a little less than that. If it's just the name giving you bad dreams of warriors, then we can find something less frightening. :)

Q u o t e:
It's not going to way the crap up in the tree making me spec BM to get it, is it?

It is where Intervene is now, which is like second or third tier IIRC. Intervene moved deeper, but Thunderstomp seemed like a more valuable spell, especially at lower level.

I LIKE TO JUST READ TITLES AND THEN POST WHEN I GET SKERED.

We have changed the gorilla Pummel cooldown to 4 hours. Relax.

Q u o t e:
How is a Worm pet going to Thunderstomp?

Annelids have feet called setae. I'm not entirely sure what phylum a Jormungar is but they have little bristley bits that are probably similar in morphology. Whew. Dodged that one.

Q u o t e:
You realize this is going to get quoted and taken out of context and used against you in so many ways?

That would be the first time. :)

Q u o t e:
Nice sarcasm, but really, why do YOU think that many of the DPS casters are miles behind in arena representation at the moment? By which I mean Demo/Dest Warlocks, Elemental Shamans, Boomkins, Fire Mages and Shadow Priests.

Well, I don't think it's from hunter pets.

If we need to give the gorilla a stun so that it DRs with other stuns, we can do that. It's just a bit boring because so many pets have that ability.

TBH, I am being a little sarcastic because the real change was giving more tanking pet choices to hunters. The Pummel is just filler to give the gorilladin something. He could even keep Thunderstomp and just have free talent points. The point was just to get Thunderstomp into the tree, along with several other pet talent changes.

I'm also having a little fun because the response was so swift and a tad dramatic, even after I tried to clarify our intent.

Q u o t e:
But where does the thunder come from?

Having just returned from Vegas, I am obliged to respond…

Down Under.

Q u o t e:
Could you maybe let us in on the thinking behind the Furious Howl changes?

The original LK idea was to make it a substitute for Battle Shout / Blessing of Might. We took a similar tact with several of the pets being able to bring great buffs if you were missing them.

Unfortuntely, those buffs tend to be exceedingly common and wolves are such an iconic WoW creature that it felt unfortunate for them to be sidelined.

The new ability *stacks* with those buffs. It only affects the hunter and her wolf. We changed the cooldown and duration because we thought it was more interesting to try and time your cooldowns (like burn Rapid Shot during Howl) rather than just have the bonus up 100% of the time.

Wolves should be good now. We hope.

Q u o t e:
Of course something is wrong have Gorrila be THE best solo pet, Kitty be THE best raid pet and Crab be THE best PVP pet.

I think you had a typo.

Q u o t e:
Of course something is wrong to have Gorilla be THE best solo pet and Kitty be THE best raid pet. On the other hand, having Crab as a PvP pet just plain rules so nobody minds having them scuttling happily everywhere in Arenas. Hell, I'd tame them if they had no special ability and only ate cheese.

Q u o t e:
So im guessing bm hunters will be only ones able to get intervene. Lets pray you dont nerf roar of sacrifice as well since its pretty core to pvp hunters and is why they are using tenacity pets in the first place.

It will take BM to reach the bottom tier, but those are mostly gratutious dps talents. Utility abilities like Intervene are higher, though you may have to pick and choose since your points are limited.

I believe we changed Roar of Sac to only affect the hunter (we feared chains of hunters keeping tanks alive) but we are strongly considering letting Cunning pets have access to the same talent as Tenacity pets.

You should be able to try out all the hunter pet changes on the PTR soon.

Q u o t e:
Can we assume that Thunderstomp stats arent changing? Coffecients etc...

Because of the way pet talents work, we had to covert it to a single scaling rank instead of the multiple ranks it had before. The spell will look different, but we did not attempt to rebuild it or purposely nerf it. Let us know how it feels. The pet abilities are notoriously hard to balance because their stats are so dependent on the exact gear of the hunter, which of course varies wildly.

Q u o t e:
I'd be afraid to see how much developer time is spent fine tuning hunter pets compared to some classes out there that really need it.

I understand the sentiment, but the pet data is very simple to change. With actual classes, you can run into tons of ramifications for changing where a talent is located or what it does. You have to think very carefully about the change, and in some cases making the change itself can be intensive. Classes have lots of spells that affect other spells, etc. There is definitely such a thing as prioritization, but we also try not to let a hundred quick and dirty tasks get bottled up behind the long and hard tasks.

Q u o t e:
#1: This is a ranged interrupt that goes through walls (no LoS dependency), is off the GCD, doesn't activate the GCD, and is essentially completely "free" in every sense of the word - no mana cost, no health cost, no reagent cost, or anything of that sort.

You do realize that one of the hunter pets has had an interrupt since LK shipped….