[Discussion] Hunter/lock pet survivability

#0 - May 30, 2009, 11:04 p.m.

I want to make a discussion thread to talk about this issue that has plagued both of our classes. As a hunter I find myself petless, thats where my pet gets killed, due to the insane burst capability of the classes in the game. My mend pet is a hot so it barely even scratches any and all the incoming damage. I even had a healer heal my pet versus a ret paladin and he had a very hard time keeping him alive.

I assume that warlocks will share the same sentiment.

So please discuss so the devs can make appropriate changes so we can atleast have a fighting chance since we are a indeed a pet dependent class(s).

Thanks

Velk

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(any and if all of these abilities are welcome but some are just meant to give hunters and warlocks the ability to make a difference with our pet out)

Hunters

-Make heart of the phoenix a trainable ability that all pets will have access to with a 5 min cool down
-Give every pet class access to hearth of the rhino
-Make mend pet tick for 50% of its worth instantly and the other 50 over time with a 3 second cool down so you wont have hunters spamming this ability.

My idea for warlocks:

-make fel domination a baseline ability on a 5 min cool down (I believe it is a 10 min cool down now)
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^^ I will depend on warlocks on how to help their pets.

Ghostcrawler

#19 - May 31, 2009, 6:42 a.m.

Q u o t e:
All pets need to scale with resilience and spell pen (hit rating?)

We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right without some crit mitigation. Pets will never scale right with gear as long as the master improves in ways that don't benefit the pet.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

Ghostcrawler

#26 - May 31, 2009, 6:56 a.m.

Q u o t e:
EDIT: Since pets are kind of an integral part of both warlock and hunter PvE damage, and expertise is entirely wasted on both classes, would it be possible to add a talent option to give pets expertise?

We don't want you to have to stack stats on your character just to benefit your pet. For example, we currently let warlock demons earn melee hit based on the caster's spell hit.