[BUG] Pet Growl Auto-cast not working

Which quests/mobs are you encountering this issue with?
Some mobs are immune to growl and the pets will not autocast it in those situations.

This is especially true for the Erratic Sentries for the new Sunwell Dallies.

We're testing this internally.

If you would like to help us please provide me with some useful information to work with.

What NPCs are you fighting?
What Pet are you using?
What pet abilities are you using?
What character abilities are you using?
What macro's are you using?
What type of gear are you using?

Crying about your class and bickering about semantics does not help us get bugs fixed. If you are not providing useful information do not bother to post in this thread.

I've spent most of the day today testing hunter pet aggro.

First let me say that Growl and Charge interaction is not the same as it was in 2.3.3, this is being looked at separately by the developers. I'm specifically looking at the reports that other pets are not not holding aggro as well in 2.4 as they did in 2.3.3.

Second let me remind you all that threat meter add-ons are not an accurate tool for testing threat. We have internal tools that can display exact threat numbers but those functions are not available to mods in any way.

Third Growl does not appear in the combat log on the "self" filter by default. You must turn it on by selecting Spell Casting message types in the settings for that filter. You can always see Growl in the combat log if you use the "everything" filter.

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I have been able to verify by side by side comparison that Growl auto-casts consistently when turned on and that it is doing the exact same amount of threat in 2.4 as it did in 2.3.3.

I also did side by side testing of two identically geared and talented hunters (using a copy of a retail character that reported this problem) with identical fully skilled pets and compared threat.

I sent the pets to attack an unkillable target.
After the opening growl I turned on Auto-shot, and hit Arcane Shot.
I then chain cast arcane shot 9 more times as soon as it was off cooldown.
I then compared the threat of the pet and the hunter. Both were within 10% of each other.

I repeated this on 2.3.3 and 2.4 and the results were nearly identical.

I also repeated this test using Improved Hunters Mark (as I notice all the hunters reporting it have that talent) and the threat for both the pet and the hunter were higher but still within acceptable margins and aggro was not lost by the pet by the 10th arcane shot on 2.3.3 or 2.4.

There may be a bug with hunter pet aggro, but it is not caused by Growl. If anyone has more information or observations about threat they can post here and I'll try to take a look at them.

Guys managing aggro is not intended to be a no-brainer it takes some effort, that means using a shot rotation to maximize your DPS will draw aggro that is intended. If you were somehow not before 2.3.3 then either you were doing something different or there was a bug. In my testing 4 steady shots in a row drew aggro off the pet 100% of the time on 2.3.3 and on 2.4.

As I said before, I have confirmed that Growl without charge is creating the exact same amount of threat in 2.4 as it did in 2.3.3 if there is a problem it is not with growl.

Unless someone can provide evidence that something they are doing is causing more aggro than it did in 2.3.3 I'm done testing this, there are other bugs that need investigation.

Q u o t e:


OK Hortus, do me a favour, test out your agro in a GROUP situation. as i sated on page 10, i seem to pull threat off a pally very easily now. i couldnt before 2.4 and nothing in my gear has changed. hunter agro seems to me to be BUGGED.

Then your problem is not with growl, which is what I've been saying all along.

I've got plenty of Hunter players working here in QA who have looked at this and they all have told me that they are pulling aggo at the exact same time as they did prior to 2.4. If you are doing something different then it needs to be identified before it can be fixed.

And for all of you bringing up my statement about hunters mark increasing threat. Hunter's mark (and IHM) increase AP, which increases damage, which increases total threat, this is intended and working as it should.