Pet aggro an issue in 2.4?
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 31st 2008 at 8:00PM
Mania goes over the list of reports, some arguing for better pet aggro, some worse, and specifically singles out boars as possibly suffering the most since growl scales with pet AP and the boar's charge ability adds AP to the pet's next attack. If that attack is growl, yay, more aggro! If that attack is not, boo, less aggro.
Being that I have access to a level 70 raid-geared hunter in the person of my lovely wife, I sent her forth into Outland to see what she could discover first hand. She reports that pet abilities appear to be casting in the order that they are on her cast bar, so she suggested moving growl to be first on the bar as that appeared to cause it to cast first. However, she still felt as though he was having a more difficult time in holding aggro for her than he did before. She also included a screenshot of her combat log.
Hopefully, if you're having this issue this suggestion can help. Mania also mentions that Hortus is taking bug reports on the issue, so if you're having these problems you should head over and give them as many details as possible to help them run it to ground and fix it. At this point, your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not this is happening to warlock pets as well: any news on that score from warlocks?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ASDF Mar 31st 2008 8:16PM
Wow, only took a week for something to be posted about this issue. 2.4 brought a huge stealth nerf - the new mana regen formula - to hunters, as well as broke our pets.
Matthew Rossi Mar 31st 2008 8:16PM
Sorry, but as I said, I don't have a hunter myself and it wasn't until my wife showed me the Mania article that I knew anything about it.
jrb Apr 1st 2008 5:33AM
don't b lame yourself for it not being bought to your attention lately. 2.4 should have been named the "lets anally rape the hunter patch". Most of us haven't noticed the lack of aggro pets are creating purely because we don't have enough mana to out-aggro our pets for the most part. of course, when we do we have no mana to get out of between the rock and a hard place.
i think it's been compounded by the fact that people aren't being vocal enough about it (both issues), especially considering we're the most populous class. But then, if Blizz hard made changes to the cast order mechanism of hunter pets you'd kinda hope they'd know about it, instead of asking if it was annoying us all, and playing innocent.
PeeWee Apr 1st 2008 9:38AM
A hunter who doesn't stay inside the 5-second rule when he's DPS:ing has no idea what he's doing. Re-roll while you still can.
The spirit-based mana regen is nothing that will benefit you in combat anyways. QQ moar.
Dan Apr 1st 2008 5:18PM
> A hunter who doesn't stay inside the 5-second rule when he's
> DPS:ing has no idea what he's doing. Re-roll while you still can.
>
> The spirit-based mana regen is nothing that will benefit you in
> combat anyways. QQ moar.
All hunters are level 70 raiders, amirite?
Rob Mar 31st 2008 8:23PM
Thanks for the late notice, but I imagine pretty much every raiding hunter knew this already. As of now, being a hunter, leveling or otherwise, just got harder. It's not catastrophic, you just need to be more aware and alert than usual. Yes, your pet breaks aggro more, but you still have MD, FD, and other hunter tools.
Pucelle Mar 31st 2008 8:31PM
Yes, raiding hunters would of course know this, because we use growl so much in raids.
Knob.
Rob Mar 31st 2008 8:31PM
Oh Horitus has posted some info.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5591269680&postId=56402096337&sid=1#160
Basically he tested and can't identify a problem with growl. I think his testing is shody at best.
Rob Mar 31st 2008 8:39PM
I meant to imply that most people who farm regularly would be aware of this. Raiders need to farm constantly for their rather large bills. In doing so it's pretty obvious that there is a problem now. Its so easy to criticize, yet so hard to make a valued contribution, isn't it?
G Mar 31st 2008 8:57PM
"Its so easy to criticize, yet so hard to make a valued contribution, isn't it?"
Pot, kettle. Kettle, hunter.
hoviboy Mar 31st 2008 9:35PM
it is a very serious problem (bug?) because the threat generation is way too low. in my experience, before 2.4, "Growl" would generate +/- 1.3k aggro, with the patch 2.4 it is reduced to more or less 500.
very annoying for people who need to farm
doyesac Mar 31st 2008 11:15PM
"Thanks for the late notice, but I imagine pretty much every raiding hunter knew this already."
I'm not a raiding hunter, and generally I don't go around asking raiding hunters what's up with their class. You think I stand in Org all day randomly asking hunters "Hey, uh -- anything about your class I need to know about?"
But this info is useful to... um.. those who aren't directly affected, no? Mayhaps I'm tanking, the hunter tries to use their pet to grab a stray mob but fails -- instead of shouting "Huntard! Delete all hunter toons cos they all suck!" I'll instead think "Hmmm... maybe that piece of interesting news I read on Wowinsider sheds some insight on this..."
Balasan Mar 31st 2008 8:42PM
Interesting. I didn't notice any change in my hunter though, so I can't empathize.
Then again (if the issue was due to growl not being the first spell being cast), growl and dive are the only autocast spells that my windserpent has. I've bound lightning breath to my steady shot.
phreck Mar 31st 2008 9:09PM
And i thought it was just me... Now im being forced to consider changing my spec to BM instead of MM just to get the benefits for my pet.... *Sigh* 2.3 brought such blessings for our hunters, and now it seems 2.4 has come to lessen the gains made from 2.3.... WTF MATE.
alanray Mar 31st 2008 10:04PM
I'm far more upset about the mana regen issue. This is a terrible patch for hunters. As a MM hunter at lvl 70 I can barely fight 3 mobs before having to drink for mana. And that's using only Hunter's Mark, Scorpid Sting and Auto-shot. I cut all mana consuming damage shots out of my rotations and have been just letting auto-shot do the job, still my mana is being destroyed, pretty annoying.
Pucelle Mar 31st 2008 10:30PM
You won't notice much difference in your pet if you spec raiding BM - that's what I am, and I still have to wait for two Growls and restrain myself to just autoshotting the target.
Maybe if you went whole-hog and buffed the pet with everything in the tree, but you'll be nerfing your own damage.
Grais Mar 31st 2008 8:44PM
@4
LoL. I now love you Pucelle.
Shindeiru Apr 1st 2008 1:09AM
I have noticed that my pet has not been holding aggro the way it used to be but from my observations I can't see any one thing that is causing it. Nice to see I am not the only one having this issue.
Julemand Apr 1st 2008 1:04AM
i did notice this thing but i thought i was just something with omen, my boar went from around 3.5k threat to 1.5k on impact with charge and growl, gonna try checking where things are on the pet bar when im home
bonse Apr 1st 2008 4:55AM
I've been levelling my 60 gorilla to 70 since a little before 2.4, something i have been meaning to do for a ling time, I'm MM so stealing aggro has been expected in such a situation, especially as I have been doing it with the dailies, flayer mines are not a great place to kite things and enraged flayers go through both me and my pet fast, its been hard work.
What I have noticed is that now my pet is 67 and can actually make a valid attempt at tanking, ie, no longer witnessing the lowbie pet rotation, miss miss dodge parry, he is now showing up on Omen more predominantly, but, whether or not Thumpy is putting down conparative threat and at what rate I can't say, what I can say is I am usually now sat at 2-3 times his threat level according to the latest omen and not drawing aggro