Furry Gladiators Part III

This is the 3rd installment on Pets in PvP.  Last time, we talked about Cunning pets, and the talent build I would use.  We also talked about the 3 most important things in PvP: Survival, Damage, and Mobility.

Another very important thing in PvP in Consistency.  For example, if you can’t deal consistent amounts of burst damage, or consistently stay moving, then you have a good chance of losing.

The next tree we will discuss has Consistency in spades.

Ferocity
Unlike the Cunning tree, the Ferocity tree has the most straight-forward talents for damage, and that is what the ferocity tree is for.  What it has in damage though, it lacks in terms of survivability.  But if you plan on having a ferocity pet, you can count on having a companion that dishes out the pain.  Here’s the build I would use.

Lets go through the list we did last time, shall we?

Survival
For surviving, this pet build has Great Stamina, Bloodthirsty, Improved Cower, Heart of the Phoenix, and Lick Your Wounds.

Great stamina is a straight up stamina buff, which is always good.  Bloodthirsty gives your pets a chance to heal themselves whenever they hit somebody.  In addition, this means your pets happiness won’t be an issue if you have to resurrect him.  Heart of the Phoenix is simple: every ten minutes, your pet can self res back to full hp.  There is a bug though that this ability won’t autocast, so make sure that if you’re using this ability that you make a macro to cast it.  Lick Your Wounds is a great way to heal your pet every 2-3 minutes, depending on whether or not you have Longevity.  You have to manually cast Lick Your Wounds, or else your pet will use it when he takes one hit!

This leaves us with Improved Cower.  Using cower in PvP? I must be crazy.  But hear me out! Instead of 2 points in Natural Armor, 2 points in Improved cower alows you to cast cower in PvP.  20% reduction in all incoming damage is better that a 10% increase in armor on a pet that doesn’t have much to begin with.  Plus, it doesn’t use up any focus whatsoever.

Damage
Damage talents I picked include Cobra Reflexes, Spiked Collar, and Spider’s Bite.

Cobra Reflexes increase your attack speed.  More attacks means more crits means more synergy.  Same story as before.  Spiked Collar is a straight up 9% damage increase.  Spider’s Bite increases your pet’s chance to critically hit.  Critical hits means burst damage, which is what we’re aiming for.  Not much else to said about that one.  Consistent, passive damage being pumped from your pet.  That’s what the Ferocity pets are all about.

Mobility
For mobility, we have Dash and Lionhearted.

Dash is a huge speed boost to your pet for 16 seconds.  Using the math from last time, the cooldown of the ability is brought down to about 22 seconds.  That’s about all the speed the pet needs.  Lionhearted makes sure your pet is moving more often, instead of standing all stunned or running around like a headless hawkstrider.  Once again, dependable, stable talents that get the job done.

Things I didn’t take and why
There are a number of great talents I didn’t pick.  Lets go down the list.

1.  Natural Armor, Great Resistance, Avoidance
The points not spent in Natural Armor were put into Improved cower, which has more bang for the points spent there.  I would have liked to take Great Resistance and Avoidance, but I already have enough survival talents to make up for a ferocity pet’s terrible survival rate in PvP.

2.  Call of the Wild, Rabid
These two require some explaining.  Both are amazing talents.  Remember what I said at the top? Consistency.  Having your pet be reliable is what makes ferocity great in PvP.  Rabid is a powerful talent, but I would have needed to put points into avoidance.  Call of the Wild won’t see much use in arena because of the 5-3.5 minute cooldown.  As a matter of preference, I don’t need another instagib button I can’t use very often.  At the very least, I can get The Beast Within on a 1 minute cooldown.

3.  Boar’s Speed, Charge
I have Dash, and Dash works for 16 seconds.  Charge can be used more often, but once used, that’s the end of the speed boost for another 25-16.75 seconds.  Boars speed is a nice constant speed boost, but Dash only has a 6 second down time for me.  The rest of the time, the ferocity pet will be zipping about at 80% increased move-speed.  So no need for Boar’s Speed either.

What I tried to do wiht this build is maximise the pet’s durability in the hopes that it would survive.  This meant some cool abilities like Heart of the Phoenix and Lick Your Wounds.  I also wanted consistent damage and mobility.  The Ferocity tree specializes in damage, but like I said before, is frail.  So all the survival talents were necessary, and hopefully won’t impact the pet’s damage output too much.

For all you Non-BM hunters out there, here’s another idea for you guys.  Same idea, but I had to cut Lionhearted out.  I also had to cut 1 point from Great Stamina and Improved Cower.

Whereas the Cunning pet was meant to deal more damage under the right circumstances and take less damage while they were at it, the Ferocity pet deals the same amount of damage throughout the fight.  Because of this, they can’t take it as well, so make sure that your Ferocity pet isn’t trying to take all the damage.  Hopefully when talented properly, it can withstand the heat of the Arena, but it’s going to take a lot of Pet management to make sure it doesn’t die.

That’s all I have to say about Ferocity, for now.  Next time, I’ll be covering the Tenacity tree, and the special role it will play for the Hunter in PvP.

Follow the White Rabbit…

I interrupt this series of posts with a fun one.

Aspect of the Hare is a blog I frequently read.  Pike, the author, is a very good natured blogger with adorable hand-drawn avatars.  She also recently posted a new post called “Who’s on First?“

To quote a quotation…
“Go back to your first few posts. Who was the first person to EVER comment on your blog? Call them out, link that post and thank them! Then tag a few folks to see who they call out.” – Cait at One Among Many“

I’ll admit, trying to remember why I started this blog isn’t hard; this blog is only a week and a half old!
I started this blog in my university room.  I had studied, I had read all my blogs, and I had HAD it with the forums.  I wanted to post my ideas on this amazing class in this amazing game.  So, out of the blue… I made Slow Wolf.  Just sat down, and wrote about the “Great Hunter Nerf of 2008” to quote BRK.

So, I look back at my first couple of posts(Not that hard to do, seeing as I have just over 12 ) and to what does my shining eye appear, but the post of a woman by the name of Pike(or so I hear).

So, Pike of Aspect of the Hare was my first commenter, back when this blog hadn’t moved to WordPress yet.

I have this to say to you Pike.  Thank you for reading that rag of a post.  When I saw that someone posted, I was about ready to flip right out.  Then I did flip out when I saw it was someone I read regularly.  It made my day.

In any case, I tag everyone who reads Slow Wolf.  You guys/gals keep this blog going, and if I didn’t have any readers, this would have died a week ago.

I’d also like to thank bloggers like BRK, Lassirra, Loronar, Big Bear Butt, Drotara, and Mania.  If they didn’t exist, I’m sure I would not be writing this now.  They are very intelligent people who write very intelligent things, and they(along with Pike) are the reason I decided to start writing.

/salute.

As an assignment, I want everyone to check out all the links I have on the right side of the page.  ALL of them.  They’re all great blogs and deserve reading time.

We now go back to our scheduled program.

Furry Gladiators Part II

As a continuation to my Furry Gladiators post, I am now going to point out some PvP pet talent point specs and why I would use them.  Or my ideas for them anyway.

Lets start with the tree that was supposed to be the Alpha and Omega pet tree.

Cunning
Cunning is supposed to be the PvP tree.  This isn’t true at all, but it is the tree with the most talents designed to be useful in PvP primarily.

Wait Klin! So what talents am I looking for in a PvP build? Well, when going into PvP, we need to keep in mind three things, in an arguable order.  First, survival.  This means armor, intelligence and health points.  We’re talking stamina and mana here, and loads of it.  We need this because if we can outlast our opponent, then we win.

How we can outlast our opponents will have to wait until another time, and another post.  I’m focusing on pets.

Second is damage output.  If we can’t kill our opponents, how can we win? We can’t.  So we must get damage that cannot be healed easily.  One of the easier ways of achieving the hard to heal damage is through burst damage, which we as a class lack to an extent.  Our pets are the same way.  I’ll explain burst damage in another post one day when I’ve had more time to play with our shots.

Lastly is mobility.  If we can’t move, we die.  Mobility is very important, although it’s not a stackable stat.  It is something only the hunter and the pet can do through abilities, and boosting those abilities through talents is very important.

So, Survival, Damage, and Mobility is what I will be going for, and what I will be going for with my pets for PvP.

So for the cunning pets out there with 20 points to spend, we have this build.

Survival
Great stamina, Natural Armor, Great Resistance, and (to an extent)Cornered are all great for survival.  Great stamina gives more life, Natural armor gives more armor, great resistance increases the pet’s resistance to spells.  Cornered, when the pet is hurt enough, reduces the chance your pet is critically hit by 50% in addition to increasing damage done.  Fairly straightforward.

Damage
For damage talents, we have Cobra Reflexes, Spiked Collar, Feeding Frenzy, and Cornered(Yet again!).  Cobra Reflexes increases the amount of attacks your pet makes.  More attacks means more crits, which means more burst damage and synergy with the hunter for Beastmasters.  Spiked Collar increases your pet’s damage by 9%, straight up.  This leads into Feeding frenzy which increases your pet’s damage by another 12% when your opponent is at less than 35% health.  That’s 21% potential increased damage.  Then there’s Cornered, which can increase the damage by a whopping 50%.  You read that right.  So that’s a potential 71% increase to damage.  It’s situational, but it means one thing: a LOT of damage from your pet, coming thick… and fast, when you need it most.

Mobility
For mobility, we have Dive and Bullheaded.  Dive gets our pet to where we want them to be quickly.  This also allows them to chase those annoying rogues if they’re running away.  Bullheaded means the pet gets a PvP trinket, just like its master(You do have one if you’re PvPing, right? Oh dear:P).

Roar of Recovery is an indirect aid to everything really, and it’s more for you than the pet.  It fits under Survival, but for the hunter, not for the pet.

Now for things I didn’t get, and why:
1.  Mobility, Boars speed.
I don’t need them; Longevity does the trick.  What I mean is that Longevity reduces the cooldown of all your abilities and all your pet’s abilities by 33% .  32 x 0.33=10.56.  I’m not sure how Blizzard rounds out their numbers, but this means that the 32 second cooldown becomes a ~22 second cooldown with a 16 second period in which the ability is active.  There’s nearly no down time, and therefore no need to increase the pet’s speed anymore.
2.  Owl’s Focus.
Between Bestial Discipline and Go for the Throat, my pet will have enough focus to keep him hyper for a year.
3.  Carrion Feeder.
Maybe decent in Battlegrounds, it’s nowhere near as decent in Arenas, as there aren’t any corpses anywhere.
4.  The rest.
Not enough points! I would love to reduce stun time and AoE damage, but I needed the magic resistance and everything else MORE.

For all you Non-Beastmasters out there, this build is what I would use(subject to your preferences of course).  It’s the same principal, just with less points and a little more Focus generation and Mobility, as the rest of you don’t have Bestial Discipline and Longevity, respectively.

That’s the cunning tree.  I’m tired now, and need to do a few more exams and then take a long bus ride home.  I’ll do the Ferocity tree next.