The new Pet AI is terrible.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Well its not like its worse than how it used to be lol?

Pet AI has always been a tough part of this game.

[Zeth Hawkins]

Really missing the old aggressive and defensive stances

[Deleted]

If you can't put attack commands into macros, I don't know, don't play a pet class? Or maybe just stop whining - if you can't use common commands to optimize pet performance, then clearly, you don't care enough about it either.

[Kwaai]

This is because Kill Command is currently coded to attack the pets current target, so unless you have manually forced the pet to move to a new target by using a stand alone /petattack macro, it will KC its current target before switching.

Most if not all the problems people are having in this thread can EASILY be fixed by simply having a /petattack and /petfollow macro (hell you can combine the 2 with a modifier on the /petfollow section)

It does not take super human reflexes and ability to switch to a new target and press a keybind to force your pet to switch, and if you think it is that hard you rally shouldn't be raiding

Has it always been like that? It feels significantly worse than it used to. Regardless, having to put /petattack in a separate macro from Kill Command because pets can't change targets immediately is absurd. How can you possibly argue that the current behavior is reasonable?

[Zeeket]

Has it always been like that? It feels significantly worse than it used to. Regardless, having to put /petattack in a separate macro from Kill Command because pets can't change targets immediately is absurd. How can you possibly argue that the current behavior is reasonable?

its new behavior since the pre-patch, and i never said it was reasonable behavior, just that it was easily manageable and fixed with very little effort, i do not think the current design is good, but i also don't see why people have so much of a problem just managing it manualy

[Kwaai]

its new behavior since the pre-patch, and i never said it was reasonable behavior, just that it was easily manageable and fixed with very little effort, i do not think the current design is good, but i also don't see why people have so much of a problem just managing it manualy

In my case I just didn't know you needed to separate the /petattack from the Kill Command. It's never been like that, it's unintuitive, and it's a backwards QoL change. Now that I know it's a non-issue, because as you say, it's very easy to manage. However, given the combined macro has fixed this behavior for years, if I hadn't been told I would have just assumed pets were retarded forever now.

[Yizu]

Started leveling a gnome hunter <3 Yeah so I really dont wanna make a new thread for this question.

So what is the point of being able to carry 5 pets if the specs are not saved per pet? Is this a bug? Or i really have to open my talent UI everytime i go inside a dungeon or pvp area? Thats feels wrong? When i can just bind each pet on a button depending on what i need?

[Kaeth]

Or i really have to open my talent UI everytime i go inside a dungeon or pvp area?

This won't help you if you regularly use Cunning spec, but the following macro will swap between Ferocity and Tenacity whenever you click it. After a long-ish cast time, and only outside of combat, of course; it's just a shortcut to the pet talent window functionality, after all:

/run SetSpecialization(GetSpecialization(false, true)==1 and 2 or 1, true)

If you want to play around with it, "3" is the value for Cunning.

[Yizu]

This won't help you if you regularly use Cunning spec, but the following macro will swap between Ferocity and Tenacity whenever you click it. After a long-ish cast time, and only outside of combat, of course; it's just a shortcut to the pet talent window functionality, after all:

/run SetSpecialization(GetSpecialization(false, true)==1 and 2 or 1, true)

If you want to play around with it, "3" is the value for Cunning.

thanks! <3

[Gaaz]

News flash, 100% efficiency wasn't happening with the AI either.

Actually, switching was pretty close to 100% efficient. The only time lost was spent on server making s selection of new target. How long does that take? 1ms? Less? Average human reaction is about 330ms even on the best of days.

Congrats, you just described the entire client-server combat model.

But why introduce things that make this problem even worse?

Nice strawman. In case you don't see the absurdity, let me similarly reframe your argument: You can't possibly play your rotation at 100% efficiency, so you should have an AI to do it for you.

I can pretty much squeeze 90%+ out of my rotation. Sometimes logs show even 95%+. That is not a major problem. What I do not get is why on earth during AoE situations my pet should stop its attack and come back to me all of a sudden? I do use petattack macros to remedy that! I even use AutoHotkey scripts to minimize reaction window to primary target death and to switch pet with minimal delay. The problem is, during AoE (the first boss in HFC is a good example) I still miss many auto attack cleaves with the new AI due to pet disengaging in the middle of AoE pack. I reduced switch times to about 100ms average, which is more than three times faster than average human reaction. But the problem is still there. Consider this: average player is going to loose 1 pet attack for every 4 mobs that die during AoE when he targets them. It gets worse with higher ping times. That is not normal. This change was not needed. You can not be reasonably expecting average, or just any non pro players to use Windows command scripts to minimize reaction times. Even more so - many would consider that cheating. But without them, you are forced to create a separate petattack macto and mash it mindlessly during your AoE rotation, so that your pet not just stops Beast Cleaving and runs back to you, but chooses a new target to continue cleaving. So why introduse that in the first place? That is not skill! It has nothing to do with it. It is just mindless button mashing, that can be remedied by a couple of lines of code on the server side.

[Deleted]

Well its not like its worse than how it used to be lol?

Pet AI has always been a tough part of this game.

It is. They're noticeably slower to react to you attacking a target.

[kucerakov]

The only issue I have was mentioned earlier. When you AE a big pack of mobs hoping to keep beast cleaving, only to have your pet finish the first one and come trotting back like "I got em, boss, no worries!"

[eScar95]

I wasn't aware they changed the pet A.I.? I thought it was always this bad. Lol

[Keyimin]

The stances and AI are unquestionably broken, as has been acknowledged by Ion on his Twitter after several people inquired about it (he initially had to ask what was wrong with it because he said it should be the same!). As of a few days ago, he said they're not happy with the behavior and are actively working on it. Yanno, finally, despite us having reported this repeatedly throughout alpha/beta (if that tells you anything about how much they've been paying attention).

Yes, you can somewhat get around it by macro'ing /petattack and constantly rotating your pet through multiple mobs manually, but it's shit and shouldn't behave that way. As others have mentioned, no matter how on point you are about pressing your buttons, your pet derps out and delays, and regardless of the milliseconds, it adds up over time -- a delay that did NOT exist pre-patch.

It's pretty simple. No matter what your views are about proper pet management, there's no world in which our pets should drop combat and come back to us while we're still in combat with a mob (unless you choose to have it that way).

[Moza]

Surely they can implement something into the game so we can use Set Focus action to change our pets target to another. I know it's currently used obviously for targeting a set target but this could improve some problems for certain classes such as hunter & Demonology Warlock. Thus allowing us to manage our class a little better an make it more enjoyable.