BfA Alpha - Hunter Changes

[Nythiz]

Noob question, maybe not in the right thread: what does is the Hunter 'pet management' done? Should I think of it as 2-3 buttons more to press, or is it more complicated, more simple?
During a raid or dungeon, how often or how careful will I watch the pet(s)?
Thanks.

These days its much less of a thing than it used to be. Pet AI is a lot smarter in attacking what you want it to attack.

Back in the days pets took full AoE damage so had to be recalled if they were about to go down or were standing in stuff and pets had a habit of getting stuck, not auto attacking or being on the wrong target a lot more than these days.

So basically pet management mostly comes down to (as Vellithe mentioned) being aware of your pet and what it does. Doesn't mean you have to monitor it every single second, but be aware where they are generally is a good idea.
Pet managment also means that choosing your targets wisely is advisable. On a fight with adds you don't want your pets to constantly go back and forth between adds on one side of the room and adds on the next side, try to think like a melee player.

For most easy stuff 2 keybinds will suffice. One being /petattack and the other being /petfollow.
Keep the pet on assist and you'll be fine for 99% of content. If you want a bit more control you can get macros for passive stance and defensive stance as well, but I find that the majority of "casual" content has no real need for that.

[Dracodraco]

I've basically bound /Petattack to kill command (as this makes my pet teleport to the target when in close enough proximity), and can just treat it like the fucking walking DOT it is. Just pretend it doesn't exist and DPS whichever target has the highest priority, and your pet will follow because you keep pressing Kill Command.

The only place where you actually have to consider what you're doing is AOE - you need the pet to hit a central mob, so it'll cleave everything. But then, that's not actually different from most other AOE spells (things such as chain lightning and target-area like Earthquake being the exceptions), so you'll probably be multishotting a central target anyway; Thus, also bind /petattack to multishot, and your pet will waddle over to the central target and cleave it's heart out.

As mentioned earlier, the only gripe I have with "pet AI" in the BFA beta is that Stomp is no longer a seperate spell, and we once again need the pet to be in range of a target to cast dire frenzy (now renamed Barbed shot). Not being able to press 2 of your 3 main buttons (one being your main focus generator outside of passive regen even) just because your pets not waddled over to the important add yet feels bad. Atleast on live, I can still stomp/cobra shot a target that's too far away while my pet makes it's way over (think robots on Kin'garoth). In BFA, I can't stomp, because stomp is just an extra AOE-pulse that happens when I press barbed shot, rather than an actual attack.

[Kaolin]

As mentioned earlier, the only gripe I have with "pet AI" in the BFA beta is that Stomp is no longer a seperate spell, and we once again need the pet to be in range of a target to cast dire frenzy (now renamed Barbed shot). Not being able to press 2 of your 3 main buttons (one being your main focus generator outside of passive regen even) just because your pets not waddled over to the important add yet feels bad. Atleast on live, I can still stomp/cobra shot a target that's too far away while my pet makes it's way over (think robots on Kin'garoth). In BFA, I can't stomp, because stomp is just an extra AOE-pulse that happens when I press barbed shot, rather than an actual attack.

Literally this. They should just give us volley back or something.

[Vellithe]

As mentioned earlier, the only gripe I have with "pet AI" in the BFA beta is that Stomp is no longer a seperate spell, and we once again need the pet to be in range of a target to cast dire frenzy (now renamed Barbed shot). Not being able to press 2 of your 3 main buttons (one being your main focus generator outside of passive regen even) just because your pets not waddled over to the important add yet feels bad. Atleast on live, I can still stomp/cobra shot a target that's too far away while my pet makes it's way over (think robots on Kin'garoth). In BFA, I can't stomp, because stomp is just an extra AOE-pulse that happens when I press barbed shot, rather than an actual attack.

You don't have beta access right?

Barbed Shot is essentially a ranged Dire Frenzy. You throw a knife at the enemy and that causes your pet to go in a frenzy (and stomp, and whatever). It feels a hundred times better than Dire Frenzy did, because it never fails.

The only thing that has range limits is the "jump" the pet will do to the target once you cast it. It has the same range as Kill Command, so it's pretty wide. If the jump fails, it'll just cast stomp on the wrong place, but Barbed Shot still goes through unaffected.

Also, since Barbed Shot causes the pet to jump on the target, and the stomp is delayed until the end of the jump, stomp is pretty much an actual attack. Imagine that instead of a random beast that you have no emotional attachment to jumping in and stomping, it's your beloved pet. See? 100 times better at the very least.

Also, binding that many /petattack is a terrible idea, because it causes your pet to "waddle" so much it ends up having very little time to attack. Try to move your pet only using Barbed Shot/Kill Command, because those "teleport" the pet to the target, resulting in no DPS loss.

[Dracodraco]

You don't have beta access right?

Barbed Shot is essentially a ranged Dire Frenzy. You throw a knife at the enemy and that causes your pet to go in a frenzy (and stomp, and whatever). It feels a hundred times better than Dire Frenzy did, because it never fails.

If they changed the behaviour, that's great. I've done every heroic/mythic beta test outside of this latest one (they were testing a boss we'd already done twice on heroic, with a very boring mythic mechanic, so didn't feel like scheduling a friday-raid with a days notice). It certainly was *not* working the way you're describing it when I was doing the raid tests; You could not shoot the target with barbed shot if your pet wasn't in range of it.

The only thing that has range limits is the "jump" the pet will do to the target once you cast it. It has the same range as Kill Command, so it's pretty wide. If the jump fails, it'll just cast stomp on the wrong place, but Barbed Shot still goes through unaffected.

And as said, this is new behaviour compared to when they did all the bulk raid tests a few weeks back. If that's how it works now, I have no complaints. Back then, it wasn't making the pet teleport, and it wasn't useable even if your pet wasn't in range of the targets. You had to patiently wait for the pet to get there (especially fun when oozes would spawn the furthest away on Fetid Devourer, having to call my pet off 5 seconds in advance to their spawn to make sure it was near enough to KC->DF).

Also, since Barbed Shot causes the pet to jump on the target, and the stomp is delayed until the end of the jump, stomp is pretty much an actual attack. Imagine that instead of a random beast that you have no emotional attachment to jumping in and stomping, it's your beloved pet. See? 100 times better at the very least.

I don't see the point you're trying to make here. Stomp is a pulse of damage around your pet that triggers when the frenzy does. How is calling it "an actual attack" making a difference here, I just explained what it did.

As for the whole random beast thing, I could not give less of a fuck about emotional attachment. I'd much rather have fluid gameplay than "my beloved pet" (which will be whichever perk the raid needs, such as lust or dispel, or a 12% stamina pet if none of those are needed) doing stuff for me.

Also, binding that many /petattack is a terrible idea, because it causes your pet to "waddle" so much it ends up having very little time to attack. Try to move your pet only using Barbed Shot/Kill Command, because those "teleport" the pet to the target, resulting in no DPS loss.

"That many". I told him to bind Kill command, and to bind multi shot. That's two. You're telling him to bind two as well. If you're switching between targets while multi-shotting for AOE quickly enough to make your pet start waddling around, chances are you're doing something wrong to begin with, considering we don't have the focus to keep spamming MS and generally only want to hit it every 3-4 seconds to keep BC up till we run out of focus. You shouldn't be spamming it (and switching targets constantly) enough that your pet runs around after targets.

[Kaolin]

I could have sworn than BS wasn't making your pet charge. Logged on late last night and its basically the same as the KC charge. I was still able to BS mobs but if my pet was out of range he wouldn't charge the target. Not many situations where that would be relevant but Kin'garoth is def one of them.

[Traveler Voltin]

i just want more stable slot.

[Lodvampire]

Battle for Azeroth Beta - Build 26788
Dire Beast: Summons a powerful wild beast to attack your target that attacks the target and roars, increasing your Haste by 10% for 8 sec. Beast Mastery Hunter - Level 15 Talent. 25 Focus. 40 yd range. Instant. 15 sec cooldown.

Interesting change, gonna worth using this?

[Mavick]

Battle for Azeroth Beta - Build 26788
Dire Beast: Summons a powerful wild beast to attack your target that attacks the target and roars, increasing your Haste by 10% for 8 sec. Beast Mastery Hunter - Level 15 Talent. 25 Focus. 40 yd range. Instant. 15 sec cooldown.

Interesting change, gonna worth using this?

Possibly on AoE, doubtful for ST. Animal Companion *still* isn't working right and it's generally performing better than the new Dire Beast from what I've seen on a dummy. Also, if you're specced into Stomp, Dire Beast still does the stomp but the damage for it's stomp seems to be greatly reduced compared to your main pet's stomp.

The added haste buff is definitely a welcome change tho, and might *possibly* lead to a bit more interesting gameplay where you're lining up the haste buff with Bestial Wrath, etc.