Cobra Reflexes and Why We Love Them
Cobra Reflexes, along with Avoidance, are new pet spells courtesy of Patch 2.1. But whereas Avoidance is pretty cut-and-dry, CR is a little vague as to how it works. Naturally, there are some people who write to us asking for a more complete explanation of how it works and why it should be trained or not. That’s why we’re here, so let’s do it.
But first, there are two concepts we wish to understand completely in order to fully explore the Cobra Reflexes spell: Damage per Attack and Damage per Second.
Damage per Attack. When you pet strikes a single time, it does damage. The amount of damage is variable from a minimum to a maximum, less armor mitigation, plus any buffs, crit modifiers, etc. The basic concept is that a single hit is just that.
Damage per Second. Simply, DPS is the rate at which your pet does damage. Basic math, but math nevertheless, let’s make it very pretty so we can examine it.
Notice how proportional everything is. If we increase the damage a single attack inflicts, we increase our DPS. If we decrease the interval between attacks, we increase our DPS. Likewise, if we were to increase the Damage per Attack by 10% and simultaneously increase the time between attacks by 10%, our DPS would remain the same. Wanna see?
Let’s assume our pet hits for 300 damage per hit, and hits once every second:
Now, let’s increase our pet’s damage per attack by 10% and increase the time between attacks by 10%:
What do you know, the math works out. Let’s apply this to Cobra Reflexes.
Now the CR tooltip says, “Attack speed increased by 30%, but damage done is reduced.” And when it says increased, it means the rate at which your pet-attacks are increased; the attack speed number is decreased.
But by how much is the damage reduced? Well, it doesn’t say damage is reduced by 30%, does it. if it were reduced by exactly 30%, we know from our previous example that our pet’s DPS would remain the same. But what would happen if the damage-reduction did not mirror the attack speed modification exactly? Obviously, our DPS would change.
Guess what. The damage-per-attack mitigation does not mirror the attack speed change. Lucky us, it works out in our favor; Cobra Reflexes actually increases our DPS as it lowers our damage-per-attack.
Proof? Here ya go. Stolen from the vaults of the fine folks at Petopia, their research into Cobra Reflexes:
By their research, by just training Cobra Reflexes your pet will receive a net DPS-increase of 10% or more. That’s spiffy! So why does BRK not recommend Cobra Reflexes for everybody? Because Marksman and Survivalist hunters require different things from their pet than Beastmaster hunters do:
The Primary Function of a Beastmaster hunter’s pet is DPS.
The Primary Function of a Marksman/Survivalist hunter’s pet is to hold aggro.
MM/SV want their pet to hold aggro so they can unleash their high-RAP and high-Crit attacks. They will train their pets with the highest-aggro generating spells possible. In terms of importance, it is more desirable for their pets to have Bite, Lightning Breath and Screech than Cobra Reflexes. If a MM/SV hunter wants to max their pet’s health, grab Avoidance, and maybe a resistance or two, they may run out of talent points before they reach the point where they could train Cobra Reflexes. And in these situation, BRK can easily recommend they not worry about CR.
Beastmaster hunters, on the other hand, want their pets to generate damage. We don’t worry about pulling mobs off our pets as it just doesn’t happen. So Cobra Reflexes is a given for us for the extra damage alone.
Frenzy gives your pet a 30% increase in attack speed for 8 seconds when your pet crits. The more frequently your pet crits, the more frequently Frenzy will proc. So Cobra Reflexes will cause Frenzy to proc more often, which is more pet-damage, which is more Goodness.
But wait, there’s even more!
When your pet crits, Ferocious Inspiration will cause all the members of your party to have their damage increase by 3%. More crits means more Ferocious Inspiration, which means more pet/hunter/party-damage, which is even more Goodness.
“Now wait a d@mn minute, BRK. You’re telling me that Cobra Reflexes increases my pet’s DPS just by being trained, and if I’m a Beastmaster hunter it’ll make Frenzy proc more which will increase my pet’s DPS AGAIN, and it’ll make Ferocious Inspiration proc more which will increase the DPS of my pet, me, and every member of my stinkin’ party?”
Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying. You graduate.
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21 Responses to “Cobra Reflexes and Why We Love Them”
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I got a question for you then. I’m a BM 70 Hunter with a cat, I don’t have CR trained on my pet but I do have dash. I find it very very hard to part with dash as I like to be able to run for amob and send my pet in there first without needing stop.
However… I notice that the mobs I’m currently fighting (70-71) almost ALWAYS leave my pet and head straight for me about 75% of the way through the fight. I’ve adapted to this and simply save my concussive shot for the end of the fight.
If I get CR, will that help my pet hold aggro? Or as a BM Hunter am I pretty much destined to remain in this particular fighting style?
Yes, CR will help your pet hold aggro in that your pet will do more damage. Do not part with Dash. Make sure you have Growl 8. Watch your combat log and see if your Growl is being resisted. Get KTH Threat Meter and use it while soloing.
And if you find a biscotti, we’d love one to go with our coffee this afternoon.
“I don’t have CR trained on my pet but I do have dash. I find it very very hard to part with dash”
CR is a passive ability and will not need to replace anything on the pet bar.
Good write up. Adding this ASAP to help with my pending career as an arena clothie shredder.
off topic,
i swear by Crom, that when i reach level 29, i will be there until the new year. i want all gnome twinks to die in Chuck’s claws.
in regards to Barby’s comment:
I use a cat, with claw, bite, growl, dash. I find that when I have claw active my pet doesnt always have enough focus to use growl when it’s timer is up. My pet holds aggro better with bite and growl because bite has a longer timer and doesnt use up all the focus. You could also give your tanking kitty a few seconds before you open up a can.
Now this is only useful while grinding. I would never run that way in an instance where my pet isnt tanking.
@anon
Why not just use growl and claw? Claw uses less focus, and the pet ends up doing more DoT. At least, that has been my experience.
This is for grinding.
Growl is your bread and butter. It is what keeps your pet holding aggro. The damage your bite or claw are doing is just extra. I have had a friend that had the same problem holding aggro for long. It is because you have too many things trying to proc for the same focus. Your pet doesn’t do as much damage you do, he is there mainly to hold aggro. You should watch your pets focus and I’ll bet you’ll see alot of things waiting after their cooldown.
If this is true, turn off bite and dash. Use up that focus on what’s important and you’ll have your pet hold aggro the whole fight. Don’t forget to feign often to drop your aggro to 0.
Any pet will have enough focus to auto-spam Bite, Growl and Dash, so there is no reason not to use Bite if you want to.
If you have the talents Bestial Discipline and/or Go for the Throat, your pet will generate singinificantly more focus, and you will want to train your pet with a “focus dump” to take advantage of all that potential damage. What’s a “focus dump?” Simply an instant attack that your pet can spam until it runs out of focus. These skills are Claw, Lightning Breath, Gore and Screech.
But, you say, I don’t want my pet running out of focus, because then it won’t be able to Growl. If you have BD and/or GftT, don’t worry. Your pet will be generating focus very quickly and the AI will pause spamming the “focus dump” whenever Growl’s cooldown is up. Your pet will rarely have a significant delay in Growling, and all the damage your pet has been inflicting with its “focus dump” ability will have generated some additional threat in the meantime, as well as boosting your pet’s DPS.
If you DON’T have BD and/or GftT, the slower focus regeneration will sometimes result in a delay of casting Growl. If you don’t have BD and/or GftT, you definitely don’t want to leave a “focus dump” on auto-cast, if you even bother to train it at all.
Regardless of your build, if you find that you routinely pull agro from your pet, get a threat meter and observe how your shots generate agro, then adjust your playstyle accordingly. Bottom line, a hunter should be a master at threat control, and that means more than just Feign Death. It also means learning not to pull agro unintentially. Use your pet as a tool for honing your skills, learn to adjust your shots and abilities to a variety of situations, and you will be a better hunter, solo and in a group.
Thank you BRK.
H.
Hi BRK,
I am wondering about training a pet to have CR. I trained king bangalash ages ago who came with CR, but now I have a new cat I would like to use but I haven’t discovered a way to train CR with him. Is it not possible to train it on an pet that doesn’t already have it? Thanks for any input you have and thanks for the great post.
Ok, just because your pet does more dps in theory, won’t it make a difference depending on the enemy’s armor? Now, I’m not an expert on how armor works in wow (or otherwise) but if armor reduces damage, and the amount of damage you do over that is consistantly lower won’t that matter?
For instance let’s say your pet does on average 70 damage per hit and the enemy has armor that will reduce that by 40. So it does 30 damage per hit. Then you get CR, and now the pet hit faster but only does 60 damage per hit, and after armor only 20. it may be 30% faster but the actual damage done in this particular case is reduced by 30% per hit, and thus makes it the same either way, and then is only useful in slowing the enemy’s casting time.
Again, I’m not an expert, but it sure seems like this may be a lot more complicated than it’s made out to be here. Perhaps that is why Blizz was so vague when they put in the description.
“Then you get CR, and now the pet hit faster but only does 60 damage per hit, and after armor only 20.”
Armor is a percentage reduction, not a static value. In your first example the mob appears to have a 57% damage reduction from armor. Following that same reduction percentage the pet would do 34.29 damage after the damage range decrease, not 20. Though those were hypothetical numbers - it’s an important distinction.
Thanks for clearing that up, good to know!
I’m so lucky to bump into this place..
I’m pretty damn sure i’ll be a better hunter after this 10 mins of analysing the charts.
well done BRK!
/clap
What about Kill command?
If you take CR Kill command will do less damage, How do you think it would affect to the overall DPS?
2 things to think about:
1: Kill Command extra damage is a fixed amount, so you are only losing the base damage.. (which when you do a kill attack, isn’t that much of the total)
So… The loss to the Kill Command damage is (using the lvl 68 pet from above)
With CR
(187-206)+127 = 314-333 (Avg: 323.5)
Without CR
(219-238)+127 = 346-365 (Avg: 355.5)
So damage lost is ~10% every 5 seconds (Assuming you are crit’ing at least 1/5 seconds!) (or about 2% DPS)… (which is less than the overall gain of ~12% dps over time…)
If you’re not yet to the point where you are able to keep the kill command on a steady rotation, then the overall DPS increase with CR is closer to the above %.. if you are, then your overall pet dps gain is about 2-3% less than the petopia numbers…
2: if you EVER pvp, then you should be absolutely in love with CR since faster attacks mean less channeling time from those pesky casters..
wow.. I didn’t realize that the DPS gain would still be a win.. but that’s 2 wins on CR.. lol.. (vindication for my instinctual “must have CR” choice..:))
Kkir
Would just like to point out the uses of CR in pvp also. That 30% attack speed bonus means your pet is hitting a caster more often and thus delaying it’s casting. I would get CR just for that effect.
Oh its true. Fast attacks are a Pain on Casters.
I have a HARD time trying to put these hunter pets to sleep
on my druid…lol
After patch 3.0.2 there’s now one more reason to love Cobra Reflexes. The Bloodthirsty talent of Ferocity pets has a chance per hit to heal them for 5% of their HP. 30% more hits per second from Cobra Reflexes roughly equals 30% more healing received from Bloodthirsty!
MM talents create an excess amount of burst dps with the new patch instant cast aimed shot/chimera shot, plus the serpent sting bonus adds a shitload of dps. Im not saying BM Doesn’t have its share of the dps, but MM certainly has an excelled amount of dps with my gear not even hitting ZA figures and im topping 1.1k dps