Lightning Breath and Why It’s Not The Same
“BRK, I have a question about Lightning Breath. I saw your post about Gore vs Claw, so how about we make this a 3-way-match and rank them one through three…Which is most efficient and will cause the most damage. Thanks, Drizztz.”
Nope, we’re not gonna do it.
Why? Because of Spell Damage. Yes, it’s Math Time at BRK High.
Although we though so originally, neither Claw nor Gore gain any bonuses from a pet’s +Spell Damage, which is derived from the hunter’s RAP. We cannot find a Blue Post or a definitive “yes/no” answer anywhere confirming this, but from carefully monitoring our cat’s Claw, we have no choice but to report what our own eyes tell us.
However, it is a very-well documented fact the Lightning Breath most certainly does scale with +Spell Damage. In fact, it was heavily nerfed a few patches back. It’s an interesting subject, the LB Nerf. So interesting, in fact, that we should revisit it.
The formula for Lightning Breath is:
LB Damage = Base Damage + Spell Power Damage
Your pet’s Spell Power Damage was calculated by using a factor of your hunter’s RAP, and that looked like:
Spell Power Damage = RAP * 0.125
So our formula looked like:
LB Damage = Base Damage + ( RAP * 0.125 )
If you were a Marksman with 2300 RAP, your windserpent’s LB damage would be:
LB Damage = [ ( 99 + 113 ) / 2 ] + ( 2300 * 0.125 )
LB Damage = 394
And can you see why Marksmen hunters went nuts for Lightning Breath? It was obscene.
The problem was that the wrong formula for calculating the Spell Power was used. Lightning Breath is an instant-cast spell. Spells that are instant-casts are only supposed to receive a percentage of +Spell Damage, the specific number being 42.86%. Supposedly, everybody’s instant-cast spells use this modifier but the hunter-pet programmers didn’t know it. Thus, the LB Nerf was actually correcting a mistake in the formula. In its current form, the LB damage formula now looks like this:
LB Damage = Base Damage + ( RAP * 0.125 * 0.4286 )
Using our previous data, we get:
LB Damage = [ ( 93 + 113 ) / 2 + ( 2300 * 0.125 * 0.4286 )
LB Damage = 226
If you were wondering why the Marksman Hunter Community was outraged at the “Nerf”, now you know.
So why won’t we do a comparison of Lightning Breath, Claw and Gore? Because, as you can see, for each hunter the comparison will be different. As a BM hunter, BRK’s RAP is approximately 1700. If we had a serpent with Lightning Breath, his LB damage would be 194, which is 30 damage less than a Marksman hunter with a 2300 RAP. Also, Claw/Gore can be mitigated by armor whereas Lightning Breath is Nature damage. To do a true comparison, we’d have to take different damage-mitigation factors into consideration and, frankly, we’re not that motivated.
We recommend people not spec survival unless you have a very high agility to take advantage of Expose Weakness. Similarly, we don’t recommend Lightning Breath pets to hunters unless they have a RAP high enough to really pound out the nature damage as opposed to a melee pet that does naturally-high Claw/Gore damage. But if you do have a massive RAP, a Lightning Breath pet is a fabulous choice for you.
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19 Responses to “Lightning Breath and Why It’s Not The Same”
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Cool thanks the only reason I ask is I saw in different pet skills that LB is double what claw does but LB takes 50 energy while claw takes 25 didnt know if the energy difference would make them come out even kinda looks like LB would be good for pvp with no growl.
Thanks,
Drizztz
Today I learned something. Thank you BRK.
On a side note: I stopped using LB in favor of a pet with claw simply because I hated being out of range every time I did a kill command. It made me feel less in control of my pet, yeah he was spamming LB but he was NEVER in range to do it.
I’m thinking I want to switch up to the wolf now though since I spend much of my raid time in a melee damage group.
-guy
Hmm… since I’m sitting at almost 2200ap with just tsa and aspect of the hawk up, should I be running a wind serpent? Am I wasting dps by using a cat? How about tanking potential? Is a windserpent going to be able to take the beating that a cat can?
Do Dragonhawks also factor into all of this with CC breaking firebreath cone?
Zem, try a windserpent and see if you like it. The flapping may grow on you.
Fire Breath should work the same way as Lightning Breath. They are both instant casts, both consume 50 Focus, both have 10-second cooldowns, both are non-physical attacks.
BRK on good intentions they dont say anything about LB having a cool down. I thought it was contstant as long as the pet has energy. But good intentions does say that fire breath has a 10 second cool down.
-Drizztz
Doop! Lightning Breath has no cooldown other than the 1.5 second global. Explains even more why LB is used over FB.
=( no BRK points for nicely pointing out a mistake? =(
-Drizztz
Zemulos,
Windserpents have the same armor as a cat, and slightly more health. Base melee damage is slightly less than a cat.
I highly recommend a WS for a pet, but then my BM hunter has had one for his main pet since he was about level 30. Lightning Breath is a powerful skill. Very few mobs, or players for that matter, have much nature resistance but many have a lot of armor, which means you will often do more damage with a WS with LB than with a cat with Claw. You will get the most mileage, of course, if you have Bestial Discipline and/or GftT.
A lot of hunters complain that WS cast LB at range unless they are engaged in melee. This means, for example, when you order your WS to attack, it will stop 20 yards from the target, LB, then close the range to melee. I find this very useful, as it means the mob will already be taking damage (and you can open fire as well) before it can damage your pet. Once engaged in melee, the WS will autospam LB on the target with no problem. Until you get used to this quirk, though, it makes “placing” a battle harder than just having your pet run in a start fighting.
Another result of this behavior is that if the WS’s target is being tanked by another player or NPC (or is rooted or stunned), every time your WS has enough focus to LB, it will back off, LB, then return to melee. A lot of hunters hate this quirk when grouping, because they worry that the WS will accidentally agro other mobs. If there is a danger of doing so, you will have to turn off LB.
On the other hand, the ranged ability of LB can be very useful for pulling. If you manually cast LB, either by clicking, hotkey, or macro, your WS will fly to range, LB, then fly back to you without engaging in melee. It makes tricky pulls much easier.
WS, as flying pets, also path better over obstacles (most notably lava) than terrestrial pets, but have a small enough profile that they don’t cause visual problems like birds. They love to eat mage bread. Plus they have a cool new swimming animation!
I think I’ll go tame one in blades edge before heading to farm more freaking primal air. See how he stacks up. Thanks for the input guys.
Guy pointed this out at the very beginning of the post. I would love a wind serpant as a pet, but it seems its LB would negate your kill commands.
Can anyone explain this to me? I would hate to lose my kill commands, especially as I get many upwards of 900.
Wind Serpants just seem to be a cool pet, but I won’t get one at the expense of my ravager’s kill command.
Didn’t they increase the range of kill command to compensate for this? I don’t have a serpent, but I could swear that lately, my raptor can kill from a long way off.
Actually, for a given rank of Claw and Lightning Breath, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out the RAP which makes one stronger than the other.
Rank 9 Claw looks like it does an average of 65 Damage for 25 Focus. Lightning Breath costs 50 Focus, so it should do 130 Damage in order to get the same efficiency out of your Focus. Rank 6 Lightning Breath does 106 Damage on average and before spell damage is applied, so if we get 24 additional damage from Claw, we’ll break even. Using the equations you give, 448 RAP should be enough.
Now, my level 55 Hunter has almost 800 RAP, so I doubt anyone is going to fall short of this number. I also haven’t included the effects of armor and resistances, which I believe will further tilt things in favor of Lightning Breath. A further factor is that Lightning Breath burns through Focus twice as fast, which could be a factor if you have both Bestial Discipline and Go For The Throat.
Of course, I have heard that this interferes with using Kill Command, but Rizzah above me seems to think this has been fixed. Does anyone else know more about this?
@Drzztz: I use a WS in PvP with 2/2 Bestial Discipline (No GffT yet), Growl Turned off, and only Dive and LB trained/active. He can spam LB almost continuously. In a raid where you have more of the luxury of standing still pewpewing, and both Go for the Throat and BD, I imagine he can spam it continuously with Growl off auto.
@zemulus: Windserpents have the same armor/hp/damage modifiers as cats, but not sure if the base armor/stam/damage is the same. Compare:
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_windserpent.shtml
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_cat.shtml
@goeben: I find my WS rarely backs off to 20yds to fire LB. I see it occasionally, but most of the time it will Dive to 20yds, fire LB once or twice till it’s out of focus, then Dive the rest of the way to melee range, and continue spamming LB from there. After that it rarely backs off to 20yds again to fire LB. I wonder why the discrepancy…
And yes, their swimming animation is very cool, I even wish they flew like that.
I wrote this post recently on why I’m now a WS fan (used to be boar fan). In a nutshell, can close distance and attack faster than any other pet,
http://www.gamingtheories.com/2007/06/why-im-now-wind-serpent-fan.html
Wind Serpents are great pet since they can get the edge at 20 yard.. Eg : A rogue is coming and you send pet which will maybe land a Lightning just as he stealth. Against Warrior its a good BM asset, since most of our dmg is white dmg and the mitigation is near 50%… With Windserpent its good ol’ magic dmg at the service of hunters.
What lacks with serpents is a fast attack to disrupt caster (like gore and claw do)
@ collin:
It’s actually not quite that easy - there are 2 other things you need to take into account.
The first is that Claw is reduced by armor. The second is that Claw crits are 2x damage, and LB crits are only 1.5x damage.
I still think LB > Claw, but is it enough to make up for the 3% white damage difference?
(LB crits trigger FI and frenzy, correct?)
- MostlyHarmless
@ Boddingtons
I didn’t know that gore and claw slowed casters like regular attacks — are you sure about that? Even if that’s true, a WS will disrupt quite well with BM talents and Cobra Reflexes.
@ Byron
The occasions where a WS will back off to LB are fairly rare, as you point out. I just brought it up since it is a major bone of contention for some hunters.
Also, WS modifiers are slightly different than cats. WS get +7% Damage, +0 Health, +0 Armor. Cats get +10% Damage, -2% Health, +0 Armor.
Goeben @
Each time a caster get struck by a melee attack, it does slow his casting time a little. Since the gore use only 20 focus, it will interrupt a little more often than a Lightning breath which uses 50 focus.
People saying the pet moving around is bad, its not that bad when youre BM with survival, and the improved wing clip trigger, both hunter and pet can attack a melee classe from afar, and when the pet is root/snare, it can also strike back if its less than 20 yard away.