Patch 2.2 Ain’t Even Cool Yet
So we just get our new Aspect of the Viper running and before we can proclaim “Buff or Nerf” we’re getting rumblings of Patch 2.3.
The Big Thing in this patch is, of course Fel Reavers as hunter pets. Yes, we’ve advocated this development in many forums and columns and it looks like sending those prepaid subscriptions to Playgnome have paid off.
Fel Reaver pets are gonna rock for many reasons:
They’re immune to Fear and Fire. Totally and completely.
X-Ray Vision replaces Bite. Rogues get hit with the biggest nerf-howitzer ever as Fel Reavers can see through Vanish.
Aspect of the Fel Reaver is only available when you have a Fel Reaver as a pet. AotFR gives the hunter a buff to all Aimed Shots where the damage from it has a 10% chance of inflicting 100% of the total health of the enemy. Basically, AotFR reintroduces One-Shotting to PvP and it makes us quiver in places we shouldn’t while at work.
This is all super-nice and all, but we’ve been toying with a Fel Reaver pet for a few days now on the PTR and we must report that there’s one huge obstacle to having one.
Taming it.
Basicially, you need to be able to tank a Fel Reaver in order to tame it. As everybody has been smooshed by one of these contraptions, y’all know how hard they hit. They are immune to Freezing Trap so you’ve got to stand there for 30 seconds and take some serious blows to the head and shoulders to complete the taming process.
Now pre-2.3 it was “illegal” to assist a hunter while he’s taming a pet. No longer. But one healer isn’t going to cut it. You’ll need at least three level 70 healers popping instant and HoTs on your @ss in order to survive the taming process. Guild-assistance will most definitely be needed in order to get yourself a Fel Reaver as a pet. Expect to be blackmailed most enthusiastically by your squishy-heally buddies.
Oh. And Fel Reavers eat Defias Brotherhood bandits for food. By the cart-load.
Now as for the other stuff, the more boring and yawnable things we’re reading about, we still have some big-time questions.
20 and 24-slot ammo bags. Craftable? Purchasable? World drops? Faction rewards? Who knows. They’re coming, though, and it’s about time. We just want to know to whom we need to suck-up.
Serpent Sting getting bonus damage based upon RAP and Marksman hunters of the world rejoice. Just how long it take before we hear the cries of “Improved Stings FTW!” we don’t know and don’t want to know.
Arcane Shot Rank 6 will now also dispel a magic effect. You want to talk about buffing hunters for arenas, well this is just the ticket, holy cr@ppola. That’s mean, that is.
The mechanics, however, concern us.
Hunter attacks Paladin. Hunter shoots Arcane Shot Rank 6 and gets to dispel a magic effect. Which one gets dispelled? Does it just randomly dispel, does it dispel alphabetically, by order of power, by a list the hunter can create? How is the spell-to-be-dispelled get chosen?
Personally, Zul’Aman is the biggest and best thing coming. To say Karazhan hasn’t been the most fun we’ve had in WoW would be a lie. Gruul’s is great but much harder to coordinate. The 10-man instance is our favorite mixture and we can’t wait to get into a new one.
Avaric on 27 Sep 2007 at 5:40 pm #
“Fel Reavers eat Defias Brotherhood bandits for food.”
I almost spit my drink all over my keyboard. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read so far today.
I can just imagine legions of hunters farming Defias bandits in Elwynn Forest. Suddenly the life of crime has gained a whole new downside.
Shifttusk on 27 Sep 2007 at 5:42 pm #
The dispell will probably work like purge taking the top buff off. Giving more benefit to warlock teams in arena that remember to put up Detect and Underwater.
Galamar on 27 Sep 2007 at 5:50 pm #
And I thought BRK was kidding about the Fel Reavers. BRK does this mean you’re going to change your blog name to Big Red Feller?
Karl on 27 Sep 2007 at 5:51 pm #
Forget all that… (well not the ammo bags, I want those…)..
the other thing that is rumored?.. craftable flying machines for engineering! Finally, a reason to keep engineering one you make your (whatever) khorium rifle!
and let’s not forget the excellerated leveling that might come as well.
Anonymous on 27 Sep 2007 at 5:54 pm #
FYI - supposedly mages are losing detect magic. Why? Because everyone will be able to see magical buffs come 2.3. This means you’ll know who to aim that dispell, er arcane shot, at.
Also useful in PvE. Moroes comes to mind. Pally casts BoM on mores. Now, instead of a priest or shaman wasting mana to get rid of it you automatically do during your normal shot rotation.
I’m certain there’s other bosses to dispell stuff from too, just came to mind because I killed Moroes last night.
Jesse on 27 Sep 2007 at 6:03 pm #
Don’t forget insta-cast Wyvern sting. No more perfectly timing Wyvern sting to interrupt healing mobs, and cursing Silencing shot when I’m .01 seconds too late!
Kinzlayer on 27 Sep 2007 at 6:05 pm #
you know BRK it’s very mean to bring my miserable hope like that… I was just about to go and delete my warlock as a main and level my hunter so i can have a Fel Reaver as a pet come 2.3 Very MEAN!!!
Nicky D on 27 Sep 2007 at 6:07 pm #
On the topic of ‘new’ pets you should take a look at the windserpent.
Benefits to a windserpent
1. Eat mage bread.
2. Eat mage bread.
3. Special attack ignores armor.
4. Special attack efficiently, i.e. completely, uses GftT focus.
5. Can learn dive.
Disadvantages to a windserpent:
1. Don’t eat meat
2. Require expanded macros when fighting trash as they will fly out to 20yrds to use their special against a stunned target. Not that bad though.
/castrandom [target=pettarget:exists] Kill Command, Lightening Breath (Rank 6)
Don’t know if you’ve found Cheeky’s spreadsheet yet, but it’s an amazing tool. If her numbers are right a Windserpent will outdamage any pet w/ 2/2 GftT once a hunter has ~25% crit pre-raid buffs.
If you find a ravager too hideous you may want to try one of these. They even come in red, green, or blue colors!
tinwhisker on 27 Sep 2007 at 6:11 pm #
Early reports say Serpent Sting will get 10% of your AP to bring it to 800 or 900 damage over 15 seconds. So it’s better but not as great as it sounds.
Dagashai on 27 Sep 2007 at 6:45 pm #
Errr? A Fel Reaver?
I thought if it didn’t have dash or dive, it wasn’t a dps pet! And thus not BM worthy…
Besides, you know that Blizzard would simply “normalize” it… to the size of ol’ smokey or so… and then nerf dps to bring it in line with comparable pets such as a pink flamingo or so…
And then it would be immune to mend pet, being a mechanical… so you’d almost HAVE to pick up engineering for the repair kits.
Of course, the true nightmare is that with the tameable fel reaver, 2.3 will extend the hunter class, finally…to gnomes!
Shutter on 27 Sep 2007 at 7:38 pm #
Bah, shifttusk beat me to it. But yeah, it’ll probably work like every other dispel mechanic last on, first off.
Gonna have to disagree with you though, 10 and 25 mans in BC (especially 10 mans with a weeklong reset) were some of the worst things about BC. I’ve lost count of the number of guilds they broke. Heck my only survived through sheer force of will on the part of about 6 officers, and I think we were the only one on our server to survive past May. If they’re gonna stick in more instances with such small raid caps they really need shorten the reset timer, it’s hellish organizing groups otherwise, especially on new instances.
Karl on 27 Sep 2007 at 8:03 pm #
Dagashai speaks truth….
Kinzlayer on 27 Sep 2007 at 8:21 pm #
I think BRK sold the Fel Reaver to me the moment he said, “X-Ray Vision replaces Bite. Rogues get hit with the biggest nerf-howitzer ever as Fel Reavers can see through Vanish.”
Galamar on 27 Sep 2007 at 8:40 pm #
So this whole Fel Reaver thing is nothing more than a hoax, right?!
Indy on 27 Sep 2007 at 8:48 pm #
Even minimal RAP scaling on serpent beats having it scale with +spell damage (nature). Unless you think there should be some excuse for all that shaman gear dropping….
Ithrows on 27 Sep 2007 at 8:50 pm #
No, the fel reaver thing is true, I have one on PTR right now (called him Prime heh). If you stack up on defilers you can solo Kara with that thing
Me on 27 Sep 2007 at 9:45 pm #
ithrows, how many stacks of defilers did you need and how long did it take you to farm them up?
I’m yet to get enough healers together to get mine. Turns out one holy paladin can’t heal through 30s of that damage.
Thankfully I copied my hunter to the PvE server, I tried my warrior on the PvP server and it’s hard to get far without running into a hunter ganking people with a reaver.
Someone on 27 Sep 2007 at 11:05 pm #
“stand there for 30 seconds”
WHAT? They’re increasing the tame time to 30 seconds??
ComputerSherpa on 27 Sep 2007 at 11:14 pm #
To balance this new ability, Warlocks will be able to tame Lord Kazzak. Arena size is being increased to allow for these new abilities.
Karl on 27 Sep 2007 at 11:31 pm #
And you wonder WHY they are letting paladins turn into death nights?..
Anonymous on 28 Sep 2007 at 12:51 pm #
To bring the other classes in line, other classes will be able to tame.
Warriors: Saurfang the younger
Mages: Shade of Aran
Warlocks: Doom Lord kazzak
Rogues: Big Bad Wolf
Priests: Warriors
Druids: Eachother
Paladins: Dr.Boom (SEE WUT I DID THAR?)
For the Pie on 28 Sep 2007 at 1:26 pm #
Anyone noticed Frenzy isn’t showing up as a pet buff on the portrait or on the timers? Or is it swallowed up by Ferocious Inspiration?
I know the pet is getting it, I see the speed change on their paperdoll info. But you can’t see it on timers and such.
insufficiently on 28 Sep 2007 at 2:04 pm #
I got onto the PTR last night and I can tell you the Fel Reaver in PVP isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Okay in Arenas, but in BGs or world PVP that whole “earth shaking within a 500 yard radius” thing tends to give away your position. I’ve even seen people wake up from /AFK in AV to jog out of our way.
The other thing that’s really going to be a problem is it turns out Defias only stack in fives, and it can take seven or eight of them to bring the Fel Reaver to maximum happiness. From what I can tell, too, when it’s neutral or unhappy it’s more likely than other pets to run away, or to one-shot you and then go lay waste to the nearest capital city.
BRK on 28 Sep 2007 at 2:19 pm #
One of the biggest comments to the PTR-folks is, “Hunter’s need 100-slot food-bags to accomodate all the d@mn humanoids our Fel Reavers eat!”
Another solution was to give us a permanent hearth to Deadmines, but that seems less likely.
Talonis & Talon (Kul Tiras) on 28 Sep 2007 at 3:12 pm #
Best. Column. Ever.
Anonymous on 16 Nov 2007 at 12:18 am #
Tamin a Fel Reaver would be the equivalent of when I was 60 pre-BC and wanted to tame a devilsaur in Un’goro. It would be virtually the the same thing.
First I would tame it.
then I would teach it DASH…
then I would send it right….at….you.
It’s the same effect as fear…..you run all over the place.