Gorilladin Gets a Tweaking
Alright, patch 3.0.3. is here, and our Gorilladins got a little under-the-hood work.
First off, Thunderstomp only costs twenty Focus, not twenty five. Nice.
But also, now it autocasts when only one mob is in range. No longer does it wait until two mobs are present before autocasting. How does this change our fighting style? When fighting a single mob, like an elite or boss, we no longer have to turn off Thunderstomp and turn on Smack to do additional DPS and Threat. Thunderstomp isn’t a a true Focus-dump like Smack, so if your Gorilladin is not tanking and there’s only one mob being attacked, you’ll want to turn off Growl and Thunderstomp and turn Smack on.
But you’re not taking Gorilladin for pure-DPS, are you. /wink
The other issue is the conversion – or more properly said, “fix” – of the Thunderstomp attack mechanic, physical to spell. So sayeth Blizzard:
“Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.”
This means that the attack itself has been calculated using Spell Hit and Physical Damage mechanics. Obviously, this is a little bug that needed correcting; it’s supposed to be Spell Hit and Spell Damage.
What does Physical Damage have as a variable? Armor; it mitigates physical damage. In 3.0.2 and before, when your Thunderstomp hit a mob, its damage was reduced by an amount in proportion to the mob’s armor. No longer is this the case; armor does not mitigate Thunderstomp any longer.
What does Magical Damage have as variable? Resistance; it mitigates magic damage and affects the chance for a partial resist of the damage. When your Thunderstomp hits a mob, its damage will now be reduced, and the spell partially resisted, by an amount in proportion to the mob’s nature resistance.
As for the magnitude of the damage that Thunderstomp inflicts, a physical coefficient would seem to indicate that the damage was calculated using the pet’s Melee Attack Power. A magical coefficient would seem to indicate that the damage is now being calculated using the pet’s Spell Bonus. Although this makes sense, we do not have formulas or datum that supports our assumption. But frankly, it’s irrelevant. What we really care about is: Just how mean is our Thunderstomp today?
Since we do not have a target-dummy practice session data-set on hand from 3.0.2, we cannot mathematically compare the damage against a session from 3.0.3. (Dang it, we should’ve thought of doing that yesterday. /fail) So we have to do it “by feel”.
Does our Gorilladin feel weaker or stronger? After clearing a Scourge invasion, including three elites therein, we can happily report that we were able to tank everything just as efficiently as before, even knocking off a few 2k Thunderstomp crits. Gorilladin isn’t nerfed or weakened in any way that we can tell.
He’s just more mathematically correct.
Edit: It’s a kilt. We just have very big boots.
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sweet i may have to get me a gorilladin
Ah, I couldn’t comment before. It seemed something was suspended. oh well.
Yeah I’m loving the new changes his DPS has noticeable gone up may it be the ability to thunder stomp 1 target, I also noticed while grinding netherwing dailies for some extra cash towards my mammoth that he is generating more threat per second.
8.4K while my hunter only had 3.4K in a total of 5-6seconds.
Roughly 1400TPS O_O
Oh could you post a screen cap of your pets tab? I would like to see your pets stats to try and get mine as good.
~[Algörithm[Khaz'goroth]]
I love my Gorilladin! Without BRK I would have never known about this little (wink) secret of using a Gorilla. I use it as my main pet now. I was wondering though BRK, if you could tell exactly how your spec your Gorilla. What talent points are spend where? Thanks in advance!
Woot Magical instead of Physical. Me and my hunter pals are rejoicing in an IronForge Tavern, Come join us.
Change to spell means the mana worms in kara resist the thunderstomp completely
Yeah, the difference isn’t noticeable – I did the same invasion clears and noticed that he was definately holding threat better because of the increased number of Thunderstomps he was able to cast (because of reduced focus cost). Damage seemed pretty close to the same, wasn’t seeing any crits that different than before. I had spec’d into Animal Handler just before the patch, and noticed he tanked the multiple mobs much better with the new expertise change. All in all it feels the same
Well from my own adventures in Scourge extermination (got the entire armor set woot!),if anything it is now giving just a hint more threat.Now I’m not saying not massive,just 5% more maybe?
Also spell damage ignores armor doesn’t it?So on mobs that don’t have magical resistance you will end up doing a tiny bit more damage wouldn’t you?
Of course most bosses have resists out the wazoo,so he will still be a mainly grinding pet.Which is what I’ve been doing with the invasion and gained two levels in the last four days.
Just because bosses resist the thunderstomp that isn’t the Gorilla’s only way to gain mass threat and it doesn’t stop his ability to tank.
The gorilla is fast becoming my quest-partner of choice. I love how much threat he holds, even on mobs that aren’t his primary target.
But I’m still getting a bear (from Northrend.)
My Tauren hunter picked up the white Gorilladin yesterday. It took 7 hours of standing in the cave killing spawns. When THE spawn happened, I swear my heart was pounding, I was so afraid someone would whip in and kill it before I tamed, but I got him!
Fabulous!
You know BRK, I hope for your sake that outlandish photo of you never gets out because your reputation isn’t gonn abe able to hold up against the 1-2 punch of a melee hunter one day and BRK in drag the next! Is that a dress or a skirt, or perhaps even a kilt?
Are you sure your interpretation is correct? I imagined resistance was already an issue before, since immunity was as well – nature-immune mobs were completely unaffected. But we can not confirm this anymore.
Since both stats apparently scale with the hunter’s RAP, it should not matter much.
BRK IS WEARING A DRESS.
Call it a kilt if you want, we all know it’s a dress.
Mayhaps Ratshag’s “blackmail” has some far flung repercussions after all…
Why cares if he used melee attacks.. [Mongoose Bite] [Raptor Strike] are there for a reason.
I use melee when I’m bored too.
Change to spell means the mana worms in kara resist the thunderstomp completely
They resisted it completely in 3.0.2, too, since it’s Nature damage.
lol u have a skirt on
not that I plan on going out and getting spellpower items/enchants, but does anyone know if you got an item with +spellpower on it, that it would increase the damage output of thunderstomp now? If I know I am going to be doing some AOE grinding maybe swap out some spellpower gear to increase his stompage? With Focused Aim being a viable talent for BM hunters now, some of that shaman int gear doesn’t look half bad…
Hehe, BRK is wearing a pretty mage dress XD
My hunters a dawrf girl and even she looks silly in that skirt/kilt thinggy, BRK just looks wrong
I wasn’t saying it couldn’t tank a boss,just that it wasn’t the best choice to do so.That would be a turtle followed by a bear.Using Smack alone is not a great replacement for a pet’s special,even with Taunt.Shell Shield with it’s damage reduction and Swipe with the extra physical damage hence threat generation are far better suited for tanking bosses.
BTW BRK,I have to say my BE huntress looks way better in her Blessed Greaves of Undead Slaying than you do.Put on your pants man!
I have never had a pet that I’ve enjoyed as much as my gorilla. And I’m loving the new Blessed armor set.
Could we get more on why the Blessed armor set is so much more effective than the BG armor. And how that relates for BG v.s. Tx armor from drops and instances. I really confused by all the discussion of T3-6 armor. All the T4, T5 talk seems more like typical fishing stories than rational analysis of particular armor. Where’s the chart ? What makes armor T4 vs T5 gear, other than how hard it is to get the drop in a particular instance ?
Are you switching to the Blessed Armor set or did you just what to explore cross dressing in the safety and security of wow’s virtual world ?
It’s okay BRK- my warrior is wearing a skirt now too.
The damage was always nature-based – mobs with nature immunity were always immune to the thunderstomp damage. I believe the change was only that it should use the pet’s spell power instead of attack power.
What I wouldn’t give for real kilts in WoW. I prefer to call those Sarongs.
nice dress BRK!
Well look at all the Monkey pet converts!!! It’s great to see all the gorillas running around (BRK=POPULAR?). Where I was once the laughing boy of hunters, it now seems that I am a pioneer. Ehsobee was always great at saving a healer and OT in a pinch, but now he MT’s. We even let him OT Kara last week. The changes to the hunter class have been amazing, and thank you BRK for all of your research and shenanigans!
Hunter4life…
Oh, how I love my gorilladin! =)
Which gorilla is that brk? It has a very striking face!
If you think the skirt looks bad on a dwarf, you don’t want to see it on a troll.
I’ve never really liked gorillas, don’t know why. But I finally broke down & tamed one with my BE hunter when he reached lvl 32. I still don’t like them much in general, but Argus is now one of my favorite pets. ^_^
Testing the gravatar…
After 3.0.3 as a hunter that just recently turned 70 (still missing instance/heroic loot), my gorilla isn’t that much of a multi-mob tank anymore. Armor is down by 2k, and whereas I could take on 8-10 talbuks before, I reach a comfort limit already at 5-6 now.
Makes me wanna respec back to Survival, which by far has proved the most fun for my playstyle till this point.
Btw – I would also like to see pet build and stats; makes it easier to “compare” my situation to the pros
My gorilladin is good for about 12 blood elves from Netherstorm before I have to start worrying about losing aggro. Best pet ever, thanks for letting us in on it BRK!
/thanks to BRK for filling me in on the Gorilladin tank! I have been in Nagrand farming herds of clefthoofs. I am loving this pet. I might not get my Rhino now. *Ok I will still get the rhino lol*
OMG
/love BRK
/love Poobah my gorilla tank
/love aoeing
/love tanking underbog (ok 70 against 64ish mobs is easish) with only 4 people in the party and WOWing them with Poo’s awesome leet skillz.
Thanks BRK for making the gorilla my new pet of choice for soloing. I am sticking with my Devilsaur, BamBam, for instances and raids.
Personally, I don’t like the new thunderstomp mechanic. I much preferred the fact that the ability didn’t proc unless there were 2 or more mobs in the area, as I could just click it (or use a macro) and fire it off. Now, if I pick up adds, it’s usually not readily available to pull them off me, meaning I have to train my gorilla to the add manually or move into range of the thunderstomp and hope the cooldown/focus recharges soon enough.
I didn’t use thunderstomp for damage, I used it for situational threat.
Your explanation for the meaning of “Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.” is wrong.
It was ALWAYS causing Nature damage (and being affected by spell resistances).
What they changed was the COEFFICIENT.
Don’t know what a coefficient is?
It’s the CRIT MODIFIER.
For Physical Crits the Coefficient is x2.0
For Spell Crits the Coefficient is x1.5
That means that Thunderstomp CRITS were affected. NOTHING else. Not NORMAL Thunderstomp hits or anything.
It’s a SMALL nerf.