Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The unforgivable sin

I had a neat response to my molten armor post.

Lets face it. I'm not really gonna post anything earthbreaking on any class. Just my observations. I know the classes more or less. I've played 5 of em to level 60 or higher. I run on a pvp server, so I have a bit more exp than most of the BRK crowd with tactics. ArmsandFury has been quite gleeful with the difference his all too brief stay on a pvp server has made to his pvp'ing back on the pve server Kelmar is stuck on.

Anyway, here's the response...

Shalkis said...
Molten Armor + Impact procs can be nasty, but if your pet is smacking a mage long enough for Molten Armor to even make a dent on the pet's health.. you're doing something wrong.First of all, any halfway competent mage is not going to just stand there and allow himself to get mauled by your pet, not even when he has the 2-piece Aldor bonus which makes Frostbolts and Fireballs unaffected by pushback. He's trying to CC your pet and get into your deadzone to cut off your dps.

K. Here's my response, and why I wrote the post.

I was running Unbound in terrokar, (Unbound was a 63 enhance shammy at the time).., and got jumped by a 65 fire mage.

Normally... shammys pwn with extreme prejudice any caster class. But I'm a bit slower with unbound, and again, there's a shammy post out there on the subject. The mage got the first shot in (intercepted by a grounding totem...) and it was on. I killed the spider I had aggroed, and ran at the mage. By the time I had closed, we were both near 20% health... and I forgot to purge the little gnome bastard.

I go to melee and the molten armor kills me.

Shalkis, you are absolutely right about molten armor not mattering against a hunter. Except in those instances when you aren't.

Hence the point of this post. When should you kill the pet before the hunter?

When the hunter is doin that attack range of 70' crap. Which happens a lot in arena. Too often, I'll send my pet after someone, and they'll duck outta LOS. When that happens, the damn pet has to come back, or it will die. I KNOW this now. And if the pet dies, the hunter is gimped for the rest of the fight.

SO... Shalkis... you a fire mage in arena, and you get BM hunter aggro.

FIRST. Get the hell outta LOS. The pet will follow, and usually intimidate will proc. If you get behind or under something fast enough, its just you and fuzzy all alone for a bit.

3 sec stun. Then take 3 more seconds for "direct action." That's 4-5 claws, and if ferocity procs, 6-7 attacks. Thats 1300-1800 damage for the pet from MA, depending on how things go. Mana shield, OTOH, should keep the damage you take down to reasonable levels.

And yes. Thats a significant chunk of life outta the pet. Add a blast wave, dragon's breath, and fire blast... and if you managed a fire blast before he got to you... you looking at another 5.5k damage on the pet.

6700-7200... thats kinda close to dead for a pet, especially if they ain't running with endurance training. Add a scorch to put em over the edge. Dead pet in 6 seconds. Hunter turns the corner... and without the pet, the BM hunter is gonna die in a straight up fight against a fire mage.

Gotta have that mend pet up. (And I gotta find out if it can be spell stolen :) ) And you can't let the pet chase the fire mage outta LOS. Frost mage... sure... whatever... go to town. BW will keep em from hurting em... if a frost mage can't freeze you in place, 50% of his damage goes away.

Arcane... well, if the arcane mage wants to blow all his cooldowns on the pet, nothing you can do. Tho slow can be a bitch if BW is on cooldown.

But fire mages pose a specific threat to melee classes and hunter pets. Too damn much control, and 2 additional instacast mega damage spells. (Dragon's breath and Blast wave.) Add combustion to that... combustion... Each fire spell you cast adds to a counter. Each counter adds 10% to crit. Until you've crit three times.

If you get seriously unlucky... they kill the pet, and combustion is at 60%. And then they sheep you for the pyroblast... with a 95% crit chance.

Thats a 7-8k damage spell people. You will join frisky in the afterlife very shortly.

Anyway... props to Melvin. He and Magebert played their mages and ran with Mabd in 3v3 last week. (We went 7-3). One team we hit was made of 3 frost mages. Magebert and I go down, as well as two of the frost mages.

Melvin butchers the elemental, then sheeps the frost mage. (both are at >20% health and mana) Melvin goes invis... then he and the frost mage, both near full health and mana, go at it. Melvin did the team proud. He is actually quite decent at 1v1. If only he could get used to teamwork :(

One thing that screwed the frost mages? They went after mabd first... and mabd, with BW on, is immune to all that frost nova crap. Waste of perfectly good cooldowns... and mega gimp to frost damage.

BM hunters DO have a place in arena. "Have pain... will deliver!"

Just leave the pet alone to eat yo face, alright?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting numbers.. However, Molten Armor does not gain any extra damage from spell damage. It's always 75 damage per hit, although it can crit and proc Ignite. If we assume that the fire mage has 30% crit, Ignite and the pet does 12 attacks, that's at most 1413 damage. And note that this is with the mage sitting still for those extra 3 seconds and not using Blazing Speed, Blink, Frost Nova, Blast Wave or Dragon's Breath to gain some distance. If he is actually doing something to protect himself, you can cut that damage to half. 706 damage doesn't sound too imbalanced. Especially when your pet also has Avoidance to mitigate Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath damage by 50%.

Still, if you let your pet wander off on your own, you are gimping yourself. The pet may be mighty, but it's still only ~30% of an average BM hunter's damage.

However, there is a valid reason to slap a Mend Pet on your kitty before yelling "Go get 'em, boy!". Improved Mend Pet. With 2 talent points that's a 50% chance to dispel a harmful effect per tick. Frost Nova? Gone. Blast Wave? Gone. Dragon's Breath? Gone. Chilled? Gone. You'll save your Bestial Wrath for an opportunity where you can get the maximum benefit from it.

Zball said...

I might be crazy, but as a mage, I *want* a hunter to burn BW on me. Even with Improved Mend Pet, he gets hurt regardless. With my high crit chance (~25%, more when fully raid buffed) and his fast attack speed, he's going to be clearing a lot of harmful effects. 15 seconds of healing? I hurt him more than he hurts me while I barrel toward the hunter in question. Impact stun, that half- second before the next tick (which only has a 50% chance to dispel and then, what, another 50% chance to dispel Impact instead of Ignite?) gives me a few more yards to get inside the dead zone and kite the big red beasty around. Yeah, it's not much, but it's something. And while the hunter blows the mana and a GCD on Mend, then blows his BW cooldown to eat my squishy self, any partners I might have get that bit of time to finish him or his partner off.

If it's just me and a hunter in world PvP, I'll take the initial death and come back up to kill the hunter a few times while he waits for his 18 second "I Win" button to get off cooldown.

Dagashai said...

Shal.. buddy...

My combat log and says molten armor is doing 103 per hit... I don't remember if the scrolling combat text agrees with it, but I don't remember it not. Assuming similar scale, when my +spell damage is 800 or so, I should be doin 125.

Although when MA crits, it only crits for 125.

I'll double check when I get home. Get a screen shot or something. Time to torment some hellfire swine :)

And the problem with Imp Mend pet... that tick is now every three seconds instead of every second. And the removal of baneful effects is random (i.e. it's not 50% chance to remove any debuff, it's 50% chance to remove a specific debuff... say a curse, even if theres no curse, only that poison effect... I think. Might need to ask BRK this.) As a decursive effect, I'm not sure it's really worth it.

Mera said...

God knows which part of your anatomy that was pulled out of -- Mend Pet has a 50 % chance to dispel ANY harmful effects, not a random class then see if one exists.

Dagashai said...

Mera... you're probably right. But you might not be. It always seems to take way too long for a debuff on my pet to go away with mend pet on him...

And the tooltip was thus written by insano monkeys.

My problem. I absolutely doubt that they changed the mechanics of the dispel ability when they made mend pet a hot. And I know for damn sure that when it was channeled, it took far too long to get rid of debuffs. That was back when a tick was one second. And I had to do a rank one MP at least twice to get rid of curses or poisons.

The odds of 6 ticks failing to dispel a debuff if its an even up 50% chance?

1.5%

The odds of it happening if it's a random either/or dispel?

44%

So I might do some field work tonight. Get the pet poisoned... and count the ticks to dispel... do this a few times, and get a clue.

3 outta 4 times any debuff should be gone in two ticks. Does this seem to be the case when you play? It doesn't really seem to be my experience...

Anonymous said...

Hi as a fellow BM arenaing hunter i must say that im finding myself serverly gimped as a BM hunter in arena. I do mostly 2vs2 and 3vs3 and i have to say i foind myself in many situations were thos extra 2 interuptts of MM could have saved the game by preventing healz also they crit much higher which arena is all about burst damage or lasting longer. Im having serious doubts on my spec for Arena and i was joping even pleading a little bit for a post on MM vs BM in arena. I love my spec more than i lov... well i love it alot plz save me from medicore MMness that is seeminly more and more the right path to go.

Anetheron server Quickslash lvl 70 & fathiful mean er.. giant red eating kitty Dahm, your BM brother.