Sounds like just about everything we have been asking for. I'm curious to see where this goes.

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

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Sardus wrote:

 

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

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Those types of changes will not be included in the inital 1.3 PTS or the first update... Like I said before we are still looking at a number of those types of items for later in 1.3 PTS or the patch after

Alot of the stick fixes will help with fetch as well btw.

-Adam

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AdamG wrote:

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Sardus wrote:

 

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

---

Those types of changes will not be included in the inital 1.3 PTS or the first update... Like I said before we are still looking at a number of those types of items for later in 1.3 PTS or the patch after

 

Alot of the stick fixes will help with fetch as well btw.

 

-Adam

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Thanks for the reply. It looks like you have successfully addressed most of the issues that I can think of. The only two things that I can think of are "whirling axe" and the axeman tree moral 4 "joy of the hunt". Neither of these abilities are very popular amongst WLs for various reasons. All of my other concerns have been addressed in some fashion, but  I didn't see either of these called out in particular so I figure i'd point them out.

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AdamG wrote:

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Sardus wrote:

 

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

---

Those types of changes will not be included in the inital 1.3 PTS or the first update... Like I said before we are still looking at a number of those types of items for later in 1.3 PTS or the patch after

 

Alot of the stick fixes will help with fetch as well btw.

 

-Adam

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Adam, I like the direction that the opposite stats effecting stances is putting the class. However, White Lions have a noticeable lack of toughness on their gear. To get high enough toughness to make the pet do the damage it does not(which isn't even that much without leonine frenzy) we'd have to sacrifice bucketloads of strength. 

Could TTK be different from TTT in that instead of each 1 pt. of toughness gives the pet 1 pt, of str, the TTK stance is more like each 1 point of toughness gives the pet 3 points of strength? Since the pet only gains strength from items, it would be very logical to do it this way.

Also, the pet seems to do weak damage in the guardian stance anyways atm. Its auto-attack with +400 str. only does about 200 damage and fang and claw does around 190 per hit. For the "Pet DPS stance" that's not enough. Leonine Frenzy is the only way to make the pet do anywhere near viable damage. However, that's 10s out of every 30s we can use it.

Another thing. I think some abilities may not be getting benefits from stats property. Fang and Claw has the exact same base value as Leonine Frenzy. In my spec they do 143.

I looked at my combat log against this choppa, and the damage the pet was doing with Fang and Claw was about 180, and Leonine Frenzy was doing 300.

Odd.

Looking forward to the actual patch notes. We've been sitting down at the bottom of the food-chain since the nerf to fetch, tearing blade, resist cap and the AoE madness we see in 1.2 and 1.2.1.

Since 1.2 I haven't really played my WL much due to feeling utterly useless in the AoE-mess with BW/Sorc, followed by Choppa/Slayer. To add on to that, AoE heals are ridiculous too and make us unable to bring down light-armored foes due to excessive AoE heals. Coupled with a buggy pet with pathing problems and the lack of on-demand CC, lousy pve tactics, ridiculously high AP cost and low base damage on most of our skills, many WL have since re-roll or quit.

I'd say 1.3 is a make or break patch for us.

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Sardus wrote:

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AdamG wrote:

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Sardus wrote:

 

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

---

Those types of changes will not be included in the inital 1.3 PTS or the first update... Like I said before we are still looking at a number of those types of items for later in 1.3 PTS or the patch after

 

Alot of the stick fixes will help with fetch as well btw.

 

-Adam

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Thanks for the reply. It looks like you have successfully addressed most of the issues that I can think of. The only two things that I can think of are "whirling axe" and the axeman tree moral 4 "joy of the hunt". Neither of these abilities are very popular amongst WLs for various reasons. All of my other concerns have been addressed in some fashion, but  I didn't see either of these called out in particular so I figure i'd point them out.

Message Edited by Sardus on 05-14-2009 06:14 PM

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Don't forget about the Rank 4 Guardian Morale, Rampage. http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9232 I've done some testing and the only moves it really affects are Pack Assault (but the damage buff doesn't stack), Cull the Weak, Echoing Roar (Dot doesn't stack more than twice) Coordinated Strike (which has a problem getting all attacks off if the lion is attacking something), and Whirling Axe (which you can't get if you get Rampage). Also, you don't regenerate AP during this time that you're spamming abilities. And with the current "combat lag", you won't get more than 3-4 abilities off before ends.

For being abilities that are supposed to "turn the tide of a battle", White Lions don't seem to contribute much (though I have to admit that the spike from Blade and Claw is pretty nice)...

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AdamG wrote:

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Sardus wrote:

 

Adam, any word on adjusting our pet based CC abilities (the silence and the stun) so they fire off immediately rather than wait until the pet's next attack? Or any word on adjusting fetch! so it fires correctly when the pet is moving or attacking (it will cycle, but it does not fire off if the pet is using an ability at the same time). This is terribly frusterating and the ability rarely works as intended.

---

Those types of changes will not be included in the inital 1.3 PTS or the first update... Like I said before we are still looking at a number of those types of items for later in 1.3 PTS or the patch after

 

Alot of the stick fixes will help with fetch as well btw.

 

-Adam

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FIrst off - thank you for the patch notes.  Overall I think they are a great improvement to the WL class.

Please think about adjusting which stats transfer to the Lion.  Make WOUNDS correspond to STR and TOUGHNESS correspond with WS.   I think this is more appropriate given the armor set bonuses (they are all STR/WNDS) for the 2-3 set bonuses.  This will allow ALL mastery trees to take advantage of the set bonsues without having to deal with different sets of armor.

Also - please look at increasing the range of fetch :-) 

If these new training buffs go live, and trained to hunt stays the same, my pet will have more strength in train to hunt vs. trained to kill. And trained to kill is supposed to be the pet dps stance.

In trained to hunt, my pet gets 257 str and 82 weapon skill. 

The new trained to kill, my pet will be getting 46 strength and 200 weapon skill......

I don't think I need to say anymore about this, the numbers speak for themselves.

This change makes no sense at all. Please keep them as they are, they are perfectly fine how they are currently!

On a positive note, I do like everything else in the patch notes but this change is completely unecessary. 

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dooflachi wrote:

If these new training buffs go live, and trained to hunt stays the same, my pet will have more strength in train to hunt vs. trained to kill. And trained to kill is supposed to be the pet dps stance.

 

In trained to hunt, my pet gets 257 str and 82 weapon skill. 

The new trained to kill, my pet will be getting 46 strength and 200 weapon skill......

 

I don't think I need to say anymore about this, the numbers speak for themselves.

 

This change makes no sense at all. Please keep them as they are, they are perfectly fine how they are currently!

 

On a positive note, I do like everything else in the patch notes but this change is completely unecessary. 

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if you are running in TTK then you have to stack toughness if you want the lion to have more STR.  that is what makes the trees different. 

you need to decide which stance you want to run in and outfit yourself accordingly.

Thanks for the update Adam.  These are pretty amazing and encouraging changes, not just for WLs but for all classes in general.  The majority of WL issues have been addressed here... and I almost cannot believe it.  I still don;t understand the Toughness -> Str thing, instead of Wounds -> Str, but that is now of minor concern because of all the issues being addressed for us in this patch.

I guess all that's left for me to say is a big THANKS to you guys at Mythic.  Thank you for listening and taking action.  About time :-p

It's a lot harder to stack toughness vs. strength as a WL. There are only 2 sets with toughness on them (conqueror and warlord), both of which are the 4th set bonus so you can't mix and match to gain the extra toughness, so there goes 67-76'ish toughness (strength for your pet) that you are never going to be able to get no matter what. Which you can currently get now. 

There is a LOT more strength on all of our items vs. toughness as well.(this is not including talismans or set bonuses. Just a general observation of the items for WL's)

Now lets say you have 100 toughness from just item stats, no talismans, no item sets. Now add that to the 1 set bonus you can get for toughness. We are now at roughly 166 toughness (assuming you are wearing 4 piece conqueror). Now slot all +20 toughness talismans (lol) in all 8 of our  talisman slots (I say 8 slots if you have the BS influence ring with the talisman slot in it). For a grand total of a whopping 326 toughness. Now I am sure you can probably get a little more than that if you sacrificed even more of your other stats for toughness, but I am going to use that as an example. 

So this all converts to 326 strength and 200 weapon skill for my pet. I am going to use my current amount of  wounds on items for the weapon skill number of the pet. (even though that is going to drop a ton for stacking ALLLLLL that toughness) 

So in the end of all of this, I now do a lot less damage because I dropped all of that strength for toughness. And now also my pet gets even less strength and like 20 more weaponskill (woohoo) than he does currently!

As of now,  without any sacrifice of any stats,  my pet gets 515 strength and 180 weaponskill in TTK vs. 326 strength and 200 weaponskill he would be getting on 1.3. You would be stupid to run TTK vs. TTH because you can get 250+ strength and 100'ish weaponskill in TTH for your pet WITHOUT sacrificing ALLLLLLL those other stats from you. Again, the numbers speak for themselves.

Please leave the stances how they are. They are perfectly fine.

One thing that I'd really like the devs to look at is changing fetch to be exactly like terrible embrace.  Namely, unlink the ability from the pet, or make the pet instantly leap to the target and then leap back to us with the target.  Marauders are quite capable to using TE (on the run no less) to snag a player who has popped flee (or charge), and bring them quickly back to within melee range.

Due to the lion's quirks, fetch cannot be used to catch a fleeing target.  Even if we pop charge, the lion has great difficulty running down a player moving at normal speed.  I fully understand why fetch was nerfed to 65 feet, but to be honest it is now a pretty much useless ability.  I don't really care about being able to peel an enemy out of the zerg (which was what fetch was mainly used for).  I just think that when a squishy runs from us (usually after using some sort of knockback or root/snare) we should have a realiable way to pull them back to us once.

Please alter fetch to be just like terrible embrace.  It's single target, has a balanced cost and cooldown, and fits well with the White Lion's role as a single target hunter-type MDPS.

Firstly a huge THANK YOU to Adam for finally communicating to us, it helps a huge amount and I really wish you would have done so sooner and will continue to do so more often in the future.

I completely agree with the way you're focusing on the balance between AE and single target abilities, and what you've presented to us here is encouraging but it's really rather vague and we could do with alot more detail.

A number of questions come to mind:

Have you brought WL delves and AP costs upto par with other MDPS careers?

Have pet related abilities been made reliable? (silence/stun/fetch)

Has Loner been changed at all to not require a tactic slot?

Has Thin the Herd been changed to a incoming heal debuff?

Have we recieved any additional CC at all? (knockdown on Blindsided! tactic for example)

Have we recieve a non pet based armour debuff?

etc etc.

Would really appreciate a reply to any of these.

Have to say I'm a little disapointed in some of the changes - with few exceptions most of these changes appear to be happening to all the MDPS classes. I'm encouraged that you have addressed underused tactics and are obviously aware of our feedback.  Having said that, I still feel that we are missing the true focus on the class we were promised and that most of our buffs are actually the result of wider MDPS / game wide changes instead of clear focus on the WL.

I suspect if WL only changes were held over until 1.3.1 so we could see them in isolation the majority of WLs would be distinctly underwhelmed.

The two main things that stand out for me are - 

1. Thin the herd.  Witch Hunter gets 50% outgoing heal debuff at rank 9 as a core skill, we need to invest 14 points in a tree to get ours? (although ours has a higher initial damage).  I sincerely hope that the reshuffling of trees results in this being much more achievable (failing that an incoming heal debuff would have worked nicely on the blindsided tactic slot).

2. Nothing addressed on our lack of CC (which I expected) but I really hoped that we would see a change in the way the pet CC fires - especially considering it is drawing on our own AP pool.  The stick feature may change that however we have seen so many changes to pathing/AI and none of them have resulted in an end result I would say works as intended.   To add to that, these kind of pathing and AI changes for pets are consistently updated and overwritten too when you make changes to NPC AI.

Final judgement held over until I can get a day or so on the PTS.

On a more positive note I do like the way the game is going with regard to CC.

You guys are crazy, the changes are awesome. Although i think our sundering chop should get better contribution from strength. With almost 1000 str my sundering chop was only critting in the 600's and thats from behind with flanking, pack assault, and i think primal fury as well. My lvl 40 test server choppa (who has terrible gear, and only about 800 strength) was HITTING in the high 900's with his rear positional attack and critting in the 1600's. Thats suuuch a huge disparity between two abilities that should be somewhat on par. Also keep in mind our attack completely ignores armor and is still doing about 35% of the damage that the choppa backstab does. (although all choppa attacks basicalyl ignore armor since they get a 1k armor debuff FOR SOME REASON)

Besides that though, the WL changes are awesome.

Edit: Also keep in mind, my WL had +50% crit damage on while my choppa only had +25%. So not counting that, the choppas backstab was litterally hitting for 3 times the damage non crit, and probably even more if the mobs i was hitting on my choppa had 0% armor like the mobs my WL was fighting did (because sundering chopa ignores armor).

This damage disparity doesn't seem right, it almost seems like sundering chop isn't doing the damage it's supposed to.

Well, here's to hoping that all goes well. Changes are always inevitable with all classes -- it's never just going to be "alllll riiiiight".

I hope that these changes really do improve the "pet" play. White lions without their war lions is like having bread without the crust -- it's just weird.

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dooflachi wrote:

It's a lot harder to stack toughness vs. strength as a WL. There are only 2 sets with toughness on them (conqueror and warlord), both of which are the 4th set bonus so you can't mix and match to gain the extra toughness, so there goes 67-76'ish toughness (strength for your pet) that you are never going to be able to get no matter what. Which you can currently get now. 

 

There is a LOT more strength on all of our items vs. toughness as well.(this is not including talismans or set bonuses. Just a general observation of the items for WL's)

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so what is the responsible thing to do here?  not to say, "i want the bugs kept ingame because it helps my playstyle."

the thing to do now is to advocate for more toughness options for armor.  do you know the stats of the new tomb kings armor?

Khaaz - I'm not sure what you are saying in your post, on the one hand you are pointing out a glaring difference between the (frankly poor) dmg the WL does with a positional (and tactics) versus the (frankly OP) damage a choppa does.  But you go on to say the changes are awesome? Which changes are actually awesome? I can think of one that might qualify and perhaps two if the pet stick function actually works and isn't broken within a week when something else is patched!

I'll help you out - I broke down all the changes to real numbers in this thread

I'm curious to know why WL's need more ap cost too there abilities for the dmg? Slayers seem to have most of what we have sept for a couple things like Pounce which always puts you just out of reach of your target, and fetch which works accashionaly at best.

Pounce is amazing for moving from front lines to back but my only real issue is if you use it while target is moving you will always land far enough away to not be able to hit them inless your using charge. the dmg wont effect them either. i would have no issue if it did no dmg but just allowed us to land near them.

Fetch... can you take it away and five us something useful. i have no issue with having my pet pull them but too often he runs to the target the ability lights up and press it and nothing it hits cooldown. you cant use it inless its a flat serface most of the time. can we have somethign similer to terriable embrace where i press it my pet runs them them and fetches them. give it a casting time like merauders just instead of the tentical thing are pet runs to them.

Feline grace. i dont think the immunity timer has ever worked. i can use it then be effected by another root immeditly afterwords. 

what makes us so special? a pet that is only semi useful?

Ultimatly are dps numbers are going down and we were at a pretty good place before on dps. cull the weak's dmg is better and i do enjoy the 100 from behind on slashing blade but increasing the ap more really counters its usefulness.

we have very limited cc, and with all the print screaning out there is hard to even snare people.

Why do slayers get a 50% healthing debuff to outgoing and incoming and we only get a 50% outgoing?

 Pack Hunting tactic. Does this seem to work for anyone. i have the harbinger axe and at 2.7 speed with the tactic it never seems to be 50% less.

Thanks for Listening