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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right with some crit mitigation.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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I have never loved you as much as I love you right now.

EDIT: Since pets are kind of an integral part of both warlock and hunter PvE damage, and expertise is entirely wasted on both classes, would it be possible to add a talent option to give pets expertise? I know BM hunters already have a talent for it, but demonology warlocks don't, which is kind of a shame given how big a chunk of our DPS the felguard is.

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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right with some crit mitigation.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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Wow that is huge.
Time to start getting haste and Armor Pen for my hunter !

Excuse me...I need to go change my pants.

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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right with some crit mitigation.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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I'm normally playing devil's advocate and on your side, but...

Its about !@*#ing time.

Oh my god.

It's a miracle.

Resilience, too. My goodness.

I just crapped my pants.

Pets becoming a benefit rather than a weakness.

Man. Life is good.

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Q u o t e:


We don't want you to have to stack stats on your character just to benefit your pet. For example, we currently let warlock demons earn melee hit based on the caster's spell hit.

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Holy crap I just got a blue response. o-o There's a first time for everything I guess...

But anyway. Since we can all agree that having to give hunters and warlocks expertise gear would be stupid, can demonologists get some pet expertise tacked onto a talent somewhere? Even just 10 like the BM talent would go a long way, as there's currently no way around dodges/parries for our pets (most notably the felguard) like there is for misses, and the DPS increase shouldn't be too terribly unbalancing.

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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right without some crit mitigation. Pets will never scale right with gear as long as the master improves in ways that don't benefit the pet.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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GC, i hate to nitpick and maybe I'm misinterpreting your wording but, if pets were only to get PART of the masters Spell pen, warlocks would have to stack an insane amount of spell pen to be able to somewhat reliably interrupt a mage.

In my opinion, that's another stat really needs to get 100% of the masters rating to be effective.

edit: also please look into effects like mage armor and shadow protect stacking, thanks.

Does this include shadowfiend? Currently it does practically nothing and can be 2 shot A LOT easier than hunter/warlock pets.

Very cool news.

Hopefully you guys make it impossible for pets to be buffed when you do this. the last thing we need is for you to make all these well earned scaling improvements and then nerf them 12 hours after launch because when pets start double dipping they're op.

The bad news is the new scaling will apply to deathknight pets too.

Unless they get rid of perma DK pets in the same patch, hint hint.

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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right without some crit mitigation. Pets will never scale right with gear as long as the master improves in ways that don't benefit the pet.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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Ghostcrawler, as a Brutal Gladiator I want to say thank you very much for understanding the problem.

Might I beseech you to scale all pets stats @ 100% while taking the base down? If we're stuck with a 200 resilience pet while we're @ 800, they're going to be just as squishy.

It would be nice if warlocks weren't so dependent on our pets for survival (soul link) and utility (spell lock / devour magic) in the first place, but it looks that's what we're stuck with, so we might as well make the best of it as we can.

Again, I've been petitioning for this change since early S4, and I want to say thank you for understanding one of (if not the biggest) problem that warlocks experience in PvP, even if it did take you guys this long to figure it out. :(

Don't take that as an insincere thank you, I definitely want to say thanks.

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Q u o t e:
Hopefully you guys make it impossible for pets to be buffed when you do this. the last thing we need is for you to make all these well earned scaling improvements and then nerf them 12 hours after launch because when pets start double dipping they're op.

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pets already double dip from anything you can buff right now, stam/int/resistances.. ect. Unless there's some insane resil/spell pen/hit buff that I'm missing. I seriously doubt itl be a problem.

Hi again, this is OGC (I'm posting on my Brutal Gladiator character).

I was recently interviewed by WoWinsider about the warlock class in PvP right now, and this is something I wrote back to them concerning pets:

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Q u o t e:

Wowinsider: What can reasonably help Warlock representation?

Pets. Warlocks' #1 issue is pet scaling. It needs to exist. Right now, felhunters are basically level 74 enhancement shamans in full greens. They need to scale with spell penetration and resilience on a 1:1 ratio basis. In fact, they need to scale everything on a 1:1 basis. If you need to make the base hp of the pets worse in order to adapt, sobeit.

The cost of losing a pet to a warlock in incredibly devestating. Not only do they lose key abilities from the pet (usually devour magic and spell lock), the ability to keep an opposing class in combat, and a meager amount of damage, but Warlocks lose soul link which is currently what their survivability is based on. They can use a ridiculously long cooldown to get a .5 summon on a new pet, but that one dies just as easily as the first. The opposing team is not CCing itself to kill the Warlock's pet (contrary to the developer's belief), they're destroying his survivability and utility by killing it. If you don't want to use fel domination to get a new pet out, you have to sit there for 5.5 seconds trying to get a new pet out, then soul link it with another global cooldown afterwards.

Compare this to the Death Knight pet. Not only does it have better abilities than the felhunter, (gnaw, huddle, leap), but it's instant-cast, and much more easy to recast with night of the dead. The death knight also doesn't depend on the pet for his survivability.

I'm not saying that Warlocks should have Death Knight pets, or that Death Knights should even have Death Knight pets. But the fact that Warlocks are a pet class, yet have to go through all this red tape just to get a key part of our class into the game (and if we don't have it we're probably subsequently dead as our survivability is tied up with our pet) is just kind of ridiculous. It can get very depressing when comparing Warlock pets (or Hunter pets for that matter) to DK pets, so I think I'm going to stop here. DK pets need to get toned down, but all pets need to scale with all stats on a 1:1 basis to solve these problems.

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I wrote this just hours before this announcement came out. Thank you so much for understanding a fundamental issue of our class and trying to solve the issue as best you can.

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Q u o t e:


We think it's probably time to let pets scale, to some extent, with resilience and spell pen.

The way pets scale from the master's stats was implemented (on our side) in a slightly clunky way which made it difficult to add additional stats. In BC, it took some effort to kill a pet so it wasn't a burning problem for us. In LK, we have bumped up pet health a few times, but we are thinking now that the balance will never work right without some crit mitigation. Pets will never scale right with gear as long as the master improves in ways that don't benefit the pet.

We have a new way to let pets scale, and assuming it works, we should be able to give the pets scale with all relevant stats from the master, from hit to haste to crit. Some things will need to scale at 100%, since it's silly to have your pet inherit part of your +hit.

No promises until you actually see it live, but that's what we are thinking at the moment.

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This is very nice to hear, especially on our demonic end where we don't actually get talents for our pet getting Expertise (nudgenudge), but I do have one concern: won't this still be somewhat moot in the case of some pets being worse since their abilities fall short in some ways and thus another pet is simply better? For example, Affliction seems to prefer Succubi more than Felhunters, even though the latter cares about dots on the target (Shadow Bite).

(And that's if we don't factor in Improved Felhunter's supposed synergy with Dark Pact, when Life Tap can do the job better, AND get a glyph for it.)