I am looking for some quick, barely scientific poll data about the cower bug. Adam Holisky, at the venerable wow.com, reports seeing it with his crab. I had heard that it was only a problem for cats.
The way that I understand this bug is that once you summon your pet, every time you enter an instance or change zones, the pets auto-cast abilities scramble. If you normally run with cower on and growl off, for example, you will periodically notice your pet start to growl. Please tell me what your experiences have been below:
Was the reapplication of Kill Shot’s minimum range an intended “fix” or a stealth nerf?
It’s undocumented, but, I believe, intended.
I’m pretty sure not requiring you to be at range was never an intentional change. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that you wouldn’t be able to shoot arrows up close except for this one shot.
I find that the only time the pet auto cast skills become bugged is when these skills are not on your pet’s hotbar. When growl, cower, and prowl are all on the hotbar and properly enabled/disabled, they stay the way they are in and out of instances.
Only seen the same behavior as xWarrior.
Any pet abilities on any pet that are NOT on the pet bar can scramble… certainly on login and pulling from stable, not so sure about zoning or simple summoning.
I’ve just learned to live with haing growl and cower both wasting a spot on the pet bar. It is a pain though as shell shield (turtle), roar of sac., heart of the pheonix etc all can go autocast which is particularly a PITA for these sorts of things that work much better macroed but still need to be on the pet bar to make sure they don’t go autocast.
Fix It Blizz…. FIX… IT… :)
It’s a shame we can’t remove “aggressive” to add a 5th action, or to modify the toolbar in that kind of way.
Imagine if that started flipping randomly whenever you zoned though :(
Typically, what I see happening is that even though I turn off my “Growl” in an instance, it will turn itself back on without me noticing when I switch back to questing, etc. Usually I don’t mind this… but this seems to stay that way when I go back in, so there are times when my pet still has growl on in the next instance, even though I can’t remember logging out or turning it on.
(I do not have growl on my petbar, because I want Heart of the Phoenix there, and growl is less detrimental than most of my other abilities for accidentally turning on or off, as long as I catch it quickly.)
At this point, I just have “check pet growl/cower” on my “to do when entering an instance” list; also included are ‘make sure combat logging is on’, ‘make sure you have the right bullets equipped’, ‘make sure you’re not in pvp gear’, etc.
THis bug ahs been since sunwell was rlsed or rather when wotlk talnets were rlsed before wotlk was rlsed.
I haven’t found that abilities on my pet bar are immune- Call of the Wild turns itself on autocast all the time, and I keep that on the bar. My wolf also regularly turns off Bite, which doesn’t help her dps much. I check every time I zone into something now.
I just changed my usual mouse-buttoned attack macro from:
/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
To:
/petautocastoff Cower
/petautocaston Call of the Wild
/petautocaston Claw
/petautocaston Dash
/petautocaston Growl
/petautocaston Rabid
/petautocaston Savage Rend
/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
So if/when things get screwed up again for whatever reason, they get automatically fixed before the next fight.
Personally, I believe call of the wild should not be on autocast. It should be controlled manually and used in conjunction with your trinkets and when heroism/bloodlust is called during raids. To have it go off as soon as a pull takes place is sort of wasteful.
Generally, sure, but I copied that from a leveling hunter. I found myself saving CotW for “important” fights and wasting it by hardly ever actually using it, and decided “wasting” it by using it every time it was up was actually more useful in the end.
But the particular pet skill mix involved wasn’t the point anyway.
Definitely more than just my cat; I’ve had instances where my wolf has Bite turned off (very annoying if I haven’t noticed for a couple of fights).
This bug has been going on for about…well I would say a bit before Ulduars release is when I started noticing it. Put growl/cower on the bar and let the rest auto-cast, with the exception of one other. Thats the only fix Ive found
Aha. This is something that has been bugging me. I have had one instance of a warrior making some backhanded (but not in a particularly angry way) remark about “someone’s pet wants to tank”, which of course I rebutted as “growl is always off”. “I saw the growl effect.”
I guess he DID see the growl effect. I was wondering for a long time if there was some other ability that produced a similar effect, but this certainly explains it.
I think that cower might actually make the same visual… I would check, but I need to get to work. Tonight :)
I’m not sure about the cower animation, as I have never used it, But I’m fairly confident it doesn’t have a visual on the boss.
Growl however displays a single animation of the old Diablo II Necromancer’s Iron Maiden curse. Quite noticable :)