Animal Companion is underpowered, IcyVeins is wrong?

Classes Hunter
1

Hi, I was doing some testing on Animal Companion vs Killer Instinct from the first talent tier. Bear with me and my janky testing here for a minute.

I first ran Killer Instinct on a single target dummy, which obv wasn’t ever under 35% health and so the talent was not in effect and therefore useless. My single pet was performing like this:

auto - 388 dmg
claw - 1332 dmg
kill command - 1984 dmg

Over 3 minutes of the pet doing his thing while I’m auto-ing and using Kill Command on cooldown resulted in 1.3k DPS. No problem here yet, right?

I then attempted to test Animal Companion, which performed like this:

auto - 253 dmg (times two! so definitely a boost here)
claw - 865 dmg (however, NOT times two, meaning a huge loss in DPS here)
kill command - 1290 dmg (times two, so this is an upgrade also)

Over 3 minutes on the dummy again, with just Kill Command on cooldown and the same exact situation, STILL 1.3k DPS! Meaning that Killer Instinct (not in effect) and Animal Companion resulted in the same DPS or almost exactly the same. In other words, picking no talent is just as good as picking Animal Companion.

Which is that way because the second pet never uses Claw. Something tells me the pet SHOULD use it, otherwise the talent is useless - which makes Killer Instinct obviously better because we never even factored in the 50% extra dmg on Kill Command for targets under 35% hp.

To add on to my confusion, IcyVeins mentions that Animal Companion is the best choice by far, and doesn’t even consider Killer Instinct or Dire Beast as options. WHY?! Why is Animal Companion better? Am I missing something here? It’s literally an illusion of strength, it adds absolutely nothing.

Maybe Claw is bugged and the second pet SHOULD use it? That would make the talent worthwhile and I’m assuming that’s how it should work.

Furthermore, another observation was that Claw is indeed bugged in an entirely different way. The skill is supposed to do 100% bonus dmg and cost 100% more focus when the pet has over 50 focus, as per the tooltip. However, I extensively tested it and it NEVER does that, which results in less burst than there should be.

Can anyone share any light on this? Ngl it’s driving me bananas because it just seems bugged and it’s definitely affecting hunter DPS.

edit: I would add the damage breakdown has Claw at top dmg (31.3% of total dmg) with Killer Instinct, and on the bottom (19.9% of total dmg) with Animal Companion. It’s either bugged or not, but if not, there’s no point in the talent even existing.

1 Like
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If you pick Animal Companion, there is a hidden aura which applies to both pets when you have them out. This aura reduces all pet damage dealt by 35%.

Animal Companion

Talent | Requires Hunter (Beast Mastery) | Requires level 15

Your Call Pet additionally summons the first pet from your stable. This pet will obey your Kill Command, but cannot use pet family abilities.

Spell Details

Effect #1 Apply Aura: ?? (Aura #493)
PVP Multiplier: 1
Effect #2 Apply Aura: Mod Pet Damage %
Value: -35%
PVP Multiplier: 1
Flags: Passive spell, Cast time is hidden

If you check the numbers you mentioned above from your test, those perfectly match this.

253/388=0.6520 = 65.2%
865/1332=0.6493 = 64.9%

The fact that this aura exists is very much intended, and that it also applies to pet basic attacks(Bite, Claw, Smack) despite how the second pet doesn’t perform any such attacks.

Why? Because if the second pet would also perform basic attacks, this talent would effectively be a 30% boost to overall pet damage, making it vastly superior to other talents on that row, and with that, waaay too powerful for a single talent choice in general.

Animal Companion as a talent has many other issues though. As an example, we have this deficit aura of -35%, and how it doesn’t only affect the main pets, but also affects other companions and guardians summoned by yourself during combat, such as the Spitting Cobra(talent), or certain guardians you can summon from trinkets etc. This is very much not an intended effect, but sadly, it has been a thing since they first implemented this talent back in BfA beta.

Another issue with Animal Companion is how that second pet does not in any way benefit from Pet Specialization passive effects(Predator’s Thirst, Endurance Training, Pathfinder).

The second pet is also very glitchy when it comes to things like using Camouflage or invisibility effects.

And it tends to, at times, be unresponsive to certain commands related to the pet AI.

Because of how it works, picking Animal Companion amounts to roughly a 4-6% boost to your overall damage. This is ofc based on you using all your damaging attacks optimally. But even if you do tests such as what you mentioned above, you might not notice any major differences from one test to another, especially when you consider RNG such as critical strikes, random effects proccing(or not). etc. etc.

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I was aware of this basic information but you explained it so well with more detail than I was aware of.

It’s both enlightening and demoralizing. :wink:

3 Likes
4

Another thing to keep in mind is Stomp. When you use Barbed Shot both pets will Stomp, drastically buffing that talent in particular.

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Yea, AC is about a 4% increase, but why it’s a winner is stomp.

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Reducing the damage of your main pet by taking ac will also lower the leech heal he gets while tanking. Something to ponder.

1 Like
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The entire BM talent tree is a mess. I think the main reason people call BM a braindead spec (despite the fact that there are no hard to play classes in WoW) is because all of our best DPS talents are passive. That seems to go against Blizzard’s common design strategy of making active abilities stronger than passive. In my opinion, Dire Beast, Chimaera Shot, Murder of Crows and everything in the 45/50 tier need an overhaul to make the active abilities stronger.

It seems Blizzard doesn’t have time for Hunters though. The pseudo-promised changes that were coming in 9.1 never happened and instead we got weird +dmg buffs that resulted in Cobra Shot doing more damage than Kill Command in PvP. Don’t get me wrong, the buffs made the spec playable again, but it’s a lazy fix that doesn’t address the real issue.

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As others have stated, Stomp needs to be considered. Testing on a dummy without you doing a fully rotation is going to get this type of result.

Also, Thrill of the Hunt increases your crit by 9% with three stacks, which directly translates to your pets - since they inherit your stats. The extra 9% crit applies to Stomp as well.

Essentially, Animal Companion, despite all it’s issues, just scales better with the rest of our default kit.

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If carrying around 2 pets all the time with AC gets you down, just go tame a frog for your AC pet and it’s smaller than a critter.

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I agree with much of this.

There are ofc many ways to “fix” the spec, going forward. In regards to the main subject of this topic, that being the Animal Companion and what should be done with it, along with the spec as a whole really, my thoughts on this can be found in the link below:

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if I can read my log, both pets cleve as well as well as stomp

companion is more damage. (edit: by a little, but it’s more)

if you pvp though, go single pet for more chunky hits