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WotLK Patch 3.1 brought the much coveted gorilla Thunderstomp ability to every tenacity pet. This is awesome! But just how much threat does thunderstomp generate at level 80 (rank 6)? Does that threat scale? How much damage does thunderstomp do at lvl 80?
To provide definitive answers to these questions, Warcraft Hunters Union did some research into thunderstomp threat and damage and based on that data here’s what we discovered:
The Thunderstomp pet ability tooltip says that it generates a moderate amount of additional threat. But just how much threat is a moderate amount?
| Thunderstomp generates an additional 150% threat. |
Or, stated another way:
| Thunderstomp generates 1.5 additional threat for every 1 damage it does. |
And, as we know from our Threat Guide, normally one damage generates just 1 threat. Now if your Thunderstomp does 100 damage you’ll do 100 threat from the damage, and another 150 additional threat, for a total of 250 threat. So how good is this? Very good indeed, because thunderstomp deals a lot of damage, and the damage that thunderstomp does scales with hunter attack power.
Thunderstomp Rank 6: Level 80 Pet
Deals 236-334 nature damage
Now as anyone with a tenacity pet at lvl 80 knows, thunderstomp is dealing a lot more than 236-334 damage. The reason is that thunderstomp damage is modified by your pet’s spell damage. And your pet’s spell damage increases as your attack power increases. As our WHU conversion guide shows, your pet gains 12.85% of your AP as spell damage at level 80.
So, if you have, say, 3,500 ranged attack power then your pet will have about 450 spell damage. Now it’s adding that 450 onto its 236-334 thunderstomp damage. And, of course, it can crit!
So there are all the facts you need to know about thunderstomp. We feel that the change of thunderstomp to all tenacity pets was a vital move. Now instead of just the gorilla, you have a much wider array of pet choices for your pet tanking needs.
so since no one has commented on this i’ll start it off with some basic questions. keep in mind that in heroics that 75% of what we attack in there comes in groups of 3 or 4 etc. so i became more sorta curius on pet aoe. so i started off with trying out a dragon hawk in several 25 mans due that its flames cone and hits whatever (several targets in front of him) and noticed that he out dps’d the 6 others hunters ferocity cats and raptors, by a noticalble amount. (they had the same survive build as me give or take a pt) so here comes the biggie question, due to the insane damage this stomp does, could the aoe actually put its dps consistently above ferocity in the instances? being that the raids are onlly once a week was hopin that this could be looked into by more than me to get a yay or nay on this or some feed back from the site manager
so on a correction to my first post, as i tested further the dragon hawk only hit single target, so the higher dps than the ferocity is prob a fluke of gear, or just playing the toon better, however my question to pet aoe still stands, and hope to get some feedback and data from other people to see if pet aoe should start gettin sought after more. a list of pets that aoe can be found on petopia here http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/skills/skills_compare.php
No, and aoe pet will not be better in raids than a cat or raptor. Here’s why:
Everything we do to prepare for raids — our gear choices, the hit cap, all of it – is focused on one thing: Boss fights. We don’t really care about trash. Trash will be killed. It’s not a problem. We want to be optimized for bosses, which means maxing our single-target dps.
Even if a gorilla did more damage overall because of the aoe trash (I kinda doubt it, btw, after the gorilla nerf) you would be hurting the raid as a whole by choosing a pet for trash, rather than for bosses.
true true i just had to satisfy my idle curiosity about it lol
The spell damage calculation is wrong. Hunter RAP indeed gives the pet some spell damage but it is not directly added to the thunderstomp damages. I did some testing on the target dummy : as a survival orc, about 1,11% of my RAP is added to thunderstomp damages. This is around 50 damages on top of the base 236-334 damages, then it gets enhanced by the damage modifier (+%5 from orc racial and +25% from pet happiness).
@ lvl 80, this pet is by far the best BM – PVE pet avail. After I tamed and lvl’d it up, I can easily handle a large group of lvl 80 NPC’s beyond my cat’s or my devilsaur’s ability. With multiple targets your only concern is volley, multi shot and mend pet. I periodically, I will focus my pet on my target just to speed things up a bit.
I was Bm before patch 3.1 then changed to Surv. but i still have 2 exoctic pets in my stable, how do i remove them? Any ideas?
I’ve had to abandon them before I respec’d, otherwise you have to be BM to just pull them out…hence they’re stuck! Glitch Blizz should prolly fix, if you spec outta BM, maybe you should auto-lose the pet? But then that sucks to have to retrain / catch a rare exotic pet…so I don’t know. Unless you’re dual-spec that is…. Otherwise, just buy the extra stable slots and keep em all, that’s what I did = P
P.S. Loque is WWAAYY too hard to find on my server (sisters of Elune) /CRY
Is this still accurate?
Yup, still correct – I’ve updated the dates on the reviewed & accurate.
I have a stat question How much dps roughly does the set 2 bounus of tier 8.5 and teir 9 do together?
Hey, I got a real quick pet tanking/aggro noob question… I’ve only been 80 for about a month now and I have pretty much everything down on the DPS side but, as far as the aggro and solo-tanking factor I have NO idea how to do this stuff. I picked up a gorilla and tried to farm a few NPCs that patrol in like groups of 6-10 to make some really quick gold and I used this awesome and most epic Thunderstomp on them, along with all the threat bonus pet spells there are and my pet just kept losing aggro. Are there any tricks or moves I can use to decrease my threat? So far I’ve heard that I should stack Stam for my farming spec and try to use Viper as much as I can but really I’m looking for the best possible method to successfully farm with my glorious Dragonhawk Aspect and hit those lovely 3k Volley Shots w/ out my pet losing aggro. Please help me!
The best pet for that is either the crocolisk or the bear — they both get thunderstomp but also have another aoe threat ability. If you really want to pursue soloing you can see our extreme soloing guide here: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/07/hunter-extreme-soloing-basics/
A Gorilla is my the far best pet for aggo issues. In trash pulls mabye due to the fact a gorilla pulls agro due to thunderstomp, meaning the more dmg it does the more agro it pulls. An aoe pet will not generate as much aggro but slightly increase its damage. By far a wolf is the best pet becuase it adds fuirous howl wich increases your attack power. Another thing if you are pulling aggro your having a problem. Follow your rotation correctly more then 2-3 adds start volleying. get omen. Start off with a misdirection and then muli shot. STat volleying and watch your aggro and feign death.use a frost trap to slow then down, concussive shot, wing clamp, scatter shot, disengage or learn how to kite. Strafe hopefully when you do all these littling things you can finally go back and M/D onto your pet.
Tumbus, a little bit of that is dated. All tank pets now have thunderstomp in their spec’s. As Frost said, a bear or croc will currently be the best for AoE threat at the moment, since their special abilities are the only ones among tank pets that will affect multiple targets.
I AM really interested in finding out which pet has the best single target aggro at the moment. I know worms are popular, but does armor reduction generate threat for the worm, or just increase total damage? I’ve been looking into leveling a single target tank, but have been unsure which is best.