You may have heard some hunters say they a have a “bug” with their cat pet, where they will very firmly turn Prowl off of Autocast and it will… automatically turn itself back onto Autocast. Everytime you mount or dismount or zone into someplace new, it comes back. There are “fixes” like resummoning your pet, or putting the offending Prowl on your pet’s action bar, and sometimes it will work, but sometimes it won’t.
Tawyn ran into this problem with Locke and Lunapike ran into this problem with Alyosha but they were both easily fixed. I dragged Prowl onto my pet’s action bar, turned it off, dismissed and resummoned my pet, and… problem solved. Neither of them are Prowling anymore and things are snazzy. Although even if they did have the prowling bug, it wouldn’t have been too big of a deal, because I have other pets I could use if it got too annoying.
So then I logged into Althalor. My hunter who only uses cats.
Guess what?
They won’t stop prowling.
Anytime I mount/dismount, Prowl. Anytime I log in and out, Prowl. Anytime I take a flight point and land somewhere, Prowl. It doesn’t matter how many times I turn it off. It doesn’t matter how many of those million tricks I found on the internet I try. It doesn’t matter that I did the little trick I did with both Tawyn and Lunapike to fix the problem. My poor cat hunter’s cats are simply not cooperating.
Why it’s only happening on one of my hunters and not the others, I have no idea, and why it had to happen specifically to my cat-only hunter I have no idea, but the result was that it wasn’t long before I got sick of the stealth noise and got tired of constantly having to tell my kitties to unprowl, and I decided to break protocol and go tame a non-kitty pet to use until this all gets sorted out.
At the suggestion of a commenter, I opted to go with a moth.
…let’s play the guess what game again. Guess what?
The only pre-Outlands-level moths in the game are in the Draenei starting zone. Althalor is a blood elf, on a PvP server.
Did I? You’d better believe I did!
It actually wasn’t that bad. I think a lot of people are distracted by the zombies running around so I didn’t run into anybody (except, well, a zombie) on the way there. Then I jumped into the water at Auberdine, drowned myself under the draenei boat, hopped onto the draenei boat as a ghost, rode over to Azuremyst Isle, and– still ghostified– ran myself to the Spirit Healer who is standing not too far away from where level 1 draenei first spawn. I rez’d there and, much to my luck, there was a moth right in front of my face.
/tame!
/yell Byebye Draenei!
/hearthstone!
I only had enough time last night to play with the moth long enough to realize that the moth’s special ability, Serenity Dust, does not seem to be autocasting and I have to manually trigger it. So now I find myself wondering… is this a known issue or is poor Althalor just having horrific luck with pets?
Oh, also, I need a name for the moth. Something other than PikesWorstNightmare (have I mentioned I have this phobia of moths in real life but the ones in WoW don’t bug me? …pun not intended.) I was thinking of something dreamlike or trancelike cause I think it would fit. Toss me your suggestions.
How about Lorelei?
I haven’t had any problem with my cat, by the way (although I haven’t played with him the past few days since I’ve been running with a chimera).
This is pretty weird really, as I never seemed to have the prowling problem on either of my hunters. They did prowl when I used them for the first time after the patch, but after that… Never, unless I wanted them to. Might have something to do with the fact that I always have Prowl on my pet’s bar for the moments when I have to go AFK for a while and hit Shadowmeld.
On the other hand, I have the problem with Cower. It just won’t stay off, darnit! And I even had my gorilla’s Growl turned off and Cower on once… Mind you, I NEVER turn my Tenacity pets’ growl off. Was kinda “wtf” when the mobs wouldn’t stay with my gorilla for a split second. 😛
I have found a solution for this problem.
I Had this problem with cower, it would never stay off. But on your Character log in screen (where you type your username and PW) click the options tab. Find ‘Reset UI’ Dont worry your buttons and hotbars icons wont move or anything. This simply reloads the UI Code from the server side. Once you do this and log in… Turn on or off the ones you want and it should stick from now on. It worked for me, hopefully it does for you as well.
Oh and i cant think of any names, never been good at that. You could always try to spell moth backwards ‘Thom’, and see who can pick up on it. 🙂
My ally hunter is 63 and snagged a Terromoth (the beige skinned ones by Cenarion Thicket) and my Serenity Dust doesn’t cast using slash commands, manually punching the button, or autocast.
A guildie of mine hordeside ran to get a moth when she was in the 50s (ran to Draenei noob zone before the patch (and guard increase in level) and logged in and tamed when the patch went live) and her Serenity Dust was labeled lv 64, so she couldn’t use it at all.
So, moths in general to me seem kinda buggy (har!). I can’t speak for cats because I don’t actually have any on either hunter. >.>
How about Somnia? Or even better, Insomnia!
I still haven’t leveled Tinea, though I am quite eager to. The Angry Butterfly needs an Angry Moth, after all!
Being a Great Cat Hater, I haven’t encountered this bug, but I am aware of the Giant Pet bug, where pets will revert to their NPC name and rescale to their pre-tamed size. I’m not sure of its origins, but I know it’s never visible to the player – I’ve been asked how I tamed such a large Windserpent and was able to name it Son of Hakkar, yet Aeris looked normal to me. I haven’t seen it since 3.0, so maybe it’s fixed :D.
Avaric’s primary pet is a frostsaber pride watcher. I love this cat, he’s been with me since I turned 59. However, prowl/cower bug is so maddening (and I’ve tried the reset UI trick, and I’ve tried the thing you described with the spell on the pet bar and dismissing and resummoning, and nothing works) that I’ve temporarily stabled him. I mean, I have a devilsaur and a core hound to level up and they’re fun, but I want my cat back. I hope they get it fixed before Wrath hits, because I fully intend to level with him.
Capacity to tame those moths after a year of wanting to.
It FINALLY happens when I am in the midst of like SEVEN other games I want to be playing.
Damn you Blizz.
My girlfriend also complains about prowl autocasting and no tricks (mentined here or else) work to fix it.
I don’t know about cower being bugged since she turn it on anyway on trashfight to prevent the cat trying to aggro anything what meant to run to her ever-lasting freeze trap (0/10/51)
Hello Pike,
So, like 2 months ago (actually, 2 months and 10 days if we want to be exact), I caved and started to play WoW with a group of friends that have adopted me (they’re LOKI, on Darkspear, though I didn’t actually know that at the time). Since I love being able to shoot deadly arrows in DnD and LOVE kitty cats, playing a hunter seemed like the most logical thing in the world. However, in listening to their (intense and very, very long and confusing) convos about WoW, I quickly realized that I was way, way over my head. ZA? ZG? Who was this Illidan fellow and why, exactly, was LOKI trying so hard to “down” him?
Naturally, where does a girl in distress trying to learn a new language turn? Why, the internet, of course! So I googled “i’m a new WoW hunter and need to learn to play”. Your blog was not the first hit. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Instead, I fought through a quagmire of threads on WoW.com, ridiculous Yahoo answers, graffiti, and porn. (WoW porn? Who would have guessed?) Thank goodness, I eventually made my way to Hunter Kindergarden, where I promptly sat down at the front of the class and read until my eyes bled. (She reads Redwall! I LOVE Redwall!) Thanks to you and your blogroll (can I just say that BRK saved my poor nelf’s life several times?), I can trap! I can Feign Death! I switch between Aspects! I’m level 69! I know what the patch did to us! And why it matters! I’m ready to go to Northrend!
So, LOKI is taking me on my very first raid (EVAH!) tomorrow night to Kara, and trembling in fear, I pulled up your blog in trepidation. Surely Pike wouldn’t have left a noobie 69 Kara raider like myself in the cold without even one guide to send her on her way! And true to form, you came through for me again.
Now that checking your blog has become a daily ritual directly following checking my horoscope (today’s said something along the lines of “You will grovel obsequiously before a complete stranger”), I read your post and thought, hmmm. You know, I could stop being just a lurker and actually, like, post a reply. Surely Pike deserves an /applause for making me kind of relevant.
(What if she thinks you’re a geek, or a stalker?? Well, I’m okay with that.)
/applause
Thanks Pike! /hug
Oh yeah, and the whole reason for this obscenely long, sappy post was to offer a name suggestion for the Moth.
What about Morpheus?
Adoringly,
Kialesse and Jake
69 Night Elf Hunter and Nightsaber Extraordinaire
For some reason, the hairiness of the moth reminds me of Shepherd’s manly ‘stache.
Hence, name your moth Shepherd.
The autocast works on my moths serenity dust, but only if its lost some health, not much of a problem so long as your pet is tanking for you, but a bit of a pain if your in an instance.
My moth is called Dal’anar which is Thalassian for Starlight which I found quite appropriate. For my blood elf’s pets I always check out the wowwiki thalassian page and make a name up from them.
How about Angeldust?
Its obvious that the only name for this interesting journey is “Lunacy”.
I happen to believe its a perfect fit for a moth like that.
big fan BTW, first time post lol.
‘Lunacy’ would be great, but better for a Night Elf hunter, though.
I’d go with ‘Gypsy’.
Haha, oh, I’m honored that you tried a moth! =)
Such a pity you have all those problems. =( I have six hunters, and two use cats and one use a moth… no problem. It’s really a strange bug.
Oh, moth name? Well, I named my Flutter. I just had to! I’m not typically 100% serious on pet names (boar is Tiny, wolf is Howler, long-earred lynx is Rabbit…), and if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s probably not allowed, I’d suggest Tinkerbell…
Good luck with the bug, though!
For the love of the Earth Mother, don’t name it Gypsy…
I do my research on Gypsy Moths, not to mention they what they do to thousands of acres of New England forest every season…
The perfect name for the moth is Serenity, of course…
“In Which a Game Bug Leads to a Pet Bug”
Hilarious 😛
Pike, I’ve been raiding with a moth since 3.0 came out, and the serenity dust not autocasting thing is a known issue. Everything EXCEPT serenity dust autocasts every time the cooldown is up. Call of the Wild? Autocast. Rabid? Autocast. Lick your Wounds? Autocast. Growl? Autocast at the beginning of a Hyjal trash wave, and squish goes the Luna (which is what I called mine). x_x Here’s hoping 3.0.3 will fix the pet bugs, and maybe give us a few more pet action bar slots…
Took my level 13 orc over to the isle and tamed a moth and its been working great. No issues with any pet abilities. Sorry I had to say goodbye to my owl but the moth is doing great in the barrens.
I have found that any base skill (Growl, Prowl, Cower, Bite/Claw, family-skill) that is not on the Pet Action Bar will automatically be set to AutoCast when I:
– Dismount
– Land from a flight point
– Enter/Leave an instance/battleground/arena
I have tested this with and without UI tools, etc. and it is the only constant I have found.
@ Clockwork – thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately, no luck with it.
@ Khol – But I named my wasp Serenity! https://www.aspectofthehare.net/2008/10/new-pet-review-wasp.html
@ Kialesse – Thank you for making my day <3 /hugs!
I was gonna suggest Serenity too, o well. How about Dreamdust, or just Dreamer?
And the prowl bug is also driving me up the wall, specially since I have 2 hunters with cats.
Dustbunny!
As I was reading this post I giggled a bit. Cats not doing what they’re told? How is that even news? That’s just cat-ness! From “do NOT play in the recycling” to “no cats allowed in the bed” my cats have not done a single thing I’ve commanded them to do since the first tiny furred paw set foot in my house. Cats walk by themselves, and us lesser beings deal with it 🙂 That being said, I’m sorry to hear about your game bug but I wish you well of your pet bug.
I’ve not come across the prowl problem, but I have to continuously turn off cower, which is getting a bit tedious…
As for a name for a moth?
Avoureen, Avoree or Lree?
My hunter dinged 68 last night, so I took her to tame a blue moth in Netherstorm. It came with rank 6 serenity dust, which apparently is too high for the
moth to use. Clicking on serenity dust only yields the error “Target is too low level.”
My other pets are a crab, spider, chimaera and turtle, whose special abilities all work
fine. Oh, I named my moth Behemoth (lol).
Just a thought, but Serenity Dust is also a healing skill, have you tried seeing if it autocats when his health gets low?