“Hunters battle their foes at a distance or up close, commanding their pets to attack while they nock their arrows, fire their guns, or ready their polearms.”
“Hunter talents primarily strengthen their pets; improve the damage, effectiveness, and duration of their traps; and increase the speed and power of their ranged attacks.”
“Hunters tame the beasts of the wild, and those beasts serve in return by assaulting their enemies and shielding them from harm.”
“Thanks to their pets and damage output, hunters are effective at completing quests and leveling quickly, even when they’re alone.”
(Source: h ttps://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/game/classes/hunter)
From the character creation page: “Hunters are at home in the wilderness and have a special affinity for beasts. They rely on their weaponry and their pet to deal damage.” (similar wording on the Classic character creation screen as well)
By Blizz’s own words the Hunter is a pet class. MM never should’ve been incentivized to play without pets. Clearly a significant portion of the player base wants a ranged shooter class that doesn’t use pets. According to Blizz that doesn’t fit within the hunter class fantasy they themselves created.
I think a lot of hunters, myself included, tolerated MM because while it was suboptimal to use pets in dungeons or raids, they were still useful in solo content and needed in pvp. Not ideal but it wasn’t a complete gutting of the class like they are planning now. All because they’re too lazy to make a real dark ranger class. Blizz could give us one with only 2 specs like they did DH. That’s a lazy solution too. But just don’t gut the essence of hunters. Otherwise there is no true pet class in wow anymore. That’s not OK with me.
Im really excited to see how MM without pets is gonna play. I never really used a pet myself, so this will hopefully be an improvement in their class design
A real dark ranger type class would be amazing. But hunters are the pet class and IMO should stay that way. I’d for sure make a ranger type alt. It sounds fun. And I do agree that there are too many issues with MM as a petless spec. That’s because they’re trying to make a hunter spec petless. Just make another class and leave hunters alone.
…or just play BM if you want pets. Dark Ranger sure looks & feels like a hunter with a bow and no pet (i.e., MM) if we’re saying Sylvie is the archetype for a Dark Ranger.
Best just to ignore the hypocrisy in these threads. People are perfectly fine with BM having an option of one or two pats, with a known dps loss for one of the options, but it’s completely out of the question to have an option of no pet or our stable pet for MM, even if it’s a dps loss.
But heres likely the problem though…they cant design the class around a maybe pet.
For example, if they gave MM defensive cooldowns to compensate for not being able to have a pet, but people could use the pet anyway…you’d end up with more survivability than intended.
Similarly. Even when MM penalized you for having out a pet, there were still situations/mechanics were the DPS loss was insignificant and having out a pet was still advantageous
They’ve already done it. And they are doing it next patch.
If they cannot figure out how to not screw people out of a stable of pets, then that’s on them to figure out like they have in the past. Not to remove part of Hunter identity and have disingenuous forum responses of “you’ll live” and “play BM.”
You’ll still have your stable of pets. Your not getting “screwed” out of anything.
Being a solo sniper, like MM has been designed to be for years, is also part of the hunter identify. I mean, they are the only ranged weapon class in the game. They are not the only pet class.
I don’t want Hunters to be gutted into a pet spec. I want them to stay the pet class. All the classes in wow and we can’t have one of them be a pet class?
If this were true most Hunters wouldn’t be so upset. MM is losing all access to pets. Can’t tame them, can’t stable them, nothing to do with pets at all. That’s why people are so pissed.
I started as MM and tamed all my oldest pets as MM. I swapped to BM in Legion when they ruined MM. Recently MM has become a lot better so I play it now when BM isn’t optimal. Why should I have to choose one spec to play pets when I play a hunter? Supposedly THE pet class. All specs should be pet specs in the pet class.
If people want a petless ranged spec then roll something else that’s not a hunter. We tolerated the MM change because we still had an illusion of choice. We could still play with pets if we wanted on our own and in pvp. We gave Blizz an inch and now they’re taking a mile. If one spec is completely petless it guts the entire feel of the class as a whole.
Now hunters have a pet spec instead of being the pet class. I don’t like that. And it’s lazy. Just give us a ranged class that doesn’t use pets. Don’t change the essence of the most popular class in the game. All because they couldn’t figure out how to make MM functional without pets. Which is a huge clue that maybe it never should’ve been a petless class to begin with.
I mean, I would not object to there being more than one ranged physical DPS, since it would make guns/bows/crossbows useful to more than just one specific class, even fist weapons aren’t that restricted and the only classes that make sense using those are rogues and monks.
