1. Current Behavior
This is a post created by a rank 1 cata hunter Kenniflopper
1.1. Description
Currently When you use cooldowns on Pet 1 and you dismiss the pet and summon Pet 2, their cooldowns are shared, the cooldowns should be individual.
1.2. How to Reproduce
1. Tame 2 Monkey Pets
2. Join an arena and use the special ability bad manner from Pet 1, then dismiss the pet and Summon Pet 2 and notice how the Bad manner cooldown carries over across the different pets.
Source Material:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrS1yty4ryY - Watch how i use Bad manner and Roar of sacrifice on Pet 1, then i dismiss pet and summon Pet 2 and that pets abilities are all on cooldown, cause its shared right now.
In original Cataclysm, Hunter pets would have their own individual cooldowns, so what hunters would do was rotate through different pets using the Dismiss Pet spell, effectively resetting their cooldowns. Hunters could do this until end of season 14 of Mop (Patch 5.4.2) a WHOLE expansion later, almost 2 expansions infact. Where they changed the way dismiss pet works, and removed it because it was no longer a mechanic that was needed inside arenas at that stage of the game for hunters. also note that in Wrath classic they removed pet cooldowns resetting upon dismissing and resummoning the SAME pet in pve / open world. But kept it for PvP play inside Arenas. This mechanic is not needed in PvE but affects PvP immensly for Hunters in Cataclysm.
Now the arguement will be, was this intended in Cataclysm or not? - My honest answer is yes, ofcourse it was as it was a widely known and used mechanic. There is a bluepost about it being removed in the end of MoP ( https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/10859655954-dismiss-pet-nerf/ ) But my arguement towards this is that it was only removed in Season 14 of Mop (Patch 5.4.2) near the end of a whole expansion later, almost 2 infact, and hunters worked completely different in MoP compared to Cataclysm, in Cataclysm Hunters were a CC / Support Bot that did no dmg outside of their burst openers with rapid fire and on use trinkets and lacked so many defensives, whereas in MoP hunters had everything. Self healing, Defensives, Damage, great crowd control without the use of pets. So i strongly believe this was the reason that they removed it so late cause when hunters had such a toolkit at their disposal, using the dismiss pet mechanic ontop of it made hunters completely broken in MoP.
Hunters in cataclysm rely heavily on this mechanic to compete at a somewhat decent level, we lack alot of defensives and we dont do damage outside our burst window, we have 1 form of hard cc which is freezing trap, which is easy to stop with any form of cc on the hunter.
Having this Mechanic is absolutely crucial for Hunters in Cataclysm and is a core part of our Kit and how they work in PvP, and sadly without it we do not function in a PvP environment.
If we start straying away from the original Cataclysm experience with such a massive change to the meta, where does it end? If this custom nerf to hunters will go through and completely remove them from the competitive scene, at what point do we stop nerfing other classes that suddently become super good and overpowered such as rogues and mages? Cataclysm PvP is balanced around the fact that hunters have the ability to do this in arena, and theres no denying that. As shown below it was widely used in a variety of tournaments and even from casual players.
2.2 Source Material (gonna get lengthy)
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_5.4.2
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dismiss_Pet
People also asking for Dismiss Pet changing macros during cata aswell, as it was widely used and known.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1165659-Hunter-macro-for-pet-changing?highlight=Monkey+pet+swap
TOURNAMENTS AND PVP VIDEOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaYHkdYeEbE - Focus on bottom right cds you will see a bunch of roar of sacrifice cds and Hunter's cast bar for dismiss pet cast:
GAME 1 = Sac used at 0:42 & Dismiss cast at 1:05 / New Sac used at 1:13 & Dismiss cast at 1:36 / New sac used at 1:39
GAME 2 = Sac used at 2:25 & Dismiss cast at 2:58 / Sac used 3:03 in middle of dismiss cast / Sac used at 3:15 & Dismiss cast at 3:33 / Sac used 4:04
GAME 3 = Sac used at 5:06 & Dismiss cast at 5:20 / Sac used at 5:29 & Dismiss cast at 5:31 / Sac used at 5:52 in middle of dismiss cast / Sac used at 6:11 & Dismiss cast at 6:27 / Sac used at 6:34 in middle of dismiss cast / Sac used at 6:43 in middle of dismiss cast / Sac used 6:51 in middle of dismiss cast / Sac used at 7:24 & Dismiss cast at 7:27
GAME 4 = Sac used at 8:45 & Dismiss cast at 9:15 / Sac used at 9:40 & Dismiss cast at 9:55 / Sac used at 10:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDr2QkDtfw - Focus on bottom left cds you will see a bunch of roar of sacrifice cds and Hunter's cast bar for dismiss pet cast:
GAME 1 = sac used at 2:45 & dismiss cast at 2:47 / sac used at 2:56 & pet abandon at 3:25 / sac used at 3:28 & dismiss cast at 3:49
Even famous players back then was doing it and uploading pvp montages to their youtube channels such as Braindeadly and Tosan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1jk5nxa2nU - Braindeadly Hunter PoV: Notice when he cast dismiss pet and summons a different monkey the cooldowns are reset cause each monkey has their own cooldown timers
Timestamps = 3:20 & 3:46 & 6:21 & 8:01 & 11:32 & 12:24 & 15:37
Even at one point in tournaments Hunters would have 4 Roar of sacrifices on cooldown which means that they used the dismiss pet mechanic 4 times within the span of 1 minute to refresh their pet cooldowns.