That is true. My proposed redesign for pet talents/specs isn’t meant to solve any issues we have with pet family abilities. It’s purely meant to allow you to move away from the idea of locked-in specializations, and to also provide a little more variancy over what you can get from each individual pet spec, in terms of active abilities/passive effects, etc. on live atm.
I’m of the opinion that pet family abilities, such as:
[Defense Matrix]
The Mechanical contraption creates a personal defense matrix around itself, reducing damage taken by 50% for 12 sec.
[Acid Bite]
The Hydra bites the target with corrosive venom, causing the Mortal Wounds effect.
- Mortal Wounds
Grievously wounds the target, reducing the effectiveness of any healing received for 10 sec.
[Nether Energy]
A pulse of excess energy releases from the Ray, removing 1 Disease, Magic, and Poison effect from itself.
…abilities such as these, they are very much designed around the theme of each individual pet family. You can ofc reimagine themes for some overlap, for certain families, like they have done already. But not every type of ability necessarily fits with every single family.
Again, though, while the concept I proposed in my previous post wouldn’t allow for complete freedom of choice, at the very least it would allow for more families/combinations, compared to what we have currently on live. I’m not saying that you can’t take another look at the family abilities, look at ways to further explore how to adapt them for a wider array of families. I just think that placing themed family abilities in a common talent tree’esque design would not be the ideal way to do it.
While it does ofc provide some benefits, and would continue to do so with the proposed concept, Spirit Mend nowadays isn’t as much of a “big deal” as it was in BfA where it essentially healed you for 40%+ of your total health with each use.
Having said that, I don’t think the issue with something like the benefits of Spirit Mend should be addressed through a central/common talent tree.
In the way we think of pet specs, as they work today where they’re essentially designed like Core Specializations are for classes, yes.
In short, because all three of the current active abilities we have that are tied to pet specs(Primal Rage, Survival of the Fittest, Master’s Call), none of these have a conflict with eachother in terms of design or niche. They all have their area of usefulness, and would provide for a neat character progression path, for you, as you and your pet level up.
As for the passive effects you’re referring to, they are, in my concept, placed on different paths in the tree. You wouldn’t be able to get all of them. I think the easiest way to explain it would be what you see in the images below.
Let’s say you’re in the process of leveling up, or you’re out questing at max level. Then this might be your chosen path of talents:
In a case where you’re trying to solo an elite, perhaps you would instead pick Heart of the Phoenix, over Discourage.
On the other end, when at max level, when inside a raid, you might instead want to go for this path:
For PvP, you might prefer either of these paths:
Perhaps another one?
The point here is that this would be possible to do on a single pet, if you so wish. Obviously you could achieve that part by simply making it possible to switch between the specs we already have. But IMO, the above would be a lot more fun to play with, than what we have on live atm.
Note that what you can see below here, this should not be possible. If you select/start putting points in one passive, then you cannot continue by selecting talents to the left or right of that one. You should only be able to continue further down towards the bottom.