Great chat, you really backed that one up well 
Did I really need to write an essay just to tell you I think your idea is terrible? Really?
A blue replied to my pet thread. It’s not quite what I wanted to hear, but I’ll be replying to it later tonight (currently I’m traveling to another city. It’ll take time!) along with a few extra suggestions/concerns brought up by you guys.
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Yeah I thought about this as well. When in melee range you have your raptor strike/mongoose bite then when you are in ranged it changes to “raptor shot” idk… And maybe you put a cd between switching from melee to range or you give some incentive to come into melee instead of hanging at range all the time ( maybe if you stay in melee for X amount of seconds when you go to range you receive a buff to all ranged for X amount of seconds).
But honestly I don’t think blizz would be able to pull it off, it sounds maybe somewhat cool, kind of but to clunky to be realistically implemented.
Yeah, I saw this. It’s not very encouraging to read at this moment. I want to be positive but it doesn’t seem like anything will change.
Animal companion is broken, but we don’t know when we can fix it even though we want to.
No instant dismiss because our pets are disposable (yes I know this) so when you have to run through Mythics and take short cuts you’ll be behind when you have to stop to dismiss your pet.
And bonus answer is that the previous issue wouldn’t be an issue if pet pathing worked but since it’s complicated how players move that won’t change soon. However, we will keep designing encounters that highlight those pathing issues.
I don’t want to be snotty about it, but that was very much a non answer and posted where most us can’t answer it.
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Thanks for at least trying Watermist. It’s greatly appreciated. I look forward to seeing your thoughts on their response. 
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Yes, this too. I forgot to say thank you Watermist. As I said before, you posted a magnificent essay addressing many of our concerns in a very thoughtful way. It is no reflection on you if they can’t figure out that they are unable to fix problems that they have created for us.
Your efforts are appreciated and I should have included that.
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You two are too kind.
But don’t worry! I’m not feeling dejected at all — quite the opposite, in fact. I’m actually glad about the blue post because it quite clearly shows us where and what Blizzard’s misconceptions are.
I’m munching on my super-late (11 pm) supper at McDonald’s. After I’ve finished my burger, I’ll make that post!
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Yea this doesn’t look good at all. They don’t understand most players want to pick their pet on looks, not by some Pet identity. Pet specialization needs to be changed to Pet Stances and be swappable and Family skills should remain based on Pet Identity but improved over time by adding in more ability variety. But love your suggestion so far Watermist.
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Yea, it was good to see a blue, however the response was TERRIBLE. It was like the worst lawyer answer ever. It said nothing.
What i got out of it was that they refuse to spend the money to do anything about pets.
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Okay, people. I just posted my reply.
It’s not the best it could be – in my defense, I wrote this up at midnight here, and I’m not a night owl at all. I also typed it up in like 45 minutes?
If I miss something, or need to clarify (or expand) on something, please let me know. I’ll fix it in the morning. 
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Good job!
The CC response to such a bad blue answer is strong. Hopefully it sparks something.
I would say though that if all classes had a single large talent tree like players you could play ANY pet with ANY combo of skills and in pvp no one would know if you were bringing root break or mortal wounds. Isnt that the point?
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I really like these ideas.
You sneaky Tauren, you are my favorite. Did you just point out to that Blue that they did not understand the subject material they were commenting on……in the nicest possible way? Cuz you did.
Impressive. Well done.
And Thank You.
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I despise the comment about pet summon times because they’re going backward to Role Play from Vanilla and I don’t think anybody wants that.
I think animal companion should be removed from the game because the bugs haven’t been fixed in 3 expansions. Why are they talking about it now? It Feels rushed right? 
Pet families need to go, and pet talent trees need to come back. Bloodlust cannot be a pet spell, it must be a hunter spell because it removed choice of pet from the hunter.
Same with all debuff and buff pets, that needs to be on a talent tree, because I want to play with Timmy the bear, and right now I cannot play with Timmy the bear.
For the most part, with anything involving pet identities and the usability of pet families, both you and others in your topic referred to how giving us the option to switch between pet specializations on individual pets, like we could in Legion, how this would open up a lot of additional families for us to use in our desired content/style of playing.
When we then get a dev reply, it’s indeed a bit disheartening to see that what they chose to focus in on was, like you mentioned yourself Watermist in your reply, the individual family abilities, as opposed to the above. I ofc can’t post there, and so I can’t respond to Nimox directly. But yeah, you and others said it well.
And while on the subject of pet specializations, considering how they’re moving away from the idea of ‘Core Specializations’ for classes, and instead focus on a more, open-ended type of customization with talent trees, wouldn’t it be a good time to do the same for hunter pets? I know that pet specs aren’t 1:1 comparable with class specs. For one…pet specs, as they are now, don’t have any talent choices at all, but only the “core spec” itself. It doesn’t leave much for players to work with IMO.
In short, even if they were to bring back the option for us to switch pet specs, I would argue that you could do much more than that, without it becoming overwhelming to players. I’ve talked about this before in previous posts, about a common talent tree that is accessible to/through your active pet. Essentially, there would be no pet specializations, as we know them today. You would have the aformentioned talent tree that allows you to, as you level up, build a foundation of core abilities(those we can currently see in each pet spec), which you can then choose to customize in various ways, along with adding even more effects and abilities, tailored for your preferred content/style of playing.
I know that, short of any effects & abilities that are currently already present in-game, or have been so in the past, the composition of the proposed concept is purely theoretical and would require further testing + tuning. The upside is that it would not take away from the unique aspects of individual pet families, as they would still have their appearances, their respective family abilities, etc. The sole purpose is to allow players to be able to further define what they want their pet to be good at, while at the same time allowing for a solid foundation that wouldn’t be as restrictive/limiting as it is now.
Reference: (https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/community-council-discussion-on-hunter-design/1268014/104)
As for the rest of what Nimox said…
Nimox: While mentioning Animal Companion, there’s a known issue that taking this talent reduces the damage of all of your pets and other summoned units instead of just reducing the damage of your second pet. We plan on keeping Animal Companion around, and this is something we have plans to resolve so getting other abilities that summon pets no longer creates bad synergies, but I can’t give a guaranteed timeline on a change.
By all means, keep the option for Beast Mastery hunters to play with two pets, but for the love of…make it a passive option that has no effect on our throughput. Especially the way it is now, it’s purely a passive effect that does not change how we play. Allow players to have this option based on their preferences for visuals/aesthetics, and leave it at that. I doubt many players would be upset if that option wasn’t about increasing throughput somehow.
Reference:
[Animal Companion] - You may call 1 additional pet to fight for you at all times. The second pet will obey your Kill Command, but cannot use pet family abilities(except the Basic ability for damage).
If you have two active pets, they both use the same damaging abilities and benefit from the same effects, but they only deal 50% of normal damage(each).
Only using 1 pet instead causes that pet to deal 100% of normal damage.
Continuing with…
Nimox: Revive Pet, and Dismiss Pet being difficult to use is an intentional change that we don’t have plans on adjusting currently. For a while, the solution for parts of the game was to tame 5 pets, do some content in which your pet would die, and just abandon and re-summon a different, new pet, and then go get 5 more pets again later. Dismissing a pet used to be instant, now it has a 3 second cast time. Your pets are not intended to be disposable things, at least for Hunters - Warlocks and Death Knights have some mechanics where they steal from their Pets, but that fits their fantasy. You should care about your pets you are using and should care about keeping them alive.
Not once in my “WoW-life” since I started back in Vanilla have I done this to my pets. I tame/choose pets based on how they fit my with my hunter. Not to have them as “disposable things”.
If there needs to be some additional restrictions in for example PvP, then sure, work on that. But for the most part, in the scenarios where players are having issues with resurrecting pets, or dismissing them, it has nothing to do with the idea of abandoning pets as soon as they die.
Take a different example, if my pet dies in an arena match, I have to spend the time it takes to cast resurrection before I get it back. A cast that can easily be interrupted by others. For both Beast Mastery and Survival, pets are a key part for us to be able to use our core toolkit. Meanwhile, other classes/specs, if they get temporarily CCed or disarmed, it all comes back by itself, and they can continue as normal. But with hunters(incl MM), this is not the case? Despite the fact that being able to bring pets isn’t exactly a huge perk compared to classes/specs that don’t have pets.
And so, pet pathing issues…
Nimox: We’re always looking to improve pathing for both players and pets and make things smarter and more user friendly. That’s an ongoing process for the game as a whole. We discuss problems with pets on encounters where you get teleported or forcibly moved around a lot. We also play classes with pets and understand some of the frustrations. It is not a simple solution, as players move in very complicated ways, and use a lot of tools to move themselves around, and we don’t want pets to just feel like they are floaty or teleport around all the time.
Fair enough, though, the way they currently work, where they get stuck/left behind all the time, doesn’t exactly feel better from a end-user perspective.
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I have also commented above about how a common pet tree, similiar to a character tree, would be the BEST way forward. Providing that blizz actually listens to the playerbase and allows for complete builds for all 3 pet classes, this would be the best way forward.
However, if blizz says ok we will do a pet tree, then fills it with nothing but cunning talents, tank talents, and survivability and does not do anything with ferocity, more specifically, dps specialty talents, then the tree is a complete waste of time. Blizz is known for taking great ideas and twisting them into garbo then saying “we gave you what you wanted.”
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I feel like this cannot be said enough.
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It really cant. I just cant.
I just know that if, and i mean IF we were to see a pet tree, that most of the talents would not involve dps. I mean, to link it back to the char trees, look at holy priest. It received NOTHING in terms of healing and there is only ONE build that does not involve dps talents. So who am i to trust blizz to give us a pet tree that actually has viable dps builds (yes plural) AND cunning/tank/survival talents?
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Word.
So far I have been really really underwhelmed by the talent tree previews and I feel… I would even say I am certain… that if Blizz were to add pet trees back that they would give them the very barest minimum attention. I still want them. I really really really do. But I just know it would go bad.
Also. I just throwing this out there because the Blue said it. Idgaf if my pet blinks all over the damn map as long as it can reach the damn target so it can properly deal its attacks when I hit the button. I hate trying to kill command and having it fail because my pet is on a different ledge than where the target has moved! It irritates me to no end and I would gladly give up any “immersive” experience to have my pet stay on target when it needs to.
Also, also. I am not talking about kiting or out maneuvering a pet in PVP. I mean those instances where the target pops around and is perpetually out of reach because there is literally no way of reaching it without porting the pet to it.
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