Exotic Pets and their role for the Hunter Class

[Watermist-skywall (Watermist)]

@Maizou-proudmoore

When they were first introduced, Exotic pets were meant to be a “wow factor” for Beast Mastery. They can tame pets the other 2 specs can’t tame, and they were bigger and more striking than regular pets, and to top it off, they had two abilities instead of one.

However, over time, that has changed. Now exotic pets have one ability, except for a few like spirit beasts, and new exotic families seem to be added with no rhyme or reason, and a lot of the flashier pets aren’t even exotic anymore. On top of this, it makes hunters feel shoehorned into using only exotic pets.

I remember when BM Hunters first got Exotic pets… it was a big deal. So many BM Hunters ran out to tame Devilsaurs, Core Hounds, and Chimeras!

You’re right about Blizzard having hamstrung the Exotic pets ever since – a big reason was that they were just “too strong” (AKA difficult for Blizzard to balance). They nerfed the Devilsaurs pretty early on, if memory serves me.

@Maizou-proudmoore

For the longest time, I thought Exotic Pets were meant to be us taming the pets with more sentience, but then you have outliers like worms and caterpillars that are Exotic, and Cloud Serpents that aren’t exotic.

…huh. I never got that impression. I mean, Devilsaurs literally were amongst the first Exotic pet families, and there’s no lore implication that they’re smarter than usual. The Chimeras and Spirit Beasts, I’ll grant you. But Devilsaurs and Core Hounds? Nah, no way.

@Maizou-proudmoore

The general consensus I’ve seen at petopia is that the need for exotic pets just isn’t there anymore. Most agree that Spirit Beasts in particular should remain beast mastery only, but I’ve only seen one or two people argue that Exotic Pets in general should stay.

I read that Petopia thread which you linked. There were literally two other people beside from you who were outright calling for the removal of the restricted Exotic “tag.” The rest were more like “Eh, maybe we can trim down the number of Exotic families.”

I disagree with you, politely of course. But those people do have a point that we’re a bit overloaded with the number of Exotic pet families. There’s no need to have, what, 12 Exotic pet families? That’s a bit much. I think that having about 5 to 8 Exotic pet families is more appropriate.

@Maizou-proudmoore

Remove the Exotic Beasts tag as well as any second ability a pet has. This would be the heal for Spirit Beasts, leaving them with a dispel as their class skill.

As I mentioned earlier, I disagree with this. Exotic Beasts tag should remain exclusive to BM. While I’ve always been a proponent of a “class identity” over “spec identity,” I also have always said that I prefer an approach like this: 80% shared class kit, 20% spec-unique kit.

BM needs something to clearly distinguish it from MM and MSV and RSV – and having gigantic Devilsaurs and Core Hounds and ghost-like Spirit Beasts is a great way to do it.

If the Exotic Beasts tag gets removed, enabling the other Hunter specs to tame those beasts (Devilsaurs, Core Hounds, and so on) – that is going to remove BM’s visual distinctiveness.

I mean, visual distinctiveness was literally the excuse that Blizzard used to change RSV into MSV. Something to keep in mind…

@Maizou-proudmoore

Introduce a new passive for Beast Mastery that grants every pet, not just former exotic pets, a heal over time equal to what Spirit Mend is for Spirit Beasts now. Maybe have it be Spirit Bond, the original heal beast mastery had.

I like this idea! It makes perfect sense to me – and it harkens back to the Cata/MoP years, when Hunter pets had talent trees. BM pets in particular got a few extra points for their talent trees, so the BM pets literally were super-tricked out compared to the MM/RSV pets, even their non-exotic pets.

It’d go nicely with the re-enabling of pet respeccing. (This is something should have never been removed, in my opinion.)

@Maizou-proudmoore

Allow Beast Mastery hunters to “customize” their pets appearance at Trueshot Lodge. By this I mean, give the option to make the pet look bigger, smaller, maybe add a few glow effects, etc. (As the devs know, hunters love effects on their pets, and the devs have even gone out of their way to give us solutions to get back effects we lost, like the oil covered effects) Make them have a way to make pets stand out.

Ehhh. I understand where you’re coming from, but frankly I’m not a big fan of this. I actually hate the “Change Hati’s appearance” thing that Legion had, although I understand why it happened (because there were many hunters who didn’t like running with Hati; this was how Blizzard allowed them to “run” with their “real pets”).

I mean, there’s gotta be a line drawn somewhere in the sand. Despite WoW being a game – a fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk game – we’ve got to keep slight realism in it. And alternating an animal’s look? Man, that just doesn’t sit right with me.

Now, I do like the idea for mechanical pets. Because it makes sense there!

But, like, cats or wolves or hawks? Ehhhhh, it’s just too ridiculous for me. But I’ll admit that I can be a party pooper.

@Maizou-proudmoore

Bring back the ability to re-spec our pets.

Seriously. In my opinion, the current pet system is pretty good – we just need the ability to re-spec our pets, and all’s good with me!

@Maizou-proudmoore

Beast Mastery is Ranged and Uses Pets.
Marksman is Ranged and Does Not Use Pets.
Survival is Melee and Uses Pets.

I actually won’t bank on this, because Blizzard basically said they’re going back to a class-based identity in Dragonflight; they said that the spec-identity approach in Legion didn’t work out. That thing which you said here? That’s the spec-identity approach. We still haven’t seen the Alpha version of the Hunter talent trees, so let’s wait and see what Blizzard does.

I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but that’s just my opinion.

(Personally, I’d love it if Blizzard makes pets important again to MM. I really, really, really… don’t like Lone Wolf. But we’ll have to wait and see!)