Is still a pet.
There is more to how this is implemented than just being a visual. The effects are tied to an NPC, not the spell itself. It functions similar to the keywording we see within the rework. The current implementation leads a lot to be desired (it shouldn’t be an eagle, it should be our slot 1 pet), but they have stated it they plan to flesh it out. One example could be allowing the pet tricks like Fetch to work with it.
Seeing how brief the animations are, the new “pet” is barely even a spell effect. It’s literally “blink and you’ll miss it.” I do not like it at all.
I’m of the opinion that the current animations are not the full extent intended. Whether these are placeholder animations, or they’re not triggering properly due to bugs… I don’t know. Until this goes live, or a blue update says otherwise - I remain unconvinced. As it is now, this, ‘brown blob’ is not worth any effort in cosmetics, which is something they said they want to implement.
I still don’t see why they had to make it a bird, violating player agency and expression. If they had made it just your 1st pet slot, they could’ve saved a lot of upset.
So we have potentially placeholder animations for a complete rework that’s due out in a month, that potentially will have as-yet-unimplemented cosmetic options to change the eagle to something else.
This is not inspiring confidence.
I think Blizzard should persist with the idea of decoupling pet utility from pets for MM, but not remove the pet and its core abilities for those who still want to use it. This way, MM hunters can still be fully functional in group content without a pet, but if they want to use it, it’s still there, most importantly for soloing purposes.
Just thinking out loud here but I think these two things are tied together. One animation vs making animations for any possible pet you could choose to put in slot 1. I think there’s also supposed to be something thematically tied to the pet being airborne, thus able to “spot”, then swoop down and appear (sometimes out of LoS) for an action, then fly back off instead of whatever pet you have in slot 1 appearing in melee and then disappearing to narnia or something. It’s really full RP at this point and I don’t think it makes that much less sense to let people use the pet skin they want instead of the eagle. Would just have to redo tooltips and spell names that suggest your tiger can fly. Will probably also just be a generic melee animation in that case.
Honestly not worth it arguing with them. They clearly DID NOT understand the reason for the changes or the benefitsd in the game play loop with the stream line buff or the more uptime on lock and load procs and its interaction with explosive shots feeding back to the streamline buff… they are just said because of NO PET=bad game play in their opinion
This is a fact
More PTR playtime feedback:
-Hunter’s Mark needs to be made into final 20% as well as first 20%, or just completely reworked because it is currently falling behind and just not good.
-Trueshot continues to be the lowest impact DPS cooldown in the game by a substantial margin. This needs to be changed with giving Trueshot more impact in what it effects and does.
TS will feel a lot better when tensile bowstring is fixed. The talent is currently not working which means that there’s no cast time reduction in TS. Once fixed, you’ll be at 45/90 with imp streamline.
Honestly, this just reads as the exact same to me. A bird that I can’t see or interact with might as well be in Narnia. And it’s just as unbelievable that it’s meant to be something I’m supposed to have some kind of bond with.
There’s no need for the animal to fly to accomplish this. As I’ve mentioned before, we use dogs already to accomplish the same kind of effect, flushing people/animals out of hiding. Could also be a brief ‘bite’ or ‘headbump’ animation to indicate they’re distracting or restraining the target to give us an advantage.
While there’s something to your proposed rationalization, I suspect this is also a bit of hubris on WoW’s part: “Oh, everyone will love having an eagle pet!”
The two issues I quoted from you are still very likely why it’s a bird and not your pet1. The animation and effect is a thing coded into this bird and not all pets. Probably also have to recode the pets again to make sure you don’t double dip on passives/debuffs if you’re summoning regular pets that do those thigns for the other specs.
And I admitted there is some potential justification to that.
But their approach breaks a lot of the core appeal of the spec and class and leaves the eagle feeling more like an afterthought and disconnected from the player. There is no investment.
I think you’re supposed to feel less connected to the eagle than you are to your regular pets as sv or bm. Which kinda goes back to the core of the changes in the first place. You’re not totally losing pet play in general, but you’re also not playing with the same pet that does the pet stuff for the other specs.
So Blizzard’s answer to this is, “We’ll just take away their choice to do so. Problem solved!”
???
Currently, the eagle is less than the pet I picked out of the array of appearances available. It’s like being told that your favourite food is spaghetti despite you not really like pasta or tomato-based sauces at all. That’s not really good for makin MM “invested” using a pet, as they seem to want us to be.
They could remove the eagle entirely and MM would play the exact same in the rework. That’s how inconsequential the eagle is. That’s a big miss if their goal is to reconnect MM to pet use.
Yeah see I think this is where you’re hung up. The goal is very clearly to disconnect marks from the regular pet use that’s been causing problems for so long. The eagle is supposed to be a different pet. A middle ground that doesn’t require you to pick lone wolf or pet use. Depending on how you choose to look at “pet class” or “having a pet”, you kinda have one and you kinda don’t at the same time.
~nuance~
Kaivax’s post is repeatedly talks about having pets, and how a pet is a vital part of the Hunter class identity.
This eagle is not conducive to that. I don’t care that it exists. It isn’t something that my character would rely on as a companion. It’s in game presence is essentially ignorable (which is a small blessing). So their implementation misses the mark.
Allowing it to be our own pet for it would have allowed us to actually have some connection, since it was something we picked.
And much like married bachelors cannot exist, a half-pet is still a pet.
Call it whatever tickles your fancy. That’s the cool part of nuanced things like the eagle pet. You gotta quit intentionally ignoring it.
There’s nothing inconsistent at all
Describe Tiger Woods in his prime. Married, yet also very much (acted like) a bachelor lol.
Nuance, buddy.
Clearly the intent is for the eagle to be a new pet exclusive to MM, but it’s also so barely present that it’s like we don’t have one.
I think the problem is that unlike the hunter equivalent in other MMOs, ours has always been a pet class and some players want a petless ranger. So this is some weird attempt to both give us a petless and pet-enabled spec.
I’m just going to wind up playing BM instead of MM, because Sentinel is still lackluster as a hero spec. Sometimes we gain an absorb shield and cast Starfall when we use Rapid Fire. That’s it. Dark Ranger is almost literally oozing Sylvanas vibes, but Sentinel is barely present, aesthetically. It should be this whole Elune-themed “class skin” for MM and it’s just…not.
I don’t like feeling like a zookeeper when I play Pack Leader, but I do like the 3 new “summon attacks” we got. If we can ever replace Rexxar’s pets with our pets, I’d be all over that. Sure, it’s lacking in Elune-specific flavor, but if I can replace that circling wyvern with Ban’thalos or Olm the Wise, suddenly I’ve got more or less the same amount of “Sentinel fantasy” that Lunar Storm has. Replace the boar with a stag or hippogryph and now I may as well be praying to Elune for aid and having the forests of Ashenvale and Darkshore heed my call.
My ideal “hunter class fantasy” will never exist anyway. I’d rather have a highly mobile ranged spec that stacks DoTs on a target and then uses a couple of melee strikes to “spend” those DoTs on big burst damage before escaping to attack at range again. Sort of like how the blue-line hunter plays from Lord of the Rings Online. I’d love to dual-wield melee weapons alongside my bow again.
So, to improve the quintessential pet class, you’re removing the pet from a third of its players with no way for them to opt out?
I dunno, stealing people’s puppies & giving them the bird seems… poorly thought out. Why not just replace Lone Wolf with Eyes in the Sky, and leave it optional? If nothing else, it gives you an easy way to see how many people want this option, and gives hunters a way to try it out without forcing them to ditch their beloved pet.