And NO. Giving up my stable of pets for some eagles that drop in now and then - no matter how nifty you make them look - is in NO way an acceptable tradeoff, IMHO. I have favorite pets that I worked hard to tame and they’re part of my MM hunter’s identity for me. He’ll have to just go Survival to keep his pets, on the bench behind my shaman, warlock, and dk.
14 Likes
Yes, I did. Intentionally. I am agreeing with you.
For the record, however, imo the quotation makes PERFECT sense, and defines the core of what the hunter class has always been in the game.
Blizzard, please don’t remove MY CHOICE to have my pet with me!
7 Likes
I mean these people complaining about their “pet management” now never jumped off a balcony in a vanilla raid…
Tbh, THOSE PEOPLE are probably the ones who would just make bad hunters back in the day.
If you just want to shoot stuff at range, you might as wear cloth.
If you want to stab stuff close, you might as well trade your pet for stealth/plate/demon form.
I wont play MM because honestly the style is boring to me, so I have no feedback on any of the new ‘petless’ spells, just like SV is the least played hunter —EXCEPT IN MYTHIC— because no one actually wants it & they had to buff it into relevancy.
I’ve raided vanilla as ranged SV/MM & am now stuck as BM—yes I raid as BM—(GASP) because MM honestly sucks…I wish they’d make BL baseline & once again hunters learn to manage their pets…like we always have had to, because its always been part of the class…tired of catering the the minority players that can’t handle that 1 extra responsibility.
There have always been 2 types of hunters: really good, or really terrible.
PS: make survival ranged again & BM melee…you’re not fooling us blizz, we all know DW pack leader Rexxar is BM.
1 Like
Correct and no one is currently proposing the reversion of this.
Yes there is. For people who do not want to deal with a pet, or where the survivability of a pet makes no impact, they can run the eagle.
The pet can be the source when out, as it is now.
When the pet is dismissed, then the dumb bird can function as it does on the ptr. In either respect, player choice and agency is preserved. This solution works as the only remaining issue is detecting if the player has a pet or not - a line of code they already have written for Lone Wolf and the command abilties anyways.
Everyone wins.
With that change, you trade off <5% damage for increased survivability. The “pet or no pet” friction ceases as MM still has a pet in either choice. You also don’t need to go back in and make MM overpowered over the other two specs who do get both without any tradeoffs in their talents.
6 Likes
This is a lot more work than just removing lone wolf and making everyone use regular pet 100% of the time for the utility, and you accomplish the same stuff.
Not really.
The code to have the hunter have the utility exists.
The code to have pets have utility, exists.
The code to detect if a pet is out, exists.
The hard part was doing what they did already.
And the argument of laziness isn’t a compelling defense.
2 Likes
Turning left three times and driving around a block isn’t “hard”. Turning right one time and walking next door still makes more sense. Making logical decisions isn’t lazy.
Even in context, it doesn’t make a ton of sense. The full blue post is effectively saying “we gave you this bird because pets are so important to our new vision for MM” but it ignores how barely present this new “pet” actually is, it’s less noticeable than Outlaw rogue’s Pistol Shot. The blue post then goes on to gloss over the fact that they have “future plans” to add customization to the bird and additional functionality, but doesn’t say when. It could all go the way of the Dance Studio, easily.
9 Likes
Which is nonsensical as an excuse for why they chose to take the more difficult solution.
8 Likes
There’s a lot of truth to the reasoning behind why MM pet has been an issue for a long time. Sometimes the best thing to do is go back to the drawing board and go a completely different direction instead of beating your head against the wall in the same corner you’ve painted yourself in. Seems like that’s what they’re doing, making it more of its own thing instead of trying to make traditional pets either fit or be optional in a real way. There’s a venn diagram of pros, cons, gaps, and gains. Sometimes you have to let go of something that’s been holding you back in order to grow into something better.
1 Like
And sometimes changing something just to change something isn’t the way to go forward.
5 Likes
Keep in mind the only thing you have to look at is the literal first working rendition of the bird and its animations on a test version.
Again, no dispute there. They’ve been trying two support two fantasies in one spec: petless and pet.
Their half measure solution has created a bigger issue than it solves. If they had made the spotting eagle just your first stable slot first, then added a glyph to remove all the visuals then 90% of these threads wouldn’t exist.
They’d still have a massive issue in balancing hunter survivability without making MM do so much damage it becomes the de facto spec, or just shrug off all but the biggest hits. They’ve painted themselves into a different corner by negating a core feature of the Hunter Class in this fashion.
And sometimes, you don’t reinvent the wheel.
6 Likes
If you were in charge, you’d get to make the decision for sure. Knowing that we aren’t in charge, I feel that it’s best to actually provide constructive criticism and feedback towards making the direction they want to go as smooth as possible. For example, I think there’s room for interactions between hunter’s mark and the eagle mark. I think that RoS from the bird could interact with misdirect and take some of your damage from you since it can’t be used while cc’ed, etc.
Just spamming “give pet back” over and over isn’t getting anyone anywhere, and the handful of y’all doing it don’t reallize that you’re probably doing more harm than good.
1 Like
I never play PTR, but with the impending removal of my pets, I have made an exception. I copied over my main, rebuilt my talents, and went to my favorite delve.
It was not a fun experience. I did not finish the delve. I didn’t even make it halfway.
Now, I’m the first to admit I’m not the smartest hunter in the stable. I don’t go all spreadsheet-y on my abilities and whatnot. So I am sure I could have made different choices while trying out this spec, but I made the choices I would normally make because that is how I play.
Even taking into consideration that I need to learn this new vision of MM before I will be up to par, I can share that I did not enjoy the experience.
I play solo PVE content 98.8% of the time. Not having my Chonky Riverbeast as a tank made the delve I tried a painful experience. I felt like my hunter was now a rogue pretending to be a mage by throwing arrows. The poor relation cousin to my Outlaw rogue, except when she runs up and shoots something in the face, she lives to tell the tale. Even utilizing cc abilities and beginning the fight at range, the mobs – especially the ambush – ends up coming into melee range and my hunter… died. It wasn’t because I wasn’t using cc, it’s simply that she isn’t made to engage at melee distances.
That is my gameplay experience.
I will not deny there is an emotional component here. As has been said many times in this thread, losing access to pets I have tamed and fought beside for nearly two decades has triggered actual grief.
I beg you, Blizz, to please consider not just the gameplay and the numbers but the very real emotional impact our hunter pets have on us. Many are named after real-life pets and people we wish to remember and honor.
And to the hunters who scoff and say, just play BM or SV – please understand that for me, the gameplay of those specs are not engaging. They are not the experience I want to play. I would be happy to switch to BM if it was even remotely as engaging as MM. Or give me old school SV which was ranged. I have many hunters and 85% of them are MM. This is how much I enjoy this spec.
With this one change, MM has gone from my most favorite spec in game, to near the bottom of the list. And yes, I have other alts I can play… but this is my first character ever. My main main. I do not want to have to abandon her simply because someone somewhere thinks I don’t play with my pet out. I assure you, I do. I can talk to you about them, why they are named what they are named. Heck, for some of them, I can take you to the exact mob I tamed.
Please find a different solution to whatever you perceive to be a problem.
18 Likes
Has been given. See above where I provide a solution that allows us to preserve player choice and agency while allowing them to try this new direction. That this decision is contentious should be big indication that however positive their direction may be, it isn’t popular or acceptable.
That it is such a problem that it gets in the way over every other change is a good sign that it needs to be looked at and addressed first. Dropping a stinker of an announcement pre Christmas, going radio silent for weeks, launching the PTR, and then not even the courtesy of a follow up is not how you convey “youre listening” to customers.
This is not what the community wanted, and is not a direction we accept quietly.
You can’t misdirect solo, so tying RoS to it just makes it an even more dead talent for me and makes MM even less survivable.
5 Likes
Sigh. We’ve done far more than just say “give pet back” and this is just another example of you ignoring what we’ve said so you can just keep arguing that pets won’t work.
12 Likes
Sorry, but you are not providing constructive feedback. There’s really no point in adding and removing the same abilities twice if you’re keeping the same pet. You might as well just not do any of the utility transition in the first place. You and the rest of paw patrol are pretty much just spamming the same stuff over and over and ignoring the explanations as to why these “simple solutions” either aren’t super simple or aren’t really solutions. There’s a good reason why trueshot lodge has blocked/banned the spammers there.
2 Likes
Yet another example of Tavington ignoring what’s been said before so he can keep making the exact same smarmy useless arguments that were debunked weeks ago. Get some new material.
4 Likes
I’d like to take a moment to link to my post I made last night to see if there’s any legitimate feedback to my ideas on keeping the pet as an optional component:
4 Likes