The more I read about this issue, the more it seems to me that the rework of MM needs to be its own spec. Leave MM as it is, and implement the changes as a “Sniper” or “Sharpshooter” spec.
Please, Blizz, let us choose to play MM with our faithful companions at our side!
So, I have to retract my assertions that MM never had the pet removed before this. I guess they tried this in Legion and had to re-instate it.
Where was I??? I was probably leveling my Hordies, and was oblivious. My Horde hunter runs BM, so it wouldn’t have been an issue.
How long did it last before they reinstated pets for MM?
Yes I get the math. I’m saying that this component doesn’t make sense to be preemptively PvP nerfed.
Legion marks launched without traps or pets. Pruning was the name of the game at the time.
That isn’t right. At no point did I ever run this toon without her pet. And the post above that shows them re-instating pets was dated March of 2016. Legion dropped in August.
Maybe the Ferocity could get a Leech amp as its utility instead of Hysteria. EG. “The hunter and the pet gain 20% leech for 10 seconds”; Not real numbers, just illustration.
Existing MW pets could just amplify the effect by some small amount, or even just add the same effect and let it stack twice. EG. base MW becomes 20%, stacking twice.
I was under the impression that MM was totally petless in Legion, but after checking Lone Wolf was a first row talent during it. Taking it forbid summoning pet at all. I run the entirety of Legion with it (yes, even in the Tower challenge), so I was misremembering it under the assumption it was baseline.
They considered going full petless MM in both Legion and BfA pre-alphas, but that idea never went live.
That they are running into this conundrum for the third time shows that keeping the pet creates a problem in evolving the spec’s toolkit.
This sounds about right. And I would have seen that and said, “Hellllllllll NO!! Why would I EVER give up my pet???”
This is accurate.
Legion MM (and BM) launched without traps — that much is true. We didn’t get them back until 7.1.5, and it was only two traps (freezing and tar, IIRC).
In the Legion alpha, they cited the “original Hunter archetype” as the main reason they returned MM’s pets — because at the same time, they were deleting ranged SV for melee SV and forcing two pets onto BM (Hati and Titanstrike). They were literally radically reworking the entire Hunter class and they decided that it was one step too far making MM entirely petless, which would’ve left all the original Hunter fans out in the dark.
For the BFA alpha/beta… for some reason I’m recalling that survivability and soloing were huge issues which led to MM getting their pets back. I might not recall the exact reasoning, but I definitely remember the many threads by alpha/beta testers about MM’s soloing and survivability cratering without pets.
Which, BTW, is a thing I haven’t seen people discuss it here. Are you guys able to roll a level 1 or 10 toon? Can you level one as MM? See how that feels? Because it’s a huge part of the picture, too.
(Before people ask me about downloading the PTR — that won’t happen for at least 10 days. I work and live at a camp which entertains hundreds of guests. We’ve got back-to-back groups scheduled until Jan 27. I’m lucky to only get 200 latency on WoW these days. Most of the time, it’s 1k to 4k! So, no, it’s not feasible to download PTR for now.)
I can give it a shot, but given how fast levelling is I don’t see it being all that important. More vital would be soloing delves, I think and high level delves aren’t available.
If keeping the pet is the problem, why is it still here?
I think you might be looking at it backwards. Hunters need pets for survivability in solo play. Unlike the warlock’s Voidwalker pet, hunter pets are still good tanks.
The way I see it, the problem is that Lone Wolf is required for optimal DPS and it creates a point of friction where Primal Rage/Bloodlust is used, because it requires a summoned pet. I think if we just unplugged the raid utility from the pets, everyone would be happy, because summoning the pet would still be optional.
The pet is a remain of previous design. It has no role in the rotation, and all
It does is utility.
It’s still here because every time Blizzard considered removing it there was resistance from players, but the pet at this point is a hindrance to the spec’s design as it works better without it, except in very few circunstances. Removing the pet would allow design to find ways to handle those circunstances without the pet.
Really, the pet at this point is just utility and tanking. The new design covers utility. All that is left for pet is tanking. That’s the role that Blizzard may consider keeping it for.
Even then, the best thing to do would be to find a way to improve MM’s survivability in solo content without reintroducing a “bait” mechanic that would only serve to confuse new Hunters just to keep nostalgic solo content players happy.
Incorrect. But the anti pet crowd doesnt seem to have any logic to their arguments anyway. The only reason you choose to pull the pet that you dont want out is lust. And that is because of lazy design work. Move that spell to the hunter and then you seriously have absolutely no argument at all in the least. None whatsoever.
Considering Blizzard is finally acknowledging the “validity” of solo play at endgame by adding Delves, I hope they just detach the Bloodlust effect and otherwise leave MM alone. The design goal seems to have been to remove the mechanical clunkiness of pets from MM without removing the theming of having a pet, but the bird is barely present and in my view has failed to meet the design goal.
I’ve actually always been a little disappointed with the way “flying” pets work in this game because ultimately every pet is a ground pet, the birds just “run” ten feet off the ground. And I get why it’s like that. But this new Wyvern summon they added to Pack Leader actually feels like what a bird pet should be in combat, always circling the battlefield. I think it would be cool if the new bird did something like that, and then played an animation where it periodically dive-bombed the target or something, idk. The current implementation is just so underwhelming that I’d rather not have it.
Plenty. Developing around the pet is unnecessary complexity that will no longer be a drag on ensuring the spec is the best ranged phsyical dps it can be.
Just read the Development notes from yesterday. They are… disappointing.
I must have missed it too. I think I was playing BM at the time. When they forced us to 2 pets I said, no ty.
Actually, it turns out that we didn’t miss anything. Legion included Lone Wolf as one of the first-tier talents, so as MM you could spec that way from the get-go.
I, on the other hand, would have looked at that and decided it was hands-off like it wuz plutonium …
I want to add another point that I was reminded about the other day. MM hunters for years now have been able to go out and farm various books and such to learn to tame pets that you can’t access without getting the item. Like taming undead pets and mechanical pets and dragonkin. Some pets needed reputation before they were accessible. So is it fair to say “sorry, if you want to play MM then all of that work is now just down the drain from here on out”? We are talking about rewards that players had to sometimes go out of their way to get now being locked up.