I am shocked. I genuinely cannot believe we’re having this conversation right now. I had been telling people Blizzard finally turned the corner, wasn’t doing selfish design centered on 1% of the player-base anymore, actually cared about the game experience of people who weren’t progression raiders, was catering more and more to the RP and world-fantasy crowd-- and now this. The same bad old grabby-hands “we can take your stuff away whenever we want” design that absolutely epitomized the BFA-Shadowlands era rears its ugly head again. How??? I honestly thought we were past this. Was I wrong?
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When you said
The changes are to take away traditional pets from Marksmanship, without options. So perhaps consider being more specific about what the changes covers.
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Yes, it has been clunky and an issue. Great, that’s a resolvable issue. As Vulonnah proposed above, make Lone Wolf a passive to Marksman. That means the 5% bonus is baked into everything for balancing and folks can bring out fluffy when needed for a 5% penalty to damage.
Heck, if you want to make it the inverse of what we have now, I’d take a talent “Desperate for Companionship” or “Fluffy Saves the Day” that flat out gives me a 5% penalty while I have a pet out to obtain the option of having a tank.
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ANYway. Here’s my suggestion:
- Keep the current talent changes and concept of Spotter’s Mark.
- Allow MM Hunters to summon a pet from their stable that replaces the functionality of the eagle in combat, and appears alongside them out of combat.
- Functionally let MM have no access to an in-combat pet, but allow us to hang out with our animal companions and have adventures while they help us do more damage by picking our targets.
This is the only way I can see it working with both game balance and the stated design goals. It’s either that, or you disable Spotter’s Mark for people who choose to have a pet out to tank for them in solo play.
A talent option could be interesting just like single minded fury for warriors
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Also extra hp
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You already have the option to play that way. You can literally play without a pet and get more DPS for doing it…
There is zero justification to prevent other people from playing with their pets when you already don’t have to, get more DPS for not doing so, with the only limiting factor for you being that you don’t have bloodlust? How often are you popping bloodlust? If you’re solo you don’t need it and trueshot is the same thing on a shorter CD if you’re in a raid you’ve definitely got mages and warriors to pop it for the group.
Zero, ZERO, reason to make it mandatory for others to play without a pet.
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These are all common sense, fairer, and simpler to implement than the current suggestion
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Reasons:
- Ease of use. It’s annoying to have to cast Bloodlust in M+ when dismissing my pet takes 3 seconds.
- Utility. Without a pet, you lose out on the tenacity or cunning benefits. This talent rework addresses that.
- Fantasy. I don’t want a pet with AI out. I’m fine with a proc pet that I don’t have to control.
I would absolutely spend a talent point and take the DPS loss to preserve the utility my pet provides.
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I’m a nelf, and he is definitely cat themed, because stealth + shadowmeld, fwiw
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Why TF are you on lust duty for your raid. What am I missing? Why are hunters the designated lust class? Are you playing without mages or warriors? This seems like such an incredibly niche issue to justify the mandatory removal of pets from all other MM hunters
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That is patently absurd. Most MM hunters aren’t mythic raiders. Most MM hunters use their pet to quest. To tank. To gather and distract mobs. Most MM hunters use their pet regularly, and necessarily, for the content they play. The only reason to play without a pet is extra leet DPS in situations where you have dedicated tanks to fill those roles. 95% of the content in this game, and 95% of the content most people play, isn’t done in a mythic raid group.
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Wanted to add in another thing I see as a potential problem with this whole “no pet for MM hunters” situation: new players. According to the post, the new baseline ability that replaces our once beloved pet for an unwanted bland bird happens at level 13.
Just for fun, let’s look at how this affects a brand new player to WoW. Our new player logs into the game and creates a Night Elf Hunter which starts with a Nightsaber. They quest around Exile’s Reach with their Nightsaber and learn all about it’s new abilities. They get used to the playstyle of a hunter with a specific pet.
Then, our new friend chooses the Marksman tree once they hit level 10. They get some new abilities & continue on with their Nightsaber…all the way until they hit level 13 & their Nightsaber is gone without any way to bring them back. Do they know they can switch specs? Not off hand most likely, they just know that the cat they were leveling with is gone, there doesn’t seem to be a way to bring their cat back, and now there’s a bird for some reason.
Confused and not really understanding where to look to see their new abilities, they try to find out why this is. Perhaps they never find out and it looks like a bug. Or maybe they luck into an online forum of people mentioning that the devs took away the pets they had for 20 years just to show the player base who really has the power in this relationship. Perhaps they talk to an RL friend who tells them about the ability.
Regardless of how or if they find out the reason their cat is gone and has no possible way to return, I suspect their thought process will likely come down to some derivative of “this is stupid. Why did you take me through 13 levels with this cat just to take it away?”
And if it were me trying out a brand new game like that, I’d absolutely uninstall the game right then & go find something else to play. Because a game that teaches me one thing to start out & then suddenly changes it entirely for no reason is confusing, frustrating, and not all that fun to play.
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Make BL baseline.
They figured this out before by letting us use pet buffs with our pet dismissed.
If they fix 1 and 2, then you wouldn’t need to summon your pet at all.
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I hope you don’t edit it out, because I agree. Anyone who doesn’t want a pet shouldn’t play Hunter.
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I specifically stated M+.
I didn’t need to be more specific, I do think the changes are good. I think they can compromise for people who want a pet. Both of these things are true.
Literally the only reason I have seen for this is that lone wolves want blood lust without a pet. First off, I have zero idea why hunters need a lust at all. It is only useful in a raid context, and warriors and mages exist. Beyond that, you do not need to remove evweryone’s pets to give the mythic progressive raiders lust. Just make it a talent. Hell, take it away from Pets entirely and make it a bonus to the lone wolf talent. Beyond even that, the idea that lone wolf hunters needing lust is a necessary change requiring elimination of pets, but hunters having pets isn’t that serious is so confoundingly out of touch to how the overwhelming majority of players play, it’s stupefying. Most players aren’t raiding progression. Period. This change only benefits those players that are, at the expense of everyone else.
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Dungeons and Delves are an entire side of the endgame. Bloodlust is incredibly useful there. Please stop spreading blatant lies and misinformation. This will be my last reply to you as you are apparently not absorbing the information written in text.
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