Nice! I had trouble with ferocity dying too much. Which species? Cat, wolf or what?
Or you know, just allow MM Hunters to keep their pets, which 100% solves that problem…
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I’ve been using a Scalehide, it’s pet ability is a 50% DR for 12 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown. So I get leech and a DR ability whenever it gets low on health. But between my healing and Brann’s healing, it usually only dies if I get overconfident try something very stupid.
It’s not as easy as that. Having a pet out conflicts with the new toolkit, allowing double-dipping and exploits, which is why Blizzard wants to disable it.
To reach a solution, you need to understand the direction the spec is going and find a solution that does not clash with it.
Here’s a list of things (pulled from memory, may be more) that the update gives for MM utility, survivability and PvP:
- Innate Bloodlust/Heroism
- Mortal Wounds applied by Aimed Shot
- Talent choice between Improved HP + Damage Reduction or Improved speed + Root clearing
- Talent for Improved CD reduction of Exhilaration
- Talent improvement for petless Intimidation
- Talent for Petless Roar of Sacrifice
It’s a great toolkit, and a great direction.
I have three different sugestions (pick one) on how to circunvent the pet limitation while keeping the new toolkit, but each option has a price:
- First suggestion: a skill or talent that summons the eagle to tank a mob for a bit.
– Pros: keeps the new spec fantasy, requires skill, solves the soloing problem.
– Cons: Is not your chosen pet, it’s not as easy to manage as a tanking pet - Second suggestion: You can summon your pet, but that disables the entire pet-based toolkit (plus the new Spotter’s Mark mechanic) to avoid double-dipping.
– Pros: you get your pet and can do solo stuff at your heart’s content.
– Cons: Far worse toolkit, needs to dismiss pet for competitive play, more prone to bugs and exploits due to having to adjust the disabling of several skills and talents. - Third suggestion: You can summon a pet, you get a damage penalty and the pet comes without family and spec skills to avoid double-dipping (pet keeps taunt, charge and basic attack).
– Pros: You get your pet and can do solo stuff at your heart’s content; keeps the new spec toolkit, easier to implement than the second suggestion (you only disable pet abilities).
– Cons: It’s still a worse alternative for competitive play, but good enough for solo content.
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I like the suggestions! I just find it to be a tough design choice that when you have a traditional pet out, all the new talents associated with the spotting eagle are dead. That’s a huge tradeoff.
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I think, of the three, the third would be the best for those who want to use their pets. It would also be the easiest one to implement.
Probably, except for the damage penalty. Losing all the talents associated with the spotting eagle is the penalty.
Can’t be double-dipped anyway thanks to Sated.
Disable this while having a pet out.
This talent choice only exists because they’re taking away our pets, so disabling it would be fine.
So keep it the same as it is now if you have your pet out.
Just disable these as well.
Why does this need to be disabled? Just have your pet apply Spotter’s Mark instead of the eagle.
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In the 3rd suggestion, you don’t lose the Spotting eagle’s skills and talents. You just lose your pet’s spec and family skills. The damage penalty is just to avoid adding the pet damage on top of the hunter’s damage.
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Going to requote what I said earlier:
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You can double-dip in the sense that you can get two pet skills (Lust/Hero + a Tenacity or Cunning pet).
One of the problems of disabling several skills is that it’s more prone to bugs or exploits, which is why I think the 3rd alternative is way better, since you just need to disable pet family and spec skills instead of messing with the whole spec’s toolkit.
It’s a trade-off for the added pet damage. That’s why I only place a damage debuff in the 3rd suggestion but not on the 2nd.
I don’t think having to work the MM utility kit around having or not having a pet is going to be worse than the current friction of working MM petless utility around the hunter class in general. Some of these proposals don’t seem very fair to BM and Surv- an unkillable, un-CCable, un-LoSable Intimidate? Roar of Sacrifice with only a dps loss? The class tree already has to contort around melee Survival, now it also has to bend over for petless Marks…
I think toggling utility and talents for pet/no pet modes would not be a big deal in comparison.
MM Hunters that don’t choose a pet can also have a Cunning or Tenacity pet through their talent choice.
It’s not the first time they’ve had a talent choice lock you out of other abilities.
Which is why they can just go the opposite route of Lone Wolf. Add a talent that lets us summon a pet with reduced damage as compensation for having a pet.
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But no pet damage while out of LoS either. Also, no targettable pet to take away targetting when you Feign Death. No pet to protect a node when you are under CC.
That’s just another double-dipping issue.
Keeping pet abilities + full spec toolkit would allow you to:
- Have Lust/Hero (no need to summon a pet for that)
- Mortal Wounds (no need to summon a pet for that)
- Spec Cunning (extra speed + root clear)
- Summon a Tenacity pet (extra HP + extra heal)
It’s almost all pet spec skills. It’s only missing the Leech from Ferocity pets.
Yeah, but the more things you need to lock off, the more likely it’s for bugs and testing. Currently, the devs disabled Mend Pet turning into Revive Pet because it was buggy (the functionality bugged out when you changed specs), so in theory you could get a exploit that by changing specs you bug out the pet detection and keep all the toolkit on top of the pet abilities.
Disabling the pet abilities, however, would be easier to implement. It’s just a player spec check, rather than a pet presence check.
My suggestions could all be baseline, which would mean you get the pet while not having to spend a talent. I think it’s a more elegant solution and avoids the need for balancing (once something costs a talent, people will ask for balancing it out. If it’s a baseline option at no cost, it’s a “solo mode” that doesn’t need to be competitive).
I just went over all this.
All MM Hunters will be able to Lust/Hero without having to summon a pet for that.
Mortal Wounds can be disabled if you have a pet out. Or just remove Mortal Wounds from pets and give them something else.
All Hunters can pick between Tenacity or Cunning without even needing to summon a pet. And if you summon a pet, that’s what you get stuck with. So summoning a Ferocity pet would lock you out of Tenacity/Cunning abilities.
It’d be a shame for the devs to have to do some tuning over the next 3 months of PTR testing.
So your problem is that there might possibly maybe be a bug that they’d have to fix.
They’re already removing a bunch of talents, so adding one optional talent shouldn’t be that big of a deal. And it’s not like Blizzard has ever added talents that just sit there and rot before anyway. There’s a reason most classes go with cookie cutter builds while leaving many talents to be very rarely chosen, if at all.
They could even make it an ability, but one you have to go out and learn from an NPC or something, that way MM Hunters who don’t want pets don’t even have to look at the talent.
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Besides the whole Shakespearean controversy “a pet or no pet, that is the question”, the Spotters Mark in its current iteration needs to be reviewed.
It’s a boring passive skill that only gives a
10%-30% single target AiS buff with a 30% chance of being applied.
Consequently Ohnahran Winds also needs to be reviewed. A very expensive talent that gives a 25% chance in addition to the original 30% of Spotters Mark that makes the skill apply to 3 more targets.
It’s too much RNG for a new core mechanic that isn’t even that cool.
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Just super disappointing. My wife and I have both been playing MM hunters together the past month. Taking away the pet aspect is bumming both of us out. I don’t want to play a melee hunter and I don’t like BM. Please reconsider how you’re planning on implementing these changes. Did you all bother polling the playerbase who actually plays these specs before designing this?
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Please do not take my pet from MM.
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You understand it’s the same thing right?
We have a 5% buff for not using pets. Which means using pets is 5% less damage.
Pets are removed, the Lone Wolf buff is incorporated into the base tuning as it’s not needed anymore. Putting a 5% reduction on pets results in the same exact situation - summoning a pet does 5% less damage.
And nothing about keeping pets in the way I said changes any of the new stuff at all - you still get everything exactly the same as they planned.
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Absolutely nothing about keeping a basic pet with just bite, claw, growl and dash with a 5% DPS reduction for having it out would create any kind of exploit with the new abilities.
The third option is what I personally want to see happen. It would have no impact on meaningful content like M+ and Raid which would be identical to removing the pet.
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