This is the weirdest take for me. I just will never touch MM ever again. Why would my class fantasy be about my pets and then you just say “nah jk” and remove all of the pets we as players have gotten attached to over the two decades this game has been out? This is a big loss and big step backwards in class design…and I honestly didn’t think MM fantasy could feel worse than it was at the start of Legion…but you have once again proved me wrong.
24 Likes
And the core difference between a hunter and those classes is they don’t bond with their companions, they use them for personal gain.
14 Likes
I’m pretty sure Goblin Hunters only use their pets for personal gain.
3 Likes
So MM hunters not only do not use pets in combat but cannot even summon or tame them? What? How are they even hunters? And no a UI avatar isn’t a pet.
This is not ok. I swap back and forth between BM and MM since Blizz refuses to make the quintessential ranged hunter pet spec any good most of the time. I play hunter to play a ranged pet spec. Hunters are the pet class. So one spec relies less on pets than the others. I don’t like it but whatever. But this is too far.
What is the reason to not even allow a spec in THE pet class of WoW to be able to summon and tame pets?? I hate this change and hope it doesn’t go through.
28 Likes
Side note on this, I know you meant MM, but this is a general gripe about the pet abilities, it’s still genuinely flabbergasting to me they have refused for so long to let us re-spec our pets again.
Not only is it bad gameplay wise, but it hurt the RP community as well, as well as non-RPers who had personalities for their pets.
They forced every pet of a species into a personality, tenacious, ferocious, or cunning. When, for example, a wolf can be all 3. A wolf can be ferocious, but a mother wolf can be tenacious when protecting her pups like nothing else, while a wolf can also be cunning and stalk its prey before it strikes.
By restricting the ability to respec pets, they took the ability for us to choose a personality for our pets away, and restricted our choice of pets. For PvPers, 66% of pets in the game are useless. For non-PvPers, 33% are useless, and another 33% are subpar but useable.
Whereas if we could respec like we used to, 100% of pets are useable for all facets of the game. Yes, PvPers might prefer a Mortal Wounds pet, but that would open PvPers up from only 3 possible pet families to a whopping 12, effectively quadrupling their pool of Mortal Wounds pets. Similar numbers for PvPers who prefer a snare pet, etc.
EDIT: And I’m aware they did enable this feature in 11.1. (Unless they cancel it) It’s just so crazy it took THIS long to give it back.
10 Likes
You could have fixed the issues with Lone Wolf vs. Pet utilities with these changes:
- Separate Bloodlust ability
- Turn Lone Wolf into a choice node talent for which set of abilities are active when you do not have an active pet, in addition to the +5% damage
That’s it! You could have stopped there. Instead, you’re trying to invent an entirely new mechanic – forcing you to rework the entire talent tree to accommodate it by replacing about 20 talents and changing what you haven’t replaced.
29 Likes
Hey Kaivax,
Happy holidays. I appreciate the information, but what I’m reading here is spawning many, many questions. I’ll be playing on the PTR as soon as it is available to us.
I can say with enthusiasm that I am very happy to see Lone Wolf go away. That is a massive step in bringing some soul from the class back to the identity of Marksmanship as a specialization.
That being said, I can also say that I feel great concern when I read that Marksman is losing access to traditional tamed pets. Reading the changes here and with Pack Leader, it seems like this is getting done to solve complaints from Melee players feeling like their space is noisy.
Is this eagle change to Marksman trying to alleviate the same issues with melee clutter?
If so, is this change the start or framework to re-hauling the entire pet system class wide?
The eagle is a cool concept, but I have some pretty massive questions as to how it is going to work:
- Should we expect the eagle to appear like a normal pet in our UI, in the pet bar, with the pet health frame?
- Are conditional macros for things like misdirect or play dead going to work as they do now? /cast [@pet][exists] Misdirection for example? If they join us once we are in combat, how are these macros going to work going into a pull?
- Are we going to have a catalogue of skills the eagle can know? Do we get to change it’s abilities within each of the pet specs (Tenacity, Cunning, Ferocity)? Or are we getting the standard pet talent buildout?
- Will we be able to solo pull with it? Presumably yes since we can set it to Tenacity, but again I don’t understand if we’ll actually see it in our frames or not.
- Can I name the eagle another name?
- Will my eagle get to fly with me in Skyriding?
Room to Grow
This next step for Marksmanship is, ideally, the first of many. We are interested in continuing to flesh out Marksmanship’s Eagle as a true pet and partner for you on your journeys with unique interactions, effects, and even appearances in the future, but we don’t have specifics to share yet. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Admittedly I had to read this post a few more times, but it puts to rest the customization question.
>Can I customize the appearance of the eagle? Or is every marks hunter on Azeroth and beyond going to have the same bird around with them?
And the main patch notes clarify these questions too:
> - What’s happening to Dismiss Pet and Summon Pet for us?
> - How is mend pet and revive pet going to be effected?
Removed when Eyes of the Sky is learned. OK.
Looking forward to the PTR.
3 Likes
So instead of giving us the abilities that we lose by not having a pet, as just a baseline MM hunter ability… you’re tying us to this hawk thing we will not be able to customize or use our own pet for?
This is seems like… the worst of both current options, imo.
Lone Wolf was appealing, because I wanted to play a Gunman/Archer and not have a pet… It was nice to have a spec where the pet wasn’t the whole identity and I could finally be the Robin Hood, Green Arrow, Legolas, etc etc I always wanted to be and not a kennel master…
Tying this hawk thing to us just… burdens us with a pet, but a pet that we have little options with… We cant use mortal wounds in pvp, etc etc. Or pick what pet we want to have with us…
So now not only do we have a “pet”, but were losing out on the features that make a pet worthwhile/fun on top of that? ??? You didnt really change anything from the current situation, you just forced us to use one particular pet and changed the names of things is what it sounds like. So ???
Why is it so hard to just get a pure sniper/archer type spec?
16 Likes
I don’t play MM but I’m not fond of trying to remove choice from players.
MM should have a choice of whether or not they want a pet and if they do want a pet what that pet is. You eventually gave BM the ability to change Hati’s appearance for a reason.
Oh, also, please don’t remove Eagle Eye from the other specs. I make use of Eagle Eye fairly often when rare hunting or even something as simple as taking screenshots from out of reach places. I’d really hate to lose it.
27 Likes
Overall I like what yall are trying to do but I like most people here take issue with MM losing the ability to have their pet.
I played BM for years and loved it, until it became a swarm spec. I personally haven’t enjoyed it due to Dire Beast and Call of the Wild became the only way to play. Also kill command becoming the only button that matters didn’t sit right with me. The spec went from me working with my pets to me sitting back and watching my pets go scratchy scratchy.
So I swapped to MM, chose to just ignore Lone Wolf and have my pet. With the nerf to the talent in WW I honestly didn’t feel any weaker, and I got to have my pet still. I love the bird idea (as long as it’s customizable as I would love to have a warden owl) but I still want pets who have adventured with me for years.
The issue I’m running into is I want to be an archer working together with my animal companion, but that fantasy doesn’t exist anymore. The specs currently look like this.
BM- Pets do everything, Hunter does virtually nothing.
MM- Hunter does everything, pet now is non existent (except for a bird I have no connection to)
SV- works together as a team but is Melee
For the good, I love how MM’s identity is being streamlined (pun intended). It’s more focused on actual arrows and shots while magical stuff has been stripped away (Wailing Arrow).
I look forward to trying out the new design and I also look forward to seeing how y’all iterate on it.
Edit: in regards to Pack leader, for the people who want it, it sounds like an awesome hero spec. Something that could be cool to add in whenever it’s possible is the ability to choose your three pets to fit your character. Add options to the stable the same way they did with Animal Companion. As a night elf hunter if I played pack leader I would love my Bear, wyvern, boar to be a Hippogriff, Nightsaber, Warden owl. More cosmetic customization is never a bad thing
9 Likes
I feel like there’s probably a middle ground that can be reached.
Like, instead of the eagle, you can call a pet and have it function normally for the sake of MM having their pocket tank, then have an ability to toggle them into “scout” mode, which causes them to vanish and start acting the way the eagle would, with them popping in and do their thing when appropriate (with divebombs for flyers, or a charging animation for grounded pets).
It’d presumably need to be tuned in such a way that “just have a pet out” isn’t the optimal play. Maybe a damage penalty when your pet is in “normal mode” similar to how Defensive Stance reduces the damage of non-Prot Warriors.
Of course, this is just 4AM spitballing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ All else aside, I’m very happy to see we’re getting the ability to change pet specs again.
8 Likes
Begging you to not take away my pet.
You could keep all the changes you’ve done and then just bake Lone Wolf into the spec and let us keep the pets.
The problem with Lone Wolf was needing a pet out for Lust which brings a damage penalty (which you fixed) and the fact we couldnt change our pet type so were shoehorned into certain pets, which you fixed…and then for no reason you take our pets away entirely?
In dungeons and raids we would never use summon the pet which would cause literally 0 change from what you planned anyway but otuside of dungeons where that 5% doesnt matter we could still use our pets for solo content and theme.
I’ve played alongside Mauler, my Auberdine Thistle Bear that I tamed at L10 in November 2004, for the last 20 years. Please dont take him away 
27 Likes
This would actually be a phenomenal idea.
1 Like
Absolutely not, everything except the pet changes are good. I REFUSED to use Lone Wolf because my pets aren’t negotiable. I love being able to change them out to match glams, or for what we need. Are you telling me that all the time I spent as a MM hunter, collecting pets and enjoying the challenge to see how many rare/unique pets there are will be entirely USELESS? That does not sit right with me. If this change goes live and the only hunter spec I enjoy changes to something like this, I’ll probably quit entirely. Hunter is my main, it has been since I started, and this is probably one of the most stupid changes Blizzard has ever suggested. Hey pets are important to hunters, except for marksman. We are gonna take all those a way and give you a chicken. Like… What? are you serious?
20 Likes
I really want to talk about some of the changes but MM is dead in the water to me with these changes. I play a small skilled archer who has a big tiger to protect them, I enjoy MM, they are the shot caller and the tiger is the point guard. I will not be using this eagle you want to replace my pet with, I will not be swapping specs. I have no intention to play your narrow minded Quinn spec.
24 Likes
All they have to do is give us the ability to use Bloodlust without our pet out and that solves all of the “problems” with Lone Wolf.
20 Likes
I’m also thinking about tutorial island. Hunters are introduced to getting pets throughout the island, then at the end if you pick MM Blizzard says JK and removes it.
19 Likes
Honestly, I think all of the changes here sound pretty interesting and definitely something I think I could see myself really enjoying when I see them in action.
The pack leader changes is just a universal improvement. Rexxar inspiration was a great source to draw from and I was hoping that would be the case with a previous post in beta. I do worry that the inspiration was maybe a bit too specific here with it being a boar/bear/wyvern, but it’s definitely a great direction. The hunter fantasy is so broad it would be hard to find a mix of animals that make everyone happy and ideally this would be a customizable component of what you can summon in to fill your trio. It might be weird too for Alliance hunters to summoning wyverns when those are almost solely associated with the Horde but then again sentinel exists as a hero talent and arcane owls don’t really scream “For the Horde” so it goes both ways.
The MM pet change is one that honestly sounds cool to me on paper but there definitely are some caveats. Again, the fantasy of hunter is incredibly broad. An eagle is a good pick as a general “one size fits all” kind of pet if you had to pick one, but at this point with every race being able to play this class there stopped being an animal like that ages ago. I think a little customication here would go a long way, even if it was just a small handful of different flying animals we could choose to represent us as our companion.
MM was generally played without a pet anyway and that has been part of the appeal of the spec for awhile so I don’t mind losing the traditional pet but judging by some of the posts here this is definitely rubbing some people in a very wrong way. I actually think the new BM choice talent opposing animal companion is a good idea towards alleviating some of these feelings by keeping the solo hunter + solo pet fantasy but this relies on:
-
It being competitve as a talent (definitely not a given)
-
BM being a spec people would want to switch to
The latter is really the big one here. BM has a great fantasy and I think it can (mostly) encompass the fantasy that people might be losing if they prefer to play MM with a pet but as a spec it has been stagnant for a long time now and is a bit too simple to appeal to players who prefer the other hunter specs. Suggesting something like a BM overhaul or anything along those lines when we just got a slew of hunter changes would be incredibly unreasonable and is not what I am trying to convey here; however, I do think it would be wise to reexamine the spec and to see what can be tweaked to offer players who feel jilted by these changes and who do not enjoy the current iteration of BM.
I don’t think there’s any kind of decision regarding major class changes that is going to make everyone happy but I definitely think there are some tweaks that could be made to smooth over a lot of players put off by the new directions here. The changes I am seeing here look positive to me and both directions are improvements from my view but there’s always room for improvement and I think some changes in the right areas would mean a lot to a lot of players.
2 Likes
I never post on these sorts of things, but I know negative opinions tend to be the loudest on the internet and wanted to make sure you heard from people like me who are energized by the proposed MM changes.
I have only been playing the game for a few years, but MM is the only spec that has felt right to me from a gameplay perspective. However, the fantasy of MM has never really connected with me, as it’s always felt a bit… underdone. Running a pet in MM always felt like you were basically playing Hunter without a spec. Lone Wolf made sense as a sneaky sniper type but also felt detached from the Hunter fantasy since in WoW pets are a major part of it.
Normally when there are proposed changes to MM, I react with a shrug. These proposed changes are the first changes that I have ever felt a strong emotional reaction to. The falconry theme is evocative and flavorful, and I am so excited to try this redesign that I might actually hop on the PTR for the first time.
That said, I do sympathize with the MM players that have an emotional connection with their pets and feel cheated that they won’t be able to use them. While I am personally very, very excited about the falconry theme, I do hope you strongly consider implementing at least a visual option for MM hunters to choose their companion’s appearance based on pets they have tamed. There are also a number of people who are concerned about not being able to use their pet to tank solo content, but if this is an intentional gameplay change, so be it.
Thank you for giving me a reason to be emotionally invested in playing MM for the first time.
3 Likes
1000000% agreed ppl seem to be going insane about something that pretty much is the norm - Most MM players DO NOT play with a pet unless we absolutetly have to. Great changes for the spec we are finally getting a more interesting talent tree with a decent 2 target cleave option and the utility for lust or masters call without needing a stupid pet to ruin the lone ranger Legolas/Windrunners fantasy. For all of yall cry babies who want to play with a pet play BM or Surv and knock yourselves out
4 Likes