To reiterate what others have said more eloquently, nobody is asking for pet identity to be removed, or pets to be completely homogenized. But the current system is retrogressive: it forces pet distinctiveness at the expense of pet utility, a system that previous hunter class designers moved away from for that very reason, and it’s confounding that it was returned. It’s difficult to find any hunters that disagree with that sentiment, and demonstrates how widely unpopular the one-spec-per-family system is.
At the very least, all pet families should have access to Ferocity, plus at least one other. I can understand if you don’t want to allow thin and fragile looking pets to be Tenacity, or gigantic, stocky pets to be Cunning, so I’m not asking for all pets to have access to all three specs. But all should at least have access to Ferocity (+ either Tenacity or Cunning). This would go a long way toward making all pets useful, while retaining some distintiveness for specialty situations.
I also strongly believe strongly that the “exotic” category should be removed and instead ALL families should offer a bonus ability for Beast Masters:
- BM players would no longer feel pressured to use a narrow range of families.
- All families would offer something special for Beast Masters, so BM would become a spec for “getting extra tricks out of any pet” rather than “taming a slightly wider range of pets”. This fits the class fantasy.
- Other specs could then tame any family they like, they just wouldn’t get the bonus ability.
- These days, the “Exotic” category no longer makes a lot of sense. It was different when Exotics were first added and there were fewer families, and even fewer exotic-looking things. Now we’re in a situation where any hunter can tame fantastic flaming birds, progenitor wolves, and pink elekks, but for some reason only beast masters can tame really mundane-looking clefthooves.
- Spirit Beasts: I propose dissolving Spirit Beasts as its own family and making each a “Spirit” type within their related families (all existing spirit beasts have regular family counterparts they can join). This would be very similar to how undead pets don’t have their own family, but are instead speciality types of their respective families. Optionally, the ability to tame “Spirit” types could remain BM-only. For abilities they’d get the regular ability of their related family (so a spirit wolf would get the wolf family ability) and an exotic ‘spirit’ ability that is common to all spirit beasts, for BM players. I thought this proposal would be the most controversial, but replies in previous threads where I’ve mentioned this have been very supportive.