Having to use a Pet prevents me from playing BM and Surv

Classes Hunter
1

To be clear I think pets are fine and should 100% stay. I like fighting with them from time to time and I definitely enjoy capturing and collecting new ones. However I have some issues with them and I’m curious if any one else may share my opinions.

Pets Can’t Switch Pet Stance - I started playing in Legion, on and off, but I feel like I remember the pets being able to switch stances. I could see this maybe being a PvP change where you’d want the opposing player to know what kind of pet to expect at a glance without confusion. This theory is also reinforced by the fact that you aren’t supposed to be able to swap to a different pet in arena. So the opposing players always know what type of pet you have. But I feel if they really cared that much there could easily be a weak aura to track it. Plus the pet has a buff on it stating it’s passive. That could work as an indicator and there could even be another buff stating its stance. The reason why I’d want something like this would be to have more options for chosing pets in specific content. With a change like this any pet can be a lust pet, any pet can be a freedom pet, and any pet can be an endurance pet. Though I do believe endurance pets need a rework because the leech/lust pets are better for tanking in my experience and in many others online as well.

The Pet won’t Feign Death With Me - when pressing feign death with a bodyguard on nazjatar, the bodyguard drops with the player, loses aggro with the player and gets up with the player. The hunter pet, in my experience does none of this and you have to press a seperate button for it to feign. And macroing it in has been awkward for me, because you HAVE to cast “wake up” for your pet to get up. Simply telling it to attack wont work. Plus you can accidentally cast “wake up” before your pet actually plays possum and for some reason “wake up” has a cooldown. Not sure why a highly situational ability is castable when you wouldn’t want it to be and why it has a cooldown. I haven’t checked this recently, so forgive me and ignore this if it has changed in recent patches. But if it hasn’t then I really feel it needs to. Why would I want my pet to stay in combat while Im feigning? Its super buggy and sometimes makes your own personal player feign not work. If any of you feel this is intentional please share your opinions, I’m curious.

The Pet is too Slow to Follow - i have a speed set on my main that gives my character 192% move speed after all buffs. And I easily outrun my pet in all situations. I feel like a solid fix for this would be to have the pet match the players speed in and out of combat. If this is intentional, can someone please explain the thought process behind this to me? I can see maybe in instanced arena gameplay some people may not like it if the pet is moving super fast, but the pet sticks like glue in most cases anyway, plus kill command somehow does damage before my pet even gets to the target.

Surv Has to Use a Pet - if the above three issuse were changed I’d probably care about this one less, but I’d still think it’d be nice to have pets only be a requirement on BM and for it to be optional on Survival as it is with Marksman. Just to have the option incase I wanted to play Survival but I don’t want to have to deal with janky pet AI. Off the top of my head, since Im not at my home right now, I believe Intimidation and Kill Command are the only two abilities that require a pet, plus theres also the damage of the pet as well. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this being it. An alternative could be making intimidation say an X meter ranged stun where the hunter just shouts at the target and intimidates them. This is just a hypothetical and the implementation isn’t to relevant to my topic. Any number of things could work. Perhaps for Kill Command it could become Spear Toss, or Javelin Throw or something of the sort. And then of course a damage buff like Marksman.

tl;dr I like pets, I think they should stay. I feel they need changes though to be better. Switch pet stances, feign death with me, match my movement speed, and I feel like a pet should be optional for survival.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear some other views on this.

2

It should be balanced (which I know is asking the world of blizz) in a way that gives running pet vs no pet no advantage one way or the other, otherwise BM will be the only pet hunter spec.

2 Likes
3

So your solution to the issue is to mandate weakauras?

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4

Co-ordinated Assault. And:

Why? And, have you considered aggro, w/o a pet it’s all going to be on you.
Having the pet stay in combat is an opportunity to stay in the fight. Also, you can move your pet, dragging the mob away, giving you room to run. Or fight.

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@Mike Well I did also say the pets could have a buff that shows their stance.

@Llars Oh yeah coordinated assault as well, that one could just apply to the hunter then if he doesnt have a pet out.

Well I figured a damage buff would be necessary since you’re loosing pet DPS. The same reason MM hunters have it.

Yes I do that personally. But remember Im asking for it to be optional. To mimic MM hunters. So if you feel a pet is necessary then you can still call one out.

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The damage buff, I never thought was a good thing, and I habitually play MM.
Have you tried playing MSV w/o your pet, just as it is? It might be a good thing to try. You would find out for sure then, what does and doesn’t work.

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The issue with MM’s buff is that it makes playing with a pet less viable in instanced PvE content. It would need to be perfectly synced so that it’s purely player preference.

1 Like
8

This would be easier to achieve if a) Lone Wolf only buffed single-target abilities and b) we wouldn’t continue to derive so much player power from borrowed effects e.g. tier sets and covenants.

At the baseline level (without borrowed power) Lone Wolf buffs 10% and a pet does about 7-9% of your single-target damage. That’s already very competitively tuned. It’s just the borrowed power/AoE that makes it a big difference in reality.

1 Like
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Borrowed power messes with class tuning astronomically, and I can only pray they do away with it next xpac. Or smartly designed tier with a reliable method to obtain it I would be happy with. However, looking at BM’s tier I don’t have any faith.

10

I do agree that pets need to be improved, but I think this post is off base.

By switching stances I assume you mean switching specs. I agree we should be able to switch pet specs. We used to be able to and they changed it without giving a reason.

Pets not feigning death with you is a total non issue. Just press both Feign Death and Play Dead. They are both off-GCD. Having them automatically at the same time is a bad thing; there are many situations where we want to use them separately. For example, if soloing harder content with your pet and you pull aggro, you don’t want to immediately end the fight; you want to feign without your pet feigning. Or if your pet pulls aggro in group content due to, say, an early Kill Command; you want just the pet to feign and not the player.

Pets running too slow; I thought it just ran at the same speed as the player no matter what. If that’s not the case they should indeed fix it.

Survival has to use a pet because, despite common belief, it’s still meant to be a Hunter spec that shares important core aspects of being a Hunter. It’s already egregious enough that it lacks the most important part of the class: the ranged weapon. If you could also play it petless it would just be a Warrior variant. It relies on a pet so much because that’s its one significant tie to the core Hunter class. It wouldn’t have to rely on a pet so much if it were a ranged spec. In fact, the last time it was a ranged spec (WoD 2014-2016) it had access to Lone Wolf.

3 Likes
11

Is this a troll? Because if not you don’t understand how BM and Survival work. If you don’t want a pet play marks.

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Out of combat they will keep pace with the player. In-combat the player can out run them due to range and CD of dash.

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The pet is a proof of legitimacy for wearing the Class title. Traps is another. Ranged Damage used to be one. And pets is negotiable, for one spec. And traps come and go.
"It’s important that there will be this sort of universal base of what defines a Hunter. "
? hunter’s mark and disengage?

1 Like
14

correct, hunters have their own threat & their pet has its own threat as well. your pet action bar gives you full control to build your pet’s threat up on any mobs you want. . you do not have control over bodyguards the way you do your pet.

you will find this spell tome in the legion class hall.
leave your keybind for /cast Feign Death as the [key] it currently is set, and set the shift+[key] to do this: /cast play dead . in other words, my FD is the key G. i have play dead as Shift-G.

  • when you feign death in the future, you quickly repeat it with shift held down. when your portrait indicates combat has ended, you will press W to wake yourself up & you will hit the shift+FD key to wake up your pet

The Pet is too Slow to Follow

  • your pet has an ability called DASH that makes it fast for a time and you can & should put it on autocast . you are outrunning your pet but it is not a real race yet. .Survival hunters Kill Command is another solution if you dont want to autocast.
    . - take your current keybinds for a few spells such as - - Kill Shot, Harpoon, and raptor strike . create a macro for each that does this, with or without the brackets ive got in mine

/cast [@mouseover,exists,harm] harpoon
/petattack
/cast dash

  • your pet hustling when you use Kill Command, that is not janky AI, it is the class design that is sensible for SV . Kill Command has an absurdly long cast range for an ability on a melee class like SV . you must only be aware of whether the vertical situation is realistic for your pet to charge the target or not. your pet has no thumbs and cannot Harpoon like your hunter can. it also has the hot temper of a Beast - it wouldn’t be worth a tame if it could disengage . .

  • you should have /cast Dismiss Pet keybound somewhere that you can access it while in awkward combat without looking away . mine is Alt+Shift+2 … so . in combat, if my maneuvers are so intense that a mere Beast cant keep up with me, i pay the 3-second penalty to cast dismiss pet and i invest 1-GCD into calling my pet to my side… that is the tradeoff for Disengage and Harpoon being so fluid to use and traverse vertical spaces.

  • if my pet is dead, and i have to replace it with a different one, i need to revive, and then dismiss my pet, and then call the one i want . Mend Pet and Revive Pet are both macro’d by typing /cast revive pet

  • aspect of the turtle (8 seconds) is long enough to get me out of this compounding mistake - revive pet (3sec) and dismiss pet (3sec) , and call pet (gcd,~1.5-) . the Command Pet abilities are off GCD, so i can do all of this within my Turtle before it ends.

1 Like
15

That’s asking the world of anyone, not just Blizzard lol

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I am confused what the real issues of OP are from reading most of the comments. Seems like a huge issue would be making people go out of the way for the ability “Play Dead” people acquire from Sholazar Basin or Trueshot Lounge. I am still confused why abilities for players are not just learned by default when they have this much of an impact.

Having pets shouldnt be an issue as its the way the class is built. I dont know how well tierset works for arenas compared to other specs and classes but BM was pretty strong for most of SL i believe. Just have to do what most of the other people here suggested and utilize your pets abilities with what situation you are given. You may be faster than your pets in combat but your target is not so I see no issue with pet speed. I am curious the type of content you are doing where your pet speed actually bothers you. If you have a speed set I am assuming you are just noob stomping players at low level bgs which is fine but not realistic for the actual game as speed sets are hard to come by i imagine at rated pvp.

P.S. a survival hunter without a pet would just be a discount warrior. survival hunters should always use pets as it makes hunters what they are besides MM which is just a default sniper with the ability to bring out a pet on occasion.

1 Like
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No, you got it wrong about MM.
MM are Hunters with the ability to put up their pets on occasion, for instance, when playing in back of a Tank. For MM, the pets major job is to control aggro. When playing in a group that includes a Tank, many MM put up their pet, believing the Tank will handle aggro. It’s a more simplistic way to play, free from pet management, something a good many MM never learned, and without obvious DPS loss, as Blizz provides a 10%+ damage increase for MM who choose to run w/o a pet. It’s gotta make you smile, thinking about it, MM get rewarded by denying a major part of their iconic Class abilities, way to go!
The OP wants to learn to play their pet is all, and you didn’t get it wrong, but I wish you did. I just quest here, and don’t always agree with the rules.

I agree with the bolded type.

18

Lone wolf for Sv would be awesome, I would play it. I don’t think beast mastery would make any sense without a pet though.

19

Sv without a pet is just an enhance shaman

1 Like