Hot Take Remove Lone Wolf

Classes Hunter
81

I’m sorry, I’m not arguing with you exactly. I’m just saying if the choice is between doing more damage or less damage, there isn’t a choice.

For some reason, Blizzard can’t commit to a design choice for Hunter specs. If they want to have full-on, solo bolo for MM, melee for SV, and whatever BM is supposed to be, DO IT instead of half-assing talents and abilities to accomodate whatever it is they’re trying to accomodate. Clearly they aren’t trying to make as many people happy as possible because as near as I can tell, not that many people are happy with what we’ve got or with what we’re getting.

As much as I’m loathe to suggest it (because I like my pet) just make MM no pet. Passive LW, and then:

  • Hunter’s Mark talent in the class tree for Mortal Strike
  • Master’s Call talent in the class tree. Petless, calls random pet from the stable to aid target
  • Hunting Horn, or Horn Blast, or Vuvuzela, or Sad Trombone, or who cares as a talent in the class tree for Lust
  • Roar of Sacrifice - same deal, no pet, calls upon the nobility of an almost-human porpoise to hurl itself in front of incoming torpedoes to grant short term crit immunity

Except Blizzard, when they created the Hunter class, and defined it as a unique mix of ranged damage and pet. THAT SAID, committing to a petless playstyle would resolve a whole bunch of “what should go where” scenarios. Also, unlinking utility from pets would be a boon to the other spec’s survivability. Of course they would want to rez their pets ASAP, but they wouldn’t be complete sitting ducks if their, uhh, duck gets popped.

82

Is that why there were zero pet-affecting talents in the original Marksmanship Tree? Just as there were zero pet-affecting talents in the original Survival tree? And zero non-pet-affecting talents in Beast Mastery?

  • The only exception to this was BM having 3 Aspect-affecting talents.
  • This state remained until spec utility complements were each shuffled to other trees (MM’s Hawk Eye to Survival, eventually being doubled up by Sniper Training; Go for the Throat to MM; further defensive capability to BM) in order to make cross-speccing a bit more attractive.

Marksmanship has never been about pets. Only Beast Mastery, one of three facets of Hunter, had anything to do with pets.

Because some specs back then, including those of Hunter, forcibly included much of the other two specs, Hunter at the time was a Marksman, Beast Master, and Survivalist. As such, yes, hunter included pets, just as it forcibly included the full amount of traps and, originally, all ranged attacks but Aimed Shot regardless of one’s spec.

But that design wasn’t unanimous, either. Yes, every Death Knight included Frost, Blood, and Unholy abilities in its rotation, but other classes even way back then, such as Mage, already did not use their counterpart specs’ rotational abilities with any regularity. They were matters of isolate utility that happened to be skinned and named after this facet or that—Fire Mages using Frost spells only in the sense of occasional snares and roots, not for their damage or any synergies—not core and permanent elements.

That was then, and it was contested even at that time. It makes no more sense today to insist that every Hunter must use a pet than to insist that every Death Knight must regularly rotate Frost, Blood, and Unholy attacks regardless of their having any use for what the other facets bring to the table.

Let MM pets be used when there is an intrinsic reason to use them—an actual use for their being separate entities with a separate line of sight.

Otherwise, it should come down to visual/thematic/RP preference. No change in damage. No change in available utility beyond the use of a separate unit with a separate HP and threat pool.

That’s always been included in the suggestion. I’ll requote them from earlier in the conversation.

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83

They didn’t start this no pet garbage until Legion. Personally I think they should remove Lone Wolf. Or turn it into something different.

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84

This is incorrect. I’m not going exlpain why it’s wrong, but instead allow you to explore the wonders of Google! Good luck, my friend! It will be a wonderous journey.

Addendum: I assume you’re talking about the Vanilla tree, which only makes this partially incorrect. However, since you go on to compare it to Wrath DKs, I will also assume you’re arguing in good faith and are comparing apples to apples, and are considering the same era for Hunter talents. That would make your claim DEFINITELY incorrect.

The thing you’re overlooking is that the pet was integral to our leveling process for the first, what, 4 iterations of WoW? Maybe more? You could saw off a tank’s left arm and duct tape a shield there instead, but I feel like an arm is a more versatile choice. THAT SAID, see my response above. I would rather Blizz commit to petless MM at this point. I’m just making the argument that they created this fantasy, which was enjoyed by all Hunters for quite awhile, before it was decided that coming up with three meaningful iterations of Ranger + Pet was too monumental an undertaking for the developers stranded on their enormous mountains of money, and instead had to lazily resort to what we have now.

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85

Go for the Throat was not in the original Marksmanship Tree. Just as Hawk Eye was originally in Marksmanship, not in Survival.

“Original” talent trees would refer to the original talent trees, yes. Not to iterations later. The… original ones.

However, the above also applies to the WotLK talent trees.

Here are the only non-pet affecting BM talents in WotLK:

  • Improved Aspect of the Hawk
  • Improved Aspect of the Monkey
  • Pathfinding
  • The Beast Within

Note: Your pet also benefitted from Ferocious Inspiration, while it did not from the likes of Hunting Party or Trueshot Aura, as your pet used Melee AP for all but Wind Serpent’s CD special attack and did not use Mana.

Here are the pet-affecting MM talents in WotLK:

  • Go for the Throat
  • Marked for Death (only because it applied to all special attack damage)

Here are pet-affecting SV talents in WotLK:

  • –

(There are none. Your pet did not inherit your damage, HP, or stat modifiers.)

As were ranged weapons and traps because those specializations are part of the same class. That doesn’t mean that a MM hunter would need to have every trap skill, as was the case in WotLK, to be complete. That does not mean that BM would have to have access to all but two ranged attacks, as was the case in WotLK, to be complete.

Nor does access to Lone Wolf, even today, prevent one from using pets while leveling.

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86

It didn’t stop being integral to leveling. Nor did it stop being an option when Lone Wolf was added…

This is effectively what you’re asking for, though? That regardless of context, a Hunter should siphon off 10% of their “do whatever you want” capacity forced towards pet usage.

Nevermind that one isn’t playing a shield/pet spec, they must spend that portion of their resources specifically on the shield/pet.

Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to be able to use, say, Mortal Strike and Raging Blow without weapon or wield restrictions, so that I could better use a shield as the situation demands, but you’re asking instead for the equivalent of being required to use that shield at all times.

That is arbitrary and less versatile.

Marksmanship is about marksmanship (ranged attacks). Beast Mastery is about the mastery of beasts (pets and aspects). Survival was about traps and defensive, complementary, and support tools (now… who knows?). It makes no more sense to demand that MM must use a pet at all times than to demand that Beast Mastery must take Aimed Shot (as per MM’s side of things) or Nessingwary’s Trapping Apparatus (old SV’s side).

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87

It’d be identical to our current choice, except that MM would have one fewer talent to spend on real choices.

  • The solution, stated time and time again over this and other threads, would be to just make Lone Wolf only affect single-target damage and to have the Hunter manually determine their choice of family passive and ability, rather than thereby limiting pet choice.
    • But apparently that’s too complicated and therefore warrants removing the choice of Lone Wolf completely? ¯\_(ツ)__/¯

(The above notes are not aimed at you, Ghorak, and are meant just as a summary of this thread and similar ones since Lone Wolf’s implementation, which remains problematic but oh so easily fixed.)

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88

The choice is still there, you’ve just chosen to go for the option that provides the most damage.

Either way, I do get your point. The issue is that making Lone Wolf into a talent doesn’t change that point of yours. It doesn’t solve anything. The only thing it does is literally forcing anyone who wants to use Lone Wolf, to have to spend a talent point on it. It doesn’t actually add or remove any choice connected to playing with, or without a pet(as Lone Wolf can be a baseline passive, and you can still choose to play with a pet if you want).

I do agree to some extent here.

I think of Lone Wolf the same way as I do with Animal Companion for BM. Both are essentially passive effects that can do a lot towards player(character) identity, something that is quite important for many players. And on top of that, both effects are ones that some players simply want to avoid, whether they’re good options for throughput or not, as some have stated above here.

Keeping Lone Wolf as a baseline passive, allows players to still have that choice of playing with, or without a pet, without also requiring to select it as a talent option.

Making Animal Companion into a baseline passive that allows you to manually call 2 permanent pets, and have their damage just split 50/50, or if you want to play with a single pet, it does 100% of normal damage on its own. This removes most negative sides with this passive as well. And yeah, that hidden deficit aura needs to be fixed regardless of what is done with it, the fact that the aura also affects all other companions/guardians you summon is really bad.

You mean in Vanilla?

The original talent trees/categories were designed to build on a common class fantasy. Each category focused on a specific part of the core design.

Beast Mastery - Pet stuff
Marksmanship - Everything involving ranged weapons
Survival - Focused on increased survivability through better defensives, utility, and to some extent, damage as well.

The class as a whole was very much about pets in general, despite how it wasn’t necessarily reflected in every single category at the time.

Yep.

For the matter of tuning/design of the passive, I agree.

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89

Oh, I completely agree there. I just don’t think that, as Jaggles claimed, pet usage was part of Marksmanship itself.

Just as I wouldn’t say that Demonology was a DoT spec just because it still had access to baseline DoTs, it would seem disingenuous to say that Marksmanship itself was specifically designed to use pets.

As such, in a modern setting, it doesn’t seem reasonable to demand either among…

  1. That should Marksmanship choose not to use a pet, it should also lose certain utilities not inherent to using a pet (a separately controllable entity with its own threat, HP, and LoS), or…
  2. That Lone Wolf should be removed as an option.

This I also have to disagree with. In itself, a pet is a utility affordance. It’s not always applicable, and it does typically get bundled with damage, but the whole point of routing that X capacity through a pet instead of using it directly is utility.

To demand that MM be forced out of using a pet is to deny them access to that utility. And why? It’s utility they’ve always had access to. Lone Wolf simply—especially if its design were just sensibly polished—removes that damage bundling so it’s purely utility that one ought to use when they can benefit from it and perhaps out to avoid when it’d be screwed over, since in either case it’s irrlevant to the core spec.

Class trees like ours are precisely where you put “sometimes handy utility not relevant to one’s core spec.” All else is working as it ideally should; Lone Wolf simply needs those final two touch-ups (which would, indirectly, also give us back pet choice).

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90

Hey, here’s a fun one: Why do MM Hunter’s take a pet in PvE? It’s not for the utility!

No, I think it should able to go fully pet free. I don’t necessarily CARE to do that, but Blizz should commit to the routes they’ve chosen instead of making everything kinda just OK for the three specs. If you unlink the utility from the pet, BM shines with (hopefully) improved exotic abilities (Brez? Healing aura? Who knows - tuning necessary), SV gets the pet team with things like Flanking Strike, KC regen, Mastery, and Pet/Hunter damage CDs, and MM just becomes a Ranger that focuses exclusively on shots. They could be GREAT at those things, rather than just OK at the amalgam of skills we currently have. Also, I was being facetious about cutting off your arm haha!

91

Do tell me what it’s for then. We get the same ST damage regardless, so if it’s not for…

  • Family abilities (Lust, Call, etc.)
  • Family passives (Leech, Move Speed, HP)
  • Use of a pet as a separate unit by which to absorb damage, move mobs, etc.

…all of which are forms of utility… what is it then?

I just don’t feel like you need to cut MM off from pets to better define the avenues of pet utility available to BM or SV.

Each spec is free to add to the options in the class base.

Granted, I would like to see those base options adjusted a bit, and might even move Kill Command over to BM and SV (possibly renamed for SV to avoid confusion).

  • Its place could be filled, thematically, by BM-related utility in the form of improved F/T/C passives or, with perhaps some column-shuffling, a general talent that could improve the leveling experience, such as a choice node between Serpent Sting and Master Marksman (revised to of course include pet crits as well).

But, you can absolutely do tons of interesting, well-tailored things in the BM and SV trees despite MM still having access to pet utility.

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93

pets are more than a passive buff. they do dmg through LoS, hold aggro, CC, slow enemy casts…

Pets are a must in PvP and solo because the utility greatly outweighs Lone Wolf. So, again… it would need A LOT more than just the passives you suggested if the AoE was nerfed that way. For starters, more CC.

What you suggest doesn’t make LW “an actual choice,” it makes it a non-choice.

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94

Every Hunter, before they became Hunters, knew every Spec in the Class ran with a pet.
Every Spec was designed to, optimally, run with a pet.
No Spec has to run with a pet.
Without a pet, every Spec has to run like hell.

It was designed as a partnership between Hunter and pet. The pet seeks out the targeted mob, gets its attention and keeps it as the Hunter kills it.
The pets job is to handle the aggro, the Hunters job is to provide the lethal DPS.

95

Was that somehow missed in…

…?

Nerfed how? Again:

You’d, in either case do, full AoE and ST damage in total between you and your pet, if taken. And you’d have, in either case, access to all utility save for what is intrinsic to having a second, separately controllable unit and the minor pet ability.

  • MM has access only to two minor pet ability effects that aren’t simply defensives for the pet itself, Mortal Wounds and a 50% Snare.

As such, you’d use a pet when its intrinsic value (things specific to having a second, separate unit) exceeds the problems of using a pet (can’t reach target, would die almost immediately, etc), rather than being forced into it to just use utilities extrinsic to it (things that have nothing to do with the pet’s species or its being a separate unit) or forced out of it whenever you need to AoE.

That sounds a whole lot like more choice, not less.

Pet aggro is irrelevant in group content outside of gathering ranged mobs for your tank via Growl + AoE while you continue AoEing. You absolutely do not want to be regularly using your pet as a tank for anything but leveling, where Lone Wolf is largely irrelevant anyways (unless the +10% damage would somehow be just enough to reliably allow you kill a mob before it ever reaches you).

…You’re… honestly claiming that pets aren’t obligatory for even BM?

Not just somehow neglecting that you can’t presently access Master’s Call, Primal Rage, etc., without them but outright claiming that even BM is sufficiently functional without a pet?

96

The thing about Lone Wolf is that it wouldn’t be a nerf to AoE damage. Or well, technically it would, just that it shouldn’t have increased AoE damage in the first place. The damage bonus of LW is meant to compensate for the loss of pet damage which, for MM, is purely ST based. Any increase to AoE damage from Lone Wolf is something that, by intent, shouldn’t be a thing.

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97

At least at present, though (following previous AoE nerfs), MM AoE does appear to be balanced around using Lone Wolf. As such, I’d say the shared baseline would probably need to go up a little when the Lone Wolf AoE bonus is removed.

That said, whether it’s that Lone Wolf AoE is brought down to pet-using levels or that pet-using AoE is brought up to Lone Wolf levels will just be a matter of…

  1. Determine what level of performance would be balanced for MM AoE and ST.
  2. Both with-pet and no-pet MM get that much AoE (because LW doesn’t affect it).
  3. MM ST is then compensated for the lack of pet such that both with-pet and no-pet MM, in total, get that much ST.
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98

Hunter absolutely 100% imply pet. In WoW Hunter always had a pet and the whole class revolved around the pet up until wod or legion when they added lone wolf. And that blizzard adds a passive/talent that is ment to compensate you for lost damage if you for some reason want to go pet less does in no way ever suddenly make the class “not imply pets” or any such.

And to pick some other game or definition of “Hunter” to try and prove the point then yeah pass, we are talking world of warcraft now. And Hunters as seen in real life have for as long as we’ve had domesticated pets (dogs/hounds pretty exclusively) we’ve used them for hunting.

If it was ranger or sniper or a myriad of other archetypes of similar playstyles sure. But to claim that “Hunter does not imply a pet” is quite false.

If you are a MM and dislike pets then fine. Its there and for you. But to (not saying you have, i dont know) say that the Hunter should not have a pet because Hunter is petless or that as a class we should not have all these talents, abilities and utility with our pets because MM “is ment to be petless” then i call Bull. Because the option is still there, you choose to play without a pet (the most defining part about the Hunter class in wow) and should not expect to Also get the things/bonuses the pet brings.

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99

Lone wolf was added in legion.

100

according to cataloging it was WoD. 6.0.1

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101

They added Lone Wolf to both MM and SV in WoD. When they removed the old SV with Legion, the new version of the spec was made to involve pets in core gameplay, so naturally it could no longer have Lone Wolf. MM kept it though. They then reworked it again for BfA, into a baseline passive.

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