Let us pick our pet’s spec again, that’s all I really want for pets. If it’s such an issue for PvP, then have pets default to their original spec in PvP only. So a bear that is Ferocity in PvE would default back to Tenacity in PvP.
Blink Strike was always a nifty thing.
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Sure, but… Blink Strikes was also objectively worse than the 50-yard (53 on SV) supersonic dashes we can now do on every Kill Command.
It had a non-diminishable ICD that couldn’t be nearly so well banked or timed, effectively giving a lower rate of use and value per use than what replaced it as a baseline QoL change.
That’s not the issue in pvp… the issue is the special ability. Some pets have a defensive ability, others have cure/dispel or a slow… There’s one special ability that only a few pets have - that’s a Mortal Wounds ability that reduces healing. You have to bring a mortal wounds pet in pvp regardless of whether it is tenacity, cunning or ferocity.
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Didn’t blink strikes let your pet jump off cliffs/ledges? Like in temple of kotmogu? That was a neat thing.
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I believe so, but I could have sworn it could also fail to respond to commands once on the other side, forcing you to resummon?
Either way, that seems at most a reason to apply a Blink over a charge/dash to Kill Command, rather than to bring it back as something affecting autos, as per the old Blink Strikes.
- Heck, give us a talent by which to deal additional damage when hitting a new enemy for the first time (or to apply a lengthy mild DoT) with KC, opposite on choice node a charging linear AoE? But, regardless, leave it on an active, bankable skill.
To be honest, outside of gimping yourself there is really only one pet for PvP. It’s the undead raptor.
Which is honestly quite tragic. You’d think people should be able to pick the pet they Wanted to have as a companion while Still being competetive/have the tools they need to be competetive (or atleast not gimp themselves).
It always sucks when Blizzard decides if you play what you like or play with the right tools. We are so far from “bring the player not the class/pet” in regards to Hunters it’s baffling.
Now you can argue that it’s nice to have all these different pets, specializations and family abilities and I agree, absolutely. I’d like to see more of it! But the big, big issue here is that Blizzard have removed our choice in the matter. We used to be able to pick pet specialization/have pet talent trees but… they kept all these things making pets different but removed our choice of What we wanted to pick, sad backstep if you ask me and quite baffling how it could even be allowed to happen.
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I have a solution to a problem that had plagued the DEVs and those who play BM hunter for quite a while.
<First to preface that I also support Pet talent specs being adjusted by the player similar to how players select their own specializations. And, the idea of them also having a talent tree and talent points to invest in them is worth looking into.>
Now to my idea- Remove Spirit beast as a trait on some tameable beasts and instead make it a base talent that BM hunters get at the appropriate level. Then the Spirit traits would operate extraneous to the usual pet specs of Cunning, Ferocity, Tenacity. The Spirit Beast Base talent would instead only add the following abilities but otherwise not augment any other bonuses or stats the pet would otherwise have standard with in the 3 base specs.
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Talent: Spirit Beast
This talent adds the following abilities to any active hunter pet.
Spirit Mend: [25 yard] [30 sec cooldown] Spirit of the hunt flows through hunter and pet connecting them through a soul bond allowing the pet to Heal the current friendly target for 7,206 plus an additional 23,781 over 10 sec.
Spirit Walk: [10 Sec cooldown] Puts your pet in stealth mode, but slows its movement speed by 50%. The first attack from stealth receives a 20% bonus to damage. Lasts until cancelled. (Animal companion benefits from stealth and receives the movement de-buff but does not benefit from +20% damage)
Spirit Pulse: [10 Sec cooldown] A pulse of spirit energy releases from the Spirit Beast, removing 1 Disease, Magic, and or Poison effect from the current friendly target. (It would be ok if they scrapped this and brought back the sooth ability it had more utility)
“After many rigorous trials, hardships, and adventures the Hunter and Pet become one in Spirit. Allowing the Pet to rise above its previous limits.”
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As a BM hunter I personally would be fine if then the spirit beasts became universally tameable.
So doing it this way solves the spirit beast conundrum of BM Hunter Utility in Dungeons and Raid vs diversity of appearance in the world environment (ie we’d be able to use pets other than spirit beasts for their look with out losing utility)
While also expanding the amount of possible pets any hunter can tame with out having to add new NPC assets.
Pretty Much a win all around all hunters get to tame cool glowy pets they couldn’t before and BM Hunters can finally use other pets for their appearance models.
Separate to this they may also consider adding the Rez back to Quilen, Having actually used that ability in a real Heroic Raid I can tell you that for a hunter to dismiss and then summon a different pet just to rez a Healer or Warlock is extremely difficult. But, not impossible. If executed swiftly & correctly the Hunter may save the Raid from failure and the cool down was always so long that hunters wouldn’t be disrupting other global rez counters considering its designed as a hail MAry in the event all others who can rez have died. I am personally not opposed to adding it to the proposed “Spirit Beast” talent either but I can almost guarantee that doing so will make all other classes who usually do all the rez-ing immediately burn down the forum pages with complaints."
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Can we also rework MM to have actual utility without a pet?
It’s really annoying to cut yourself off at the knees just to do competitive damage
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Sounds like a BM issue…
Hmm, best resolved if it formally became its own class. It can get that and so much more.
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Blizz should just put them back to how they were before the BfA pre-patch
+10 to this
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I’m adding another vote for a toggle to let me choose cunning, fero or tenacity. I’m not even asking to let us choose their family-specific abilities, eg the dodge-granting catlike reflexes for cat pets or whatever.
i have quite a lot of hunters and i’d love for them to use certain pets, eg the gnomes using mechanical pets or the zandalari using raptors, but as a pve-only hunter any cunning family pet pretty much only comes out when i want the speed boost in an old raid that doesn’t let me mount up. that’s really disappointing.
Ah yes, the quintessential BM Hunter, with his dual-wielding Axes. 
Yes. That’s him.
Just bring back pet specs. They had them in WotLK and they were great - there was ZERO reason to abandon that system and everything since then is objectively worse.
Could all be fixed with a pet talent tree, remove all pet abilities and specs, and toss it all into a tree so we can have pets just be for cosmetics.
BM gets +4 talent points, and call it a day.
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Just adding my voice to this. So many cool pets out there that you can match with your race and character theme but we have to bring the same raptor or bird to everything because we need mortal strike. Just make it so you can choose your pets spec and ability. Pets should just be cosmetic.
I’d like to use any pets. I wanted to use two Bakaars to represent my dogs that passed away but it’s better to use corehounds or clefthooves.
Smarter pathing, though it is vastly better than in earlier days.
Make Tenacity pets more tank and less squish.
Make Cunning have more utility. Like a Swiss army pet.
Make Ferocity more aggressive and give it a stacking passive bonus to attack speed outside of hunter abilities or make it become enraged on it’s own after (variable here).
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