Edit: Updated 2/7. Some changes from my earlier ideas based on feedback, please read below.
Lone Wolf enables a petless archer fantasy that is appealing to many Hunters, but it does so with tradeoffs that significantly hamper the class overall (in addition to Marksman specifically). Some concerns:
Pets locked into a given spec
Primal Rage and Master’s Call wholly unavailable to Lone Wolf
Key utility gated behind specific pets
Some class talents (and PvP talents) functionally don’t exist for Lone Wolf
Hunters who prefer to be ranged with one pet have no viable options for competitive content
There are some very easy and commonly requested solutions to some of these problems. For others, we’ll need to get more creative.
Hunter Changes:
Primal Rage now baseline for all Hunters, learned at level 48.
Replace for Ferocity with a damage-increasing ability or cooldown of some sort.
Example:
Lynx Rush
10yd range
X cooldown
Your pet leaps from target to target, making attacks against any targets within range that you have damaged in the last Y seconds. These attacks deal Z damage instantly, and cause the target to bleed for 0.5*Z over 8 seconds.
This could be a short CD rotational ability set to autocast, or a longer cooldown dealing more burst damage. In either case, it should be balanced around offsetting the 10% buff to AoE damage that Marksmanship gets from Lone Wolf over the course of a typical raid encounter or M+ dungeon.
Pets can now be swapped freely between Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning, any time you are out of combat.
This allows you to use your favorite pet in any content, while cementing Ferocity as the clear choice for maximum damage.
Distracting Shot unpruned:
Distracting Shot
40 yd range
8 sec cooldown
Distracts the target, causing them to fixate on you for 6 seconds. This has no effect if the target is already attacking you.
Marksmanship Changes:
Aimed Shot now applies Mortal Wounds to the primary target.
Lone Wolf now grants the following additional benefits:
You learn three new passive abilities - Lone Wolf: Ferocity, Lone Wolf: Tenacity, and Lone Wolf: Cunning. These grant you 10% Leech, 5% Health, and 8% movement speed, respectively. You can only have one Lone Wolf ability active at a time.
Your Intimidation, Master’s Call, and Roar of Sacrifice now temporarily summon your first active pet for the duration. The pet does not deal damage or cancel the Lone Wolf buff when summoned in this way.
Other changes (pet reworks, spec reworks, etc) might also accomplish this same goal, but I’m trying to focus on giving MM parity in terms of both damage and utility, regardless of your pet preference (or lack thereof), without introducing a bunch of changes that diverge from that goal.
PVP wise sac and freedom are basically required. Disengage is a pretty out dated Mobility skill when most melee have instant gap closers\ranged stuns\ranged slows etc.
If you want lone wolf playstyle to be viable you kinda need to make them usable, even if they are usable hunters still lack utility/mobility in comparison to other classes.
Second charge of Disengage covers freedom. You get a break rather than break+immunity, but in a much shorter cool down and while opening a gap.
Agreed on sac being important, but the entire mechanic is that the pet takes the hit for you (or a party member). Who is talking the hit if there’s no pet?
in solo shuffle disengage even when breaking slows doesnt do much not when most specs have instant range slows/instant gap closers x2 relative to Freedom which is better because it makes you immune to all slows for a period of time.
If they made it so you get 2 seconds of immunity to slows after disengaging then that would be cool.
Reposting a more comprehensive wishlist regarding pet and pet-less play…
Background Changes
New baseline skill, given at level 48, Horn of the Hunt.
This replaces Primal Rage as the Hunter’s means to Bloodlust/Heroism, making that function independent of pet type.
Pet utility actions are now all oGCD and may now be used even while casting.
Yes, that includes formerly GCD skills like Intimidate.
However Intimidate now has the standard pet skill range of 50 yards, as per Kill Command (20 of actual range; 30 available via instant KC-like dash, thereby affected by roots), and stuns for one fewer second in PvP (in exchange for the otherwise up to 1.5s of added uptime against a stunned target and increased ease of keeping line of sight).
Growl still cannot pull threat against bosses, but it can redirect single-target attacks for 3 seconds if/while the pet is in range to be hit.
This does not turn the boss.
Distracting Shot (readded, below) can be toggled to swap between this same functionality or a full pull.
Pet actions now need line of sight on the enemy from only you or your pet.
You may, for instance, cast Intimidation on an enemy you cannot see, so long as your pet can.
New baseline passive, Spirit Bond:
Your pet’s excess healing done by it or you is transferred to you, and your excess healing done to self is transferred to your pet. Any finite defensive or healing benefits you generate for yourself, your pet also receives doubly.
Survival of the Fittest and Exhilaration no longer mention separate effects for your pet. Your pet now just inherently receives that same amount, and then doubles it. (This doubled amount cannot overfill back to you.)
Pets no longer auto-attack. This damage has been shuffled towards their basic attacks.
These basic attacks’ (pet Focus spenders) cooldowns have been decreased to a Haste-reduced 1.5 seconds.
Pets now have an area-of-effect attack spammable Focus spender, and will by default use it over the single-target attack whenever it would net greater damage.
Double-hitting the Attack command on a given unit will cause your pet to focus the particular target instead.
Call Pet now siphons 10% of your Attack Power “to maintain your bond with the creature.” Hunter attack potencies (% of Attack Power dealt) increased by 10% in compensation.
This replaces any need for a Lone Wolf compensatory effect.
The debuff is explicitly noted in the tooltip and mentioned by the Hunter trainer in Exile’s Reach, who notes the nonetheless significant added utility of having a pet through control of that second unit (with separate position and health, threat, and effect pools).
Beast Training
Returned as a 4x4 grid. The contents of Rows 2 and 4 vary based on pet species.
Row 1: Passives
10% Leech and 15% reduction to time spent charmed or incapacitated
10% Speed and 15% reduction to time spent snared or rooted
10% Reduction to Damage Taken and 15% less time stunned
10% Increased Healing Taken and 15% less damage taken from periodic damage.
Row 2: Shorter-CD Utilities
(Four options per pet, up from one. Options vary with species. The sample given here is for a Wolf.)
Furious Howl - 40% Cast pushback and AoE 40% movement and casting speed slow for 3 seconds. (30s CD)
Fang Drag - Pulls enemy along for up to 2s. Enemy may cast while moving only from Drag. Any displacing effect will interrupt Drag (40s CD)
Some other examples, as available to other pets:
Single-target knockback (30s CD)
Single-target knockback with interrupt against enemies landed upon (40s CD)
Conal knockback (40s CD)
Conal knockback with brief slowfall aura and 2s 40% falling damage reduction (45s CD)
Interrupt (30s CD)
AoE Interrupt (60s CD)
Single-target knockdown (45s CD)
Linear AoE knockdown (60s CD)
Row 3: Longer Utilities
Primal Rage - Grant 30% Leech and Speed to self and 4 nearest allies, fading linearly over 15 seconds. 180s CD.
Free-flight - Purges roots and snares from the target ally, and makes them immune to roots and snares and increases their speed by 40% for 4 seconds. 45s CD.
Interloper - For 4 seconds, intercept against target ally until those attacks would otherwise be fatal, or redirect a portion of the target enemy’s damage dealt onto yourself. 60s CD.
Vitalize - Purge up to 2 damaging effects and refreshes up to 2 finite healing or shielding effects on self or purge a buff and refresh one of your master’s damaging effects on the target enemy. 60s CD. (WIP)
Row 4: Defensives
Elusion: You are guaranteed to dodge attacks against you until having nullified damage equal to 20% of your HP.
Withdraw: The next attack that would kill you instead heals you to 20% HP and reduces damage taken by 30% but also reduces your damage dealt by 50%. This effect cannot occur more often than once per 2 minutes.
Bristle: Gain 20% Damage Reduction, increasing further with each instance of damage against it over the duration, to a maximum of 40%.
Inspirit: Heal for 25% of your maximum health over up to 10 seconds, with a portion of this healing being done instantly based on the portion of your health missing. For 10 seconds, your healing received is increased by 25%.
Lone Wolf
You have a Beast Training tab for each of your 5 pets. You may select any among these pets to use to “learn from”, offering your Hunter itself pet-independent (base Hunter) versions of each selection, along with Distracting Shot (in place of Growl).
These effects are nigh identical. Remember, though, that the healing and mitigation for you is only what is written on the tin; unlike your pet, you do not receive doubled effects. All actions remain oGCD.
The only notable changes:
Most skills that would previously dash to the target can now be used from range, just now from given from your point of view instead of your pets.
Skills that previously applied Mortal Wounds, Snares, or displacement effects directly will now instead be named and skinned after some kind of specialized toxin or munition, such as Hemotoxin for Mortal Wounds, Disruptor Charge for an AoE snare, or Windwall Ammo for an AoE knockback. These actions remain oGCD and can be used even while casting, but are applied to the primary target only on your next shot and do not begin cooling until the buff is consumed.
Net Results
The only unique utility of having a pet is now in having a second unit. All else can be done through the Hunter itself.
Pets are now considerably more durable and thereby much better able to be leveraged for utility, but there are also a couple extra clutch tricks Lone Wolves are capable of as well.
Miscellaneous
Eyes of the Beast is now instant-cast and no longer requires a channel, instead simply being toggled off at your command. Moreover, you may still use attacks while in Eyes of the Beast and can use the Move and Attack commands to move your original body about and change its primary target.
While in Eyes of the Beast, the Hunter-as-pet may intercept and interact with mechanics, but does not retain increased Avoidance against those previously ignored mechanics.
This will most likely see use only for Play Dead skips as a slightly safer alternative to Feign Death pulls, or the rare emergency mechanic-grab.
I made an edit to the OP, having pet-requiring utility abilities now just call your first stable pet temporarily. Your pet uses the on-demand utility as normal, but can’t deal damage or use family abilities when called in this way. It still takes damage as normal.
I dropped the Disengage and Posthaste changes as they are not needed if Master’s Call is still available.
Much of this is outside scope (I’m trying to make small changes that largely give Lone Wolf parity with pets as-is, rather than reworking everything), but there’s a fair bit of extremely broken things in here as well. Allowing Intimidation to work at 100yd, off-GCD, with either Hunter or pet providing LoS, is insanely OP. That’s 4x the range of Hammer of Justice, on the same cooldown (excluding Fist of Justice) and with a way easier LoS requirement (especially given Sentinel Owl), just for comparison. Pet offensive utility is uniformly single target short duration debuffs, and don’t include any spell pushback, cast speed debuffs, or displacement, so any Lone Wolf equivalents should be on par with that, not superior.
I’m not proposing the 10% damage be removed. Number still goes up. Number now also goes up for BM/SV (and non-Lone Wolf MM) if you are using a Ferocity pet.
I’m thinking another 5 to 10 percent if nothing else changes; nothing radical. I do have a strong sense of fair play (even after watching zero hunters compete in arena recently). I mean seems easy to tack on 10 percent into whatever calculation but according to some people around here it’s more complicated than cascading PID loops. I’ll be the first to say that beps and altani and co are against this idea and they are more current and accomplished than me though… their opinion is probably more valid for future builds and class fantasy (maybe).
REWORK Trueshot: You and your allies within 40 yards deal 5% increased damage to enemies above 80% health. You can activate Trueshot to increase the haste of all party and raid members by 30% for 40 sec. Allies receiving this effect become sated and are unable to benefit from similar effects for 10 min.
Granted to all Hunters at level 48.
Primal Rage removed.
The existing Trueshot ability in the Marksmanship tree is renamed Truesight, and otherwise retains its existing functionality.
Command Pet removed.
REWORK Master’s Call: Your pet and a friendly target are cleared of and become immune to all roots and movement impairing effects for the next 4 sec. If you do not have an active pet, you gain these benefits instead.
No longer locked to having a Cunning pet active.
Fortitude of the Bear can be used whether you have a pet or not, and is no longer locked to having a Tenacity pet active.
Hunter’s Mark no longer has a cooldown during combat and no longer grants additional damage to enemies above 80% health.
NEW - Hunter’s Tactics: Activate to cycle through various tactics which grant you and your active pet Pathfinding, Predator’s Thirst, or Endurance Training. The effects last until cancelled regardless of whether or not you have an active pet.
Granted to all Hunters at level 10.
Pathfinding, Predator’s Thirst, and Endurance Training are no longer granted by an active pet.
Results
The new damage boost group utility becomes automatic, not clunky to use.
Many utilities and buffs are no longer tied having a specific active pet.
All pet family-specific “Command Pet” abilities become available for use at all times.
Lone Wolf remains unchanged. Choosing Lone Wolf still requires the hunter to sacrifice optional pet-oriented utility talents (such as Intimidation) as part of its trade-off.
If the thrust of your suggestion comes only from PvP, then make PvP changes aimed more squarely at MM’s PvP excessive bottlenecks / pain points. Do not use it as reason to further remove balance or optionality from the actual Talent Trees.
50 yards, or just 20 if pet is rooted, per the adjustments suggested to allow cast times not to be that much less compatible with pet commands. More limited range, but oGCD and usable while casting.
It also lasts a second less than HoJ (for which FoJ is almost always taken, giving it up to double the frequency of Intimidate), and only a second more than Warrior’s ST stun despite having twice its CD. But feel free to trim an extra second off its duration, especially in PvP as the added uptime from being oGCD means more personal damage doable during the stun.
Sentinel Owl already allowed Intimidation to be used through walls, so that’s hardly relevant to what was suggested either.
Without even a shared CD? You’re then just giving the active utility of having 1 of each type of pet simultaneously.
Intimidation isn’t a pet command. It is a Hunter ability. The same way Kill Command or Flanking Strike or Bloodshed or Spearhead or Coordinated Assault or Command Pet are Hunter abilities.
Again, trying to focus solely on parity between Lone Wolf and not-Lone Wolf MM here. There are two primary issues:
Lone Wolf does way more AoE damage than MM with a pet
Lone Wolf is missing key utility only available with a pet
If you give pets an AoE damage tool that offsets the +10% to Multi-Shot/Trick Shots/Volley/Explosive Shot/Barrage/etc, and you give Lone Wolf the ability to call a pet temporarily to do pet things without giving up the damage bonus, you solve those problems.
It’s a utility action that depends on your pet, requiring that they are not dead or CCed. You can call it a combo ability, by all means, but it is not purely a Hunter ability.
I’m merely shifting it to work in line with other pet utility skills, rather than rotational combo damage skills, because to do otherwise disproportionately hurts MM’s ability to responsively use pet utility due to their cast times.
I did the first in my suggestion, just without making it force a Leech pet (as tying additional AoE damage to only Ferocity —already the obligatory pet type in PvE content until being threatened with one-shots for lack of FotB— would do).
You could also just go back to having no pet solely increase auto-attack damage, though (or, having a pet out solely decrease auto-attack damage).
Its been 10 years and blizzard cant figure out how to make lone wolf work. Its just not going to happen.
Best they can do is add in a range bow spec for rogue or dh and just go all in on pets for hunter imo. 10 years of summoning and dismissing pet just to lust or pet sac or freedom, highly unlikely its gonna be something blizzard invests time in.
