Lonewolf too weak for Dragonflight

Classes Hunter
1

Considering how good and numerous the amount of utility our pets bring us in Dragonflight such as master’s call, pet family abilities, ros, intimidation, and bloodlust it leaves Lonewolf and its downsides feeling extremely underwhelming for Dragonflight

There are many limitations (friction, barriers) to a smoother experience within the MM Spec because of Lonewolf. I’m not here to say remove it whatsoever. I think it fits perfectly in the MM fantasy and should in practice be inherently valuable but its proving otherwise.

First and foremost, I want to express the entire frustration of raiding and doing dungeons and realizing I will be the one using bloodlust

If we gather every spec in the game that can use lust, all 3 mages, all 3 shamans, and most recently Evokers, these classes can use lust seamlessly, with no inherent downsides other than its own CD.
Hunter’s must meet 2 requirements to use lust which makes absolutely no sense in today’s game and there was even a time professions made scrolls that also behaved seamlessly.

Hunter devs if you’re reading this, Hunter’s have bloodlust and heroism. Hunters have it. Embrace it. Bring it up to par.

  1. Both Beastmasters and Survival MUST use a ferocity pet.
  2. If you are Marksmanship using Lonewolf you get double d**ked by having to call out a ferocity pet, use lust, and then decide whether or not the pet is worth dismissing again. This translates to either continuing to do DPS with your pet and losing out on the 10% or literally casting Dismiss Pet on a 3-second cast then waiting 20 seconds to get max stacks on LW. Have you ever gotten caught with your zipper down? It feels the same as this. You sit there while everyone is MEGABLASTING!!!1! because you decided you wanted to help your raid with a buff that literally every other application outside of the hunter class can insta use… dude.

Ok let’s move on to the next,

I don’t mind that I lose out on utility from my pet for extra damage but as MM the utility I bring to a dungeon or a raid in this age’s culture, environment, and atmosphere the downsides to being able to use pet utility for the group is not a “really” a choice but when it is it’s also a sucky a** choice for real. It’s double-edged.

Most classes in Dragonflight are moving in forward-thinking directions when it comes to their gameplay, their builds, their kits in pve and in pvp and to be honest, the MM hunter tree is very interesting and have so many options for different situations and I’ve been playing for hours on the ptr. I also played my alt Enhance Shaman for hours as well.

Long story short, Lonewolf in 2022 should be as the Hunter devs are portraying it to be, a fundamental mechanic to MM in the same way Aimed Shot is and should continue to play a central part of MM. But Lonewolf should 100% bring utility that a pet using MM can’t bring.

Allow Lonewolf Hunters the ability to bring utility that an MM Hunter using a pet cannot so that it can really differentiate and rebalance some of the power back to Lonewolf. Or make the experience streamlined so that we can play our spec with less friction than it currently has.

6 Likes
2

I was logged out and it defaulted me to this old alt of mine posting lol

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I find it fascinating that we’ve gotten here.

Starting from people running petless for fantasy or just more simple gameplay. Blizz added lonewolf to decrease the penalty for avoiding pet management and more complex gameplay, friendly quality of life for an alternative playstyle. Now it’s the expectation that the more simple playstyle should offer both more performance and comparable utility vs having to manage both your pet and yourself.

2 Likes
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More Simple? isn’t MM supposed to be the more ‘complex’ spec of hunter?

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I never realized dismissing your pet occasionally when jumping off certain ledges qualified as more complex gameplay.

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Yeah, it was. It was brought in at another age like a decade ago and was sufficient enough to remedy both pet issues and a spec fantasy which is still relevant. I’m not opposed to it. Fortunately, times changed and every spec has had advancements to their gameplay and mechanics, especially for Dragonflight and yet MM Hunters are still dealing with this interaction when so much has changed since then. We already have to deal with having specific pet spec abilities, pet family abilities, and potentially dismissing the pet after using the ability. That right there is already enough. And because of it, we don’t use them in a practical sense anymore unless you’re doing PVP. In PVP this friction is prevalent.

I cannot fathom the reasoning behind bloodlust having both a pet specialization and pet interaction required to use it and sacrifice damage when every other application of lust is straightforward to use with no downsides. Yet still heavily penalizing MM for it as if the spec is benefitting from that whole process when it is quite obviously not. All because of Lonewolf.

2 Likes
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As it stands today, Ferocity itself isn’t balanced against other options. I’d be perfectly fine if lust were swapped with something like Battleshout, and leech swapped with haste.

Lonewolf should stay baseline. Too many issues once you tie it to a talent point in the spec tree.

1 Like
8

it’s is fine, as long a the damage buff make it worth.
OP is right, pets bring too much utility to compete with Lone Wolf.
I’m one who like to play without a pet, and will pick Lone Wolf no matter what, but it feels bad most of the time.
I wish I could play solo content with lone wolf not feeling I’m wasting my time for not calling a pet, because It’s so much easier to play with a pet taking damage for you.