So the only special pet abilities now are slow and mortal strike? And that is only for a few pets? Am I getting this right? So the vast majority of pets will just be useless, bc why would I choose a pet with no special ability?
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I mean there are also shield wall/dodge abilities, but yeah.
The pet dispel abilities have all been removed due to the addition of tranq shot, and they haven’t been replaced yet.
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Also, did clefthoofs lose blood of the rhino passive? Are they seriously not going to add any pet abilities? We are going to be stuck with pets who only have “claw” as an ability? This is ridiculous. At least just give half of them slow, and the other half mortal strike. At least it’s something…
I actually miss the pet buffs from MoP. Would love it if they allowed each pet family to bring a raid buff. Like bears giving battle shout or sporebats giving arcane intellect. Allow hunters to be more versatile again.
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What? They remove pet dispel abilities? I’d rather putting them on pet than Tranq shot because Tranq shot will take a GCD.
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Tranq Shot works from range and is pretty well guaranteed to work. When it was on the pet it had to be on the dispel target. I had many times where I had to press the dispel button multiple times to get it to work.
Tranq Shot can also be used regardless of which pet you have out, or if you have none at all (ex. MM Lone Wolf, or if your pet got murdered by that rogue and he hasn’t given you the eternal 6s needed to rez the dang meatshield again).
Need Mortal Strike and a dispel? Gotchu covered.
It also depends on what pet ability replaces it. Personally, I’m still betting on (and somewhat hoping for) a cast speed slow ala Curse of Tongues. Given that Tongues and Numbing Poison made a return in SL, I don’t think it would be out of the question to add it as a pet ability as well. It’s also something that’s quasi-magical in concept, which aligns in general with the quasi-magical concept of most of the removed pet purge abilities.
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I just hope that pets get something. Right now all they have is “smack”. This is ridiculous. Why are hunters always so ignored by the developers?
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Even worse is they have been talking about removing all damage abilities from pets themselves and having them out only gives a 1% buff to the hunters damage output overall
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They were fun into MoP, but feel just crappy now because of the ridiculous and repetitive abilities compared to before.
That doesn’t sound very plausible.
[citation needed]
Going of this thread I think this is part of a larger problem. That being, ever since they homogenized huge amounts of pet family abilities into lack luster passives and minor secondary buffs, a lot of pet families have lost their unique feel and flavour. I honestly feel if Blizz has learned anything from classic/depruning, bringing back the unique pet abilities (Spider pet- web, etc) and ensuring they don’t prune anymore of them would really make hunter pets feel unique and interesting again. Instead of model/texture recolours of units that all work and do things identically.
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Having certain pets have powerful and unique abilities was one of the core issues with pets in SL. In raids, Spirit Beasts were literally the only option for BM (purge + defensive + heal). While soloing, Clefthoof largely were (ferocity for pet self-healing via leech, plus pet defensive, plus exotic ability that makes them even tankier). For SV (and MM, if they used a pet), it was generally a crane or stag in raids (for purge + defensive), and a ray or bat in M+ (for purge + lust).
59 pet families, and in the majority of content, any given spec has maybe 1-2 options. I have soooo many pets I’d love to use languishing in the stable because their ability set simply makes them non-viable. For example, my ghost wolf, which is ferocity + MS, useless in all content I do. My plethora of awesome looking cats, all of which have the dodge ability, which is universally inferior to the other two pet defenses and completely worthless in group content. I have a bird of prey (Rukhran) that perfectly matches my hunter’s transmog, but Birds of Prey are, for no readily apparent reason, Cunning spec, with a generally useless snare to boot (why Birds of Prey are Cunning and Carrion Birds are Ferocity, I’ll never understand).
Some of the new foxes look absolutely amazing, but they’re Cunning + pet dodge CD, literally the most useless combo out there. There are some pretty neat mechanical pets out there, but sadly those are all stuck in their own Mechanicals family, and that family is Cunning + pet defensive.
There are just so many pet families and looks out there that I’d love to use, but simply can’t because of spec-locking and family abilities forcing me into just a handful of viable options.
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Preach man preach!
Optimal and viable are not synonyms.
Totally agree. They should give us pet transmog, where we can change the skin of the pet to any of the skins in our stable
Would love to be able to run around with a clefthoof or spirit beast that has the look that I much prefer to have out with me all the time
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I want pet talent trees back honestly. Let me pick a skin and built the pet to my liking.
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When you’re doing actual difficult content, suboptimal is nonviable, unless the difference is quite small. The difference is very much not small when it comes to pets in PvE (and I’ve been told, PvP as well).
Or not invent a new system to fix what they themselves broke. Remove pet family spec locking, move lust, SotF, and Master’s Call baseline, and tie the pet abilities to spec rather than family (or go further and bring back the old pet talent trees).
Now you can use whatever the heck pet you want. There’s no reason I should be forced to use pets I’m rather ambivalent about, and perma-stable my favorites, just because Blizzard wants to try to hamfist in a notion of pets types mattering somehow.
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Sure, then use your optimal pets for the hardest content, and pull out the pet you really like the look of when you’re just out doing WQs and other grindy stuff.
Well, the dps isn’t different, so unless you have a hard requirement for Heroism or dispel on a fight, the difference would seem pretty small. And tranq shot is coming back so dispel won’t be an issue. Pets have mostly defensive differences, so any pet you can keep alive is close to optimal.
In M+, the purge is effectively mandatory, and unless you have a mage or shaman, so is the lust. In a raid, the purge is less relevant, but the defensive from Tenacity pets effectively is mandatory. This isn’t and has never been about DPS, it’s about the utility being mandatory. I don’t want mandatory utility tied to specific pet families, because I want to be able to use whatever pet I fancy, rather than the game forcing me into ones I may not like.
Ya, and in that harder content, I’m forced to use only a handful a pet families. That’s a bad thing. That’s a price too high for pet choice being “relevant” somehow. Lemme choose whatever pet I want, just like I can choose whatever armor look I want, without there being any mechanical difference on performance or utility.
I mean, your argument here could be used against transmog as well. Use your grotesque clown suit armor that’s got the best stats in the harder content, and then throw on your suit looking armor set when in town where it doesn’t matter, right? Why do we need transmog at all, if that’s a valid solution?
Oh, that’s right, because players care about aesthetics even during raids and M+.
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