They should just let us switch pet specs again. The game has too many pointless combos right now (mechanicals look so cool but cunning with a shield CD is useless.)
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That’s not enough, tbh. You still have pets with terrible abilities like the dodge CD or self-cleanse. There’s no reason to bind all of that into a coarse one-of-three choice. That’s why a mini talent grid would work so well. Let us actually customize our pets.
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At the least, I wish they’d make these carbon-copied pets and abilities more unique or even useful. I’m tired of being stuck with just an SB or Clefthoof.
Being stuck with a spirit beast or clefthoof is a direct result of abilities being “more unique”. Those are the dominant options because they have unique abilities. You could give every single pet family in the game a unique power, but for any given situation, one of them would be the best.
The only way you don’t have that is by not having unique abilities and powers tied to specific types of pets.
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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/pet-family-suggestions/791413/24
True in the case of Exotic vs non-Exotic, which is supposed to be their basic perk.
I mean, even amongst exotics, it’s an issue. There are 12 families of exotic beasts, and yet I’d wager 90% of exotic pets used by max-level hunters are either spirit beasts or clefthooves.
Unique abilities simply don’t work if you also want to be able to freely choose your pet.
Look there is only like 3 to 4 designer to design class./spec and abilities for all the specs and talent trees and pet design. They hardly have enough time to Eve balance class and abilities (just look at SV Hunter they simply ran out of time so SV was just the way it is)
They aren’t going to spend to re do hunter pet.
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Pet Specializations & Talent Trees Example:
Level 10: Choose a specialization
Ferocity - 5% increased pet damage dealt
Tenacity - 5% reduced pet damage taken & 50% increased pet threat generation
Cunning - 2.5% increased pet damage dealt and 2.5% reduced pet damage taken
Level 15: Predator’s Thirst (10% Leech for Hunter and Pet), Endurance Training (5% Health for Hunter and Pet), Pathfinding (8% Speed for Hunter and Pet)
Level 25: Primal Rage, Survival of the Fittest, Master’s Call
Level 35: Mortal Wounds, Cast Speed Slow, Attack Power Debuff
Level 50: Blood of the Rhino, Thunderstomp (AoE damage with short cooldown), Lacerate (single target maintenance DoT)
Pet family abilities stay as-is, excepting Mortal Wounds - those pets would get a snare instead (for lack of any better ideas with the useful debuffs now in the talent tree).
Clefthoof would get a Charge with minor bonus damage on impact and a snare effect.
Specializations would have their trees set independently and you could change specs anytime out of combat, like player specs. Pet talents could be changed in a rest area, with a Tome, or could be reset by a Stable Master.
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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/pet-family-suggestions/791413/28
Yeah I like that. Just what my version was that you inter-cross some of the more specific things like charge or stomps for something like Gorrila vs Clefthoof while they still has at least another choice. To stay specifically optimal.
I feel like that doesn’t fix the issue, then. Snare would be functionally required for PvP, or maybe the 1m CD DR cooldown if pet survivability is still a critical liability. Soloing would mandate one of the cooldowns. The self-cleanse and dodge are still effectively entirely useless, substantially weakening 2/5ths of the pets.
Like, why not make the defensives part of the talent tree?
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I’d personally rather you choose the pet and then train customized abilities.
When you tame them they are one of the four types (ferocity, tenacity, cunning, exotic.) Each pet has a specific family they are most likely to be. For instance stags tend to be tenacity 80% of the time, if you want a different family then you have to farm for it.
Once you tame the pet you can do quests to learn abilities that are available to that family. Each ability is unlocked by training a pet of the family that normally has it and receiving a questline to unlock something like a conduit that allows you to train other pets with that ability.
Thats just me though I’d love to use the stags (or hyenas, raptors and even spiders) but I only use ferocity pets.
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That seems way more annoying than fun. Farm a unique pet for hours, or even days only for it to be the wrong family? Meh.
Outside of some specific rares it really wouldn’t be that bad. Hours to get a pet that lasts for years is nothing. Most of us have spent weeks/months farming some of the rarer pets.
Many of them are not even being used at the moment anyway as spirit beasts (pets most likely to be unique) currently suck. This would at least give people the opportunity to decide to farm it if they really wanted it.
I mean you could remove family abilities entirely and add another row where you choose between Shell Shield, Tendon Rip, and ???, but I was trying to limit the number of rows.
I LOVED the pet training system in Vanilla and TBC (minus having to spend points on really basic stuff that every pet had to have anyway, like the spell resistances to not die immediately to cleave in raids), and would happily go back to that if I could.
However, I think the game has evolved to the point that this wouldn’t be well received by the player base. Too much effort for something that other classes don’t even have to think about.
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I’m trying to limit (read: eliminate) any mechanical impact tied to specific pet type, simple as that. I don’t ever want the game to tell me to put away my favorite pet because another one is more advantageous in a given situation. We’re not warlocks, we’re not thematically supposed to be hotswapping pets like hats, using whatever is more useful at the time. They’re our trusted companions, and we’re their trainers. We should have complete customization of their combat abilities.
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I don’t ever want the game to tell me to put away my favorite pet because another one is more advantageous in a given situation.
Tbh, I want there to be situations where you should/need to switch pets, whether in niche situations or not. There’s a reason that there’s so many with former different abilities and passives, so switch it up or have different uses.
That’s a warlock thing, swapping out pets like they’re tools in a toolbox.
Go back to the old RPGs. Hunters/rangers/archers, the sort that had animal companions, had one animal companion, period. They didn’t tame an army of them and hotswap them based on what they needed. They had one companion, who was a close to them as a spouse or soulmate.
Think of Tyrande and Ash’alah (her white tiger), or Rexxar and Misha. These are iconic pairings, not a hunter and a useful tool for the given situation.
But really, it just comes down to player agency. If I’m going to swap out a pet, I want it to be because I want to use that other pet, not because the game is telling me that, say, a spider or a worm or a clefthoof is the “best option” in that situation.
Rexxar has 3 different pets in canon. Misha is the one in all the artwork, but he also has Tusker and a raven I can’t remember the name of. If you use him as a bodyguard in Legion content, he swaps between them seemingly on a whim.
What about in Classic, where you had useful pets for attack speed, yet a dozen equally for abilities like Wolves’ Howl or tankier pets’ Stomps?