Pretty much everyone that has posted here has stated that they are fine with the target being dictated by a spell, Bane of Doom for warlocks and Flame shock for shamans.
Doesn’t have to be /petattack. Anything is an improvement over a core ability either targeting something it’s not in range of and standing there or, just standing there even if the target is in range.
So… “No,” actually.
That’s just not how temporary pet summons work though. It’s very consistent across all classes, isn’t it?
WOTLK Mages Water Elemental was a 45s summon with a pet bar including abilities.
So there it is! There’s some precedence. Was there any cost to the mage to get that pet bar, such as an additional talent point, etc.?
The water elemental itself was a talent point but was basically a no-brainer getting down to Deep freeze.
Not sure what that means in the context of costs measurement.
Iirc, UH DKs have to spend talent points (1 or maybe more?) to have a permanent pet, with controls. It is in the Uh tree and unavailable for other specs. In Retail, I think it may be by default for UH and also unavailable for other specs.
Hunters and warlocks have controllable pets without having to spend, as part of their core class toolkit (presumably trade offs may have been made elsewhere in class design/balance).
I’m not saying, “don’t allow all pets to be controlled by players,” I’m more trying to get a better sense of the trade offs. There would for sure be impact to things like arena performance, if now Frost or Blood DKs could set their pet to stun a rogue or follow them out of stealth instead of sitting on the mage, or whatever…
Shamans cannot use Fire or Earth Ele in Arenas or RBGs, I’m not sure about DKs
DKs cannot use AotD. Presumably, this change (to allow controls for temporary pet summons) would apply to other pets than just elementals, such as Spirit Wolves or any other class/spec that has such summons.
Also, I gave a single example of something that would be obviously impacted from the top of my head, it wasn’t meant to be taken as an exhaustive list of everything possibly impacted.
My point was that most of these long CD pet summons are primarily utilized in PvE and would have minimal if not zero impact on PvP which was your originally implied concern.
My point was clearly stated as:
There are trade offs, and changes have consequences, both intended and unintended.
Anyway, as I already stated (quite clearly):
Just trying to have a better understanding of the situation, not trying to assert an opinion or preference.
And as stated, that won’t fix the issue people have with guardian’s missing. All it does is lower the skillcap for totem positioning. Compared to Doomguard the fire ele is already vastly outperforming it. Removing positioning only buffs that for poorly played shamans.
You have no idea what you’re talking about, we have two shamans in the top 10 world rankings in guild and have the issues the OP is mentioning. You’re just listing RNG instances. To add, they also need to fix searing totem not attacking if it’s dropped out of combat please.
All pets and guardians have the problem. Adding /petattack won’t change that.
This post is about fixing the AI bug that’s clearly there, either by following the flame shock target of the shaman or by the petfollow trick that worked with UH Gargs. You don’t have much constructive feedback on this topic and don’t have much knowledge.
This post is about adding “/petattack” controls to a fire ele…not about fixing the bug ALL pets and guardians have.
Position your totems better.
The nightmare is over friends
It’s not /petattack, that was never going to happen, but this is spectacular.
Shaman Fire Elementals will now prefer targets that have their master’s Flameshock active on them, and will switch to those targets over targets without their master’s Flameshock. This check occurs only once every several seconds, so may take a little time to occur.
So they should have Hunter pets and Warlock demons not be able to be controlled either, right? Instead you press an ability to summon the pet for the fight and those two classes should just “git gud” at when to press the button?
But Blizzard clearly disagrees with your mentally unwell take, so all is gucci for Shamans.
Cleary Blizzard thought you’re wrong cuz they fixed it. Thank god your terrible takes have no impact on the game, never suggest anything again.
Rotate more accounts 
Squeakiest wheels got the unneeded change while the actual real bugs got ignored…again.