So, I’ve spent some time thinking about hunters and their pets lately. I do not main a hunter and haven’t really found it an enjoyable class to play personally. But I see the appeal.
So, I found myself wondering this morning, were hunters designed and given “bad AI pets” on purpose to keep them out of group content, or has Blizzard been trolling Hunter Mains since vanilla?
Most people like to blame Hunters troubles on bad pet AI. And to an extent I can’t argue with this. But, this morning I had a thought that I can’t shake… Warlocks… I don’t remember a single point in WoW history where Warlock Demons caused the kind of trouble hunter pets do. In fast Warlocks truly appear to be favored over hunters. As they both fill a similar niche… Ish. They do it in different ways and have different toolkits. But they are both classes that rely on their pets. Sometimes heavily.
But throughout WoW’s history, “Huntards” have been lambasted by groups because there pet will catch up just to also bring 25 unwanted mobs with them.
Heck, in Naxx (pretty sure) Warlocks even had the distinction of needing to perform tank mechanics in a raid. But Hunters are shunned and not even given a serious look for high end teams unless they’ve got a proven track record of knowing how to work around “bad pet AI”. Whereas, a Warlock was the difference maker in world firsts at TGP earlier this month.
I just find myself wondering, did Blizz design hunter pets bad on purpose to make them the face of solo content? Or have they been trolling Hunter Mains the entire time because they knew players would flock to hunters in droves because of the “class prestige” (meaning I can recreate my WoW toon in my DnD group with very little effort).
As someone who’s played a BM hunter since BC and also a demo lock, hunter pet ai pathfindimg is truly horrendous. Pets still to this day will drag half a dungeon worth of mobs with them trying to catch up to you
It’s why I mostly stick to outdoor content now. Not worth the stress as dungeons get more and more complicated
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I suppose that’s what I was wondering. How the hunter mains feel about/see this point. Do you feel trolled or like you were pushed in the direction of solo content instead on the hunter
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It’s more blizz just being too lazy to update the hunter pet AI. I realize there’s ways around it, but lock pets will at least teleport when you jump off a ledge in a dungeon and appear at your side
I chose to do solo content in the hope one day blizz does look at hunter pet AI and fixes it.
Its still a very fun class to play when you mastered the limitations of the class
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I don’t like pets, so I play marksman exclusively and therefore my take on this comes from an outside perspective. While pet AI has somewhat improved over the years, I agree it is not perfect. However, I don’t think pet AI is to blame for hunters having a bad rep in the community. It is rather a small part of the problem.
Hunters are always advertised as being the best new player or solo player friendly class to level and play, because of the pets. With the large sample of players picking up hunter as their first class because of this, it is inevitable to witness the rookie mistakes. Anecdotally, I found the “hunters being bad” stereotype often comes from the inexperience of the player rather than the bad pet ai (wich is not completely innocent either as i said before).
My biggest example comes from my own experience back when I started my human hunter in the last weeks of WoD. I had no clue pets didn’t jump down a ledge with you in dungeons, or what was pet taunt (and how to turn it off). I had to learn these things by running dungeons, messing everything up, and having someone call me out and explain to me what I was doing wrong - because there was nothing in the game to prepare me for those issues. It was commonplace for the community to know those things, but not new players, especially solo ones.
Blizzard adressed some of these issues over time, like pet taunt auto-turning off in dungeons, but the damage is done ate this point. Hunters will always have a bad rep, even if the rookie mistakes are less of a problem now
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What does this have to do with story??
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I use my phone and don’t always know which of the things to pick. So I aim for something kinda relevant. In relation to the story, why can’t hunter pets have AI like Rexxar’s pets. There, story related and still asking the same question.
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Ma’am this is the story forum
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Ok, so tell me what Forum you would have put it in because I didn’t see a better option. I even replied with a response that makes it story relevent.
But if you have another option for where to put it I will keep that in mind next time.
Probably general discussion or even the hunter class forum.
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That’s because groups cheat. Instead of going through the dungeon in the paths intended they find unintended short cuts and jumps and the AI isn’t designed to deal with these deviations, so Hunters have to spend time dismissing and resummoning their pets. If they don’t think to do so, the hunter pet mob train is what results. This has become worse as the urge to speed run dungeons has reached ridiculous levels.
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Plus early on in WoW pets did have ‘aggressive stance’ which was the default. Where the pet will go out of its way to attack anything it sees. You had to either swap to defensive (pet only attacks when you get attacked) or even passive (pet does nothing) and use macros to tie in your pets auto attack to your abilities. It wasn’t until cata that aggressive stance got changed to assist, where the pet will only attack enemies after you attack them, or take damage.
It was less of a problem for warlocks because the main pet you would use for group pve content was the imp, which was ranged. While nearly all hunter pets are melee. The voidwalker was mainly used for solo content, succubus for pvp and felhound was very situational. Felguard was demonology only.
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I remember clearing a whole area of low level critters that way.
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These are the kind of points I was hoping to hear. It’s so easy to say “Blizz was lazy and didn’t want to do X” but this feels more like the Hunter was genuinely just designed as a solo content class. Not to say it doesn’t have group benefits. Back in the day, Aspect of the Pack meant 1 Hunter was guaranteed in your raid.
But, with this realization, we now have to ask why it seems like Blizz has moved to largely ignoring solo content, thus rendering the solo focused class virtually useless save for legacy content or pounding out the campaign in TWW so your main doesn’t have to with shared rep
It also bugs me that they make you remember to bring your pet back if you are rushing back. And you have to remember whether it died first, and needs to be revived and not called. And of course, if you try and call a pet you need to revive, it gives you same sound you get if you successfully called it.
It really does feel like having to deal with a pet is something Blizzard wants to be a burger.
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I got use to dismissing the pet and re-summoning them. In Classic I then have to heal them and feed them, before battles. Instances with short-cuts become a pain.
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But there are sooooo many new players since vanilla and tons of you OG’s have left. So the players who know how to pet dance on Hunters are the larger pe cent of hunter players. You came up when being a hunter paid off when you got good, nowadays, it’s tough to argue for a hunter in a group even if they are the best hunter to ever hunter. I don’t play one, but it makes me sad that there is still a class in this game designed around solo content when solo content is often left on the back burner with each new Expac.
I’m glad to see some of y’all are still around. Maybe the currently standing views on hunters can be saved yet haha
I couldn’t tell you what their problem is with Hunter. I always thought it was because it was always an easy class to play, especially BM so they treat it like performance doesn’t really matter.
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Yea, this thread has made me realize Hunters are probably designed and reworked around solo players interest instead of group benefit.