So, I’m not a hunter, I’m not a non-hunter. I’m an altohaulic, so I’ve done both.
So, on my hunters, I’m leveling. On horde, you can’t easily get charge rank 2 and 3. So, boars are stuck with rank 1, unless you swim from booty bay to westfall. Which, you wouldn’t have a reason to do until 18 or 19.
Cats are still great, but, they’re balanced so no one complains about them either way.
Wolves, may or may not be working. Even if they are, the howl would need a melee group to really work.
Turtles have a cool shield gimmick, but they are the slowest at killing by far. No one is sending a turtle after you in PVP, even if they have one for PVE reasons.
Lots of “good” pets aren’t good yet. We don’t have dash, or dive. So bats, owls, hyenas, and tallstriders, are kind of just waiting for season 2.
Carrion birds and raptors are basically cats but not as good.
Then there’s spiders, crabs, bears, and crocks, which are all totally useless.
Gorillas aren’t tamable yet.
So, we have, Scorpids, Wind Serpents, and Cats, as realistically the only options. With boars sort of getting an honorable mention, if you can get your hands on Charge 2 or 3.
Unusable pets - Spiders, Bears, Turtles, Bats, Birds (Owl, Carrion, and Tallstrider), Raptor, Hyena, Crocolisks, Crabs, Crabs and Crabs. Also Gorillas that you can’t even tame yet.
So there are three options.
Also, the other specs are just not great yet. Marksman and Survival just, doesn’t cut it.
Ask yourself this. Whatever class you play, if a Melee hunter came after you, could you kill it? What about a petless marksman? Wouldn’t you just get into their deadzone and kill them?
So if, one or two of the “useless” pets could get something other than “bite” and “cower” to use, then maybe you’d see less scorpids. You WILL see less scorpids (and more wind serpents) as the hunters level up, but really, if you’ve maxed out the relationship with your scorpid, and it’s still using a level 8 ability as it’s best in slot, most hunters probably don’t even bother to upgrade to “Claw 3” Claw 1 or 2 is just fine.
Then, if you’re going up against Warlocks, load the pet up on Shadow and Fire resist, and the pet probably has more shadow and fire resist than 97% of the players in the game. So of course you’ll have trouble killing it.
If Spiders could make you web parashot’s, or if Croc’s gave you +3% Crit, or if Tallstriders gave you a 5% movement speed buff, you’d be seeing more diversity.
But if Scorps and Wind Serpents fall, then everyone will just default to cats. And I suppose that would be more or less ok, but having one option instead of 3 isn’t exactly better, if “diversity of pets” really is the issue.
Just give me a reason to use a crab. I dare you Blizzard. (How about water breathing/swim speed?)