I've always seen my pet as both a companion character and a secondary weapon. As such, being able to choose both a pet's appearance and its spec is along the same lines as transmogging a weapon.So far, I'm fortunate that my favorite pets won't seem to have their specs changed (even though having a monkey wearing a fez act as tank amused me).Still, I'm leery of any more big changes to hunters. I had played Survival from Wrath through WoD, and Legion destroyed that spec. It took me a while to find a good Marksmanship build and rhythm to get comfortable again. I've already made play-style compromises in order to keep my hunter as my main, and I'm not keen on making many more.
I'm really confused reading through this since I tried to make it clear in the last post, but all three pet types do the same DPS. It is purely a utility choice as to which you want, it's an extra talent effectively if you want to be pragmatic, or alternatively, it allows you to play any pet just that they lock you into a specific type of utility. This is not a nerf to Spirit Beast output.
Nice! I play a hunter main and am looking forward to the changes. While it has been convenient to use any pet for any role, I do miss my pets having an identity and a purpose. Right now it feels like I've got a stable full of a bunch of skins rather than a collection of pets for various circumstances. I'm sure people will complain (they always do), but this hunter is looking forward to switching things up a bit in BfA :)
Returning player, missed out on Cata and MOP, so feel free to correct me for things I get wrong. I also think this is a big step backwards. Being able to switch Pets specialization was one of the best things to have happened to hunter pets IMHO. Don’t fix what ain’t broke Blizz. You, doing away with the feeding pets thing, good. This, locking pets to a certain spec (again), is bad. Certain pets have almost always had certain special abilities, and keeping it that way (or giving them to new families) is fine, but please, please, don’t lock the specializations.Used to be a hardcore raider in vanilla, and when the raid needed a certain pets special ability, we would bring that certain pet. Same goes for PVP. I remember when patch 1.7 came out, and the bloodseeker bats from the old Zul’Gurub raid, having 1.0 attack speed was the fastest pet plus able to interrupt casters, was the bomb. Every hunter and their aunties went to ZG and tried taming this bad boy. So the capital cities were packed with the things with all us hunters flaunting them off (trying to tame it was similar to taming Fenrir now). As much as I’d love the nostalgia, being a casual player now, all I want to do is play dress up barbie with my toons, and my pets with it. The only pet ‘look’ I want now are the Rak’shiri skin and all colour variants of the WOD wolf(Garn Nighthowl, Maia the white). I’ll be damned if I can’t have them out and on Tenacity when I’m doing PVE solo content, which is 98% of the time (I play MM, and having all aggro on your pet while you dish out all the damage is very satisfying for me).Yes, I do group content like Mythic Dungeons and LFR from time to time, and when I do, I’m more than happy to get a Ferocity pet out no matter what it may look, to help out with the raid. Pets now don’t have flavour because they can be specced into any of the 3 roles? Quite the opposite mate, see my comment about the bats above. Blizz wants me to ‘think’ about what pet I should bring to certain contents? I got 2 kids and household chores to do, I log into azeroth to unwind, not ‘think’ about that sh*t. Plus I’ve done Rhok’delar, we weren’t able to use our pets to kill those 4 elite demons then, did we Blizz? So why can’t we just use pets that we like the looks of effectively? Let us veterans just have our dress up pets, those hunters who want to ‘think’ and more flavour, they can just keep their pets how they first tame it. Sorry for the wall of text.
No, just no. This is a horrible change. Especially with the spirit beasts. Yes, it's alpha, good. Change it back!
Please give Direhorns and Rodents a family ability too, Blizzard! Don't leave any of our feral friends out!
To RyuFlameHeart, without Hati how would you have two of your own pet as you put? Anwser is you can’t because Hati allowed hunters the ability to have two pets. Whether you used Hati appearance or swapped appearance to one of your other pets you need Hati. If you really like having two hunter pets then you like Hati and should support other players in their effort to have Blizz keep Hati in game. Blizz please keep Hati in game for all hunters.
Finally ... having all the pets literally have the same spells was stupid. The damage output seems to be the same regardless of the spec. Just the 2 spec spells seem to differ. I think it's a great idea. Having a ferocious turtle or a tenacity moth seemed stupid. Not to mention the different pet classes were basically all the same except for visuals.
This is absolutely horrible. Talk about one step forwards, two steps back. Hate, hate, hate this. Why does Blizzard have a boner for taking customization away?Good luck, everyone else. I'm not changing my pet in groups just because you want a buff. I don't care if we wipe or I'm kicked, the only reason I play a Hunter is choosing a fun pet that fits my RP/Transmog.Also, yes, it isn't final, congratulations. You think kicking and screaming after an election is over is gonna get your candidate elected? Now is the time to show Blizzard we hate this idea and won't stand for it.
As long as damage potential across pet specs remains the same, I would welcome this change.Either way, it would still be better than how it currently is as a raiding BM hunter. Since the only acceptable BM pets for raiding are either Core hounds (for lust), Quilens (for battle rez) or Spirit Beasts (for extra heals). Bringing any other pets to the raid gimps yourself for having at least one less utility that could've been useful to the raid. At least with this new change there will be more options for pets with lust that could be brought into the raid (either as BM or other specs)I would, however, be even happier if they would just stash the combat rez ability onto the Cunning spec as well, which would mean even more options for me (instead of always bringing a Quilen or a Crane/Moth)
With all spec doing the same damage (e.g. no Spiked Collar, etc) it really shouldn't have as big of an impact, however it still somewhat does.The problem with this system is also that you'd still force players into a single spec as the Tenacity abilities seem rather strong. Hunter could go ferocity for Bloodlust, or just let mages/shamans do the bloodlusting and get a tenacity pet as 20% damage reduction and +10% HP are really strong for raiding.Also, I would miss it if pet specs are predetermined by blizzard as it means we have to give in on customization. So I hope they rethink this.
Like many others.. my opinion is this is a dumb backwards step. Didn't we already go through this? It's going to mean back to seeing only certain pets again... (hunter since 2005 here)