Ghostcrawler on Spirit Beasts & Pet Choice

[Kalliope]

That's how things are now. People don't care what you bring to vault and the other easy raids. If they do, then these raids are still hard for them, which is a different problem entirely.

Tell that to like 80% of hellscreams population >_>

mean they're still insulting people about GS

Well, lots of servers are still looking at GS, but really, it's NOT that big a deal for vault and such.

If they're complaining because they think it means bosses aren't going to die, then they're bads. x_X

[Demonicow]

I agree that pet's dps should be all around the same aside from the pet abilities and i think they should get rid of a pets ability if it doesnt suit the hunter for instance rhino's bleed affect, the birds of pray's disarm, the hyena's movement slowing and the raptor's bleed affect from savage rend, you should be able to choose what tree a pet should have but doing that will make it seem like the pets are plain and not unique and i also believe that trees should be longer like a players spec and i think a pet should get 1 talent point every other level starting at lvl 10 of course with extra options rather then being able to choose between specs thats just my opinion i think there should be more options for pets all together to make them more unique and less plain

[Ryai]

Er Demonicow..

the hyena's movement slowing and the raptor's bleed affect from savage rend,

What is wrong with the Snare or the Bleed? Or the Disarm? I mean it's not the most op but I can stand proud and say my little Rosalyn managed to own Deathknights and Retridins at 60 with a well timed Disarm.

'Lol I deathgrip'
'Lol I disarm you!'
'WTF'
'*Proceeds to lay down the smack*'.

I mean it's only cause of class/gear imbalances that Snatch is next to useless at 80.

[Gimlion]

Agreed with Ryai... The only truly USELESS ability I can think of is a rhino... and again, there will be someone who says they can find a use for that ability SOMEWHERE

[Kalliope]

Agreed with Ryai... The only truly USELESS ability I can think of is a rhino... and again, there will be someone who says they can find a use for that ability SOMEWHERE

Bleeds can't be removed, except by dwarves. Keeps most rogues out of stealth.

[Ryai]

Agreed with Ryai... The only truly USELESS ability I can think of is a rhino... and again, there will be someone who says they can find a use for that ability SOMEWHERE

Bleeds can't be removed, except by dwarves. Keeps most rogues out of stealth.

Rhinos are now less useless?

[Gimlion]

They don't cause a bleed effect Kaliope... They enhance bleed damage, which is useless as a hunter unless you have someone else causing bleeds... the only Bleed effect a hunter has is Piercing Shots, which is too deep in MM for a BM to get...

[Kalliope]

Ooh, misread the tooltip. That's dumb then. No wonder rhino owners were POed.

[Saturo]

That, and somewhat stealthily knocking people of the bridge in AV was fun. Or that time I knocked a guy off of Outland three times on the same day.

"Zomg a rogue! Knock off of the edge!"
A few minutes later...:
"Zomg a rogue again!"
Half an hour later I spot him again. I land next to him and dismount. /wave. He /sighs at me. I'm /rude to him. Ctrl+1. /bye as the Rhino charged.
I gave up on loremaster a week later btw.

[Kalliope]

I guess I don't understand giving tenacity pets raid utility ever since they nerfed scorpids. It overly hurts the hunter's personal contribution, in any spec. And at least with worms, the removal of armor is decent for soloing...

[Saturo]

But Scorpids did the same amount of damage as a Rogue if you did that correctly. The nerf was understandable.

[Kalliope]

But Scorpids did the same amount of damage as a Rogue if you did that correctly. The nerf was understandable.

Yeah, it was. That's not the part I'm objecting to.

I have no problem with hunters bringing utility pets to raids. But why do some of them have to be tenacity pets? Say we bring a dps pet with a family ability that provides utility. We're still doing decent dps, but not quite as much because we're losing a pure dps racial. Why bring tenacity pets into it? Then we're only providing utility and SIGNIFICANTLY lesser dps.

[Nimizar]

Rake is still pretty damned good, which is why cats are still up there in terms of viable dps pets. Making FH baseline for dps pets would give cats that AND Rake, which puts us back in BC with cats dominating.

True, but the question wasn't about the effect of making FH available to all pets, it was about the implications of removing all pet family abilities. Do that and Rake is gone too, so cats wouldn't have any advantage over other pets with access to the same pet talents.

No family abilities = no pet DPS balance problems due to family abilities.

However, it also means the loss of some nice flavour and versatility for hunters, hence why Blizz don't want to do it and why I'm advocating instead reworking all the pet abilities to be utility only. Sure, some players would go the "pet for every occasion" option and be breaking out a different pet for every fight, but most players would feel free to pick a pet they liked and stick with it.

[Nimizar]

I guess I don't understand giving tenacity pets raid utility ever since they nerfed scorpids.

Speaking of tenacity utility pets for raids... that's the only conceivable use of Rhinos now - supplying Trauma/Mangle if you have neither an arms warrior nor a feral druid kicking around, but also have others in the raid with bleeds that could use buffing (rogues? MM hunters? Rend from non-arms warriors?).

But yeah, I agree the personal DPS hit for providing raid debuffs as a hunter just isn't worth it. Raids just live without the buff rather than getting the hunter to bring such a suboptimal pet.

My money is very firmly on us seeing further pet normalisation in Cataclysm - I believe the real question is "How far will the pet normalisation go?"

[Palladiamorsdeus]

I LIKE the flavor that family abilities bring. If anything, I think that pet's need a second family ability, to fill in the blanks. Every pet family needs a utility ability on a moderate cooldown, and an offensive ability on a short cooldown. Have the offensive abilities be roughly equal within their respective types ((Cunning, ferocity, and tenacity)) and have the utility ability be some form of buff for pet, hunter, or both. This way everyone wins, pet's keep their individuality while having a more normalized DPS. You'll still have, and will always have people who will find the pet that does even .1DPS more and declare them the BEST pet, but I think that'd go a long way towards equalizing pets and giving everyone an option.

Although for that to be viable, you'd either need to pick your pets specialization at the outset, or our pets would have to have three actual talent trees. Me personally? I'd love to see our pet's have real talent trees.

*Scratches his chin* Actually, a thought just occured to me. Have our pet's be a blank template, and have each talent tree define them, pretty much as a mirror of players. Then have the pet family abilites be embedded in the trees. Like rake for cats would be in ferocity, and so on and so fourth. That is one of the few ways that I might actually like the normalization idea.

[Kalliope]

The problem with giving pets two family abilities is quite simply that there will be lots and LOTS of overlaps. It's hard enough for Blizzard to have designed so many unique family abilities in the first place, and now we're asking them to come up with a second set of unique abilities AND continue to add new tameable families? It's a bit much. The only way this idea would work is if an ability like prowl made its rounds through more families, since it's already doing double duty.

To give each family the option of three specs is a fascinating idea, but again, we'll see lots of repeated/shared abilities, simply due to the numbers. There are currently 32 tameable species, so 96 unique family abilities based on spec seems pretty unlikely.

And yet, perhaps shared family abilities based on tree isn't a terrible idea. Sure, we'll have duplicate abilities, but no single pet family will be identical to another, since each family will have three possible family abilities to spec into. Each would be deep in the tree, so the pet would only be able to have one at a time.

Let's take cats and bears for theory, since they're pretty easy to think of ideas for. Cats keep rake for ferocity, keep prowl for cunning, and gain swipe for tenacity. Bears would still have swipe for tenacity, but might gain a non-bleed ferocity ability and a non-stealth cunning ability. Here you have two pets with a shared family ability (swipe), but a different combination of options. This would free up Blizzard from having to devise a ridiculous amount of new unique family abilities without sucking the uniqueness out of pet families in general. There's still plenty of room for family abilities that no other pets have in any tree (like nether shock and warp are unlikely to be given to other pet families), but Blizzard wouldn't be forced to come up with the same for each pet tree.

The downside with this system is that multipurpose abilities, like warp, would be difficult to classify. Is it a tanking ability or a cunning one? Arguments can be made for both. Should it be the unique family ability for both trees? Is that fair to warp stalkers in general? It's a whole other can of worms, but it's interesting to consider.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

That was sort of where I was going. In that case, I don't see overlaps as a bad thing per se, since every pet family would have two abilities, so they could afford to have other abilities that were similar or even mirrors of other pets.

Same idea would apply to the pet talent trees, like you were saying. Swipe could be a shared ability between bears and cats, tendon rip could be shared between wolves and hyenas, poison spit between spiders and snakes, so on and so fourth. They could also shape the pet talent trees to a different, and overall greater degree this way, with cunning focusing on PvP oriented stats and abilities, tenacity focusing on tanking and/or solo abilities, and with ferocity focusing on group and raid type abilities. Finally, they could make each f damage type talent or talents do roughly the same amount of damage over a period of time. You still get the flavor of how each ability does what it does, but with no huge gaps. The only real detriment to that, that I can think of, would be the devilsaurs monstrous bite, and the raptors savage rend.

Just some thoughts. I'm not really fond of the idea of normalization, but at least this way there'd be some flavor aside from looks alone.

Edit: I meant to toss in that warp could be modified depending on the tree, so that it boosts attack, boosts evasion, or reduces damage done. And it could just replace charge for warpstalkers.

[Ryai]

Yeah honestly, the only time I see people not minding utility pets is for heroics. But for most heroics you don't need a utility pet. Unless it's like for FoS/PoS/HoR where if you're in a melee heavy group or where you can't always stay out of range or constantly standing still and shooting, would a utility pet be alright cause well you're dps is going to suck anyways.

IE see Aclove in HoR

Anyways that's where I could see a snare, stun, shock, silence or major debuff like worms can do, to compensate for the dip in DPS.

But raids?

Yeah Blizz I mean raids are really lacking in dps warriors, feral droods and the like. I mean pugs even have more feral droods usually than hunters.

>_> this is a sad and true fact, I got into VoA a bit before the last boss was tossed in I think. Or mayhaps a few weeks before. Idk. Anyways I was the only hunter.

There were like 3 feral droods.

would be the devilsaurs monstrous bite, and the raptors savage rend.

Oh that's easy Pala. Your devilsaur grows in size, tearing out a monsterous chunk of flesh from the target. Said target bleeds for XX amount of damage. Stacks 1/2[/3?] times. Savage rend can then be the same as tbh the crit is just to RNG for my liking.

[cowmuflage]

They should just make hydras tameable and makethem have like a volly shot or someting. Then that would be sweet. pointless but yeah

[Kalliope]

Err, Ryai, your results may vary, depending on your server/battlegroup. I've seen VoAs with SEVEN PALADINS....and then I've seen some with zero.

We won't go into my guild. Six or seven raiding hunters. Thank god our raid leader rotates us...