Hunter Tidbits from the 2/26 Twitter BlizzChat

Mania · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:59 pm

You can find the entire chat on the WoW forums: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 4394&sid=1

Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast - are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?
A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.
A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of "active" pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

Aleu · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:28 pm

Mania wrote:

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.
A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of "active" pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

Turning us into Pokemon Trainers. -cough-

...Wait. >_>

Dragonpuff · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:46 pm

I wouldn't mind being a Pokemon trainer if I could have the pets I wanted! I want a Spider and a Chimera right now, but I only have 1 slot left...

Bulletdance · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:26 pm

The stable slot thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense ot me, but if it lets me ahve more pets its a welcome change.

Kalliope · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:41 pm

I guess Blizzard doesn't want us to be able to summon ANY PET IN THE GAME whenever we want.

I kind of like this idea; three actives we can access from anywhere, then a whole lot more we can choose from to put into those slots. I would definitely retame a few pets. I think they should keep the active slots at five, just cause we're used to them, but I'd take that nerf in exchange for the overall buff.

Kinda bummed about mongoose bite; I hope they're giving us something shinier for melee so we're not totally stuck. Raptor Strike does NOT cut it.

Nimizar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:49 am

The stable slot thing makes a lot of sense to me. From Blizzard's point of view, allocating extra database storage to characters is a problem. The individual increase per character may be small, but multiplied over millions of players it poses a technical challenge.

By going to a "has tamed" and "currently using" model, it means the "has tamed" set of pets can just be stored as an ID for the kind of pet it is, the pet's name and perhaps its current level. The full set of pet info (current XP within the level, talent points, anything else they store pre-calculated rather than derived on the fly) would only be held in the database for the active pets.

From a UI point of view, consider if the current stable view was changed to have 3 kinds of slot:

Current pet: As now
Active pets: 2 slots (similar to our original two and current four stable slots)
Other pets: Unlimited (or very large) number of slots similar to mounts and non-combat pets

At the stable master you could switch your current and active pets, and switch either with "other" pets.
With Call Stabled Pet, you could only switch your current and active pets - you wouldn't have access to all of your other pets without going back to town and finding a stable master.

The 3 active slots (current pet + 2 others) would allow for access to pets for 3 different roles (DPS, PvP, pet tanking), while the unlimited other pets would allow for pets to be retained for sentimental or pokemon reasons.

Decent idea, and by going from 5 active pets back to only 3, they would give themselves a fair bit of room to store inactive pets without increasing hunter character profile size at all.

Nimizar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:52 am

One other point - I'd expect them to make the "active pet" selection change with dual spec if they went through with this. So you would actually have up to 6 active pets - 3 for each spec.

So I'd probably have my devilsaur, worm and gorilla for BM, and my wolf, gorilla and something else for SV.

Ryno · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:51 am

Mmm, I like this idea, hehe.

Mania wrote:

Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner.

I WANTED TO BE A MONGOOSE :cry:

FlightofthePhoenix · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:08 am

I actually think I'd like the new system. That way I can keep pets I love but I don't necessarily want for combat. I've had to abandon a few pets that have broken my heart. May future generations of hunters not have to go through that.

Gimlion · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:06 pm

Nimizar wrote:

One other point - I'd expect them to make the "active pet" selection change with dual spec if they went through with this. So you would actually have up to 6 active pets - 3 for each spec.

So I'd probably have my devilsaur, worm and gorilla for BM, and my wolf, gorilla and something else for SV.

Wow, didn't really think of that when i read the post, but that's very possible as well. I think I'd REALLY like this new idea, even if you do only get 3 active slots instead of five. Granted, it won't stop me from making hunter alts... b/c I'm an Alt-hunter/nature-ish/petaholic

Bulletdance · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:53 pm

Ohh so it is kinda like pokemon. You put some in your "pc" or stable master and then you carry around a team of three. I just hope the increase in pets we can have is really dramatic like over ten or more, but only time will tell I guess.

Daetur · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 11:31 pm

I WANT TO CATCH EM ALL PLEASE

Nimizar · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:29 am

Keep in mind that GC did say he was "arm waving" about the stable slot idea. So it's something they're thinking about, but it may not be all that high on the development priority list.

Chrizesu · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:57 am

I think the reason for the active-non active idea comes from it's not very handy to quickly call a large list of what you have from the server all of the time, but easier to have a 3 slot active rotation and then bringing back stable masters more with switching between actively using pets and ones held for looks/status/rp/ect.

Kalliope · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 1:14 am

Nimizar wrote:

Keep in mind that GC did say he was "arm waving" about the stable slot idea. So it's something they're thinking about, but it may not be all that high on the development priority list.

Or maybe he was hoping to get some feedback from the community about this idea that he favors.

Hopefully a wave of positive feedback would push the rest of the development team to agree.

Suzi · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 5:23 am

I know it's just in idea stage at the moment, but I'd love more stable slots. It really wouldn't bother me if they lowered the active slots and the rest were at a stable master, afterall, it was only one expansion ago we had to visit them to access our 2 stabled pets while we ran around with only 1 active and no other way to swap them out. I'd be happy to compromise if I thought I'd have more stored away.

Although more stable slots means I have less excuse to have more than one hunter... but I'll get over that little detail.

Darknez · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 6:32 am

Maybe it'll be a drop down list of pets with a list of model and/or textures types variants!

But like the "old days" (taming for pet skills) you'll have to "capture" (tame) each of the model/textures styles once before you can choose it....

Nimizar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:12 am

Suzi wrote:

Although more stable slots means I have less excuse to have more than one hunter... but I'll get over that little detail.

My excuse for having more than one hunter is that I want to level something through the revamped Azeroth and rolling another hunter means I also get to see what it is like levelling a hunter with the new resource system.

sargeaw · **Posted:** Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:58 pm

I agree with the rest of you. I would take any active changes as long as we can have more Pets!!

Protego · **Posted:** Thu Mar 11, 2010 3:15 am

3 pets does sound very Pokémon-like. And I'll love that, when the update the Stable situation. I want a couple of pets back that I had to Abandon.

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