“When I bumped into Ghostcrawler in the convention center, I asked if our pets would still have their talents. He said that right now Blizzard is inclined to just do away with pet talents entirely, since there aren't really any meaningful choices there. However, he did say that the devs may also change the pet talents to be similar to the new player talent system, if they can find really good decisions to be made there. Hopefully they'll go that latter route, as that level of pet customization is one of the things that sets hunters apart from the other pet classes.”
This really got me thinking. 1st I would have to agree, there is defiantly a lot of choices in the pet trees that are not much of one. They are just a simple “increase dps by this much, next”. Going off the “new” philosophy of MOP, they really seem to want to make most of the talents trees more or less or less about making a tougher decision about where you want your talents, more fun, less cookie cutter. I really like this idea, but it does make it hard to try an implement this for pets, simply due to you wanting them to really perform certain rolls and to be able to do them effectively.
But what if you could create one single tree, that could achieve what all 3 tress do now, but with a little more choice, and yet a lot more potential options?
This is a tree that I have come up with, that might be able to achieve just that. (Now it’s just a work in progress, and by no means am I educated in the ways of perfect balancing, but I did try to keep it as reasonable as possible).
So let me know what you guys think...?
Do you have any ideas of your own? What do you think is missing? What could be added? Make up your own trees! Even if you hate the idea, it’s all good
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So 1st of all, cleaning up all those talents that every pet could access, whether is was a Speed, Dps, Armour, Attack Power increase, etc. If all pets could obtain them and they were just boring point usage and are now... Gone!
Within this, some of these stats would most likely be now needed to be rolled into the core stats of pets to keep them at about where they are now stat wise. Serpent swiftness for example, all pets would simple have their attack speed increased by 10%. Was their anyone that wanted to spec their pet in a dps direction ever not just click this anyway?... meaningless point usage.
There are a few other talents that, due to the edit of the trees would also now become a core pet ability. The main one within this tree would be Dash/Dive, which would now become a pet basic ability.
Now that said, there will be some talent tiers that are clearly defined and aimed at tanking/dps/pvp direction. As much as I would love to have made them all much more “difficult” to choose from within each tier, it was a tad difficult to do so. This was simply due to the fact (and more so due to the tenacity tree) that there where so many skills within the trees, that were near mandatory in order to achieve the level of ability they have today. Some have these have been adjusted to incorporate a loss from elsewhere, and others have been rolled in together to create a stronger talent.
So with that said, lets have a look at them ~
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Tier 1
Lets start with the 1st Tier. This one is fairly basic, and is based around movement. As I mentioned before, I would make Dash/Dive a basic skill now so all pets would have access to it. All of these have thier advantages in certain areas, but none more so over powering than others. Boars speed does have a small tenacity advantage due to the 2% dodge (which was shaved off Pets Barding) but is not a deal breaker if you still wished to have Charge.
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Tier 2
Tier 2 is based around healing. Rhino's blood, is much more tenacity based due to the 18% extra Stamina (which is a combination of The original Rhinos blood and greater stamina). This was added with others powerful healing abilities so they could not be stacked on a tenacity build and be possibly to unbalanced. The same abilities as before, Lick you wounds is more of a burst healing ability choice, with Blood thirsty a slow a steady set and forget style heal.
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Tier 3
Tier 3 is a much more obvious directed build. The 3 defining abilities from the prior 3 trees are present here. Again if someone wanted to use a thunderstomp in a more dps based build, it would not do more dps than any other, but would give you the added advantage of adding a little more aoe threat to a dps style build. That said, with a single target dps loss as it's balance. These skills would pretty much act the same as they currently do on live.
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Tier 4
This Tier focuses a bit more on protection and some utility. Corehounds Guile takes both the Armour boost of both Natural Armor and Pet Barding, and combines it with Greater Resistance to create an amazing tanking, and protection talent. This is offset with Heart of the phoenix to again, not make an extreme tanking pet spec not overly extreme. Yet this gives you an option off all or nothing...x2. Cornered is here to balance the other end of having some utility with some protection.
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Tier 5
Tier 5 are all very unique combinations of older skills. Stalwart Protector again defiantly has some tanking flair to it (with intervene and the grace of the mantis) but also has some great pvp utility with Lion Hearted within. Scent of blood has a nice ramping crit bonus that is similar to culling the herd and spiders bite combined. Lastly Carrion Feeder by name, hungry by nature. This one is a combination of carrion feeder combined with owls focus, but only during the bonus health %, giving your pet a "Kill Shot" type period during low health.
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Tier 6
The ROARING last tier, and probably the most interactive. I know we already had these abilities before lvl 90, but these ones are not quite the same. Roar of Invigoration would most likely not be on auto cast now, but it is now a complimentary combination of Roar Of Recovery and Last Stand. This would make it have tenacity tang, but not compulsory. Roar of the wild, is very simmilar to call of the wild, but now with a similar added bonus of what tricks of the trade has for a target. This way not only can you help your self, but you can choose to help another along the way. Lastly is Roar of Sacrifice. Very simmilar to the last version but now has an added healing % taken bonus (simmilar to what Spirit bond has now) added on to give it an added bump in protection and nice pve/pvp cross over.
One other thing, I can see a few people asking, but what about the extra point/points a beast master gets from the current last talent in the BM tree? Well if that ability was still around, I was thinking, maybe they could remove the point bonus and add another? Like a pet cleave that could help towards the Lower BM sustained aoe output atm, I'm sure someone could be creative
Well that's me for now. I'd love to see what other ideas anyone else can think of. I just cant wait to see what possibilities our pets might have in store in our next expansion!
i think its perfect