Warp Stalkers and Warp

[Nanotrev]

Fight it! Something I thought I'd include was you'd have no idea how much opposition I had on the following idea, but it ended up getting attention and eventually got passed into WoW.

I created paragraphs upon paragraphs on why they should put the Scarab Lord mount or something like it back into the game. My final point was about my friend selling his WoW account because it had that character on it, his hunter with the Scarab Lord title. I believe it was the nail in the coffin for people who would add their negative comments saying that it was one of a kind. While that is true, we now see the arch version running about today.

Post your thoughts on the new Blink Charge ability, and then why you think warp should be brought back. They don't know just how large of a crowd wants warp back if you don't post your two cents. Honestly, I liked your point as the ability they're proposing seems too close to the others in the same tier.

[SpiritBinder]

I did mention a little while ago with the introduction of the new "Haste Buff" that survival used to bring, that is being passed to pets in MOP, and it's inclusion for Warp stalkers. I still think that would be pretty nifty, and then they could have blink strike as well?

Idk, maybe give the attack speed to maybe warpstalkers, you know, they are supposed to speed and slow time and what not. They could have called it....

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Warp Drive (New) The Warpstalker manipulates the space around it, increasing
the melee and ranged attack speed of all party and raid members within 100 yards by
10% for 2 min. Instant. 1.5 min cooldown. Special Ability.
"engage"
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...just for fun, kind of even fits with mages a little and their Time Warp Ability . Not hard to come up with something a little creative?... anyways, as always... Meh.

[Masquerain]

WARP IS BACK! Sorta! Good enough!

http://www.wowdb.com/spells/130392/#0-15851

Blink Strike (New) Causes your pet to instantly teleport behind an enemy target and inflict 200% normal damage.

HOORAY!

[Albain]

Any sign of what the cooldown is on Blinkstrike? And its range?

[Vephriel]

Any sign of what the cooldown is on Blinkstrike? And its range?

30 yd range
20 second cooldown

[Albain]

Heeyy, that's actually a pretty good rate.. :|a I may have to get it. 8|a ..when I finish this download. *sob*

[Nanotrev]

No, warp is not back and I don't think it's good enough. =/

Why is it not good enough?

Well, Blink Strike looks like a watered down Kill Command with a blink strapped onto it and honestly enough our pets have pretty speedy methods of getting to their targets as it is. If anything people would grab it for the damage utility and I'd rather see something else take its place.

...but what made warp so good?

Warp enabled warp stalkers to catch up with mages and other classes that were speedy, let alone rogues who would suddenly pop up behind us. It takes no time at all for the pet to get to that pesky rogue behind you nor can they run for too long without being caught up to. It was the warp stalker's trick pony and with it removed quite a few people use their warp stalker for taking up stable space. With such a short cooldown it was nice to utilize the pet for other things as well. In an instant, you could pull a mob off yourself while mining so that the pesky gorilla in Sholazar wouldn't break the cast bar, among other things.

It really was a flavor for that pet and as you can see in this thread I'm certainly not the only person who wants it back. I'd say the majority of hunters would rather enjoy seeing them get the ability returned.

It wasn't game breaking at all, and in spite of the "no pets should have a damage increase, thus none shall be favored too much over the other" cats get their stealth attack bonus and quite a few pets are hardly seen in major cities anymore. All I've seen most of the time in the cities I go to are cats though I'm not sure if it's the stealth that has led to them being favorable or not.

Is it just warp stalkers that are left in the dust?

No.

If they aren't cats, they're wolves or spirit beasts. I've also seen spiders quite often as well. Those four are the most frequently used by far. Through Cata when I did arena my partners would lament the times I didn't use anything else except a spider as marks or survival. It seems I can finally use my silithid as BM in Pandaria because of Silencing shot becoming a tier talent for all hunters but anything else really does seem to be frowned upon. With pet abilities right now it seems like Spiders are for PvP and Cats are used in PvE unless there's need of a missing raid buff. Honestly though, I've never seen hunter pets being utilized in that manner.

Now, I'm not saying that pets are in shambles but it sure feels like a lot are left out. With pet normalization would people agree a lot of their flavoring has gone away? What makes cats special is their awesome ability to stealth, to sneak about as cats do in reality. Is this not too much to ask for other pets? It would certainly be nice. Also, what I observe on my servers doesn't mean it's the same on yours but on the three servers I play on, what I post is what I've seen.

[Ziarre]

If you don't see hunter pets being utilized in that matter, maybe you just don't run with the sort of hunters that do. There's more of them than you might think, and I'm one of them. I love my spirit beasts, I love my cats, but I try damn hard to make sure I leave room to have pets with buffs my raid may need. I keep a diverse active lineup. Pets are in a better place than they've ever been, and they get more polished with each expansion. Sometimes things are sacrificed along the way (RIP Spirit Strike spell animation), but we get a lot in return.

*shakes her vanilla cane and grumbles about remembering when cats really WERE required*

[Nanotrev]

Even GC says he's seen it happening much, much less than they thought they would. Things flopped in that respect and I'm sure a great number of people here do substitute buffs in with their pets but most hunters don't seem to be.

I run in three different battlegroups an all I see are cats.

[Nanotrev]

WARP IS BACK! Sorta! Good enough!

http://www.wowdb.com/spells/130392/#0-15851

Blink Strike (New) Causes your pet to instantly teleport behind an enemy target and inflict 200% normal damage.

HOORAY!

I don't feel cheery about it in the least. Blink Strike seems like a watered down Kill Command mixed with a mage's Blink except it doesn't get the pet out of CC. Not to mention, the spell itself isn't very mobile with a twenty second cooldown. Warp stalkers used to have their special ability on a much shorter cooldown and you could utilize it for much more. Honestly, I don't see why Blizzard can't slap it in as a bonus ability. Warp wasn't OP in the least bit.

[Gimlion]

I'm seriously not trying to start a flame war, and if you feel like you must argue my point, please do so in a PM so we don't derail the thread over it, but I feel like you're looking for reasons to be upset with the new ability. Like you wanted strictly warp back for Warpstalkers, and that this isn't 'good enough' until it's just that. I think this ability is going to be great, and it will likely make my PvP pet's action bar.

Also, of course cats, SBs and Spiders are going to be used the most (especially in PvP). There are TONS of cat skins, if someone can't find a cat skin in game that they don't like, they're a very picky person (no offense to those who don't like the cats.) Not to mention the Stealth, which adds a boost to first damage and doesn't interfere with any attacks. Spirit Beasts, they're cats with a HEAL, who the hell wouldn't want to use one if they're already on the cat boat? Not to mention the "SHINY!!!!" factor. And spiders (as well as Silithids) provide an amazing ability, great for solo as well as PvP, in a build that generates great DPS AND Utility, and the Silithid gives the Fort Buff as well. So, why not give one a shot? Every pet you listed as seeing most often, are very strong PvP pets, with strong utility and damage. I can list off other pets I see alot too, and guess what? They all have great abilities, and are most often Cunning or Ferocity (aside from Gorillas, Shale Spiders and a few others.)

I'm not entirely sure Warp for Stalkers is going to do what you wish it to, and if anything, I especially don't think that Blink Strike is as useless and watered down as you believe either.

[Shinryu Masaki]

The only reason that Warp Stalkers are seemed to be left in the dust is that Blizzard made them Tenacity instead of Ferocity or Cunning, not just because Warp was changed to a slow debuff. The first thing I thought when it was announced that we could select our pet's specs was "Finally I can spec my Warp Stalker into Ferocity and go to town with it!" which was a joyful momment for me. While I wish that the old Warp would be brought back, with Blink Strike now added I don't see it coming back.

[Nanotrev]

Other than the warp stalker is pretty much the poster child pet of something that used to be fun, yet is next to useless now. I've used it mainly for comparison while I will admit I do like warp. I don't need to resort to tells to speak to you as I have no offensive language I'd want to exchange.

I intend to keep this discussion productive. As for your initial statement, I do feel like it's watered down and it's really just a matter of opinion at this point until we see what happens in live and what the developers think of it. Why not make it a shot? If we're CC'ed we can't use the ability anyways. "Can't do that while stunned." If they made it an ability the pet AI was in control of or something we could make them use on their pet bar then yes I'd be all for it. If it were another charge with an interrupt as well it would be metter than just a teleport and damage. In addition to this I also suggested maybe they get a better ability for warp stalkers, such as something similar to a priest's mana burn.

Back to what we were talking about.

I also brought up other pets in my threads, which leads me to what you brought up.

Not to mention the Stealth, which adds a boost to first damage and doesn't interfere with any attacks. Spirit Beasts, they're cats with a HEAL, who the hell wouldn't want to use one if they're already on the cat boat? Not to mention the "SHINY!!!!" factor. And spiders (as well as Silithids) provide an amazing ability, great for solo as well as PvP, in a build that generates great DPS AND Utility, and the Silithid gives the Fort Buff as well. So, why not give one a shot? Every pet you listed as seeing most often, are very strong PvP pets, with strong utility and damage. I can list off other pets I see alot too, and guess what? They all have great abilities, and are most often Cunning or Ferocity (aside from Gorillas, Shale Spiders and a few others.)

If other pets have just as good abilites, then why aren't we seeing an even mix of them? Across three realms, and three battlegroups, in battlegrounds, and in dungeons most of what I see are cats and sometimes corehounds for BM though I'd say it's been a week or so since I've seen one of those. According to the quote here, yes, cats are quite dandy but they also interfere with what was stated would be normalization across the board. No pet was supposed to have a damage advantage over another. We were only supposed to be bringing out raid buffs to the table in addition to what we liked to use as pets.

What would I like to see in particular? How about pets that match cats in what they're able to do. They have a raid buff and a slight damage increase. Don't forget that in addition to that they can stealth as well and using crowd control on them is much harder. Usually, that's something we'd only see with BM pets like Devilsaurs who have the healing debuff that they apply along with their raid buff. It would add a lot to the utility that they've been trying to add to pets if they leveled the non-BM pets out across the board with abilities that are comparable to one another. Here are a few ideas.

Blink and mana burn have already been mentioned, although a pet with fear would be quite interesting. Warriors can do it now as well, in addition to warlocks and priests. In addition to another rogue ability a pet could make use of Distract, and have it usable outside of stealth. It's not game breaking either, in that perhaps a death knight running after you would suddenly find himself running in the other direction and give the hunter another couple seconds of time to put more distance between them. In PvE, the mana burn would work well for mobs with mana and a ravager with its stun back would also do well for interrupts during casting.

Edit- Just to make this stand out even though it was already mentioned, I think this would add a lot to our utility that they've been trying to give us. I also like the idea of us managing our pets more.

The only reason that Warp Stalkers are seemed to be left in the dust is that Blizzard made them Tenacity instead of Ferocity or Cunning, not just because Warp was changed to a slow debuff. The first thing I thought when it was announced that we could select our pet's specs was "Finally I can spec my Warp Stalker into Ferocity and go to town with it!" which was a joyful momment for me. While I wish that the old Warp would be brought back, with Blink Strike now added I don't see it coming back.

I should do some testing on this in the beta tonight and see how things unfold. I should be able to report it in the next few hours here. I really think you've made a good point and maybe it's something I've overlooked. However, I still think Blink Strike could use improvement. I think it could be a lot more than just a blink though I'm not sure what. The point I would be making in that respect is if Warp was cosmetic enough to warrant a small CD of ten seconds or so I don't get why adding a mage's blink to a burst in pet damage is so extravagant.