MM Losing their Pets??

[Syleye]

I have to agree with Wain on this while opinions based on the stated changes are right fine final decisions should wait until they have been utilized and given a fair chance. Personally I love Minnie Mae will probably be my BM hunter and Katt can go MM. I really love it so far

Of course you're gonna need to race change Minne Mae to gnome now...

Oh my , hmm I may need to do that

I have to say I have played nothing but BM since I started. For the first time I am excited about playing another tree.....guess I will be the odd one out on that.

[Xota]

normally, a hunter and their pet are two legitimate targets.
a hunter with a non-combatant pet would probably cause a lot of unnecessary confusion in PvP, particularly in BGs. (I imagine)

If two hunters were in the same location, one with a non-combatant pet, the other with their pet on passive... I can see an unfair advantage there due to the confusion potential of having a completely non-combatant pet present.

I don't do top level pvp, but from my experience, but pets don't cause confusion other than "I can't believe I was dpsing the pet on accident". Non-combat pets don't have health bars, and you can't tab to them, and there aren't unit frames for them, and there's not a macro target shortcut for them. Minipets are already non-combat pets that can be active in pvp (a liability if you stealth).
Pets can be used to trigger traps, and as targets for friendly spells (intervene, cascade). During cata, pets were the ideal target for self-healing with void shift.

[Bulletdance]

I know they want this to add to the differences between specs, but I feel like it's taking away form the differences between the classes themselves. It's a mage with leather really.

Astute observation.
I'm wondering how Demon Hunter will feel once the novelty wears off?

**psst Melissa... I'm still getting lots of great comments for the logo you made for me. thanks a million for that.

I'm glad it worked out well for you I'm getting to make t-shirts for Princeton university soon so I'm super excited I get to do some design stuff now and then.

I'm trying hard to not get too negative about Legion since I haven't tried it yet, but I am baffled by a lot of the choices blizz is making. Either way...must have moose...

[sXe Angel]

I've been primarily a SV hunter, dual speccin' for BM when we got the chance to have two specs. While I like BM for solo questing/lvling because with a good tank pet you can do most stuff on your own, I always felt more comfortable with SV in dungeons and raids. Felt more comfortable with the SV rotation and shots. I love having my pets at my side, got some that are very special to me, due to either having to track them down/camp 'em for weeks, or having gotten them alongside friends of mine who went to a specific zone with me just to help me get said pet. I don't want to lose my pets. I enjoy playing ranged DPS, don't much care for going melee. If MM gets most of the old SV shots, then I'd go for it in Legion as my dungeon/raid spec, but I would miss having a pet at my side. Pets are what drew me to want to play hunters, they're awesome and make playing hunters feel unique from most other classes in game. #mytwocents

[Pewmew]

I'm trying hard to not get too negative about Legion since I haven't tried it yet, but I am baffled by a lot of the choices blizz is making. Either way...must have moose...

Why blame Blizzard? It's the fault of all the raiders/dungeoneers that chose to abandon their pets for Lone Wolf.

All Blizzard did was look at the hunter stats and see that many high end raiders/dungeoneers go petless. So they built a spec to fit those types.

If Lone Wolf hunters weren't so numerous then Blizzard probably wouldn't have devoted an entire spec to petless play.

[Sukurachi]

this is one of those very particular cases where Blizzard COULD (should) have created a 4th spec, as they did for Druids.

I'm trying hard to not get too negative about Legion since I haven't tried it yet, but I am baffled by a lot of the choices blizz is making. Either way...must have moose...

Why blame Blizzard? It's the fault of all the raiders/dungeoneers that chose to abandon their pets for Lone Wolf.

All Blizzard did was look at the hunter stats and see that many high end raiders/dungeoneers go petless. So they built a spec to fit those types.

If Lone Wolf hunters weren't so numerous then Blizzard probably wouldn't have devoted an entire spec to petless play.

[Castile]

Why blame Blizzard? It's the fault of all the raiders/dungeoneers that chose to abandon their pets for Lone Wolf.

Why make a powerful talent for a pet class that requires you to abandon your pet?

If you play MM you were ALWAYS going to pick that talent for raids and dungeons else you were gimping your dps.

[Nimrod]

I think they should just have kept it as the Lone Wolf talent.

It's bad enough that we lose SV to melee w/pet, but to have to choose between the bow artifact and pets is worse.

Melee should have been a fourth pet-based tank/dps spec unlocked at max level w/proving grounds. MM and SV should have remained ranged with MM defaulting to no pet.

Lone Wolf needed more work than "flat damage increase".

[Chocolate]

Pets are the main attraction of the class for me, it was unfortunate that Lone Wolf was the best choice for dps in a raiding enviroment in WoD.

It looks like if either SV or MM end up doing more damage than BM in raids then I'll have to give raiding a miss on my hunter which would be a shame..

[Maizou]

I'm trying hard to not get too negative about Legion since I haven't tried it yet, but I am baffled by a lot of the choices blizz is making. Either way...must have moose...

Why blame Blizzard? It's the fault of all the raiders/dungeoneers that chose to abandon their pets for Lone Wolf.

All Blizzard did was look at the hunter stats and see that many high end raiders/dungeoneers go petless. So they built a spec to fit those types.

If Lone Wolf hunters weren't so numerous then Blizzard probably wouldn't have devoted an entire spec to petless play.

...which is also Blizzard's fault.

It's a significant dps loss to choose something other than Lone Wolf. And that's on a target dummy. It's even worse when you take into account some fights (like the Schwarzenegger twins in Foundry) where the pets have to constantly run back and forth or end up out of range of the boss.

I REALLY hope they reconsider this before live, even if just leaving Lone Wolf as a talent. I made my hunter to have a companion. I've tamed many over the years.

But now if I want to use the artifact bow, I have to go without them. That's not okay.

On top of that, there's NO reason for a raid to bring a marksman hunter in legion. Why? Sure, Lone Wolf can bring any buff, but SO CAN Beast Mastery and Survival. BUT They can ALSO bring a battle res AND heroism. (not to mention BM hunters can bring TWO buffs on top of that)

Unless they also add "Lone Wolf: Spirit of the Crane" and "Long Wolf: Speed of the Netherray," there's absolutely zero reason for any raid to bring a marksman hunter. They will bring way less usefulness to a raid.

This change is terrible. It also makes soloing as marksman near impossible except when mobs are way lower level than you. Even nowadays, when a Lone Wolf hunter needs to solo something hard, they either spec out of Lone Wolf, or summon their pet anyway. Because hunters are designed around not being hit because we're so squishy. Yes, we can kite, but unfortunately for us, BLIZZARD decided "Let's make these monsters immune to dazing" on sooooo many endgame things. Do you have any idea how hard Timeless Isle was for hunters because they made all the mobs immune to pet taunts? We're not equipped to take hits, yet they seem to think Marksman should, and have stated they WON'T increase marksman's survivability to compensate.

If this is going to work, significant changes have to happen, including adding the other 2 Lone Wolf spells. Then add a new passive ability like "Reflexes of a Cheetah" (since Aspect of the Cheetah is gone from MM), that causes you to have a X% chance for Disengage's cooldown to be reset and cause the next disengage to heal you for 6% of your health when you take physical damage (so it goes up to 10% with the Liberation glyph, and have it have an internal cooldown of like 30 seconds. So it can't proc more than once in that time). Things like that. It would give us more chances to get away from our targets without overpowering our survivability in PvP.

[Nachtwulf]

Well, it's still Alpha (not even beta!!) and Blizzard has said many, many times that this is the point in time where it's easiest to change things up in big ways. So... I assume you've all made your concerns known?

I agree that Lone Wolf has become too dominant. I was prodded to go MM/LW in my raid group (to be fair I won the heroic bow off mannoroth which is intended for marks) but the LW just had to happen if I didn't want to be a limp biscuit. I think they're assuming raids don't need more brezzes since they already have some and they assume a group will have at least one of them (DK/War/Dru).

Also, and this is a point of major frustration, pet brezzes have a range, and it's pretty damn short. I cannot TELL YOU how many times someone went down and I tried to brez, only to get 'your pet is out of range of the target'. I don't have time to put my pet on passive and run to wherever whoever it was died. Nevermind that means I can't be doing my job during that time. I probably don't even know WHERE so and so fell over because I'm having to dance around thirty flavors of burning poop on the floor. I dunno... losing the pet brez doesn't seem like a major deal to me, if only because the one we have is so miserable and clunky.

[cowmuflage]

I did not even know we had a pet brez haha

[Nachtwulf]

Yeah, cranes, moths, and quilen have a battle rez. (maybe something else but I think that's it.) But the pet has to basically be right on top of the rez target. Handy if it's the tank that fell over... not so much otherwise.

[Maizou]

I also find it hilarious they said it was because most MM hunters took Lone Wolf that they did that.

Well, almost every Affliction and Destruction warlock takes Grimoire of Sacrifice. (Again, just like MM, it's because it's the best DPS)

Why do they still have pets then?

They aren't even close to their pets, lorewise, like us MM hunters are. They just yank the demon from the void and enslave it. Most of the demons even threaten to kill the warlock with their voiceovers.

[Jurz]

I main BM and always have so maybe I'm not one to talk but I don't really see the difference in being "forced" to pick the talent due to the significant increase in DPS and it just being given to you as a baseline. Please don't jump down my throat for saying that either.

I will say that I main destro/afflic on my lock and I do NOT pick Grimoire of Sac. Why? Because I love my little felpup and I choose Grimoire of Service no matter what solely for that reason. Am I gimping out on my DPS? Of course, but it's worth it to me and I have yet to hear any complaints from my guild or anyone else about it because I still pull a good amount of DPS without Sac.

If I had an MM spec, I too would be complaining about this, but I also would have been a marksman that didn't pick Lone Wolf as my talent.

[Rhyela]

I think someone's previous idea of adding a glyph or some such to make it so that your pet remains at your side, but just doesn't do anything like a minipet, is a great idea. And if they were untargetable so that you couldn't abuse it in PvP, that would be even better. I don't think MM hunters are necessarily upset that they won't have a pet chomping on someone's butt, but rather that they won't have their pet at all. I'm not a Marksman hunter myself, but I get the feeling that if people just had their beloved companions by their side, that would cull some of the frustration. And I completely understand. Heck, I play other classes and see animals out in the wild and think, "Hmm, I think I'd like to tame that someday." I play a hunter BECAUSE of the pets. I can't have it any other way.