SpiritBinder wrote:I guess at this rate, it could just end up being:
Tame pet, teach it 1 of the 5 buff/debuffs you want. If you tamed an exotic, can teach it an extra 1 of the 5 from this list, job done.
I really like this idea. Would solve some problems with which pets we need to bring. I know they wanted to move out of the "Bring Wolf/Ravager or GTFO" syndrome, which I thought they did, until it turned once again into it with "Bring Sporebat or GTFO".
At first I was also against removing some of the Exotic only skills like Ancient Hysteria and Eternal Guardian from BM and giving it to MM and SV, but after this expansion, I think they really should remove all restrictions on some of the Exotic skills so that all specs can use them. It would also fit well into SpiritBinder's proposed system too. I say "some" because a few of those Exotic skills would seem very out of place on other family types. I'm not sure how I'd feel to see a Carrion Bird giving me Water Walking or something other than a Spirit Beast healing me. Those could be converted into Bonus skills for their specific family. But other skills like Stam, Stats, Burst Haste, Spell Power and Battle Rez wouldn't look too out of place on other families (some might need to have multiple named versions to fit with different family types).
My initial sentiment was that I felt that some MM and SV Hunters wanted to steal away from BM some of their unique perks, but talking with other Hunters during MoP I realized that for some of them it actually made them feel forced to play a spec they didn't want to play as just so they could give their raids the Exotic pet skills they wanted to use. If there's one thing BM didn't need was even more hate being thrown at it.
I'm also wondering if they will put Exotic Beasts at level 10 instead of keeping it at level 69. I mean, it no longer reduces out pet's skills cooldowns, so why not? I know one of the major thing people against it said was that they didn't want low level Hunters running around with the Bloodlust buff. Well when you think about it, Cats and Spirit Beasts don't learn their Mastery buff skill until level 81, so why wouldn't Blizzard make Ancient Hysteria only available at level 70 just like for Shamans? I also found it quite weird to see them add new Rare pets that where Exotics on Azeroth with patch 5.1 when we can't even tame them before level 69. It left me thinking "Why even bother?"
When GC talked about the Talent Tree revamp for Cata and how they wanted us to feel like we where playing our spec at level 10 instead of 60 levels down the road, I thought that it didn't apply to BM Hunters very much. Heck, even the description of the spec said we could tame pets the other specs couldn't tame, but made no mention that it was in fact only 60 levels later. And it still felt that way in MoP even if that description is not on the Spec selection panel. It also feels like a bother to have to backtrack to Azeroth and Outland once we hit level 69 to go back and tame all those Exotic pets we saw before and couldn't tame, which is even more annoying if they're a Rare spawn.
I hope someone at Blizzard will at least tell us what they intend to do with Hunter's pets now that so many skills where removed from them. I thought it was going to be in the Hunter section after I saw all those pet skills being removed, but was disapointed that it wasn't talked about at all. Oh well, there's still time before WoD comes out to find out what will happen.
