People in alpha, what's your opinion on BM?

[Rawr]

The Manmeat is tanking Heroics right now with a Demon Hunter he leveled and there is a BM Hunter in the group that is mid range single target, but blows up the charts when there is more than 2 targets. I can tell they have Dire Beast as a talent, they didn't use Stampede at all so...... There is hope and I put this in the wrong post originally

[Mozag]

I guess my hunters will be sticking to BM, except for the one who is MM already and the new Survival hunter. I made all of those hunters because of their stables, so it would really defeat their purpose to not be able to use a bunch of pets from those stables. I don't raid beyond LFR anyway, so DPS is not a big issue - I am sure one of my other classes at least can throw out big numbers and I can feel useful now and then.

If I had only one or two hunters though, I suspect I'd be going Survival or MM. Both have wonderful artifacts and Survival sounds like it's going to be a blast. Still hate the gun (and the bow version is even uglier than the gun, which is saying something...), and I'm not fond of the idea of using a wolf as a second pet until 110. My pet themes are very specific, and having a wolf, or having the wrong colour wolf, running beside my main pet is going to seriously grind me the wrong way. More reason to get to 110 super fast then I suppose!

[Wain]

I'm unsure if someone has noted this elsewhere, but Hati now feigns death along with your pet. This is a huge improvement to Hati's player friendliness.

Feign death is still half broken but there does seem to be some improvement. Sometimes (still unsure why) the Wake Up function fails to activate, so you can't wake your pet and it (and now Hati too) has a 5 minute stun. I just had this bug occur 5 times in a row for me, so it's not a rare thing. The fortunate part is that the pet (and Hati) now lose the stun if you dismiss and resummon them, so you can at least work around the bug.

[Wain]

On a worse note, is it just me or is the Spirit Walk ability on spirit beast pets now broken so it can't be turned off?

This ability is on by default and makes the pet transparent. I copied the spell to the pet bar, but cancelling it has no effect on the buff on the pet. Dismissing and resummoning the pet also has no effect. It still resummons with the buff on.

So now any mana saber I tame is dull and barely visible.

This wasn't broken originally in Legion.

[Melissa]

On a worse note, is it just me or is the Spirit Walk ability on spirit beast pets now broken so it can't be turned off?

For me this is the case currently on live already. It can't be turned off until you toggle off auto-cast on it and have your pet attack something to get it out of stealth.

[Wain]

I know I could turn it off previously on Legion, but maybe I was in combat and didn't notice that that was also required.

[Xota]

I haven't been able to turn off spirit walk in a long time, if ever.

[Rikaku]

That's really weird, cause I've been able to turn mine off and on just fine, on Live, PTR and Beta as long as I've been in. I never use Spirit Walk cause I hate the slow walking lol

[Valnaaros]

Likewise. I've never had any problems.

[Rikaku]

On a worse note, is it just me or is the Spirit Walk ability on spirit beast pets now broken so it can't be turned off?

This ability is on by default and makes the pet transparent. I copied the spell to the pet bar, but cancelling it has no effect on the buff on the pet. Dismissing and resummoning the pet also has no effect. It still resummons with the buff on.

So now any mana saber I tame is dull and barely visible.

This wasn't broken originally in Legion.

Just to test this out, I went back into Legion and tamed Myonix (now a Spirit Beast). As per the norm, when tame finished, Myonix went immediately into Spirit Walk. I opened the spell book and right clicked Spirit Walk and turned off it's auto-cast. Myonix still had the Spirit Walk buff. I dismissed and re-summoned, and they still had the Spirit Walk buff. I then sent Myonix to attack a nearby turtle, which removed her Spirit Walk buff. After combat, she stayed out of Spirit Walk.

That's how it works on PTR, Live, and Beta for me. You have to send the pet into combat to remove the "existing" Spirit Walk. After that, if auto-cast is off, the pet won't do it anymore.

Of course I realize this might sound silly me repeating this info, I just wanted to post my steps to see if maybe there's a difference in what we're doing that's causing Spirit Walk to bug out, so we can report it

[Xota]

Ya, that's what I've experienced for years. I can toggle autocast, but once it starts spirit walking (whether from autocast or manually clicking), it has to attack something to destealth. I just don't put it in stealth unless I really need to make sure it doesn't pick up adds when I'm running past mobs. I put in a bug report or four way long ago, but eventually accepted nothing was going to happen.

The problem doesn't go away when I have no addons running. I'm surprised other people have been able to turn off spirit walk/prowl. Out of curiosity, does everyone else have to redo pet bars a lot, or do their clients remember which abilities were where when changing pet specs? If everyone else has their pet bars remembered properly too, I'm going to be disgruntled.

[Rikaku]

The problem doesn't go away when I have no addons running. I'm surprised other people have been able to turn off spirit walk/prowl. Out of curiosity, does everyone else have to redo pet bars a lot, or do their clients remember which abilities were where when changing pet specs? If everyone else has their pet bars remembered properly too, I'm going to be disgruntled.

My client always seems to remember my pet bars, regardless of whether my addons are on or not. My UI is the default, the only addons I use are DeadlyBossMods and Skada. It also remembers where my pet bars and abilities are when I switch specs. The only time I have to adjust my pet bars is if there is a huge overhaul/change to the pet system or abilities. So it would only be like, a major pre-expansion patch. I don't think I've had to adjust my Spirit Beast's bar since MoP, but I could be wrong. But I definitely haven't adjusted/changed/system forgot since 6.0 launched.

[Xella]

On live when I was playing not-bm not-petless I had to swap my bars around a lot because every time I swapped specs my bars would be a bit weird. I think it's because some ferocity skills are equivalent to some tenacity skills, but not in the way you'd think—dash is equal to last stand and charge is equal to heart of the phoenix or something like that. Playing BM sort of negated that since I never changed pet specs, and since I've gone MM I've also been petless so there's been no bars to constantly fix.

In beta, swapping my wolf between Ferocity and Tenacity seems to keep both specs bars the way I had set them up (which was not the way they came by default on character copy). HotP and Last Stand are both on c-7, whereas on live they'd swap between c-5 and c-7 depending on which spec I was swapping from/to.

[Nachtwulf]

I'll say this. After reading the feedback thread on frost DKs I feel a little better about BM.

Apparently they're all convinced 'Frost is a dead spec' too.

[Quiv]

The other issue is if I'm trying to do a tame quickly. I dismiss my pet and hit tame, but Hati hasn't been programmed to go immediately. He dismisses several seconds later for some strange reason. So if you're racing to tame you'll suddenly realize he's still there and races in to attack your tame and draw aggro.

I've run into a similar issue with Rexxar out in the field. Wish there was some way to dismiss him like the Garrison bodyguards. It means you have to do some initial damage on the thing your taming in order for him to not pull aggro (and for Rexxar specifically, hoping Misha doesn't pop out).

[Rikaku]

The other issue is if I'm trying to do a tame quickly. I dismiss my pet and hit tame, but Hati hasn't been programmed to go immediately. He dismisses several seconds later for some strange reason. So if you're racing to tame you'll suddenly realize he's still there and races in to attack your tame and draw aggro.

I've run into a similar issue with Rexxar out in the field. Wish there was some way to dismiss him like the Garrison bodyguards. It means you have to do some initial damage on the thing your taming in order for him to not pull aggro (and for Rexxar specifically, hoping Misha doesn't pop out).

In regards to Hati, I think this might've been fixed a bit in the most recent build. When I was playing last night, Hati was dismissing nearly at the same time as my active pet or about 1 second after. It was definitely altered from how it used to be, cause I know I'd have to wait a bit for Hati to despawn in just a few earlier builds.

As for Rexxar, no idea XD I haven't used bodyguards after I learned my lesson in WoD with Tormmok constantly driving me insane in new ways. That and I heard other Hunters yelling at Rexxar in trade chat lmao

[Wain]

Yeah, I never use garrison bodyguards in Warlords. I always found them too much trouble, too likely to draw unwanted aggro. So I've not bothered with them in Legion either. Same with Dire Beast, so if they've improved them I wouldn't actually know :/

I'll check out Hati's dismissal time but maybe part of it is latency. Being Oceanic, mine is >200 ms on the Beta.

[Rikaku]

I haven't experienced any extra aggro with Dire Beasts in awhile. But then again, I don't use Stomp since that did seem to be a pain in the rump. IDK if that's changed. But otherwise I have a more spam-dire-cobra build, so I don't take Dire Frenzy or Stomp. My dire beasts definitely don't seem to attract any additional aggro. If anything, the one getting aggro is usually my active pet (not even Hati) because of the weird-way "Assist" Stance seems to be.

Now my active pet seems to stand there once it kills a target, but ignores the fact that there's still other mobs I'm fighting. Most of the time even Hati keeps fighting, its just the active pet. IDK how many reports I've put in either about that. But looks like I'll have to make a ton of new macros for every ability to tell my active pet to attack. because honestly, my play last night? It seemed like Hati was honestly smarter than my active pet and acted more like my 'Live' Hunter's active pet in terms of response.

[Bendak]

Yeah, I never use garrison bodyguards in Warlords. I always found them too much trouble, too likely to draw unwanted aggro. So I've not bothered with them in Legion either. Same with Dire Beast, so if they've improved them I wouldn't actually know :/

I'll check out Hati's dismissal time but maybe part of it is latency. Being Oceanic, mine is >200 ms on the Beta.

I dislike bodyguards too, but I enjoy the Hemet Nesingwary and Emmarel Shadewarden combat ally abilities. The Nesingwary one is especially helpful for soloing difficult world quest bosses. Just BOOM! 40% health gone.
Hemet: https://legion.wowhead.com/spell=219578/that-ones-mine
Emmarel: https://legion.wowhead.com/spell=219698 ... ls-assault
I like those a lot more than having an actual bodyguard who won't let me even tame a pet.

Hati's dismissal seems to be different every time because I think they're just checking if Hati should be active every 5 seconds or so. Sometimes Hati will vanish almost immediately, sometimes it will take the full 5 sec depending where the timer is. It's kind of a sloppy way to do it.

[Quiv]

I hated the bodyguards in WoD but its frickin REXXAR. Why he gotta be so borked

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