New pet families per expansion

[Wain]

Just leaving this here for interest.

Pet Families Per Expansion.png (126.83 KiB) Viewed 1463 times

[worgpower]

This is just sad. I used to be excited to tame hunter pets every expansion. I think the war within was the first time I wasn’t really excited for anything. It’s also the first expansion where pre patch tames were more exciting, I still love to run with Grong sometimes, sometimes my banded wolf. We had so many pet opportunities, like deep flayers, soul eaters, Razorwing, etc. just straight up forgotten. But we also are at a point where 95% of the beasts in game are tameable now so it’s harder to come up with more. Blizzard can do the courser treatment with some creatures to be placed in more fitting families, but I won’t count on that

[Vephriel]

Oof, it's tough seeing it graphed out like this!

I suppose they can't infinitely add more families but....there should at least be one!!

[Staxlotl]

Give me aberrant tames. I want slimes and oozes

[WerebearGuy]

Really, all the limitations need to just buzz off; let us tame anything that's not humanoid or specifically flagged as untameable like the Aspects and loas. The hunter identity has long since been destroyed when we could tame robots that just resemble animals, ghosts of animals and creatures, enslaved humanoids forced into metal furry costumes, elementals that were made beasts just so we could have them, zombie gods, imaginary creatures that don't actually exist, and so on. People clearly flock to the weird stuff, and that dynamic should be embraced. We tame things; let things be tameable. TWW is supposedly going to be a short expansion, so I don't expect any substantial additions. Either flip the switch hard and manually flag specific things classified as humanoid as untameable, or give us a well-paid dev who can go and flag everything that was forgotten, like plant hydras and pandaria beavers.

An "Unclassified" or "Companion" pet family would be perfect for that; lump everything in there, give it Smack and some generic pet family ability like slowfall or something, and make it cunning so it isn't perfect. Later, just have our dedicated dev move things in small spurts into fitting families where applicable.

[Kööna]

This was brought up a while back when people actually got to test the Beta. Unfortunate, really. If they're not going to give us another family, they should totally allow us to tame more things. Most of the newly introduced pets at the beginning of TWW were pretty boring.

On another note, there are many beasts that are still marked as untameable even though they would make perfect pets. The weasles from Isle of Dorn (marsuuls are tameable but not the weasles? weird.), the deepstriders from Zaralekk (giraffes can be tamed, but not these? weird.), all of the aquatic beasts that can be summoned as dire beasts but still cannot be tamed (turtles, sharks, eels, fish, etc), deepflayers (there's your new family, I guess), and many more

[WerebearGuy]

There's plenty of things that would be fine as pets. Aside from what you mentioned, there's also Lion Seals (riverbeasts, maybe?), Soul Eaters (lesser dragonkin), the insane number of snails and slugs since Pandaria (carapid), Devourers and Animites (new family for sure), Wilderlings (Wolf. NOT dragonkin, those are wolves), and so many more. Weasels not being tameable is a very fair complaint specifically because you mentioned the marsuuls, which are alien weasels. There's also the weasels in Stormsong Valley, but nobody remembers those. Deepstriders were given the silly excuse of not looking right next to a hunter, but we can easily name dozens of pets that match this description perfectly. The aquatic beasts I'd probably argue against, only because our single example of an aquatic tameable beast (red eels) are an oversight that the devs just rolled with, unless they're going to be unreasonably cruel like they were with the vorquin foal and change it after an entire patch cycle (seriously, don't do this crap). I'd be all for a shark pet, but I don't see that happening unless they just break the glass and flag everything. As for Deepflayers, I'd say they get coupled with Bats and the family gets renamed as something like Screechers (because echolocation).

[Dialga]

Just leaving this here for interest.


Pet Families Per Expansion.png

Between a lack of new families, removal of the Chasm Makers and Salamanther Hatchlings, and the ... state... BM was released into, it started off as a pretty unfriendly pet-liker expansion.

I do think the problem isn't a lack of new families but the absence of balancing between the core specs. Fero's leech nerf means they're just lustbots now and cunning is used for PVP and Ansurek Heroic/Mythic cheesery. It's Tenacity or nothing aside from very specific scenarios. I maintain they need to go back to Legion pick-a-spec and just put a Ferocity/Cunning/Tenacity icon on the pet so PVPers don't complain, or just homogenize em all into one big lump.

[worgpower]

There's plenty of things that would be fine as pets. Aside from what you mentioned, there's also Lion Seals (riverbeasts, maybe?), Soul Eaters (lesser dragonkin), the insane number of snails and slugs since Pandaria (carapid), Devourers and Animites (new family for sure), Wilderlings (Wolf. NOT dragonkin, those are wolves), and so many more. Weasels not being tameable is a very fair complaint specifically because you mentioned the marsuuls, which are alien weasels. There's also the weasels in Stormsong Valley, but nobody remembers those. Deepstriders were given the silly excuse of not looking right next to a hunter, but we can easily name dozens of pets that match this description perfectly. The aquatic beasts I'd probably argue against, only because our single example of an aquatic tameable beast (red eels) are an oversight that the devs just rolled with, unless they're going to be unreasonably cruel like they were with the vorquin foal and change it after an entire patch cycle (seriously, don't do this crap). I'd be all for a shark pet, but I don't see that happening unless they just break the glass and flag everything. As for Deepflayers, I'd say they get coupled with Bats and the family gets renamed as something like Screechers (because echolocation).

I’m with you on that one. I’ve listed these things multiple times all around, but it’s worth listing again

Skeleton horses - coursers, we had skeleton hounds and we have Rezan, we can have them too

Feywings - they need new npcs, they are a perfect candidate for lesser dragonkin

Soul eaters - they’re not dragons, but they fit in lesser dragonkin more than anywhere else

Old beavers - pretty straightforward and obvious

Brutosaurs - they deserve to be in scalehides, the adults may be unfitting, but the baby brutosaurs make great candidates due to animation reasons

Deepstriders - pretty obvious

And new families that should exist, but no exotic tag

Gastropod - merge snails and older snail and slugs into gastropod, I’m looking at the rockslimes too

Weasel - ottuks, marsuuls, skunks, and the ferrets should be here

Seal - lion seals can run on land, if we can have crocolisks, crocodiles barely move away from water in real life, we can have sea lions too.

Grub - grubs are not worms despite looking similar and deserve a place on their own. This should include current grubs, classic grub from tot, fanged grubs, argus grubs, gormlings, and those baby tick things from underrot, caterpillars should also move here since they are a larva, not a worm

Wyvern - this family should take away the featherless beasts from feathermanes, this includes, classic wind riders, slyverns, and the new wyverns, razorwings would fit perfectly as I said before. I don’t mind that it requires time of hybrid beast as it’s not hard to get anymore at where wow is right now, just a little time investment

As you see this is what they could of done on prepatch, but hunter pets are forgotten tools, and blizzard doesn’t understand hunter attachment to their pet models

[Wain]

I think that Deepflayers are the most obvious candidate for a new family, because they're expansion-relevant and so could be justified more easily to management. They're clearly related to the Legion "felbats" and kin (even down to some having wings and some not), and could also fit with any other non-sapient gargoyles they added to the game.

I'm all for giving wind riders and slyverns their own family - combined with razorwings, which were never made tameable.

[Valnaaros]

I think that Deepflayers are the most obvious candidate for a new family, because they're expansion-relevant and so could be justified more easily to management. They're clearly related to the Legion "felbats" and kin (even down to some having wings and some not), and could also fit with any other non-sapient gargoyles they added to the game.

I'm all for giving wind riders and slyverns their own family - combined with razorwings, which were never made tameable.

I agree. What matters are families that are more likely to get approval by whomever gives the go ahead for such decisions. Deepflayers fit that very well, and gargoyles could be lumped in with them. Things from past xpacs are harder to push for.

[WerebearGuy]

The only issue I see with deepflayers being tameable is that they have a body plan that's lanky and humanoid. Then again, we have monkeys and gorillas which also have a similar quadrupedal posture. It's really just down to stubbornness preventing them from being flagged lol. They're literally just hexapodal bats (sometimes wingless quadrupeds, as mentioned).

As for wind riders and slyverns, I say keep them in the Feathermane category, but rename Feathermane to Wind Rider. Yes, that means gryphons and hippogryphs would humorously be labeled as such, but it's a significantly more fitting name than calling them Feathermanes. Hell, most feathermanes don't even have manes, let alone fluffy necks. There are three Feathermanes that can't fly, but they could be easily put in more appropriate families; umbraclaws are owl bears (so bear), owl steeds are owl horses (so courser, or maybe stag), and owlcats are... well, owl cats (so cat). +1 to giving us razorwings though, why those were never flagged is a mystery when they're just Korthian wind riders.

[Dysphoria]

This is just sad. I used to be excited to tame hunter pets every expansion. I think the war within was the first time I wasn’t really excited for anything.

It's also the first expansion that I haven't bought and played and I have been playing since Vanilla and have almost 500 days /played on my hunter.

I have just finally gotten fed up with the game moving to an extremely seasonal format. It results in a feeling of worthlessness for the time invested; working hard to attain x and then in a matter of a few months everything is reset again. The move to standardising hunter pets and removing unique features as well as removing truly rare "rares" while adding a bazillion new mounts to the game and $ shop just makes the game feel like a shell of what it used to.

Just my 2 cents.