Battle for Azeroth Hunter and pet abilities

[Shinryu Masaki]

Spirit Shock: The Spirit Beast blasts the enemy target, removing 1 enrage and 1 magic effect.

Oh god please let this have the Moonfire graphics! I miss my lazer kitty!

[SpiritBinder]

I kinda wish they'd bring back pet talent trees. Just get rid of Tenacity/Ferocity/Cunning and give us actual talent trees to customize our pets.

Level 15 could be Spiked Collar, Blood of the Rhino, and Cornered. (AKA Ferocity/Tenacity/Cunning)

Level 30 could be Charge, Dash, and Boar's Speed. (Movement Based Tier)

Level 45 could be Thunderstomp, Heart of the Phoenix, Roar of Sacrifice. (Unique Skill Tier)

Level 60 could be Heroism, Battle Res, or Master's Call. (Utility Tier)

Level 100 could be Rabid, Last Stand, or Bullheaded. ("Big" Ability Tier)

That way we could get creative, like a ferocity pet with a permanent +30% speed boost rather than Dash, or a Beast Mastery pet with Master's Call for PvP. And if we have a heroism user in the group, we can switch to battle res, if we have plenty of battle resses, we can switch to heroism, etc.

Agreed, I posted something very similar a little while back....

I would love to see a complete pet family/spec/ability overhaul.

As it is, it's all so convoluted and messy.

I know it may seem a little controversial, but I just don't see a better/easy/clean way anymore. I think it may be time to do away with family groups, or at the least the individual skills/abilities assigned to such.

Do I like them?
Yes... I think they are pretty neat.

Do I trust Blizzard to get them right, keep maintaining them (with their track record of literally not giving a shit about them for an entire expansion) and keeping them balanced?
Hell the frack NO...

The only way I think blizzard can get this right now it to break it down so hard that the minimal amount of energy they required to maintain the upkeep of our pets stability and balance is an actual achievable reality.

Ideally, get rid of the 3 different specs. Give pets talents that you can pick from (much like the classes) that add the different options that they currently have (and a couple of others to flesh them out)

That way one can actually customize their pet to some degree, without being locked into an exact setup. Remove all family abilities and add them in via talents for all, and done.

Something like this...



Things would require a little balancing for numbers, but actually allows for some customization. Yes I know there will be a cull of some things (updraft/waterwalking/etc.) but they are a little superfluous and could be cut to allow a simpler system to work.

A few things like spiritbond back (but just tone it down to come in line with Spiritmend, and bump Roar of Sacrifices defensive up a little) and the return of cower (which was just removed without much reasoning, but also replaces turtles shield shell/other family defensives, but available to all if you wish to spec it).

To make BM shine a little more, maybe allow them to pick two talents per tier? or even add a BM only tier at the bottom, not sure of the best outcome without making up to many fan-ciful options.

[Thwip]

guess no more battle rez, didn't see it from what looked through. Too bad direhorn lost their ability

If I recall, Battle Res and Heroism were removed from Cranes/Moths/Quilen and Core Hounds/Netherrays because they were made baseline abilities for all pets.

Ferocity pets gain Heroism, Tenacity pets gain battle res, and Cunning pets gain Master's Call.

Hnnnnnnghaskldfs. Why on EARTH would they shove the BRez on the TANK spec? I saw this commented on over on WoWhead and headed over here to double check because I was -hoping- this was not the case. I do hope they reconsider this idea. If you're in a group, the last thing you need is to have a tank pet out and it's useless to you when you are soloing.

Disclaimer: I do know and understand this is an alpha build and is in very early stages of development. I'm just having my mind blown right now over this choice and do hope it doesn't stay this way.

[SpiritBinder]

Hnnnnnnghaskldfs. Why on EARTH would they shove the BRez on the TANK spec? I saw this commented on over on WoWhead and headed over here to double check because I was -hoping- this was not the case. I do hope they reconsider this idea. If you're in a group, the last thing you need is to have a tank pet out and it's useless to you when you are soloing.

Disclaimer: I do know and understand this is an alpha build and is in very early stages of development. I'm just having my mind blown right now over this choice and do hope it doesn't stay this way.

I wonder if you could macro in a tank pet battle rez with an auto accept and a cobra shot. If you spammed it enough, that it could keep you/get you back into a fight after dying without the mob resetting? Hmmmmm

[Valnaaros]

Possibly. I think that it could work. Whether Blizz would allow it to continue to work is another matter.

[SlickrockGhost]

Holy Hell..

Just saw the great pet talent massacre that Wowhead posted... and assuming the basics of that go through.. what a clusterfuck.

From a raiding perspective, you'll have one pet, something with mortal wounds. Devilsaur or wasp probably.

Quillen will be the go-to tank, and poor corehounds get a rest in the stable.

And poor spirit beasts. I'll never use one again, there will always be a better pet. I'll miss Loque.

[Talihawk]

I really hope they change their minds on this!

[Xota]

Going over the current list on wowhead, I noticed a couple of things. First, all exotic pets have two special abilities except for Silithid and Shale Spiders. I hope it's a work in progress, not something they decide to do nothing about for a whole expansion... again.
And silithids' special ability (a snare) is melee range, like all the non-exotic pets' snares, but the other exotic snares (Worm:tenacity, chimera:ferocity) are 30 yard range. Until WoD, the silithids' cc was called "venom web spray", and was ranged.

I was wondering two other things related to pet abilities. First, does anyone with a Devilsaur use Feast a lot? Do you have it macroed into something? I never used it when I used my devilsaur, maybe I was doing it wrong. If it increased the devilsaur's size, I'd have used it though. I miss growing devilsaurs, even if it were only visible to me.
Second, does the turtle's shell shield still look like a high tech dome, or have they changed it to use the graphics from aspect of the turtle yet?

[Valnaaros]

A work in progress, I'm sure. Hopefully we see some more updates soon. Though I am just happy that they are giving abilities to Pet Families again.

[Shinryu Masaki]

Looks like Direhorns got a new ability!

As for Devilsaur's Feast, yeah I do use it on mine from time to time. Not that it's useful or anything, Mend Pet can heal so much more, and the focus generally gets back up pretty quickly. But nothing beats seeing your Devilsaur nomnoming the corpse of your defeated enemy!

[Rawr]

Looks like Direhorns got a new ability!

As for Devilsaur's Feast, yeah I do use it on mine from time to time. Not that it's useful or anything, Mend Pet can heal so much more, and the focus generally gets back up pretty quickly. But nothing beats seeing your Devilsaur nomnoming the corpse of your defeated enemy!

Can you link I'm not finding it on wowhead.

[Xota]

Looks like Direhorns got a new ability!

Oh ya. They could give their old ability to Shale Spiders, magical rock creatures seem like they could magically deflect spells. They're even tenacity already.

edit: Direhorns get a mortal strike ability: Gore

[Rawr]

Well I'll most likely use Baby for leveling then and not just a show piece.