Suggestion for a "Sand Reaver" family.

[Worba]

Basicly was what I was going to reply. Though off-topic for a moment: Why was a Cunning (Chimaera) and Worm (Tenacity) given AoE abilities? Sure we have less AoE damage than the other specs in BM. But it would make sense to give Ferocity pets some AoE abilities on that note. Why did they have to put the AoE ability on pets who weren't really meant for raids?

Agreed on this; I'm not sure why, unless that would have thrown our numbers through the charts....or given us a "most obvious choice" for BM AoE.

The AOE dmg spells for exotics seem like the proverbial "elephant in the room" to me - if it's true that chimera and worms got this to offset poor BM AOE dmg*... doesn't that simply roll back the clock to the days of Pet A > Pet B (if only for BM)?

*Personally I don't recall BM AOE ever being that stellar in 3.3 - the only AOE DPS drop I noticed in 4.0 was for my MM hunter. Although that being said, MM was the only spec I played really intensely in 3.3, the others were more like "wow, neat - think I'll play a different toon now"...

[Sarayana]

The AOE dmg spells for exotics seem like the proverbial "elephant in the room" to me - if it's true that chimera and worms got this to offset poor BM AOE dmg*... doesn't that simply roll back the clock to the days of Pet A > Pet B (if only for BM)?

*Personally I don't recall BM AOE ever being that stellar in 3.3 - the only AOE DPS drop I noticed in 4.0 was for my MM hunter. Although that being said, MM was the only spec I played really intensely in 3.3, the others were more like "wow, neat - think I'll play a different toon now"...

It does kind of, but only on trash. I think the idea is that while you clear your way to the boss you roll with whatever pet gives best aoe dps (and BM aoe never sucked that bad before. I did BW->volley and hopped right up to the top of the meters) and then switch to whatever pet's better for single-target once you reach the boss.

I did go tame a worm to play around with when everyone started raving about burrow attack, and I do love him... but I do also wish I didn't feel a necessity to have him for raiding. On the other hand, in heroics I roll with whatever ferocity or cunning pet I had with me when the queue popped and do the arcane shot/KC spam. That lets me put out a ton of damage too. I haven't raided since 4.01 though, so I couldn't tell you which is better in ICC. I suppose you always do have the option of single-targeting trash in there too?

[Worba]

I did go tame a worm to play around with when everyone started raving about burrow attack, and I do love him... but I do also wish I didn't feel a necessity to have him for raiding.

And that's my point - making only one tenacity and one cunning pet "good" for trash DPS is going to make a lot of BM raiders sigh at having to swap pets back and forth when they really might prefer to stick with a single ferocity pet throughout...

Seems to me it would have made more sense to give BM hunters a new spell called "Shattering Roar" (or w/e you want to call it), that does AOE dmg and shares CD with kill command, and which they could weave into their rotation with multi - that way at least their choice of raid pet isn't dictated to them.

Honestly between this, and moving tame exotics to lvl 69 (vs making it a core passive from lvl 10), it feels like they've made some puzzlingly bad calls with the new BM spec - don't get me wrong, I still like it better than the old one (more stuff to do), it's just that it could have been more.

[Kalliope]

Ah, but once again, how many AoE trash pulls are we REALLY looking at in Cata?

Also, if a hunter doesn't want to swap pets for trash, it's not much different than using a boar vs. a hyena, you know? Your output will be slightly lower due to missing certain talents, but you're still going to be putting out a good amount of decent damage either way, due to the pet normalization. We can still do some nice single target damage too.

[Worba]

Ah, but once again, how many AoE trash pulls are we REALLY looking at in Cata?

Enough that Blizzard thought they needed to break their "no direct pet dmg" rule and add special AOE spells to worms and chimera?

Also, if a hunter doesn't want to swap pets for trash, it's not much different than using a boar vs. a hyena, you know? Your output will be slightly lower due to missing certain talents, but you're still going to be putting out a good amount of decent damage either way, due to the pet normalization. We can still do some nice single target damage too.

Once upon a time, if you didn't want to raid with a non-wolf, you could still perform pretty well if not achieve optimal results - but that was considered (by Blizzard) an unacceptable situation. Now they are doing the same thing with worm/chimera AOE by way of "fixing" lower BM AOE dps.

Perspective ==> Not game breaking, not class breaking, not the end of the world, just... sloppy. That's all.

[Kalliope]

Ah, but once again, how many AoE trash pulls are we REALLY looking at in Cata?

Enough that Blizzard thought they needed to break their "no direct pet dmg" rule and add special AOE spells to worms and chimera?

Fair enough!

Also, if a hunter doesn't want to swap pets for trash, it's not much different than using a boar vs. a hyena, you know? Your output will be slightly lower due to missing certain talents, but you're still going to be putting out a good amount of decent damage either way, due to the pet normalization. We can still do some nice single target damage too.

Once upon a time, if you didn't want to raid with a non-wolf, you could still perform pretty well if not achieve optimal results - but that was considered (by Blizzard) an unacceptable situation. Now they are doing the same thing with worm/chimera AOE by way of "fixing" lower BM AOE dps.

Perspective ==> Not game breaking, not class breaking, not the end of the world, just... sloppy. That's all.

The reason the situation with wolves was unacceptable to Blizzard was because there were wolves EVERYWHERE because of the whole min-maxing thing. If there wasn't some true advantage to bringing a wolf over other pets, then it wouldn't've happened en masse like that.

It's also possible that BM hunters are getting pets that can AoE for SOLOING purposes rather than raiding ones.

[PorrasouxRex]

Ah, but once again, how many AoE trash pulls are we REALLY looking at in Cata?

Enough that Blizzard thought they needed to break their "no direct pet dmg" rule and add special AOE spells to worms and chimera?

Fair enough!

Also, if a hunter doesn't want to swap pets for trash, it's not much different than using a boar vs. a hyena, you know? Your output will be slightly lower due to missing certain talents, but you're still going to be putting out a good amount of decent damage either way, due to the pet normalization. We can still do some nice single target damage too.

Once upon a time, if you didn't want to raid with a non-wolf, you could still perform pretty well if not achieve optimal results - but that was considered (by Blizzard) an unacceptable situation. Now they are doing the same thing with worm/chimera AOE by way of "fixing" lower BM AOE dps.

Perspective ==> Not game breaking, not class breaking, not the end of the world, just... sloppy. That's all.

The reason the situation with wolves was unacceptable to Blizzard was because there were wolves EVERYWHERE because of the whole min-maxing thing. If there wasn't some true advantage to bringing a wolf over other pets, then it wouldn't've happened en masse like that.

It's also possible that BM hunters are getting pets that can AoE for SOLOING purposes rather than raiding ones.

True. But again, after all the discussion about "Making all pet damage equal" and then give two specific families an AoE to "Help increase AoE damage in a non-Volley way" why is it only them? Also, look at the damn Worm. It's a Tenacity pet with an AoE. What happened to the Bear Swipe or Crocolisk Bad Attitude, instead of giving them abilities that just suck in my opinion, in both their roles and over-all. Also, BM isn't the high and mighty soloing spec anymore, and Blizzard made sure we could finally do some decent DPS in-line with the other specs. But, again. That goes back to the Worm. Why the hell after all of that, they give those two families an AoE?

[Worba]

The reason the situation with wolves was unacceptable to Blizzard was because there were wolves EVERYWHERE because of the whole min-maxing thing. If there wasn't some true advantage to bringing a wolf over other pets, then it wouldn't've happened en masse like that.

I just think they should have learned their lesson from wolves - at first it looked like they had, but then came the worm/chimmy thing.

It's also possible that BM hunters are getting pets that can AoE for SOLOING purposes rather than raiding ones.

I guess... but it still achieves the same end result, e.g. now instead of having one ferocity pet that outshines the rest of the ferocity tree, you have a tenacity pet that outshines the rest of the tenacity tree, and the same situation in the cunning tree. Like cutting the head off the proverbial hydra...

It would be one thing if they at least made it consistent within the given pet family, but to have just the one "standout" pet for these families just looks sloppy and ill planned. There's no getting around that - whatever they were thinking of when they implemented these spells, it gets us to the same result.

For example, having long ago abandoned my beloved bear (I once had an "Ursa" too!), I was recently thinking about retaming her now that I have the stable space... I was like "man I'd love to have that claw effect again... oh wait, I have to tame a worm now if I want AOE tank dmg". No thanks.

Again, if they wanted BM to have better AOE dmg, the right way to do it would be to give them an AOE kill command type thing only available to BM hunters - as a matter of fact that would make a pretty awesome lvl 69 talent, freeing up tame exotics to become a lvl 10 core passive. A solution like that would have had "awesome" coming out of its pores.

[Sarayana]

Again, if they wanted BM to have better AOE dmg, the right way to do it would be to give them an AOE kill command type thing only available to BM hunters

I agree with this. I understand why they made it pet-centered for BM, but a hunter-activated pet aoe skill would be a much better solution.

... In my ideal world (haha yeah, WoW world) we'd have exotics at level 10, those bonus talent points somewhere in the middle (the 21 point skill?) and then something like this at 31 points, like you suggested Worba. That would make for an awesome talent tree.

[Gimlion]

Quite honestly, AoE won't matter a huge deal come Cata... It won't be used as often. And who actually cares about their trash pull DPS? I used to be a major hardcore raider before my guild Server transfered, and I was unable to follow due to my low income of $0 (I do not have time to work with HS and sports.), and never once worried about trash dps... I went around in AotV for trash, and no one ever cared more than the occasional minor whisper of "Viper?". So, i guess the point is, why does it matter? it's called trash for a reason...

[Worba]

If trash really doesn't matter, they might as well remove it from the dungeons and just leave a few bosses here and there - think players would mind if they did that?

[Kalliope]

If trash really doesn't matter, they might as well remove it from the dungeons and just leave a few bosses here and there - think players would mind if they did that?

This was done in ToC, and ICC had a LOT less trash overall. I think we're moving in that direction. Raids won't be like ToC all the time, but I could absolutely see us getting more "miniboss" trash encounters like ICC. It's challenging, but fairly quick, since there aren't halls and halls and halls of things to clear.

It's a much better design.

[Sarayana]

If trash really doesn't matter, they might as well remove it from the dungeons and just leave a few bosses here and there - think players would mind if they did that?

This was done in ToC, and ICC had a LOT less trash overall. I think we're moving in that direction. Raids won't be like ToC all the time, but I could absolutely see us getting more "miniboss" trash encounters like ICC. It's challenging, but fairly quick, since there aren't halls and halls and halls of things to clear.

It's a much better design.

I thought even Ulduar moved well in that direction (disclaimer: I only went as far as Freya, don't know about the rest of Ulduar). Naxx aside (since Naxx was really just a revamp of an existing raid) the raids of Wrath have been rather more sparse on trash. I certainly hope they don't go for the ToC model, though. I like to see trash pulls where you have to think about what you're doing, like the iron dwarves leading up to the split to Iron Council and Kologarn.

[Worba]

... none of which is to say that AOE will ever become unimportant, else they may as well drop ice mages.

[PorrasouxRex]

While I enjoy the discussions of why AoE should or should not matter, let's get back to the main topic at hand.

The Sand Reavers, while not many skins or NPCs aren't bosses or non-elites, they would be an amazing addition to the new "Bugs" of Cataclysm and would pretty much complete the "Silithud themed" set of pets. Though, the Silithuds need more Ferocity pets, and the Sand Reaver would be an amazing choice for such a thing. Besides, let's face it. They look pretty stunning. My favorite feature about them, besides the many claws and legs are the details of the face on them. Something I would really love to tame, even if they are decided into just the Silithud family.

[Kalliope]

If trash really doesn't matter, they might as well remove it from the dungeons and just leave a few bosses here and there - think players would mind if they did that?

This was done in ToC, and ICC had a LOT less trash overall. I think we're moving in that direction. Raids won't be like ToC all the time, but I could absolutely see us getting more "miniboss" trash encounters like ICC. It's challenging, but fairly quick, since there aren't halls and halls and halls of things to clear.

It's a much better design.

I thought even Ulduar moved well in that direction (disclaimer: I only went as far as Freya, don't know about the rest of Ulduar). Naxx aside (since Naxx was really just a revamp of an existing raid) the raids of Wrath have been rather more sparse on trash. I certainly hope they don't go for the ToC model, though. I like to see trash pulls where you have to think about what you're doing, like the iron dwarves leading up to the split to Iron Council and Kologarn.

Mimiron trash was HORRIBLE. H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E. It was way overtuned. Think vehicles and massive amounts of damage. Then it was fixed. General's trash was designed to not be AoEed. It was a pain in the ass. CC was necessary. At first, it was novel. Trash that required CC! But then after doing progression on hard mode General and that loooooong walk had to be done again....and allll that horrible trash had to be recleared....it was hellish. But you're right, the earlier trash in the instance was better.

I'll drop this here, since I have nothing else to say about sand reavers that hasn't already been said.

[Kalliope]

Actually, small update. I popped through AQ20 tonight and made sure to stop and stare at Kurinnaxx as I ran by to visit Buru. That model does look quite fantastic (and fully animated, at least in terms of walking) and I hope that it gets added in some capacity at some point to the list of tameables. Even if it's just another silithid model.