WOD Pet Ability Pruning

[SpiritBinder]

With the release of some more info this morning regarding WOD from the DEV Watercooler, the removal of certain CC has been announce in an attempt to help control the increasing amount of CC in the game. The removal of some of these however will directly affect some pet family abilities that we currently know them to have.

So far these being Birds of Prey and Scorpids with their disarming CC family abilities.

They also mentioned
“Pet-cast CC is more limited, and in many cases has been removed.”
Which may mean even more of a shuffle to what we know our pets to have as a family abilities. Looks like we will just have to wait and see how this all pans out, but I think there may be some big changes on the horizon for some of our pets.

It also begs the questions…
What CC abilities would you like to see stay, or what would you like to see go?
What new family abilities do you think would work well as a replacement to Disarms or any others?

[SylviaDragon]

I am excited to see "the big squish" to numbers. as cool as it is to have a mill hp and crits that hit so hard they may as well just slap an infinity symbol on your screen, gear stats started to lose all meaning to me. (I lose 100 stam? I gain 300 crit but lose 90 agil?... are these numbers supposed to be big or small to me? I'm going to need to get the calculator again.) It made me miss my days as a 70 when I usually hit between 7-10k.

I am excited to see the new pet abilities (I am always am looking for an excuse to grab a new pet) but I will miss my wasps stun/charge combo. it was godlike at 70 but he has fallen to the back of the line after I got a spirit beast so I hope he gets a new skill.

I am concerned with what this means for cc though overall. in pvp it was getting crazy. it was honestly pathetic. some classes could literally combo cc you then just pick you apart slowly and all you could do is watch, so i'm eager to see that done away with. but in pve encounters such as trash encounters or soloing it may pose a problem. (like the panda rares that spammed healing mist.) My biggest concern is that they don't nerf pvp healers enough to keep them level with us in a fight. even with an arsenal of ccs they have spent quite a few pvp seasons as gods. Blizz has been nerfing pvp heals so I hope they continue to keep a close eye on it.

all in all I an cautiously optimistic. my hunter had half a dozen macros, a pet bar, an aspect bar and 6(?) action bars crammed full of spells and I always ended up having to find room for one more ability so it will be nice to have some free space again. and the new nelf racials have me excited. I get to keep shadowmeld and get a cool night and day buff ^.^

[Lisaara]

Personally, I'm happy to see most CC go away. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. That's when it becomes bad. Most of the pet CC's I've found were less than helpful anyway.

[Myrrmi]

The root-while-chanelling pets grind my gears. There is really no reason to pick them. What they could get changed to is:
crocs - rend armor type thing or a normal slow (for those situations when the target is running away and already got out of your range, so you can catch up)
crabs - join turtles and beetles as hard shell tank pets
dogs - "best friend" buff being basically kings (like shale spiders have) or something entirely new, but situational - a +stealth detection buff (just imagine this baby while on camo flag def. EPIC!)

As for disarm, I wouldn't like to see it go, but if it had to, the birds of pray could get a blind ("go for the eyes" or something) or, if I had to make a non-CC choice, a defence debuff ("distracting cry" or something) while scorpids could get a stun ("paralysing poison") or a non-CC "armor melting poison". That the scorpids got a claw skill instead of a poison skill in the first place is still beyond me o_o

Talking about stuns, I'd like them homogenised. Right now we have:
bat - 2sec/2min/20yd
wasp - 2sec/1,5m/melee
shale - 3sec/1,5m/30yd
monkey - 4sec/2m/20yd (blind, but it's so much like a stun I had to put it here)
The usual consensus is "take the monkey". Some love for bats and wasps, please?

[Vephriel]

I'm glad for the number squish as well. I don't even look at numbers these days, they've just reached that point where they're so big they stop having meaning.

Agreed on the channeled roots, they're a very frustrating level of "could be useful but actually rather useless" and I'd like to see those types of abilities swapped out for something different, or at least more effective.

I'd still like to see a Fear ability on a pet myself.

[SylviaDragon]

Love your ideas Myrrmi. although I doubt we will see many new sun abilities, it would be great if the old ones all worked at the same level. and those stupid channeled root spells drive me up a wall.
I would love to see a detect stealth ability that stacks with track stealth or a fear spell as Veph said.
I doubt we would ever see something as powerful as a kings buff given to a non-bm pet though.

now i'm all excited about new pet abilities and possible new WoD families.

[Xota]

The only CC I use on pets are webs (from Silithid or shale spider) or spider if I weren't always BM. I've used Eagle's disarm, but only in pve and that was a long time ago. I wouldn't mind if the different web spells were normalized (to just a root, I think giving up a *shale spiders' stun is fair), but I would grumble if I my silithid Webs couldn't use webs anymore. Especially if water elemental keeps its root. Roots are a more fair kind of CC than stuns, blinds, charms, and fears.

*I wouldn't complain if shale spiders were removed as pets entirely (as long as another family got their buff, like birds of prey getting "Kings of the Wild" to replace their disarm). They always seemed wrong to me as hunter pets, especially when there's so many other potential families that thematically make more sense. Shale spiders would only make sense for if there were Earthen Hunters.