Exotic Pets, Should they still exist?

[Zoruaronan]

Hello There! Welcome to my discussion on a simple question I've had for a very long time. Should Exotic Pets remain in the game, Or should their "Exotic" nature finally be removed to allow other hunters to tame them aswell?

Ever since the days of Wotlk, Exotic Pets have been exclusive to Beast Mastery Hunters and them alone, However as time goes on, I cant help but feel some pets shouldn't be called "Exotic" anymore, For example.

Water Striders have no reason to be Exotic outside of their ability Surface Trot, As we can already tame a wide variety of bugs/bug-like creatures such as Beetles, Scorpids, Spiders, Wasps, Moths and Ravagers. So why then do they remain exotic to this very day?

Clefthooves are another family that just doesn't make sense anymore to have the title of "Exotic", Formerly known as the Rhino Family, These Wooly yet Loveable creatures have been some of the strongest in terms of hunter pets, Yet have always been locked to the BM class of hunters, However with the introduction of Mammoths/Elekks, Do Clefthooves truly deserve their Exotic Nature? Considering we can tame creatures that are roughly their size or even bigger, It just doesn't seem fitting.

Lastly, Pterrordaxes, These terrors of the skies have been highly wanted by many Hunters alike, Myself included, Unfortunately they've been locked behind Beast Mastery hunters ever since BfA, Which makes me question if they really truly deserve to be exotic? We can already tame many other types of dinosaurs on their own such as Raptors, Dimetrodons and Heck, Even Thunder Lizards look like Stegosaurus, So why is it that these Flying terrors of the skies remain Exotic, Plus they don't even have the secondary exotic ability that most exotics do! (They used to have Updraft be it was removed)

Keep in mind there are some exotics that do make sense to keep their title such as the Aqiri, Devilsaurs and the Elusive Spirit Beasts, But a good chunk of them just don't feel worthy of the name "Exotic" Anymore.

Feel free to give your thoughts on What Hunter Pets should or shouldn't remain exotic and if they should they even remain in the game anymore.

[Vephriel]

I love my exotic pets, but I don't think there's any clear distinction between what classifies as exotic or non-exotic anymore. They used to feel noticeably different from "regular" pets in terms of stature or fantasy, but at this point I think it would make more sense to remove the exotic flag from the pets themselves, and instead just have BM as a spec baked in with extra abilities they give to their pets to make up for it.

[Bambu]

They should no longer exist as a classification, neither should specs as they are. Blizzard should let hunters customize spec and ability (give Beast Masters two.) A pet trainer should be able to train a crane to tank or a turtle to be stealthy imo.

[Byne]

I dont think they should be exclusive to BM at least. Feels silly that I suddenly forget how to control a pet I've had for 15 years just because I've changed specs.

[Dialga]

No, I don't think they should, but I've also largely been of the opinion that pet talents/abilities should just bite the bullet and be homogenized because it's unfun in its current form. It sucks that you are limited to certain pet families for PVP/PVE and that you are forced to handicap yourself if you want to play with the pet that you like instead of the pet that comes with the very specific ability. Bring back the swappable pet talents for Fero/Tenacity/Cunning (why were they EVER removed?!) and just do away with pet abilities or make them all the same so we're not stuck bringing the 'best' pet to raids or doing worse in content just because we bonded with a pet from the 'wrong' family.

[worgpower]

I also agree like always that the exotic flag should be removed from most families, the abilities are basically pointless, except for clefthooves, core hounds, spirit beasts, aqiri. I’ve been detached from BM for so long since imo it’s a super boring spec, I leveled one for fun and I got bored in the end and stopped using this character, I would love to use exotic pets on survival without the ability since BM is not what it was on wrath and cata, so a change would make the hunter community die from excitement

[WerebearGuy]

"Exotic" should be used for pets with rare skins, not as a limiting factor. Deviate Faerie Dragon is the first to come to mind for an example; normally, this adorable chameleon is teal blue, but it has a rare chance to spawn orange. In this case, that orange skin should have some sort of indication on it that it is a rare variant, like a rare sparkle animation or, since only hunters would care, have a line of text in Beast Lore that shows "Exotic" under its name when you use the spell and inspect it. "Exotic" has lost its meaning since we can tame lava snakes, robots, alien weasels, ghosts, baby dragon stags, and so on.

Also, I'm gonna be that guy and point out that dimetrodons are not dinosaurs. Love my goofy sail-finned gecko, but they're in the same clade as us; synapsids. The ones in WoW are basically crocodile reskins, but still.

[worgpower]

Animal classifications are quite weird in wow, Dimetrodons are early mammalian reptilians that would branch off into their first mammal form at some point, diemetradons in wow on the other hand are aquatic sail crocodile dinosaurs, and all I can say now is lizard family doesn’t make too much sense, it includes diemetradons, snapdragons which are mutated fish wolves, and salamanthers which are amphibians

[GormanGhaste]

At least the lizard family is just different Classes; the worm family is different Phylums!

[ApiBiru]

As a BM, I want exotic skills for all BM pets. Idc if other specs can tame exotic beasts, but let BM hunters keep the exotic spells and make each and all BM hunters' pets have it.

[Xaosdemon]

I dunno, i think exotic pets are a OG core part of the BM identity, they stripped us of everything so don't want to lose that too.
A better solution would be that all pets when in BM Spec become exotic pets and gain additional abilities, call it Undying Bond or something and make it a passive ability and let MM and Survival tame any pets they desire without it.
Ofc Blizzard could just let hunters change pet specs too. Nothing wrong with hope.

[Xcreeping]

They should no longer exist as a classification, neither should specs as they are. Blizzard should let hunters customize spec and ability (give Beast Masters two.) A pet trainer should be able to train a crane to tank or a turtle to be stealthy imo.

Is kinda a throw back to what we had in legion which was removed due to arena, the hunter pet coming in with random things or with a random spec because its "random" is unfair.

As per the question, I pull mine out 2-3 times an expansion to heal me so it still get some use.

The whole pet system in general prob needs a complete overhaul at this point but if they are going to do it they need to do it without stripping more stuff from us. Overhaul it, remove nothing, and improve it. I honestly haven't changed my pet out since Shadowlands, up until that point I collected pets, changed them out, was happy with them and now I kinda just don't care. I think the axing of the pet spec kinda just killed it all for me that and watching the hunter forums during the last two expansion betas and seeing it being the most requested thing im pretty sure in general for us while getting denied. When I logged into the beta and saw the answer they gave to all of those people asking for it back was the removal of the hunter pet spec page I think that was the driving nail. It took me a few minutes to even figure out what was going on, did they move it? Are they doing something with it to improve it? I had to ask in general because I couldn't find it. Then no they removed it and most likely in the hopes to shut people up, cant change the pet spec with no pet spec page. That and outta site outta mind I guess.