How Hunter Pets Could Have Been

by Richard Arellano at Jul 30, 2012 2 comments

Personally I think this shows pure laziness on Blizzard’s part in removing most of the pet abilities and giving us watered down versions.

Don’t get me wrong I really like the change to allow us to just change our pet’s spec and to do it on the fly for free without seeing a trainer. However.. it’s my opinion that hunter pets will end up being much weaker than they are now come live at level 90.

Here is the reason why.

Basically for PVE your going to be using the Ferocity spec, which in on its self is what we use now. However losing Charge really is sucks because that has uses in PVE. Sometimes in target switching fights, you need to get your pet across the room quickly. I myself personally macro charge so I can use it at will. Making it ONLY for Tenacity doesn’t make any sense what so ever.

Most of the hunters out there play MM for PVP and I can understand why you do. The Cunning Pet has some rather useful abilities and the monkey is pretty overpowered however…

The cunning spec we’re getting in Mist of Pandaria is far weaker. And as a BM hunter who runs BM in PVP, we’re force to use a Spirit Beast or Devilsaur in most cases (for the healing debuff sometimes out ways that self heal). They are both Ferocity so BM for a long time has lost out on those useful Cunning abilities.

Good examples:

• Roar of Recovery
• Roar of Sacrifice
• Boar’s Speed
• Wolverine Bite

In beta now, as a BM hunter using a spirit beast in a cunning spec is rather nice. Being able to have access to Roar of Sacrifice will make BM stronger in Arena I think. But cunning is weaker in beta than live, such as not having Great Stamina, Culling the Herd(which was kind of merge into Rabid), Serpent Swiftness, Roar of Recovery and Spiked Collar.

Serpent Swiftness, Culling the Herd and Spiked Collar are solid DPS abilities for our pets and personally I think this will make cunning pets do less damage in PVP. For MM generally your pet sits at your feet and doesn’t DPS unless you need to keep a healer from drinking. But for BM where our pet does most of our damage. That lost in DPS just to get Roar of Sacrifice is a toss-up. Having Cornered is nice because generally myself personally in arena they do try to kill my pet as a BM because the BM hunter pet dies, the hunter is screwed. Where as MM hunter not so much.

Now what I think they should have done was make it something like this. I understand the reason they just decided to give us what they felt every hunter always spec into and gave us combine versions of those spells. I think having some bit of choice would have made hunters more unique than they are becoming.

In a perfect Mist of Pandaria World our hunter pets would work like this.

All pets would have a basic list of skills with no spec and no talents. Those would be; NOTE I only made notes for abilities that I changed, everything else works as it does currently in beta.

• Basic attack (bite/claw/smack)
• Avoidance
• Cower
• Growl – which now has a taunt

Ferocity

• Rabid
• Roar of Recovery – Your pet’s inspiring roar restores 25 focus over 10 secs.
• Lick Your Wounds – Your pet heals itself for 100% of its total health over 5 sec while channeling.
• Serpent Swiftness – Increases your pet’s attack speed by 20%.

Cunning

• Cornered
• Boar’s Speed
• Grace of the Mantis – Reduces the chance your pet will be critically hit by melee attacks by 3%.
• Great Resistance – Your pet takes 5% less damage from players and player pets and minions.

Tenacity

• Blood of the Rhino
• Thunderstomp
• Guard Dog – Your pet’s Growl generates 20% additional threat.
• Last Stand

They could have very easily given us a 3 tier with three talents to choose from. Which like our characters any spec can use these talents. Here is what I would have done.

Tier 1

• Charge – Your pet charges an enemy, immobilizing the target for 2 sec. 30 sec cooldown
• Intervene – Your pet runs at high-speed towards a group member, absorbing damage done against them from the next attack equal to 30% of your pet’s total health. 30 sec cooldown
• Mobility – Increases your movement speed by 10% for 2 sec when ever you use Master’s Call on a group member. 30 sec cooldown

Tier 2

• Great Stamina – Increases your pet’s total health by 6%.
• Heart of the Phoenix – Returns your pet to full health and focus. 5 min cooldown
• Bullheaded – Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your pet, and reduces damage done to your pet by 50% for 3 sec. 3 min cooldown

Tier 3

• Roar of Sacrifice – Protects a friendly target from critical strikes, making attacks against that target unable to be critical strikes, but 30% of all damage taken by that target is also taken by the pet. Lasts 15 sec. 1 min cooldown
• Lionhearted – Protects a friendly target from all Stun and Fear effects for 5 sec transferring the effect to your pet. 30 sec cooldown
• Bloodthirsty – Heals a friendly target for 5% of the pets total health over 5 sec. 2 min cooldown

I would like to add that you only would have one talent tree, not 5 for each pet you have on you. That basically means, to keep you from just having them all, pet one has talent 1, pet two has talent 2. That is my answer to doing that. So if you want to use talent 1 in tier 3, then all your pets will have that talent and can’t use another talent.

Maybe those talents are overpowered but I feel you have some choices there. Sure in some cases there will always be a right choice. That’s a given. Such as if your running older content, Tier 1 you’re gonna take Charge. Tier 2 you’re gonna take Great Stamina and Tier 3 more than likely going to take Bloodthirsty for the extra heal. What talent choices would choose for a raid boss? What about in 2vs2 Arena or 5s? Rated Battleground or just randoms? I think there is some hard choices there.

Right now Hunter self-healing is kind of weak it’s in a much better place than live, but compare to other classes, kind of not so much. If nothing else this is just a what if.. sort of wish list of how I thought they would have done it. I really do think that Cunning Pets losing Great Stamina and the DPS abilities will hurt Hunter PVP.

Mostly BM because as BM hunter, I see no reason at least in Arena to have your pet be cunning. In battlegrounds maybe you can get away with being Ferocity.. and right now I haven’t done any battlegrounds in beta to know if I can change my pet from Cunning to Ferocity in the middle of the battleground or if I can change my talent. If we can, then it might not be so bad if I can go in as Ferocity and switch to Cunning if need be.

If that is he case, I’m going to have to come up with some rather complex macros to deal with changing talents so I don’t need to pull spells on my bars. I know we’ll be now able to see in arena what class and spec we’re be facing but not glyphs or talents and we’ll be able to change base on that information before the fight starts.

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Author: Richard Arellano

Freelance graphic artist, writer, graphic designer, gamer, web programmer, web designer, video editor and blogger from Las Vegas, Nevada. Be sure to follow me on Twitter @NeckarUnrivaled.