Note to BlizzardFollow

I agree, it's very disappointing that there is no longer any reason to tame different pets from each class.
There should be a bonus to tames which are harder, it would make it a lot more rewarding.
I think they should have instance related skills as hunters aren't really sought after.
What about a group cower?
Lowers the parties threat generation by 10% for 5 minutes or something (tank can cancel as it's a buff)

Yeah, I have to agree that pet normalization sucks. I started playing WoW over a year ago with a hunter. I remember pets were unique, and certain pets were better at dps, certain pets were faster, certain pets were tougher, and you had a reason to tame. Maybe you wanted that uber-fast dps pet for those raids or something.

Now the only reason to tame is to get the higher skill levels.

I fully agree with pet normalization, since pretty much every hunter walked around with one of the few 1.0 attack speed pets as a general rule. What I don't agree on is there isn't enough ways to customize your pet. Beast Master tree should have more/better ways to make the pet stronger, it's their focus, and as of right now...yea, Beast Master can definately make improvements on a pet, but there should be other ways than just pure damage and a small hp/armor buff.

Also, having some pets tamed from the wild with pretty much no powers at all is just a waste of space. Why would anybody tame a Raptor or a Spider right now, or even an Owl or Bat? Yea, there are some shared powers, but nothing that sets them apart from anything else. Each pet race needs some kind of special power to be their own. Crabs are (someday maybe) getting Thorns. At least thats a hope of mine, since the crab you get from the Draenei hunter lv10 quest comes with the ability to cast the spell.

The basic pet normalization of attack speeds I saw as needed, but at the same time, they failed to give us any new incentives to train pets. Giving us variety and then giving us almost nothing didn't solve any problems. Taking away a 1.0 attack speed but giving us something new would have been a heck of a lot nicer, but then...were talking about a multi-billion dollar organization here. Why should they care what their customers want?

Now you just get the coolest looking pet :(

Crabs with thorns though.....nice.

Theo that is not even CLOSE to what I am saying. I do not care about the fact that my pets do not have gore or charge... All I am saying is that why can't cats have a unique ability? And heck why not have specific Elite or Rare mobs have a special ability. I am not saying OMGWTF make my pet godlike. I am saying that in combat ALL cats are the same. ALL raptors are the same.ALL boars are the same. Why can't some have a special ability that possibly makes them unique.Not better per say, just unique.

Now that's just being offensive.

Still though, ALL cats are the same (except skins obv and king b).
What other pet specific abilities are there?
How many Pet classes are there?
Well over 150 different skins in 23 classes but only 10 abilities?

I think they should add an ability for each pet class and make that skill not use up any points (when it's tamed, cost points to learn), this would go some way to make taming more interesting!
Or make the abilities free for the rare/elite mobs.
There should be some incentive.

There is an incentive. Elite/rare mobs usually have higher ranks of abilities than other mobs their level, and will usually have a unique skin (King B is the only white tiger until 53+).

This is a stupid topic to even debate, as it seems the people that are for it know very little about the Hunter class.

No, I am using my head. Your wall of text posts actually show much less thought than my posts are showing.

Especially because Blizzard has stated that there will be a patch that will give special abilities to the pet types that don't have any yet.

EDIT: BTW, the following is bashing.



Taken from the first post in the thread, in case you try to edit.

Edited, Mar 29th 2007 10:05am by Theophany

Money laundering would mean they made money illegally and then covered it up with a fake business.



FTFY.

I'd call it realistic.



So you get to pick the skin you like best. Travesty? I doubt it.



There are 10 unique abilities and 17 total.



There are 23 pet classes.



ONLY 10 abilities? No, only 10 UNIQUE abilities. Warlocks would kill for their pets to have 10 unique abilities.



Sure, that's all fine and good, but it's not as simple as "add ability X to pet class Y", there is a ******** of testing and implementation that need to be added, so it's not that simple.



A lot of mobs come with abilities pre-learned. Use Beast Lore and they'll tell you.

Although it's a terrible comparison, consider what Warlock's get in terms of pets. They all have the same basic 4 pets, imp, blueberry, succubus, and felhunter. The Felguard requires 41 points invested into Demonology. Whenever you see a warlock in a raid, or a party, they almost always have the imp out. Is this using their pets to their full potential? Hell no. You want to talk about pet's and usefullness go complain to the Warlocks. For the most part, the only time a Warlock would change out their pet is for soloing and pvp purposes.

Now you may argue a hunter only gets his choice of one pet at a time. This is true, and we can keep 2 extra in our stables, but look at what our pets get. Versatility for one. Warlocks only have the Blueberry for their tanking purposes, and/or the Felguard depending on spec. We hunters can pretty much turn any pet we want into a tanking pet, that also deals decent damage. We have the option of changing what our pet receives for the situation.

A warlock would kill for the ability to give their Blueberry more armor, or damage, or an extra ability other then what they come with. Are hunters limited to what pet receives which ability? Sure we are, but we have the option of giving them what we want.

You also have to consider, this is an added source of DPS for us hunters. Blizzard could come back tomorrow and say, well since hunters are meant to survive in the wild on their own, there is no need for them to have pets. Poof they're gone. Granted this would bring a lot more whiners then yourself to the boards, but it is a possibility. It wouldn't be much different then the Ranger class in FFXI. FFXI is also a more group oriented game though.

Our range has it's limits, we cannot successfully continue to fire on an enemy as they get closer. Casters have this option, if the enemy is within range, they can hit them at max range, or up close. Hunters are forced to melee when an enemy gets to close. So we were given a tank of sorts to help with this aspect, so we don't have to constantly kite our enemies.

I consider it a blessing, not a hinderance that we have pets. The normalization was well over-due, as stated from previous posters, everyone had the basic 3-4 pets that EVERYONE had. Those who didn't have those particular pets either wanted to be different, or just didn't know about them.

So really, your arguement is about their lack of abilities (which most pet families have one particular ability specific to them only), and the fact they all have normalized attack speeds.

I fail to see why you left out the pro's in your arguement? How much the pet actually helps you, how much damage the pet really does in comparison to your own, how many times you've sacrificed your pet just to save yourself? No other class has it easier then hunters when it comes to lvling. We get a pet, and we have ranged damage, we don't even need mana, we can go afk if we want to.

Yet for all the easyness in the world, you complain over the simplest of matters, our pets... They don't do enough damage for you? Would you expect them to get un-godly abilities so that they do even more damage than the hunter? Would this appease your insatiable appetite for power? Learn to utilize the abilities you were given, rather then complain and offer no viable option of change.

On a personal note I didnt have Broken Tooth, I had Spiteflayer, same 1.0 AS, and less farmed by hunters so easier to get + it had Screech, no personally I like the -AP Debuff that Screech gives cause even if the target is coming after me, it's going to hit me for alot less.

It would be nice if Crocs had a "Snap" Ability that did X damage and did X debuff/weapon damage/bleed effect to the target, or if Spiders had a web ability like they do in the wild, or if Tallstriders had the "knockback" ability that they have in the wild, and REALY nice if Carrior birds had the "Swoop" ability that makes it such a pain to tame them (Lvl 10 hunter Tauren problem).

It is all possible, and instead of the time and money spent on pet normalization, they could have developed those abilities listed. Yes I can play my hunter VERY well, with or without pet, I do not rely on my pet at all, but at the same time, it would be nice to have a little more "Pet Diversity", and maybe it would keep eople from screaming about Hunter diversity for a little while. I used to visit the Hunter o-boards, but stopped after seeing just about every post is a whine/*****/"Damn your Blizz for nerfing us" post.

I wouldn't have normally posted in this debate as I've only been a Hunter a week now, but the OP keeps mentioning my pet ;p

TBH the pet "normalisation" patch hasn't stopped me from wanting Takk the Leaper and I still plan on using him as my main levelling pet for as long as I can, but I have to say it's a little annoying that a pet that used to be the fastest thing on 2 legs now has trouble keeping up with me when I have Cheetah on, and he certainly can't be at my targetted mob as fast as I'd like, despite me having BS.

Now I realise it was my choice to tame Takk and I have to take him faults and all so I won't ***** about/to Blizzard, but it seems from my newbie's perspective that the pets are far from "normalised" anyway.

Normalised would suggest to me that all pets are to some extent equal, and the "which is the best?" argument would have no real answer as it would all be situational, but this is not the case. The Crusade's "there is no best pet, the boar is the best pet" slogan is actually somewhat true, as while there is no single "best" pet, boars perform well above many other pet families. I would say if I cared more about my effectiveness than pleasing my self when it comes to pets, the only ones I think I'd bother with are ones with dash/dive as pet speed is very important when it comes to being competitive.

What I would prefer rather than having rare/elite pets have unique abilities (although that would give some reason for tracking/taming them rather than just for the hell of it) is to just give them all a speed buff (dash for land-based pets, dive for flyers) Of course if Blizzrd were to give Takk his speed back, that would solve the problem for me also, but then every raptor pet would be Takk.

If what Theo says is true about a patch being on the way, then that's good enough for me, but I would like for some of the less effective pets to be given something to "normalise" them with the boars and cats of the animal kingdom.