PTR Mend PetFollow

The amount healed per cast is increased... but it's not doubled. The duration increased from 8 seconds to 15 seconds.



Personally, I applaud any characters who take on an unconventional style -- and make it work (sorry melee hunters) -- so I don't like Blizzard's answer to the Azuregos video. Capping +healing would've been a better choice, in my opinion, since it still gives hunters choices.

Regarding your comment, though, I think this is a mindset that too many players have. "Gimped their own DPS doing so." There's more than one way to win a fight, and it isn't always by pulling out a cannon. Yes, the Pet Mending hunter may have a lower damage-per-second, but he has a vastly higher survivability, and therefore can do much more damage in the end.

You have to keep your mind open to new possibilities, and not let it be clouded by what's been done before.

I'm going to be honest here, even if I'll get bashed over the head with something heavy for it, but if you want to heal, roll a Priest.

If you run around in +1000 healing and has Mend Pet as your favorite spell, you should seriously reconsider your class choice. I'm all for unconventional fighting styles, but it's just silly when you can solo something that is obviously not meant to be soloed. You don't need the added survivability anywhere unless you're trying to solo the world.

It might come as a shock to some of you, but this is a multiplayer game. You know, with other people in it? You don't need to take on the world on your own. In fact, we'd be more than happy to help out.

But isn't that what we're supposed to do?

We'll just end up with a Warrior in full +attack power and +agility gear using his crossbow do try and do our job while we do his.

It's crazy.

Well, one of the best soloing classes, true. Mages have AoE grinding, and Warlocks are basically the same in soloing (we might be a little better).
But this is how Blizzard decides to nerf classes:

1.)Can this class better than a warlock?
2.)Does this class have a useful ability?
3.)Does this class have an ability the other WoW community doesn't like?

This is how Blizzard decides what to do with the nerfed ability:

A.)Get rid of the ability
B.)Pick a random idea about what to do with that ability out of a hat

I'm not good with math, but I consider this a overall a buff. That is to me, but to those who very much vaule the cleansing aspect of Mend Pet it might be a nerf. Granted, I took Imp. Mend Pet, and I used the cleansing aspect. But I never RELIED on it. I used it once every so often, but usally the first tick of it the buff was cleansed. Mabye when I hit 70 and be a complete arena junky this will change, but right now, it doesn't really bother me.

I agree. How you spend your time in a PvP match can be the difference between win and loss.

What happens more often in PvP: The Hunter dies, or the Hunter's Pet dies? I've done a decent amount of PvP, and in my experience the Hunter dies at least 5 times as often as the Pet, and that is a very conservative ratio.
Your play style can alter this ratio considerably, of course. Send your pet across the BG after opponents and the Pet will die unsupported rather quickly...

When you're counting seconds in PvP, what is more valuable: A few seconds in which a spell may be cleansed from the Pet, or a few seconds of free action on the part of the Hunter?

I believe that the HOT aspect of the proposed change makes this question a no-brainer. Reducing the time the hunter has to spend on Mend Pet from a 5 second channeled cast to a single GCD is a huge advantage in PvP.

This isn't an attack, Mazra, but I somewhat fear anyone who adds a point to a debate that sounds like "learn your fixed place in society". It erases creativity, it discourages exceptional actions and thinking styles and it locks talented people into a square box, just because the other people inside couldn't figure out how to find the exit.

I totally agree that a cloth wearing healbot isn't really the ideal image for a hunter. But trying to be a priest, and managing your gear and play strategies to levels that allow you to solo - and survive - things that you couldn't before are two very different things.


I completely agree with this. I do think that just buffing your healing as a hunter is excessive but I don't like the argument that strategies, which differ from someone else's are wrong and should be eliminated. Sure, cap it. Keep it from getting to the silly level where it won't be really benefiting anyone - except overpowered players.

But, on some level, in its most fundamental form, some people are making the heal angle work. I don't do it, myself - but that means nothing.


I'll admit that Blizzard's text about hunters means very little to me. It's a vague roleplay-style description, to give some chunk of info. Yes, we use pets to keep distance and kill things. That's basically our role. But how we control our pet and then kill things is the player's choice.


Totally agree with this. We don't want hunters being too overpowered and being able to destroy every living thing in the game, certainly. But, I think that, cutting away individual play styles to box the class in is being short sighted.

It's like telling a rat that he has to work his way through the maze, to find the cheese... But he's not allowed to use his sense of smell to get it done.

The new mend pet is a huge buff, if you were using +healing gear then its clear you're trying to solo something which would be impossible otherwise. The reason why they took it away is that they dont want people to be soloing mobs like this, soloing azuregos for example gives you a huge amount of money.

In terms of anything other than this, its a massive buff. I respecced beast mastery this morning, and managed to get myself into an arena situation where I fought a holy paladin for the best part of 20 minutes. If I was able to use the new mend pet, it would have been a whole lot faster.

the problem isnt the Azuregos vid (there will be something like that not to long from now) but al the wannabee's who think they can do it too and start rolling for +heal gear.
i have 1 +heal trinket, and it has come in handy. healing my pet for a bit extra, and if needed (adds or so) heal my pet back to full within 2 mend pets.
and i am sad to see that go.
best way to solve it is (in my opinion) to make + healing get less and less effective for non druid/shaman/paladin/priests.
this way, hunters can make good use out of it, but wont be able to solo raidbosses.

now i guess i'll vendor my oshu'gun relic. and remember the little bit of extra fun it gave me.

Also, again, the class descriptions given by Blizzard have changed multiple times, and even those who work with Blizzard have said that they are not meant to encompass everything the class can do... if they even give an accurate idea in the first place.

Change may be necessary, but it is in fact possible to balance something without removing it entirely. Also, there are some exceptional players who can accomplish amazing things, yet Blizzard often institutes changes following such rare accomplishments, not only preventing these extreme examples, but even things moderately resembling them.

At one point in a time, a warrior who had obtained both the legendary Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker and the 300 Engi requiring, Molten-core pattern drop Force Reactive Disk. He traded out his plate armor for lots of leather that boosted +nature damage, and with a pally friend two-manned BRD. Not three weeks after that video was put out, Blizzard removed the ability for any affects from items to benefit from +spell damage.

Nevermind that the warrior had an epic, extremely hard to obtain and craft shield, the most difficult to obtain legendary sword, and sacrificed most of his defense to do an instance that had little to no level 60 value.... they removed the possibility altogether, preventing anybody from buffing an item's effect to any degree.

In the case of Azuregos, the hunter's gear would have taken an extreme amount of time to obtain, including time to build rep to get the enchants he used on some pieces. Not to mention he was wearing 3 pieces of Giantstalker for the set bonus that boosted Mend Pet's effects, armor that's no longer easy to obtain in a post-BC game. And even after all that, he had to spend two hours of his time to kill a level 60 raid boss that dropped loot he had no need for.

I agree that balance is necessary in a game, but to create such broad changes due to the extremely unlikely efforts of a few players seems poorly conceived.

Even then, I'm not condemning Blizzard for their choice, I just feel like such things could be handled better.