Pet Normalization: The Middle Way (Part II)
Yesterday I posted a long article about distintive design vs. normalization in pet family design, prompting by a recent post on The Mysic Hunter called Inevitable Normalization.
I advocate a middle way between these two extremes in which we distribute existing pet skills among the families in order to alleviate some of our problems. This is really meant as a stop-gap while the slow, slow wheels of design turn — a compromise that improves our lot while we wait for the final answer.
But I stopped before getting into the nitty-gritty details — because honestly that post had already gone on too long. So today, let’s look at the specifics.
All families get a closing skill.
One of the biggest differences between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pet families is whether they have access to a skill like Dive or Dash — a skill that lets them close with their target faster. A closing skill is very important in PvP, situationally important in PvE, and extremely convenient at all times. So let’s make sure that all pet families have access to a good closing skill.
For most families this would be Dash or Dive, but we might get adventurous and extend Charge to a few of the least popular families, like bears and crocolisks. It won’t do any harm, especially after the Charge+Growl interaction is changed in an upcoming patch.
Dive:
- Spore Bats: Dive
Dash:
- Bears
- Crabs
- Crocolisks
- Gorillas
- Scorpids
- Serpents
- Spiders
- Turtles
(Incidentally, I don’t want any gruff about how turtles can’t dash. You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever had to chase one around before a visit to the vet!)
All families get Bite.
Bite isn’t an amazing skill, but it is a nice solid reliable damage-dealer and all pet families should have access to it. That means adding Bite to the following:
- Crabs
- Owls
- Scorpids
- Spore Bats
All families get a basic focus dump.
A focus dump is just a pet skill with no cooldown timer. Since there’s no cooldown, a skill like this can be used to ‘dump’ excess focus, turning focus directly into damage. Focus dump skills have become increasingly useful for both Beast Mastery and Marksmanship hunters because there are talents in both trees to generate extra focus for pets.
There are two basic physical damage focus dumps in the game right now: Claw and Gore. So it makes sense to extend one or the other of these skills to the pet families that don’t have one yet. Which family gets which skill is open for debate, but I would suggest the following:
Claw:
- Bats
- Dragonhawks
- Hyenas
- Tallstriders
- Wind Serpents
- Wolves
Gore:
- Crocolisks
- Gorillas
- Nether Rays
- Serpents
- Spiders
- Spore Bats
- Turtles
Spread the family love when possible.
We tend to think of Screech as a unique family-specific skill, even though it’s shared by bats, carrion birds, and owls. With Screech as an example, there is little barrier to extending at least a few of the skills that are currently unique to another family or two. For example:
- Charge: Bears and Crocolisks
- Screech: Nether Rays and Spore Bats
- Prowl: Spiders and Raptors
- Shell Shield: Crabs
- Furious Howl: Hyenas
- Poison Spit: Spiders
- Thunderstomp: Tallstriders
I know that these suggestions are probably the most controversial in this post, and you can make the argument that extending the family-specific skills this way could potentially interfere with future design. Nevertheless, this method provides an extremely quick and easy way to give something to pet families that have nothing. But you could also leave out this portion and only implement the first three headings if you wanted to be more conservative.
And that’s it!
As I mentioned before, these changes aren’t intended to fix pet families completely. They are presented as merely a short-term solution that doesn’t require too much work, doesn’t negate further changes in either the the direction of more distinctive design or of normalization, and yet still manages to improve our situation somewhat right now.
Table of Contents for Series: Pet Normalization: The Middle Way
- Pet Normalization: The Middle Way (Part I)
- Pet Normalization: The Middle Way (Part II)
marzix - May 1st, 2008 at 12:17 am EDT
boy would i love this middle-road solution to happen.
Seidouyumi - May 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am EDT
Gorillas can’t Gore. However, they should be able to charge. Sometimes not having a focus dump isn’t that bad. If Thunderstomp’s radius was dropped to melee range, and the cool down dropped by half, it would make a great skill to have and would not require a Focus dump.
I’m not sure that a Dragonhawk would need a focus dump either. Fire Breath is doing, if, as it often is, cast twice in a battle, more damage than Claw is in a similar battle. This is one of those skills that does a lot of damage without needing to be cast all the time. At level 26, Hinata’s doing 70 fire damage each blast of FB. If that casts twice in a battle, that’s 140 fire damage. And it just keeps going up as I level and gain RAP. The baseline damage and the spell bonus make up a lot for the loss of a focus dump.
Turtles are known to slide on their shells though. So, I can see a dash.
I’ll add some more tomorrow. It’s getting late and my brain is starting to shut off.
Qix - May 1st, 2008 at 12:48 am EDT
I love the idea. As far as things like “X class should not have Y skill” It only has to be re-named for the most part. Outside of turtle’s and a charge ability, this would be fine. Ok, soa gorilla cant Gore, call it something else, call it face bite, I dont care.
I have always thought the same about a lot of other beasts that can’t be tamed. Why can’t I tame a Zhevra? Give it the exact same stats as another pet class (hyena?). Done. Giraffe gets tallstrider stats. Hell, make a faction quest that gives a horde hunter the option to tame a young (and smaller) Kodo with the abilities of a gorilla. Alliance could get… well I dont know, something happy and pretty. Or a pet gnome. All you have to do it give it similiar stats to another pet line.
Killerdragon - May 1st, 2008 at 12:50 am EDT
=O Raptors with prowl? I like that idea. =3
Leviath - May 1st, 2008 at 1:18 am EDT
Spiders would be creepy and powerhouse… Dash, Gore, Poison Spit, Prowl.
I think spreading the love is a good idea, but you might find some abilities will need to be nerfed to compensate for adding their new abilities. If you were to presume that all pet families were doing the correct amount of damage at the current stage in time (e.g. Dragonhawks are balanced around having Fire Breath, and - for the most part - caster stats), then any change to give them abilities would have to have an equal and opposite effect in nerfing their current abilities.
If being honest, I would surmise that’s not the case - why, if a Spore Bat does not do the same damage as a Cat, is it not buffed in defensive stats/abilities? So yes, spreading the love may be a solution, or perhaps - if adding skills doesn’t make sense - buffing the raw stats of damage/armor/health to compensate.
Leviath - May 1st, 2008 at 1:27 am EDT
…adding on to my comment, that’s addressing the current status quo with current technologies without adding new abilities. I noticed your part about focus dumps only mentioned offensive abilities - but how about defensive ones that are new.
I like to think about Spore Bats, because they’re so useless currently:
- paladin-style auras that cost 20 focus every 2 secs to maintain (either positive e.g. Mana Vapor i.e. mana regen for the party e.g. or negative e.g. Slowing Spores i.e. earthbind effect around the pet)
- triggered effects (whenever the pet crits, it spends X focus if available to do X effect; whenever its attacks are parried, or dodged, or miss; whenever it gets crit, it spends X to heal 50% of the damage etc)
Many ideas using existing mechanics but stop the focus of pets being offensive only - I think abilities like Poison Spit / Lightning Breath are heading in the right direction by making the strategy of the pet’s use a bit different.
Kurasu - May 1st, 2008 at 2:26 am EDT
I just want to make a suggestion: rather than ‘Poison Spit’ on the spiders, go with ‘Scorpid Venom’. Just name it to ‘Venom’ and there you go: a poisonous attack that more critters can have. Scorpids, Spiders… Serpents should keep Poison Spit, rather than get both, even though I think it would be awesome to have a snake with a poisonous bite. ;)
Moomaul - May 1st, 2008 at 2:32 am EDT
This is pretty much my idea, just without making all pets have the same stats. The problem with your way is that people will still use a cat over a bear most of the time because a cat just does more damage.
Also, some of your skills choices make no sense at all. How can a sporebat, which has no mouth, bite or make a screech noise? The best way to do this is just make new focus dumps for some pets that can’t share with others but that work pretty much the same way.
For sporebats, just give them “spore burst” or something like that is just bite with a different name and graphic and a “tail lash” for a claw/gore ability. For animals that only bite, instead of claw just give them “snap”, they just do a quick bite instead of a quick slash, makes more sense and does the same thing.
Also, why can’t they just add stat changers to pet trainers? You could train your pet 10% but at the cost pf 5% hp and 5% armor, etc. They could make the dps trained of this only availible to low dps pets like bears or turtles, so people would train this to a high dps pet and get a high damage uber frail cat.
ChaosZereul - May 1st, 2008 at 2:42 am EDT
I love this idea. I always wondered why some pets didn’t get skills that they were practically destined to have. Admittedly, you’re right that this isn’t a long-term, nor an end-all-be-all solution, but it still allows people a certain level of diversity. Every Hunter I see either uses a Wind Serpent, Ravager, Cat, or Scorpid as their main, with Dragonhawks or Boars as alts. I’d just love to see a level 70 brandishing a crab or a tallstrider for a little diversity.
Tahlian - May 1st, 2008 at 5:57 am EDT
Wow, Mania…that’s a really easy-to-implement, elegant solution to the neglected pet family problem. Kudos! Even if they did change the name of the skill to stylistically reflect the pet it’s on, that doesn’t seem to be too much of a hassle at all.
Not to mention the fact that my Tauren hunter’s Mazzranache named Agador would absolutely love to be rocking some Thunderstomp someday. :)
Sarayana - May 1st, 2008 at 8:00 am EDT
I’m not convinced we need to equalise to such a large extent though. I like the fact that choosing your pet takes some research - I have looked into every single pet my hunter has trained, and I have one for pve dps, one for pvp, one that’s a better tank… I also love trying on a new pet for size and realising that it’s better/worse than I thought, making my own discoveries that way. Equalising the pets’ skills would somehow remove some of that aspect of the game. I agree it’d be awesome to see a level 70 tallstrider, but there are so many choices as it is.
Seidouyumi - May 1st, 2008 at 8:05 am EDT
A while back Varsar and I did something much similar. I think, though, by that point we were both the only two on the thread.
Ok, some skills are incredibly powerful and do not require an additional skill on that pet. For instance, having a ’spell’ skill kind of negates the need for something more. With the two poisons, lightning breath and fire breath getting access to the spell bonus to some degree or another, adding in even more damage to the pet might actually push them well past what they need to do. Sometimes simply altering what the pet family already has would help out. Increasing the spell bonus addition to Lightning Breath and Poison Spit would drive their damage up a great deal without necessitating any additional skills. Reducing the cool down of Fire Breath a little (3-4 seconds) and Thunderstomp a lot (30 seconds) would add a lot of damage to a solid pet. Adding a scaling component to Thunderstomp would help as well given the scarcity of Gorillas.
I made the suggestion that Tallstriders be given screech instead of any other focus dump. The reason is because the ancient birds that they are derived from are believed to have done something similar to drive off any competition for their prey.
Both Nether Rays and Sporebats are related to Tripods which use a lightning based attack. Perhaps giving both Lightning Breath, and maybe giving Sporebats one other ability such as thunderstomp would help since it is a nature based attack.
Hyenae are more closely related to cats than dogs and I’ve done some checking on their hunt styles. Giving them more of the cat’s abilities would actualy work.
A long time ago, I recomended adding in one skill, a physical DoT. Basically, Rend. This could be added to the Crocolisk and Hyena. Both crocs and hyena try to cause massive hemoraging in their victims, so this would work.
And charge for Gorillas.
Varsar - May 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am EDT
“And charge for Gorillas.”
Yeah that would rock!
Ashah - May 1st, 2008 at 9:33 am EDT
even better than a posion ability for spiders would be a web of some sort, either slowing or trapping the taget for a short time, which would actually elminate the need for a closing skill. Some kind of posionious bite (even if its just a chance to posion target while using bite already) in conjuction with that would be awesome, but it may lean to the overpowered side, I’ve long said that spiders need a boost, they are very widespread in the game, and would make great pets cause of the look variety and availability to all levels.
In the first part of this posting, you mentioned cost and time being factors in blizz’s underdevelopment of pets. Honestly, the game is an investment, there are over 10 million players, each paying a hefty monthly fee, and each having to buy expansions, so blizz has the money, and the time should be just seen as another part of that investment. If they can take the time to come up with new content every few months, making some much needed changes to a popular class shouldn’t be a burden. Its something that will make the game more interesting, and honestly may sway some people that are on the fence to go ahead and try it, not to mention boost blizz’s persona as a developing company that actually is looking into what their players want, and fixing issues important to them. In the end, we’re all customers. Everything blizz does to improve the game, and make their customers, will bring more customers, word of mouth is a powerful thing, espically in the gaming community.
Ashah - May 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am EDT
typo above, “make their customers happy, will bring more customers” sry..
Indy - May 1st, 2008 at 9:42 am EDT
Mania…post these on Blizz’s suggestion forums. Couldn’t hurt…
Ketari - May 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am EDT
Not sure bite is essential.
The other two steps would bring in a much wider diversity of pet usage anyway..
Faulk_Wulf - May 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am EDT
These should definately be handed to whoever takes suggestions like this. Just to hear why or why not its a good diea.
Rasta - May 1st, 2008 at 10:47 am EDT
Mania: Please, for the love of all that’s hunter, go and post these two articles in the suggestions forum. Under your character, too, so that others will be able to recognize it and post their agreement.
Znodis - May 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am EDT
I was wondering what the middle road actually was, and it is a good solution that would definitely be easy to implement. Your point about normalizing eliminating the possibility of the devs eventually ‘doing it right’ is well taken. (Incidentally, you summarized some of my most long-winded posts into just a few paragraphs - /applaud + /boggle.) I’m hoping _something_ is done as we upgrade to 3.0.
My only criticism is that it leaves players with very little choice (which is really what we want). Right now, the choice is either a good pet (focus dump + movement) or mediocre to bad pet (anything that doesn’t have both). In your system, you get one choice of focus dump, one choice of movement, and one choice of ‘unique’ family ability. It’s still better that what we have now.
However, using that idea as a basis, take it a step further. This was my very first post on my blog (coming on a year ago), and it is a very similar idea with where this could eventually progress to. I found it again from a discussion at TKAsomething.com, and updated it a bit giving some thoughts to stats as well.
The TLDR version: Create 5 categories of abilities (Agro Control, Focus Dump, Movement, Passive Ability, and Secondary Skills). Now create several abilities in each category which are balanced against each other. For each family, they can chose one ability from each category with only certain abilities open to them.
Category example - Agro Control
* Growl
* Cower
* Claw twist - each attack does additional agro
* Blind spot - each attack does slightly less agro
* Bristle (Taunt)- Pet jumps to top of mobs agro list
Training example - Bear
A bear could learn either Growl, Claw Twist, or Bristle, but only one of them as and Agro Control ability. The choice is up to you. Some of these choices may appear for the bear again in the Secondary Skill category, but there will also be some other juicy skills too.
Really, I just hope something is done.
Varsar - May 1st, 2008 at 12:08 pm EDT
Ashah you will never see a pet with any kind of snare. that would then become the only PvP pet you ever see and other players would be screaming so loudly that they’d take away our bows/guns/crossbows and make us use throwing weapons….
Well maybe not that but the nerf bat would hit us so hard it would be painful
anna - May 1st, 2008 at 1:05 pm EDT
i think i would be like relli cool if all pets had there own speical abbilty!becuase i think atm all blizz thinks is that every one wants cats hehe
Drakkena - May 1st, 2008 at 1:12 pm EDT
I do like these ideas really. Though a spider with Prowl seems like one of those whoa moments. I would rather see a Wolf with Prowl (Seeing as some species can prowl around, take those in The Hinterlands for example) Over a spider but the wolves already have furious howl.
YES! Bears with charge! If a Feral Druid can Charge in bear for them a pet beat SHOULD be able to charge an opponent as well.
Palladiamors - May 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm EDT
To everyone who mentioned new abilities for pets, Mania’s solution was one that didn’t bring any new code into the game, it was just meant as a ‘patch’ until something could be done, one way or another, about hunter pets. Its meant to increase pet effectiveness on all ends, thereby giving people more options outside of cat/ravager/scorpid. And as a short term solution on the road to something else I think it’s a great idea. My wolf would probably never leave my side. Though I do have to agree with whoever said to give spiders a modified scorpid sting, spiders bite. Same effect, different name.
Now, on to why I disagree! *laughs* As a short term, I don’t. I think that it would be a great way to bridge the gap, and to buy them some time to work on a REAL solution. The idea of complete normalization disgusts me. May as well just give us a pet based on our race when we hit ten at that point. I understand, mind you, that the coding required to make each pet family unique might take a bit. But that didn’t stop them from making each warlock minion unique, did it? I am not suggesting the sheer versitality of the warlock minions. I am, however, suggesting a wider range to choose from, both abilities, and in pet statistics in general. Make each family more distinctive then it is currently, and give each family one, MAYBE two family skills. All it takes it one change large change to the coding, and you have a lot of happy hunters.
At this point, any change for the better would be so welcomed by the hunter community. I can’t speak for anyone else, but right now, the whole issue with our pets feels like it’s stuck in a rut. We have no seen a substantial change to a part of our class that has been kind of broken for the past year and a bit now. If these problems persist into Wrath, then they will only compound, and become worse. Lets all cross our fingers, shall we?
Kai - May 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pm EDT
I wouldn’t agree to have claw for Wind Serpents or Wolves. The Wind Serpants don’t really have claws, just a spike in their wings that lightning is channeled. If they tried to ‘claw’ anything with them they wouldn’t be able to keep flying :P I’d think poison spit/sting be better for them, there snakes with wings, why can’t they be venomous? And Wolves don’t really use their claws when hunting iRL unlike cats.
jeanericuser001 - May 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm EDT
If this was a comedy article you just made me laugh my ass off. If it wasn’t than I have no idea how many remarks I can make about this but there sure is a lot. As for giving pets the abilities of others, I think you have it all wrong. For starters many of these abilities need to be completely changed or removed. My belief is that pets should be treated like warriors with different stances that you can use for a pet that changes how they fight. Some pets though will only have access to two stances while others may be even able to handle 3 or possibly all 4 stances.
Defensive stance:
Info: Pet enters defensive mode increasing armor by 10% to 50% but also reducing damage by 20% to 50%.
Pets: Cats, Raptors, Ravagers, Bats, Bears, Boars, Carrion Birds, Dragonhawks, Gorillas, Owls, Warp Stalkers, Wind Serpents, Wolves, Crabs, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Tallstriders, Turtles
Special Defensive Attacks:
Thunderous Roar
Info: Pet emits a tremendous roar resulting in targets in close proximity either being stunned for 5 seconds or running away in fear for 3 seconds.
Pets: Cats, Raptors, Ravagers, Bears, Boars, Dragonhawks, Gorillas, Warp Stalkers, Wolves, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Tallstriders
Avoidance
Info: Pet increases speed of dodge and parry movement resulting in 30% to 50% chance of dodging damage however pet also loses 30% to 50% of its attack power as a result of dodging attacks.
pet: Cats, Raptors, Bats, Boars, Carrion Birds, Gorillas, Owls, Warp Stalkers, Wolves, Hyenas, Tallstriders, Wind Serpents, Dragonhawks
Shell Shield
Info: Pet reinforces its armor resulting in 75% to 100% increase in armor for 10 seconds but forces pet to stop attacking for 3 seconds.
pet: Dragonhawks, Wind Serpents, Crabs, Turtles
Offensive stance
Pets: Cats, Raptors, Ravagers, Bats, Bears, Boars, Carrion Birds, Dragonhawks, Gorillas, Owls, Scorpids, Serpents, Warp Stalkers, Wind Serpents, Wolves, Crabs, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Nether Rays, Spiders, Sporebats, Tallstriders, Turtles
Special Offensive abilities:
Rabies
Info: Pet inflicts bite on target resulting in target being infected with rabies resulting in 50 to 75 over 20 seconds and has a 10% chance to result in driving target mad resulting in target attacking other targets near by.
Pets: Cats, Raptors, Ravagers, Bats, Bears, Boars, Carrion Birds, Gorillas, Owls, Wolves, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Nether Rays, Sporebats, Tallstriders
Desperate Hunger
Info: Pet becomes desperately hungry as its health grows small resulting in an increase in attack speed by 30% to 50% unfortunately pet also lower loyalty as its hunger grows.
Pets: Cats, Raptors, Ravagers, Bats, Bears, Boars, Carrion Birds, Dragonhawks, Gorillas, Owls, Scorpids, Serpents, Warp Stalkers, Wind Serpents, Wolves, Crabs, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Nether Rays, Spiders, Sporebats, Tallstriders, Turtles
Vampirism
Info: Pet bites target resulting in vampiric mode where by pet gains health for each successful bite it makes on target.
Pets: Bats, Spore Bats, Nether Ray, spider,
Stealth stance
Pets: Raptor, cat, serpent
Pet responce to stealth mode and attack capability:
Cat:
Responce: Partial invisability
Attack: Gutripper “Cat slashes stomach of target resulting in 50 to 100 damage”
Raptor:
Responce: Camoflage mode
Attack: Gutripper “Raptor slashes stomach of target resulting in 50 to 100 damage”
Serpent:
Responce: Burrow mode
Attack1: Poison Stun “Serpent spits venom resulting in target being stun for 5 seconds”
Attack2: Suffocate “Serpent attempts to suffocate target for 10 seconds resulting in 100 to 1000 damage”
Warp Stalker:
Responce: Warp phase
Attack: phase shift “Warpstalker attempts to pull a target into another dimension for 20 seconds then target reappears and is dealt immediate 100 shadow damage and 200 arcane damage”
Caster stance
Info: Caster mode reduces ability to inflict melee damage but allows ability to use ranged attacks at reduced focus cost.
Ranged abilities and pets that can enter caster mode:
Poison Spit
Info: Pet spits out venom resulting in 2 to 40 nature damage and 20 to 200 nature damage over 10 seconds
Cooldown: 2 to 5 seconds
Pets: Spider, serpent, windserpent
Sonic Blast
Info: Pet emits a sonic wave that stuns opponent resulting in 5 to 50 shadow damage and may stun target for 5 seconds.
Cooldown: 3 to 5 seconds
Pets: Bat, Spore Bat, nether ray
Elemental Attacks:
Info1: Pet shoots out a fire ball that can do between 10 to 50 fire damage on impact and an additional 10 to 100 fire damage over 10 seconds.
Info2: Pet shoots out a snow ball that can do between 8 to 40 Frost damage on impact and may possibly freeze opponent for 5 seconds.
Info3: Pet shoots out an arc of lightning that can do between 5 to 50 nature damage and may jump to nearby next target resulting in additional 3 to 30 nature damage
Cooldown: 5 to 10 seconds
Pets: Dragonhawk, windserpent
I figure that is enough ideas to give some of you something to debate about.
Ashah - May 1st, 2008 at 5:08 pm EDT
jeanericuser001,
the coding required to change that much would be insane, and honestly, we need to have time to control our own shorts and abilities, if we had that many things to do with a pet, we’d never squeeze a shot off.
Ryno - May 1st, 2008 at 5:13 pm EDT
Not to mention how overpowered the pets would then be. At it’s base a pet for a soloing hunter is a tank and DoT. In a group it’s just a DoT, even if it has some fancy skills to keep itself alive or help the group.
Palladiamors - May 1st, 2008 at 6:19 pm EDT
*Shudders* Ryno, no offense intended, but it always drives me to distraction when some one refers to pets as DoTs. A pet has so much more controlability and flexibilty then a DoT that its just not an amusing or a good comparison. Even a non-beast master pet should be able to do more damage then even a high end corruption.
I think I find it insulting mainly because my pets can and often do bring down people in PvP when I am paying attention to a different target. That…. not a DoT, I am sorry.
hyena84 - May 1st, 2008 at 7:32 pm EDT
sporebats can make noise just fine if we go pokeing at them.thought id rather see a sporebat version of the imp’s bloodpact,screech would be possable.iv seen turtles in real like run after people that annoyed them to.and iv seen spiders,wolves,and raptors all useing prowl in wow while questing…
Ryai - May 1st, 2008 at 7:48 pm EDT
… Sorry but no offense, jeanericuser001, but do you have a hunter as one of your characters? Because if so you’d understand why that suggestion is… down right laughable and scarily, not what we need. I repeat, NOT, what we need. Just because a pet is our tank, doesn’t mean it’s a tank replacement. Yes in some cases it can off tank, but you’re suggestions make it sound like it should be able to tank.
And our pets already have three stances. Agressive. Defensive. Passive. That’s all we need for them, that’s all they need.
And:
[As for giving pets the abilities of others, I think you have it all wrong. For starters many of these abilities need to be completely changed or removed.]
Something makes me think you were a victim of DASH or DIVE + Intimidate.
PEts like Bears, Boars and Gorillas, should get dash. SPORE BATS NEED SKILLS, if not Dive, then WHAT, I wanted to use one once. Then I saw it learned noooothiiiing. It’s a caster pet with no caster stats! And some abilities need to be seriously updated, or changed/revamped, but not removed. Why? Because then we just have this lump of flesh that just growls. That’s it.
How about we make it where warlock minions don’t do crap too, shall we? ~.~
Mania - May 1st, 2008 at 7:56 pm EDT
I understand that this is a heated topic, but please remember to keep your comments polite and respectful of others. This isn’t aimed at anyone specifically, but I don’t want is to slide off into “You’re crazy — and your mother dresses you funny!” territory. *grin*
Nimizar - May 1st, 2008 at 9:07 pm EDT
Looks a lot like some of the suggestions I’ve made in threads about this on the Blizzard forums, so unsurprisingly I like it :)
In terms of ‘but X doesn’t have anything to Claw/Gore with’ style complaints regarding the addition of focus dumps to families that don’t have one, it wouldn’t be too hard to add “Snap” (a quick bite) as a rebranded version of either Claw or Gore for all of the pet families without obvious claws for Claw or tusks/mandibles for Gore (similar to how Dive is just a rebranded Dash for pets that fly rather than walk).
So, for example, ‘Snap’ would make more sense for a Crocolisk or Turtle than either Claw or Gore would.
Yossir (w/ Torc & Ravioli) - May 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 am EDT
This whole thing about normalizing pet is, in my opinion, stupid. Pets should keep the stats they have now and always should.
Something I’ve noticed about all of the pet skills currently is that they tend reflect those of animals in the real world.
All of the pets Mania listed for gaining Dash have real life counter parts capable of making speed bursts, but only for limited abouts of time. The pets that already have Dash can maintain those speed for extended periods e.g. cats, wolves, hyenas, striders (ostriches), etc.
Those suggested for Bite don’t have very powerful jaws, others let alone mouths. With Claw, I can see maybe bats gaining access to that skill but all of the other ones have no talons- dragonhawks and windserpents only have two limbs with no claws on the end! As for Gore, maybe nether rays but the other pets mentioned don’t posess the features to impale someone or something like a ravager or boar.
I agree with some of the “Spread the Love” ones like giving nether rays Screech, crabs Shell Shield, hyenas Furious Howl (renamed Sinister Laugh for them), and bears and gorillas Charge. I personally love the idea of raptors receiving Prowl though. Some of the other suggestions I just find flat out bad.
As I mentioned above, pets skills reflect their real world conuter parts. So if pets with no unique skill were to receive some, they need to be accurate. Some of these examples are for pets that have no abilities while others are just based on logic:
Kick
Family: Striders
Kicks the enemy for X damage.
25 focus
No cooldown
Spore Burst
Family: Spore Bats
Releases a cloud of toxic spores for X damage to the enemy, inflicting Y nature damage over 2 seconds to every enemy in melee range.
50 focus
10 second cooldown
Snap
Families: Crocolisks, Turtles
Quickly snaps the enemy for X damage.
25 focus
No cooldown
Leech
Family: Bat, Nether Ray, Spider
Drains the enemy of X mana/health, restoring Y health to the user.
60 focus
30 second cooldown
Scurry
Families: Scorpids, Spiders, Crabs
Scurries, increasing movement speed by X for 10 seconds.
10 focus
20 second cooldown
Death Roll
Family: Crocolisks
Lunges at the enemy, building up Attack Power for the next attack and immoblizes the target for 1 second.
8-25 yard range
35 focus
25 second cooldown
The reasoning behind Scurry’s cost and cooldown is that those animals in real life move fast more often but over shorter distances. Death Roll is just Charge but I think it sounds way cooler. Kick and Snap are just focus dumps and Spore Burst is a nature based Fire Breath. I don’t know about if something like Leech would ever be put in since its so powerful.
I think every pet needs access to a unique skill or should at least get to share one with another family. Every hunter should have a wide variety of pets with different special abilities to use.
This is just food for thought and i’m not saying that all of these change I mentioned should go in. Just trying to use some logic.
Yossir, 68 tauren hunter, Staghelm, surv/MM
Nimizar - May 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 am EDT
Yossir, I think you kind of missed Mania’s whole point here. In a world where developer resources were unlimited and free, pet diversity would be a wonderful thing. In reality, pet diversity actually reduces pet choice, because some families end up so drastically superior to others that hunters are forced to choose between having an effective pet or having a pet they like the looks of (I’m fortunate in that I quite like the looks of my ravager and my owl, but there are plenty of people out there that really prefer the looks of the pets that are less effective from a game mechanics point of view).
What pet normalisation provides is a way to increase pet choice, without requiring devotion of any particularly significant development effort to one element of one class of a game with 9 (soon to be 10) playable classes. Putting too much effort into this doesn’t make sense from a business perspective for Blizzard, because very few hunters are going to quit over it, and even fewer new plays would be likely to join due to any improvements in this area.
Mania’s middle road idea keeps some diversity (since not all families can access all skills, and there are still differences between the underlying stats of the various families), while drastically increasing choice (since all families would at least have the combination of a movement speed increase with a focus dump).
sandralover - May 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 am EDT
I would love to see the middle road taken , but as there are so many unfixed bugs in the game already i seriously doubt with the way they are trying to advance the game levels that even the known bugs will ever be fixed without a complete rewrite of all the coding in the game .
from what i can see there are still bugged mobs about from about two years ago and in outland , Well we that have been there have seen a lot still happening so what chance have we of getting any closer to more pet families being worth using at level 70+
Leviath - May 2nd, 2008 at 6:39 am EDT
Thought I’d come back and post some more thoughts. I really don’t care what they put in either the short or the long term, as long as there’s capacity for my Cat to be different from someone else’s Cat. The problem at the moment is even with the good pets, every one is the same; there’s more than enough training points to get all the skills for any pet, and so it doesn’t really matter in the end.
What I would like to see is more abilities competing with one another in mechanics, to make you choose which one to train (and therefore you would generally have different pets for different roles). Basic example:
Claw (Rank 9) - 29 Training Points - Cost: 25 Focus
Claw the enemy, causing 54 to 76 damage.
Shred (Rank 9) - 29 Training Points - Cost: 25 Focus
Shred the enemy, causing 76 to 106 damage. Must be behind the target.
In this example, you’ve got one skill that’s useful all the time, and one that’s 40% better for the same focus cost if the Pet is behind the target (which it would be if it weren’t tanking). As there’s no real situation where it would be beneficial to have both (the Pet is either behind the target, or it’s not), you could train one Pet for soloing (and buff it with tanking stuff too), and another for Groups (and forego some tanking stuff in lieu of DPS buffs). You could of course have both, but then you’re losing training points that could be spent elsewhere (and the key idea is to have meaningful reasons to spend the points elsewhere - other competing abilities - thus making the decision to take both of these really matter).
Pet Review - What’s next? « The Mystic Hunter - May 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 pm EDT
[...] I don’t think I mentioned it, but the reason the sporebat is named Gus is because FungusAmungus was too long and looked bad no matter how I abbreviated it. If I tame a new one (and they still sux), I’m going to name him ‘JustADoT.’ [...]
Palladiamors - May 2nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm EDT
Leviath, it would be wonderful to get new pet abilities like that. I think every hunter wants new skills to play with on their pets. I’ve been a big advocate of giving bleed abilities to pets, myself. But Mania’s solution is meant to give us a reason to use other pets. I realize people will still mainly gun for the high DPS pets ((This is shown by the raptor and bears having claw and bite, but not being overly popular pets)) but it would still make the non-main stream pets more fun to use.
And as for the whole arguments of giving pets abilities that don’t correspond to real life….. just stop, okay? It is a low budget, easy way to give other pets useful, pre-existing abilities without having to totally rewrite the code. In other words, at the moment, it may be our only shot.
Now, this is a bit off to the side, but what seem’s odd to me is that they have already done something sort of similar. When TBC came out, they introduced gore…… and gave it to not one, but two pet families, an old, and a new. My question is, why didn’t they expand it from there? Make another new ability, snap, for creature with bite, and maybe a heavy swing version for claw users?
Finally, Spore bats aren’t that hard to think up skills for. Swipe ((It does have a large tail)) for a claw substitute, and Ram, for a bite substitute. Same effects, different names. Viola.
Mania!! Your insane, and your husband dresses you funny!!
Yossir (w/ Torc & Ravioli) - May 2nd, 2008 at 6:53 pm EDT
The point I was trying to get across Nimizar, was that the Middle-Way suggestion is that in-game skills are based on the real-world. While Mania’s suggestion is nice, it doesn’t make any sense do have a animal without claws gain the ability to slash at something. I want to see the useless pets (Sporebats, Crocs, etc) become useful and more widely seen as the more popular ones but they should gain their own BRAND NEW skills instead of having to share existing abilities that would be unlogical for them to use. Maybe I am missing the point of pet normalization, but the pet stats SHOULD stay the SAME so that some are still better at certain areas than others.
Kai - May 3rd, 2008 at 5:01 am EDT
Actuly Wind Serpents have a Focus dump skill already, though its rather expensive. Lightning Breath has no cool down, it just costs a large chunk of focus. with the talent in MM an over 40% crit rateing. i see my wind serpent spaming lightning breath quite a lot.
I wouldn’t mind them reducing the cost to like… 30 focus or such.. or even 25..
Palladiamors - May 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 pm EDT
Ahhh, Kai. You’d have loved to have been around back when it first came out. And DID cost 25 focus. But, you know, can’t have something useful on a hunter…. nerf!
Ansawa - May 3rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm EDT
I agree that dragonhawks don’t need a focus dump. They do fine on their own with Bite and Fire Breath, especially because Fire Breath has no “target cap” and will hit everything in front of the ‘hawk.
Otherwise I full endorse this. :D
Ansawa - May 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm EDT
–oh, and shame, Mania! Wind serpents DO have a focus dump in Lightning Breath. :) It’s just so expensive you don’t see them spamming it like cats do with claw.
Mania - May 3rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm EDT
If you notice, I said that it made sense to extend a basic, physical-damage focus dump like Claw or Gore to all families. Lightning Breath is a focus dump, yes, but it is not in any way basic. It’s expensive, ranged, and does Nature damage — which is great for some purposes and not so great for others.
Noba - May 3rd, 2008 at 8:42 pm EDT
I’d love to see a movement and claw focus dump added to the unloved families. While we usually go for the best damage output(cats,ravagers..), it’d be great to have your favorite species of animal be a viable choice. I really like your design mania, and i really hope that you post(ed) it on the suggestions, and a member of blizz will read and take it seriously. I know this doesn’t fit with your theme for an easy middle road fix, but an idea for if they ever do a big fix, i’d like to see watery pets such as crocs,turtles and crabs have a better form of dash that works specifically in water. also maybe a death roll for crocs(a big damage attach that becomes usable only at target’s low health). oh, and someone above said claw doesnt make sense for turtles. turtles definately have claws, males have very large front claws, and will use them to help shred their food up to smaller pieces to eat. :)
Melanie - May 4th, 2008 at 11:22 pm EDT
I think it makes perfect sense. Some of my favorite pet types e.g spiders, have been passed due to lack of a poison skill. Spiders without poison just seems plain wrong and it is such an unbalanced system. I use Claw Growl Dash and Prowl on all of my cats and never have a problem with focus - find it a great combo for PVP with growl switched off. I would love to see a few more tameable pet types - I think Fairy Dragons would be fun. They could be given a ranged attack similar to fire/lightning breath (arcane perhaps). Some of the skills wild pets have could be recycled onto hunter pets (ice claw)but I guess, as you say, too much work for Blizzard. We all love to have unique pets - what I really would love to see is a hunter quest that gives you the option of taming one of so many unique-skinned pets. Would also be kind of neat if hunters could tame their own mounts during a quest as well - they could make it so hunters still had to buy riding skill and maybe some mats first to bring it up to mount price and stop the grumble from other classes. Cant see that happening anytime soon though, if at all.
Kyranne - May 5th, 2008 at 3:58 am EDT
Well, I’m a cat user, because I like cats more. My plan includes taming an owl too, admittely for screech as it will be useful in some of my soloing runs through dungeons.
I’m not entirely sure that normalizing all skills as proposed above is entirely a good idea, but I’d certainly give some underused pets one extra skill among existant ones. Mania’s plan is nice, perhaps acceptable and probably not terribly long to code.
My first change to the hunter class tho would be regarding the pet stables (1 extra slot) and/or the possibility to just suspend our current pets while we try learning a skill from a new one.
I want 3 pets, for practical reasons I cannot as one slot must be reserved for taming beasts with new skills we need to learn. That alone would promote diversity and then, who cares if every raiding hunter has a ravager/cat/wind serpent?
Rogar - May 5th, 2008 at 4:50 am EDT
Any thought of changes taking too much coding are completely invalid in this case. Blizzard has already proven that they have no qualms about massive coding efforts to dumb down (normalize) the pets that many hunters went to extreme lengths in order to tame (cough “Broken Tooth” cough).
First they normalized DPS per family… then normalized attack speed and DPS per family. When will it stop? Soon all pets will have the same abilities, DPS, armor etc. Then the only real reason to get a different pet is for how much you like the way it looks.
Why not make all armor the same way? All armor for a certain class and level could be exactly the same with customization points you add to your armor.
If nothing else they need to un-normalize pets. Give hunters a reason to get those special pets again.
/sigh
end rant
Znodis - May 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pm EDT
And don’t forget the pursuit speed normalization, Rogar :p
Something I’d like to point out is that Mania’s changes would still leave the ‘best pets’ as best, while moving the other pets up to useful status. The family stat modifications would still be in place.
I’m glad there’s finally a min/maxer’s perspective in here. As someone that’s firmly not in that camp, I’ve wondered what ARE you looking for in pets? Do you prefer to have 1-2 that are head and shoulders above the rest? What about when that ‘best’ pet changes after you’ve put in a lot of work (like with the boar nerf)? What do you think about the normalization I purposed where individualization is achieved through talent trees?
You’ve stated what you don’t want, but what would you purpose?
Firedwight - May 5th, 2008 at 4:24 pm EDT
Mania, Please posts these articles in a bliz forum
they are liquid gold
I love the idea of pet normalization, the way i see it,even though i may not be the most experienced hunter, with my little 31 hunter Hironakamura, Detheroc (thankyouverymuch) I see the pet as something that you should be able to costumize and made into something that’s completely about YOU
I hate cats…
lol
because everyone has one
i want every hunter to be able to choose a different pet so that there can be more diversity and the hunter class can trully be beautiful
Peace
-Firedwight
Nimizar - May 5th, 2008 at 9:25 pm EDT
@yossir: yep, I agree on the point where Claw/Gore simply don’t make sense for some of the pet families like Crocolisks and Turtles. I actually support the idea of a simple ‘Snap’ ability, which would be nothing more than a focus dump variant of Bite (probably just a rebranded ‘Claw’, as that’s the most basic focus dump going around).
It was some of the more esoteric ideas in your original post I was objecting to - while they weren’t necessarily bad in an absolute sense, they would take a lot more developer effort than just spreading the existing abilities around (and possibly rebranding one or two of them to make them appropriate for additional families).
Yoco - May 7th, 2008 at 3:40 am EDT
One thing that worries me are to what extent this normalization would emphasize aspects of pets that are not pet skills.
For instance, would this further decrease the popularity of vultures? Their skills currently are in fact quite nice (dive, screech, claw, bite; eats fish & meat), but the fact their size and position (flying height) severely interferes with your and your party’s tank’s ability to target mobs is one of the reasons you don’t see them that much. Every hunter who has tried playing with a vulture as pet has probably tried to loot a corpse and selected his pet instead.
Having other alternatives skill-wise may make prospective vulture-using hunters choose a different pet instead.
I am not saying that other pets should not be buffed, I am saying that while looking at buffing pets, more should be buffed than just their skills - positioning, size, and maybe model should be looked at as well.
Dayr - May 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm EDT
I find it almost funny you hadn’t noticed this. Blizzard’s quite well on its way to this solution; be careful of what you wish. >_>
* I agree on some points Mania, though the sweeping changes you’ve mentioned seem a tad overzealous- giving the spore bats thunderstomp is an excellent idea; at least it’d give gorillas a higher trainable rank or an option to use it at the higher levels. Or a reason to tame a sporebat other than wearing your +heal gear in town. Or at least an option to select something other than the standard cat/rav/etc we see hanging about the auction houses daily. Maybe the growl/raven updates recently are an attempt to recognize the problem.
I hereby vote Mania be hired by Blizz as a special hunter attache or something. Can’t do any worse than Furor/Tigole did, right? *grin*