Comments on: Pet Normalization: The Middle Way (Part II)

By: Untitled :: Blog Archive » burn down the stables (or: the bland pet conundrum)

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:14:05 +0000

[...] ie, all pets will eventually have identical stats and have access to the exact same set of skills. Mania agrees in part, but is hoping for a middle ground solution - where all pets become viable not by [...]

By: Mania’s Arcania » WotLK Rumor: Bite = Claw

Mania’s Arcania » WotLK Rumor: Bite = Claw — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:46:03 +0000

[...] an interesting idea. In the absence of other changes, this would (almost) satisfy one of my own personal goals for pet skill design: all families get a basic (physical) focus dump skill. (Sporebats would still [...]

By: Dayr

Dayr — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:00:18 +0000

‘Why not make all armor the same way? All armor for a certain class and level could be exactly the same’
Tier 4/5/6 armor. Gladiator’s armor. Most level 70 gear is nearly identical with only minor color changes and role/stat changes (which are usually similarly attainable).

‘with customization points you add to your armor.’
Jewelcrafting.

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*

By: Yoco

Yoco — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:40:01 +0000

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.

By: Nimizar

Nimizar — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:25:25 +0000

@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).

By: Firedwight

Firedwight — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:24:04 +0000

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

By: Znodis

Znodis — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:04:24 +0000

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?

By: Rogar

Rogar — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:50:24 +0000

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

By: Kyranne

Kyranne — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:58:24 +0000

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?

By: Melanie

Melanie — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:22:39 +0000

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.