Znodis at The Mystic Hunter has posted a list of predictions for hunter changes in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. His guesses about the future range from cynical to hopeful:
- There will be another pet family that will have no abilities beyond those that can be learned from a trainer. (like sporebats)
- New taming/ability procedure to allow the 3rd stable slot to be used. They made a mistake and put it in for BC, but it was buggy. Expect the bugs to be worked out.
… but mostly cynical:
- Some new mechanic will cause one and only one pet ability to be overpowered. This will occur on a pet whose highest wild level is 64 or lower. It will be fixed after 50% of the hunter population has leveled one to 80.
Check out the full list over at The Mystic Hunter.
I love the list, I have to say, as synical as some of them are, do you think he’s that far off?
I am actually going to disagree with him. The third stable slot I am hopeful for though. Otherwise, they seem to actually be implimenting family abilities for numerous pets, including the spore bat, and a new line of ‘claw’ like abilities. Here is to hoping what I have seen so far goes through!
Agreed. They will give us something cool then take it away.
I sent you an email several days ago listing a whole bunch of changes in the WOTLK Alpha testing phase but I guess it got lost. You would be very interested to see a lot of the changes…especially those to pet skills.
Heh, nah Akussa. She got’em. But Mania doesn’t want to talk about them here. Blizzard has kindly asked numerous sites to keep what they find out a secret, and Mania wants to stay in their good graces. I’ve been keeping up with the changes myself, but tend to respect Manias wishes and try not to say anything about them here. Suffice to say she knows, and is probably as excited as we are.
sylus: Well, I have a soft spot in my heart for cynicism. *grin* But personally I am very interested to see where Blizzard goes with pets in WotLK because at the moment, it seems wide open. There is so much they could do — or fail to do. It’s very exciting.
Akussa: That’s odd — I sent you a response yesterday saying thank you. :> But Palladiamors is correct. For the moment, I’m keeping a close eye on leaked alpha info but I am not posting any here yet.
I tend to be the king of cynical where Blizzard is concerned, but looking at some of what they have planned for pets has me excited, and for the first time in a long time, hopeful. Just the abilities I have seen so far, while they appear to be mostly just pulled directly from existing non-tamed beast abilities, are really a step forward for hunters and their pets. That being said, it is always possible that those changes won’t ever make it out of alpha. That being said, considering some of the abilities other classes are getting, I don’t think any of what they have currently planned for pets would be considered ground breaking. It mainly solidifies our place as anti-caster, though there is some possiblity for helping against the melee classes as well. All in all, if it keeps going, and those skills are fully implimented, then hunter pets will become a good deal more useful, and important. I am crossing my fingers!
“It will be fixed after 90% of the hunter population has leveled one to 80.”
fixed a typo for ya.
Boy he doesn’t know a lot about some of the information that’s come out.
There’s a 100% chance of Crabs and they will have a new skin. We don’t know if they’ll be tameable though.
And I thought I was cynical.
Not sure if anyone saw the info yet, but heres an idea for some new Pet skills they are working on…..
[edit by Mania: replaced list of info with link to source]
http://wotlk.wikidot.com/hunter
[/edit]
Sorry for the huge post. I thought the info was interesting.
*sighs* Zalthor, Mania and many of the rest of us know about that. If you’ll read back over the posts you’ll see Mania say as much, but she doesn’t want to post any of the new Wrath info. She is trying to be a good little girl, in hopes of getting in on the beta. Anyone not keeping up with the current news is sure in for a shock, tho’.
Zalthor: I replaced your long list of info with a link to the site that’s compiling WotLK alpha leak info. I *really* doubt that Blizzard is reading these comments or cares that much, but I do want to try to stay on their good side.
(I’ll also point out that for the moment, I haven’t been able to find out if these are just in client data or available on pets within the alpha proper. In either case — but especially if they are data-mined — there is a chance that they will never be accessible to hunters. It’s happened before, more’s the pity.)
Believe me, as soon as Blizzard lifts some of their restrictions and we have solid confrmation of these skills, we’ll have a field day discussing them all. :>
Two things bother me about the information Zalthor linked in, beyond the physical sourcing.
A lot of these abilities seem a bit, well, over powered. Some of them fly in the face of everything Blizzard has stated they would do to achieve class balance.
The second one is linked into this. This stuff is supposedly from the F&F Alpha. As Mania said, we won’t know how accurate this is until we have official word from Blizz, but think on this, the Alpha should be very easy to control if it’s limited to just a few hundred people known and trusted by Blizzard.
Sometimes the best way to keep information a secret is to release a whole bunch of ‘leaks’ with information that’s 90% made up. Sometimes you do that in order to find out how a community will react to a given spell or talent. You run it up the flag pole, see if anyone salutes, and if they don’t, well, it was an ‘unofficial leak’ and thus never existed.
If those abilitis are real, then I don’t think its to far fetched to expect every pet family to get a few new abilities. My prediction for hunters in Wrath is an escape ability similar to blink, and that Blizzard impliments a ton of new pet skills and either A: later nerfs them, realizing they are to strong/useful, or B: later realize it wasn’t enough, and so give them a minor buff.
I heard that there going to give each pet category there own “special” skill, like how boars have charge but there will be a lot more skills.
A few predictions of my own based only on random speculation.
1. just like pre-BC (where cats, wolves, and bears ruled) and post BC (where cats, ravagers, boars, and scorpids rule), Post BC will change the list of most popular pets. I also predict cats will stay on that list as blizzard seems to love cats above all else.
2. I also predict pets will largely fit a cold weather theme. WotLK will have alot of wolves, bears, owls, and maybe even a crab or two (hey, deadliest catch quest).
3. Also expect white cats, why force the “I want to tame a level 80 DPS pet” people to be original when they can expand conformity. (yes, I am a bit bitter that with 18 tamable cat 5 skins make up 90% of all cat pets I see).
4. Blizzard still will not add pet slots. Or the long promised ability to learn pet abilities without taming.
5. Their will be at least one pet added which will NOT fit the cold lands theme at all. Expect a crocolisk or a gorilla among the ice.
6. At least one new pet ability will make hunters say “Why blizzard, why?” as it will seem to at first be pointless or useless. Also expect it to be applied in a useful fashion to a specialized niche use (maybe in pvp against casters, or raids against a certain boss).
FirstChAoS, I want to point out to you something very important. Its called Sholazar Basin aka Northrend’s equivelent to Un’goro’ Crater. Its a tropical paradise located in the continent’s interior. So… we SHOULD expect to see a new croc, gorilla or even a raptor.
I agree with what you said about the cold environment pets like wolves, bears, etc, and that makes me want to mention something interesting on Thottbot.com. They currently have Seal Lions listed as a pet family. It might be considered a Warlock pet but so is the Remote Control and everyon knows its something every class can use. What’s weird is that Seal Lion’s have cheese listed as their diet. They don’t have ratings on their stats or skills either. It would make perfect sense if they became tamable in the future since they’d fit the area extremely well.
The thing about cats coming back yet AGAIN is plain obvious and along with all the other pets with high dps and dash/dive, they will continue to stay ahead of the competion.
I’m hoping that we can tame the untamable dragonhawks from TBC and we get a new bat. The one thing I’m truly praying for is to see more Hunters with survival as their primary talent tree so I can share ideas and get extra adivce when I need it; hell even more MM hunters would make me happy. I’ve largely had to ignore nearly ALL hunter PvP tips/tactics because so many people use the same, tedious BM build. I look forward to having Readiness, Scatter Shot and some awesome new survival talents under my belt once this expansion launches.
The only other statement I would like to make is this: If you think WotLK will be in stores by November or the Holliday Season, don’t get your hopes up. TBC was delay for a loooong time after it was announced at the first BlizzCon and its likely to happen with this one. Just keep that in mind.
And Mania, I’m not sure if the Sea Lion thing is in the alpha or not, but I apologize if you edit it out.
Yossir, lvl 70 tauren hunter, Staghelm, 0/21/40