There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep up with all the WotLK info that’s coming out today, what with the start of beta, the fall of the NDA, and the fact that I got less than 5 hours of sleep. (I woke up twice to check my mail.) So given that this is a hunter pet site, I’m going to be concentrating on hunter pets.

But having said that, I’m immediately going to start talking about hunter talents — because the very top new Beast Mastery talent looks to be something really amazing for pets.

Blizzard hasn’t released talent calculators for WotLK yet, but which people in the beta willing to post what they are seeing, we hardly need to wait for Blizzard. A player named Avarim has posted details of the new hunter talents to the WoW Beta Hunter forum, and Wowhead has a talent calculator for the new talents up already. My favorite source at the moment, though, is the WotLK Information Wiki, which has details of the talents and skills laid out in a nice table and also hosts Wowhead’s talent calculator.

So why am I, a person who normally ignores everything about hunters except the pets, excited about new talents? Because of the description of the very top of the Beast Mastery tree, the 51-point BM talent, currently called Beast Mastery:

You master the art of Beast training, teaching you the ability to tame Exotic pets and increasing your total amount of Pet Skill Points by 5.

Exotic pets … Think about that for a moment …

At this point we have no idea what ‘exotic pets’ might mean. [edited because I'm an idiot] But for the moment, we can certainly dream!

Do you think exotic pets will be otherwise untameable examples of the pet families we already know and love? Or maybe existing beasts that can’t current be tamed? Or not beasts at all?

[Update] Nimizar has just pointed out to me that there is something else for me to be excited about in there as well. There is a new 41-point talent called Longevity that:

Reduces the cooldown of your Bestial Wrath, Intimidation and Pet Special Abilities by 10/20/30%

Now I never remember to use BW or Intimidation when I should, but reducing the cooldown on special abilities is a big deal. In particular, if this works for Growl then it can bring the Growl cooldown timer below 4 seconds, allowing the pet to Growl every time they get a tick of focus regen. That should certainly help with aggro, at least for BM hunters!

[Update #2] Koraa, a Blizzard class designer, has posted more information on “exotic” pets in the WotLK Beta Hunter forum:

We’re still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different “class” of pets which we’re calling “exotic” right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won’t necessarily be “stronger” (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points).

Devilsaur anyone?

[Update #3] We’ve learned more about about exotic pets!

[Update #80] Blizzard has posted the official WotLK Hunter Talent Calculator.