A Lot of Ghostcrawler Quotes
Ghostcrawler is the Blizzard poster who shows up most often on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum, especially in regards to hunter pets. It sounds like she has a lot of responsibility for designing the pet system. (I wonder if she’d be willing to trade jobs with me … although honestly she seems to be doing a pretty good job herself.)
Anyway, she posted several times this morning with some good information-rich comments, so she gets a post all her own to round them up.
Skill Ranks
On the subject of pet skills, Ghostcrawler posted:
If someone reads this – please, normalize all the “old” pet unique skills so they have more appropriate levels and ranks like the new ones and so that they actually get level 80 abilities.
That is in the plan.
I was expecting this to happen at some point in the future, but it’s always good to have confirmation that something obvious really is in the plan.
And that reinforces something that I know I’ve said before, but that we should always keep in mind: This is early beta, and things are going to change.
Skill Usage
In a thread of feedback on focus-expensive pet abilities, Ghostcrawler posted:
We’ve discussed a few systems for managing this, but honestly the simplest one might just be to have all pet abilities be a little more consistent in cost.
We’d love to do an actual system to let you manage abilities more intelligently, but it might have to wait.
Again, good to know that they are thinking about it, even if an intelligent system for focus management needs to wait.
More on Aggro
Ghostcrawler has posted before about pets holding aggro and while she didn’t add much to that today she did reiterate her previous message: They haven’t done a pass on threat yet but they will, and in the meantime keep the feedback coming.
Pets should be able to hold aggro, especially tanking pets with the right spec.
Class dps in general is something we are still evaluating, because honestly it’s a lot of wasted work if we haven’t finalized the abilities yet. Once we have a feel for how much dps a hunter can do, and how much threat you generate, we’ll adjust pets accordingly.
Keep providing us feedback on what situations and specs you seem to pull off of your pet, and we’ll adjust accordingly.
Stable Space
And lastly, in a thread entitled “Bigger Stables pls!!“, Ghostcrawler responded with one enigmatic but terribly exciting word:
Okay.
Blizzard has said before that they won’t increase the number of stable slots that we get for technical reasons, but perhaps all we really needed was someone in our corner pushing. Or perhaps Ghostcrawler has some other ideas in mind for increasing the number of pets we can have that don’t involve stable slots. I know a number of ideas have been suggested — and are mentioned in that thread even.
That seems to be it from our voluble crab for this morning — but that’s plenty, don’t you think?
33 Comments
nice work summarising it up mania =P, and finnaly a blizzard poster doing something useful <3
hm, the only thing I’m missing is something about the Focus-regeneration. Focus is the same as Energy, so are they improving the regeneration like they did with Energy?
W00T!!! We finally got one on our side! Thanks a million for all your hard work Mania!
More stable slots would be fantastic. Like you said, hunters have only been asking for that for four years or so. :)
Or how about dumping stables altogether in favor of a “pet spellbook” that could hold more pets and let you summon any of them when out of combat. That would be soooo nice! Picture having a dps pet for an instance run and then switching to a tank pet for a section where you need an off-tank. Other classes have the ability to swithc armor, weapons (and pets in the case of locks) as needed. I never understood the rationale that giving the same ability to switch pets would make hunters overpowered.
/dares to dream
Exotic pet wishlist: bearform druids.
Mania-
Thanks for the update :) It sounds like they are aiming to make Hunter pets more interactive than they are now.
Pidge-
While that would be lovely, it should be limited in some way, though. And I think Blizzard would have to throw a huge bone to the Warlock community. However, that isn’t a bad idea. I would love to see Warlock minions get the same set up as Hunter pets.
Pidge,
That is an awesome idea. And if they’re already doing that with non-combat pets, that would be really neat to do it with our other pets. Plus, it would save us the gold of paying for another stable slot.
Any word on whether or not Caster Stats are going to be fixed/removed?
They haven’t really done anything to energy regen, they just changed its look to be more fluid, since Rogues pay pretty close attention to it and potentially make more efficient use. For hunter pets, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point to it, since we aren’t paying attention and it’s handled automatically.
Current energy/focus regen: 20 per 2 seconds
New energy regen: 1 per 1/10th second, which equals 20 over two seconds… same as before, but easier for those paying attention to it.
So, who else is planning out what three pets they’ll plan on keeping?
I’m thinking of a Bear for soloing/minitanking (if only we could get one with a Druid skin… *sigh*), a Devilsaur for DPS, and a Bat for PvP (ranged stun, hello!).
“Technical reasons” could mean just about anything, really. The fact that they’ve been so zip-lipped about giving us more stable slots tells me one of two things.
1) It’s possible, but just really time-consuming, and they don’t think the time invested would be of sufficient benefit.
2) It’s easy, they’ve already done it (or are planning to do it) and they are just waiting till the expansion goes live to spring it on us.
I’m leaning towards number 1, personally. I only thought of 2 because Blizzard is so good at keeping secrets, when they want to be.
As to the comment about more stable slots take a look at this screen shot of the new mount interface. You have tabs at the top for “Pet”, “Companions” and “Mounts.
So we know you’ll be able to summon vanity pets and mounts via this interface but my question is… What’s the third tab for exactly?
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2017/mountpetesystemiy5.jpg
Please Blizz… please Blizz… please Blizz…
Yeah I brought up that very thing a few days ago when the minipet/mount thing was unveiled…
It DOES look like we MAY get that ability. If not, you have to ask yourself why.
I for one don’t like the “Technical reasons” on the stable thing. If you look at it, there’s clearly room for more slots. They just arn’t on the stable tab. You could fit 2 or 3 more in there.
But yeah with the mounts going on spells and mini pets… and warlock pets already being summonable… It’s a possibility. As for the “you’d have to give locks a major boon”
Loks have a major boon. Their pets lvl automaticly with them and they never have to feed theirs. Can you imagine how much time and gold we’d save if we didn’t have to feed our pets? or worry about keeping them lvled with us? TONS… Granted each lok pet won’t have it’s own skill tree, but they don’t eat and auto lvl as well.
I am really glad that we’ll get more Stable slots!
(I used to be Petlover, btw, just changed my hunter’s name.) I currently only have two pets: a Dire Raven from BEM (tamed a new one to name Karasu, meaning “raven”), and a red Lynx from Netherstorm (Kasumi). I ended up having to get rid of my bat because a guildie mentioned it’s wings interfered with healer targeting in kara.
I know for certain that I will be keeping my raven. And since carrion birds count as dps pets now, that means my kitty will be bye bye (nothing against cats, though). I really want an eagle, which will be one of the “birds of prey”, as a great utility pet and ‘companion’ for my raven. (I have a grudge against owls.) As far as the third…I’m a BM hunter all the way and I’m waiting to see what exotic pets will be available. Sorry to say, I have no interest in a devilasaur. They killed me once too often. If I can’t find an exotic pet I love, then I’ll probably take a crab for tanking, or even a moth for laughs.
Can’t wait to see what Blizzard comes up with. Still wish I could get in on the beta.
I like the look of the Devilsaurs… but I don’t think I want one for my guy. I hate it when even tauren get in my way in instances and what not and I can’t see what’s going on. Big boy Devilsaur will be that problem squared.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m GLAD we’re getting them for people that want them and they look very impressive.
Just not for me. Just like I can’t stand ‘flappy pets” I even like the look of some owls and the Ravens and eagles. I just don’t like flappy pets.
I’ll be sticking with my Ravager, my cat, a saber warg and hoping aginst hope for a wolverine.
The Blizz line in the past was always that adding more stable slots would eat up too much extra space in their databases, and the answer to “more stable slots pls” was always an emphatic “no.”
I just always had a hard time swallowing that argument. If you look at all the data they’re tracking to implement achievements, it’s hard to believe a few more stable slots would overwhelm their systems. Plus I always thought that buying more stable slots (like buying more bank slots) would be a very effective, and well-received money sink.
Of course, I’d be tremendously more happy with the idea of “hunter pet” inventory tab along with mounts and vanity pets.
Here’s hoping Akussa spotted it!
I have a lvl 62 cat that I refuse to abandon, I’m hoping he’ll autolevel to 65 when I take him out for the first time after the expansion. The ability to switch pets without a trip to town would be great. I’d be happy with only 3 slots if I could do that. It’s a pain going back to town to get my warp stalker to do some farming, then remembering to switch again. Would be awesome to be able to summon any pet (out of combat), maybe be able able to “store” one of each tree and an extra.
If core hounds are an “exotic”, I’m getting one of those for sure.
Another thing to go with that, Pidge, is that even while they fed us that line, they made extra bank slots, and later even added a guild bank. Because, you know, that doesn’t eat up a lot of extra space at all.
Much better name, Selesti, I like it. As for a devilsaur stepping on you one to many times, thats part of the point for me! Can you just imagine the horrific nightmares it will cause people to see the terror that squashed them in Un’Goro tromping at them, all red and angry? *shivers in glee* Personally, I am all for re-traumatizing the opposing side. I will be a bit angry if those croc, crab, nether ray, and tallstrider nerfs go through, though. I was looking forward to having a completely useful nether ray, instead of a mostly useful one.
Currently the “Pet” tab shows your current pet, just like the current pet window.
Just an aside.. MMO champion has pics of the new Bear mounts, armored bear mounts, two seater armored bear mounts and tri Mammoth mounts. Should yall wanna take a peek.
Huzzah, now I can share the cryptic comment GC made on the alpha forums in a similar thread about stable space:
Hopefully you can see why I didn’t want to mention it without some more confirmation that it was actually still in the plan…
As for why they couldn’t do it in a normal patch… messing with your database set up is always a little scary, and if they already knew that these pet changes were coming in Wrath, I can understand why they would postpone any changes to the stable size until they were completely rewriting the schema and code associated with pet storage anyway.
Also, as far as I know, GC=she (the topic came up on the alpha forums).
Gah, “good thing to add”.
Thanks, Nimizar, both for the confirmation of your earlier cryptic comment and for correcting me about Ghostcrawler’s gender. I was considering asking, but it’s only important to me when I have to use pronouns.
Don’t worry Mania, I made the same mistake a couple of blogs ago. *Laughs*
Thanks, Palladiamors. I took the name from an elven naming website. It actually means “high elf”. :D My hunter has been Petlover for so long and had the pet “food name” theme for so long, but I decided that since she’s 70 now, and getting into raiding for the very first time, it was time she had a real name. Same for my pets.
Devilasaurs are really pretty, but they are also very BIG. If healers had a hard time targeting with my bat, imagine how bad it would be with one of those bad boys. I would have taken one of those new wolves, but I’ve fallen in love with my raven and can’t bring myself to abandon him…despite having never kept most pets for extended periods of time.
Also, I love the idea of a tab for mounts and non-combat pets. Selesti is exalted with every horde city and had every mount, but I had to get rid of some because they simply took up too much bank space. All I have atm is a Cobalt War Talbuk, a Swift Brown Wolf, and an Onyx Netherdrake. By the time the expansion comes out, I’ll hopefully be adding a nether ray and hippogryph mount to that. (And I STILL want a pet hippogryph. I simply love horses and horse-like creatures. :D)
I almost forgot my Brewfest Ram. Which, btw, I’m not sure if I like the idea of a Brewfest Kodo for horde only. Guess we’ll see when Brewfest starts on the live realms.
Follow up to the stable thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557246019&sid=2000&pageNo=2#24
Basically:
- full use of the third stable slot due to the removal of pet skill training
- 2 extra stable slots
- so 4 pets in the stable, 1 with you = 5 in total
- uses the existing stable UI for now, integration with the mounts/companions UI has been discussed, but they’re waiting to see how that UI plays out in practice before pursuing it further
I really want to believe that’s what Ghostcrawler is saying but the exact words are:
Is she saying that there are 2 additional slots in the stable (as well as the active slot) or is she saying there will be 2 more as well as the 2 we have access to? I don’t think it’s particularly clear and needs some clarification.
For the record, I read it as you did Nimizar, but comments on WoW Insider has left me in doubt. :/
Did I mention I love GC?
It really looks like there will be 5 stable slots, which would be great.
Now, if they could let hunters summon their pet as warlocks do, it would be awesome :)
I’m thinking Devilsaur for DPS, Turtle for Tanking, and Nether Ray for PvP/Arena(I’m a caster counter) and now my precious Ghost Saber Soul who I’ve had since level 20 will not have to leave me! YAY! I can now relax, I know he is pixels but I love him.
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