More Stable Slots on the Way

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I woke up this morning just a few minutes ago (and yes, it is morning for me!) to 18 new e-mails in my inbox, most of them about this post from Ghostcrawler on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum:

There are 2 additional slots in the stable.

Integrating hunter / warlock pet management into the new mount and companion UI has certainly come up already. Let’s give the new UI a whirl and see if it works and then we can consider if it makes sense to integrate the stable or anything else into it.

Taken in context of Ghostcrawler’s previous one-word “Okay” response to a request for more stable space, I think we can take this to mean that an upcoming beta build will have four stable slots, allowing you to keep five pets at once.

It seems that Ghostcrawler would like us to try out this new expanded stable and see how we like it before we consider removing the stable all together and moving to an interface more like the new mounts and vanity pets. I, for one, am certainly willing to do that!

Of course, there’s not a lot of detail here so we’ll have to keep an eye out for additional details as they become available. But considering the absolute legion of hunters who e-mailed me about this today — thank you, all of you! — I am confident that we won’t miss much for long.

65 thoughts on “More Stable Slots on the Way”

  4. Nice. I’d love to see the extra 2 slots, but if I had my druthers, I’d as soon they went to the new ‘tab’ version, as that gives Blizz the open capability to muck around with the pets and their families without affecting our ability to tame/learn/use/etc. No limits then.

    this is very good news. Not only do I like the name ghostwalker, I’m liking the person more and more every day :)

  5. It seems that they are going to at least consider / play with the mechanic of having pets available in the same way that mounts and non-combat pets are now being done in beta. This would rock my hunter’s boots off – to be able to switch pets in an instance / raid / while grinding inscription mats would be really, really nice.

  6. Ventix: Eventually we may get to that point, but I believe we are starting with two additional slots that work just like the ones we have now do. And then we’ll see how that goes.

  7. @ Ventix: If this new stable slot does not satisfy the masses than pets may be summonable on the go like Warlock pets. I think that things should remain the way they are, as much as I would love on the go pet switching. A system like that would draw the OP cries on too hunters at an astounding rate which means we would get nerfed into oblivion.

  9. I would think they’d have to do a lot more programing if you could summon your pet on the go since Warlocks learn they’re summonable pets. I guess when you tame a pet you could learn something like…

    “You have learned new ability “Summon Winterspring Frostsaber”"

    Just to use an example. More stable slots would of course be very nice so I could tame more very neat pets. I like to collect them like I collect vanity pets and mounts.

  11. More slots would be great ive wanted 4 pets total and an open slot for ganking and i mite get my wish! oh and i have a question ive been asking alot but i want to know how to put a screenshot on this website to you i know how to take one but where does it go to adn how can i put it up on your website mania or on WoW.com?

  12. Wonderful!
    I can’t wait to try it out

    I’m just a little bit concerned with how exotic and regular pets will work and what happens if you were to respecc
    I don’t wanna lose any of my pets!
    =X

  13. Hiro-

    The scuttlebutt is that if you spec to tame an exotic and then spec out of BM and loose it, you do not loose your pet, BUT you will have to stable your pet and will not be able to unstable it until you spec back to BM.

    So, say you spec BM and get a Devilsaur. You then spec MM. IF you have your Devilsaur out, it will simply vanish and you cannot summon it back. You would then have to go to the stable and swap your pet out for a non-exotic, say, your Raptor. Your Devilsaur will then sit in your stable gathering dust until you return to being BM spec.

    That said, here is the way it is shaping up now.

    You spec BM and get a Devilsaur. You decide then to spec MM. Your Devilsaur disappears, but it still in your pet page, but greyed out. You cannot summon it, but it is still there for you. When you respec BM, your Devilsaur goes colorful again and you can summon it once more.

    That is how it is being presented as of now.

  14. 2 more stable slots or a pets tab, either work for me. Heck, making mounts and vanity pets tabbed is great since due to my ammo bag I have one fewer bags then my peers. Of course, we’ve already talked about that one before…

    Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, of course, but I’d actually be super-thrilled if it were 3 more slots, if only because then we could have 6 pets – 2 each of the new cunning, ferocity, and tenacity divisions. But perhaps that merely marks me as the obsessed with simatry crazy person I am.

  15. There is no doubt that having them on the pet tab would be OP. Being able to switch pets on fly is probably not such a great idea (if we want to avoid being nerfed). I could see a Lvl 80 hunter quest for a Portable Pet Carrier that allowed us to bring an additional pet with us so that we could switch between two without going back to town. However that is an entirely different discussion. Two more stable slots… YEAH!!!!!

  16. LIndalas-

    I for one completely support your idea of leaving it stabled and then having a portable pet carrier as a quest reward…

  17. I don’t think having them summonable would make them overpowered at all. Locks can summon theirs any time anywhere. Their pets also lvl automatically as they do, and never need food.

    If you put a cost on it. say “Hunter’s chunck of juicy meat” to call the pet that’d be fine.

    All that being said, I’m happy with the 2 extra slots. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. 2 more slots almost doubles our current ammount. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

    I’m taking it and being happy.

  18. I’d love it if they enabled us to switch out different pets in the way they’re going to do with mounts. I’d gladly take a reagent cost and/or a time delay of 30 seconds to a minute or two for that capability.

    Maybe they could tie it in with the stable slots, in that you could only have as many total pets available as you have space for. If you have open stable space, you could send your current pet back to the stable, and then either call another pet from the stable (assume the pet you sent back also carried the message for the other one to come out if y’need realism) or tame a new one where you are.

  19. I’m also against the tab style summoning, PARTICULARLY if it were to ‘learn’ the animal as if it were a skill. To do that, you’d pretty much HAVE to obliterate the customized names we hunters so love to assign to our pets…and some hunters might not care about that too much, but I for one would be pretty sad at the loss of a small piece of individuality.

  20. Omg o.o I almost peed when I read this XD I’m one of those people that tame a new pet every week or two, so this is good news! I won’t have to abandon anything I don’t want to! <3 Ghostcrawler for posting this!

  21. The problem with them being summonable like warlock pets is not that we’d necessarily get a reagent cost–but we’d no longer be able to call them instantly.

    I much prefer having an instantaneous summon and limited stable slots vs unlimited slots and a ten-second summon.

  23. “It seems that Ghostcrawler would like us to try out this new expanded stable and see how we like it before we consider removing the stable all together and moving to an interface more like the new mounts and vanity pets.”

    Actually, I think Ghostwalker is saying to try out the new vanity-pet/mount UI and see how that functions before they actively consider putting the hunter pets into the same type of arrangement. It would be more complicated to use it for hunter pets unless they intend that we could tame every beast on every hunter and use them all at our whim, which would be a very bland experience.

    For example, if they limited hunters to a certain number of pets, they would need to figure out how we unlearn pets to tame new ones after having the maximum allowed. That might be difficult to program into the system.

    Also the maximum number of pets allowed now is further reduced by the cost of the second slot; if we “learn” pets, will the maximum allowed be tied to the hunter’s level? A new player, who doesn’t have a higher main to mail the 5 gold, has to wait on that second slot. Blizzard has always been good at doling out new abilities at roughly the rate at which players learn the old ones well. Without limiting pets by levels, new players would overwhelm themselves with choices before they figure out how to use a pet well.

    The new slots sound to me like they will function as stable slots always have, just more of them and more expensive.

  24. I think that the extra pet slot is a great addition considering that hunters tend to have a “pvp” pet, a “questing” pet and a “group/instance” pet. And still we need to be able to tame other pets to learn the skills, though in the new expansion that looks like it might be changing. On top of all that, there is still the matter of leveling up a pet.
    So I think the addition of some new stable slots would be good. As for a “tab” well, I think that maybe a hunter should be able to “carry” around 3 pets. This allows for 2 pets for what ever situation the hunters in, and allows an extra space for taming a pet that the hunter finds that they like, but doesnt want to loose thier current pet to tame.

  25. How often do you really summon your pet though?

    I mean sure in pvp it’d be better, but in PVP you either have your pet or you don’t. You can’t get a new one.

    If we had the pet tab like the mounts and mini pets you could switch out with out going to town or leaving an instance. I know for me who lvls a number of pets at once that’d be nice. No more “Oh man Xeno hit max lvl but I’m not going to be in town for 2 hours. All this exp is going to waste that could have gone to Starbuck” sorta things.

  26. Yeah, I have a hard time lving my other pet because I dont go to town often, so one pet is the same lv as me and the other is about 15 lvs lower. Its a bit of a headache to have to keep going back to switch pets. and then the whole lving process takes so long. If I can find a group thats willing to let me bring my lower lv’d pet thats great, if not, well. Its tough. So being able to switch pets without needing to go back to town would be a great help.

  27. Pets you tame that are below 5 level will automatically change to 5 level below your current level….

    so you do not need to worry about lvling low level pet like right now??

  28. I think that, if this were to go forward, they would need to do some things with Warlock Minions which would be comparable to what they are doing with Hunter Pets. In many ways, Warlock’s have had the ability to change Minions on the fly and only have to use one soul shard to summon while Hunters have had to schlep back to their stable and use food to gain both loyalty and happiness.

    I think that they should consider the possibility of revamping Warlock Minions in a similar manner as they have Hunter Pets, and perhaps include the ability to ‘tame’ certain Demons as well. Though, I would suggest that THAT ability be somewhere high up in level for the Warlock.

  29. I forgot to say that the way things are now kind of balanced out the pros and cons of the two classes with regards to their pets.

  30. I am ecstatic about this, and I really do hope they stick with the pets-as-spellbar idea. Like a lot of other hunters, I get into the ‘mode’ of a certain pet, and maybe while I’m out soloing I decide my DPS cat is way too squishy for the mobs I’m fighting? Do I REALLY want to schlep all the way back to a town that may or may not have a stablemaster to fix it? This will indeed put hunters more on a par with warlocks, where we can say ‘oh crap, spellboss’ and haul out our Cunning ‘resistance and dodge’ pet, or ‘tankandspank’ and haul out the big nasty Ferocitysaur.

    Also… more pets = win. Warlocks get half a dozen, it’s about TIME we get to match them. (And it means I don’t have to get rid of my dear Dire Raven, Azrael, if I want to pick up one of the new worgs. Shiny.)

  31. @ Deidare: Once you take a screen cap it is saved somewhere on your computer – unfortunately I don’t know where cause it depends on your computer. On my mac it saves it to the desktop. You have to find that file and attach it to an email, which you can then send to Mania (mania@maniasarcania.com). Only Mania can post pictures on this website since it’s hers. I also happen to know that there is a massive backlog on name that pet, since I tried to get my horde taxi dragonhawk in ;o)

  32. i like stables and 2 new stable slots is awesome!! but i dont want the stable to dissapear i like the idea with that you have 3 pets with you and 2 in the stable that way you get the spellbook thing and the stable stays that would be nice :)

  33. Oh and I also love GC and all the work she’s doing for hunters (or at least communicating to us – unlike others blues *cough* Hortus *cough*)… And I LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOVE the prospect of two more stable slots as I’ve already pointed out (but it bears mentioning again XD)

  35. I love the idea of more stable slots, though personally I’m getting around just fine on 3 really. However, I detest the idea of pets being summonable like Warlock pets or tabs in the spell & abilities book. To me it seems to cheapen the feel that the pet is exactly that, a pet. We’re not warlocks who summon our minions to existence, we fight alongside our pets.

    In the end, I am pleased with just 2 or even 1 more stable slot in the current system. I’m a hunter who doesn’t need an overhaul of the entire pet stabling system to be happy.

  36. Nachtwulf-

    Warlocks get four, not six. Demonologists get five max. This does not include Infernals and Doomguards since those are not actual minions. They get summoned, and they last only a certain amount of time.

    Basically, Warlocks get a caster- Imp, a weak tank- Voidwalker, a DPS- Succubus, a PvP Minion- Felhunter, and Demonologists get a strong tank- Felguard. In terms of minion based raid DPS, Warlocks lag far, far behind Hunters simply because most raids want, and almost demand, the use of Imps to boost group health. Sometimes you might see a Felguard or Succubus out for a raid or group, but it isn’t common. And non-Demo Warlocks are, basically, limited to Voidwalkers, and Demo Warlocks to Felguards. Hunters are not very limited in terms of their choices for PvP, Solo and Group set up.

    So, despite only having two-three pets, Hunters have more choice in their pets than Warlocks, even though it seems weird to hear that.

  37. Sorry Sei, but I have to call you on that one. While you are mostly correct in your raid assumption (“cn u summn imp, plz?” *Shudders*) the simple fact of the matter is that each warlock minion has its own role that it is specifically designed to fill, and in that manner they are, in individual roles, better at what they do then hunter pets. That being said, hunter pets are better at being able to deal with multiple roles, and over all better at DPS. Further, as a demonology warlock ALL of your spells receive a fairly large buff in damage, both from master demonologist and demonic knowledge, meaning that while a affliction or destruction warlock may be able to do a LITTLE more damage in spells of those schools, demonology does more damage with spells from ALL schools. Even toting around an imp and with barely par gear in raids my demonology specced warlock is nearly always first or second for DPS.

    Now, with that said, my original thought was that with hunter pets getting abilities remarkably similar to warlock pets abilities, that warlock pets needed a buff. And they got one. Two new fel hunter spells AND an improved felhunter talent, and voidwalkers, succubus’s, and imps getting twenty percent increases in health and armor, voidwalkers getting a higher DPS coefficient from the warlocks spell power, imps getting a 200% mana regen increase, and even felguards getting a ten percent health increase. Even the summon infernal spell got a revamp, turning it into nearly a panic button. A thirty percent health and armor increase, and a 60% damage increase, on a one minute duration. No word on whether it just dies after that, or comes unleashed and can be re-chained.

    So all in all, both pet classes pets are getting some substantial buffs. Doesn’t mean I want to be able to summon my pets from any where. I rather like the quaint feel of the stable.

  38. What if they made it so the stables were in that pet tab but you’d have to be at an inn or city (resting) to switch them? That would eliminate the hassle of finding a stable master but still require making a choice as to what active pet you want at the moment. What do you guys think of that?

  40. Given that stable masters are usually (not always) right outside the door of the inn, finding them typically isn’t a big hassle.

    For those suggesting a merge with the new mounts and companions interface, keep in mind that mounts and companions are really simple – you either have them or you don’t. Blizzard can quite easily allocate enough space per character for them to get every single mount and companion available to them in the game without any real hassles.

    For hunter pets, they also need to store the auto-cast state of each of the pet’s active abilities, the pet’s name and the pet’s talent spec. I suspect the storage needed per pet under the new system may be less than that needed for the old training point system, and that’s where our two extra stable slots are coming from (Blizzard may also be increasing the average per-character allocation of persistent storage for Wrath).

  41. Two more slots are ok. But the 2nd Option with the companion UI is better, but i also think its overpowered. The only way to make it not so overpowered is to add a cooldown. Chance your pet, wait 10-30min, or longer, to change it again.

  43. @PepsiJedi

    As a PVPer on a PVP server, having the ability to instantly summon a pet after I rez has saved my butt on many, many occasions. I’d much rather have limited stables slots and no ability to change pets on the fly than to get ganked repeatedly because I take ten seconds to summon my pet (if it works like warlock demons do). It’s bad enough when the enemy player manages to kill my pet and I have to revive him … and then while I’m doing that they rez and kill me.

    And frankly, I think adding the ability to change pets on the fly would be OP, especially in PVP — that rogue killed your cat? No biggie, just summon the ravager. Tada! You win! Unless it had a long cooldown, like Shaigon suggested, but then what if you grabbed the wrong pet, or you grabbed your grinding pet and got invited to a raid 30 seconds later?

  44. Palla-

    My point was specifically directed towards the notion of choice, and this is going to make it a bit worse, to be honest. Hunters have 30ish pets to choose from, with individual spells and their own focus dumps and growl. In terms of solo work, Warlocks get Voidwalker or Felguard. Hunters get around ten pets to choose from. Warlocks get one DPS pet- Succubus. Hunters get around ten pets to choose from. Warlocks get one PvP pet- Felhound. Hunters get around ten pets to choose from. Warlocks get one ‘caster’ pet- Imp. Well, Hunters get three or four there.

    The ability to summon pets anywhere and at any time kind of makes it less of a pain in the butt to have the limited and specific pets. Even putting the different pets into specific trees, all three trees can still be used in various situations.

    The rest of your points are well taken, though. It just wasn’t what I was getting at. This was mostly about limits of choices. I hope that’s relatively clear, it’s late at night and I’m not sure if I’m getting my point totally across. I would just like to be able to use my Succubus while doing solo work than my Voidwalker which does negligable DPS and gets in the way all the time!

  45. MW,

    I’m betting if they do put it on the summonable ability they make you dismiss the pet you’re using first then summon the other. (( Someone above proposed this and I like the idea))

    But even if they didn’t, you could still call pet same as now, if you died. Calling pet (( that you had when you died)) and summoning a pet would be different things. The first summon might take 5 seconds (( though I doubt it. they’d have to add in all sorts of powers to deduce casting time to summon them)) but once he’s summoned you can call him as you like.

    *Shrugs* Frankly I think the easiest way to do it would be instant call but take time to dismiss before you could summon another.

    So.. you click on the pic of your pet cat. He’s whistled up, but if you wanna pull out your ravager you have to stand there for 3 to 5 seconds and dismiss your cat (( which can get interrupted)) then once your cat is dismissed you can click on the image of your ravager and whistle him up. The time is still in there with out being annoying about it or making it Pet after pet after pet (( the dismiss time makes it so you can’t instant cast))

    Pet died? You have to revive, dismiss then summon the new one.

    Don’t like it? Go BM and keep your pet alive longer. :) If you’re a marksman… well shoot fast? If you’re survival… er… I’ve never played survival? Um.. Trap things and run away? Lol

  49. Ventix, that elekk is Peanut ( the non combat pet) from the children’s week quest, guss he was enlarged using those TCG cookies that make such pets grow in size.

  50. I think that the extra stable slots will fill the need. The one thing that we need to think about is how much are the new slots going to cost. I know some Level 70 Hunters who are always broke. Yeah I kinda have a AH problem.

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