Armchair Designer: Exotic Pets & Spirit Beasts
As I was showering today, I got thinking about the current problems with the hunter class in WoW. This is a perennial topic for any class, of course, even when there aren’t any major problems.
And as you know, I am not much of a power player, so my notion of problems is rather more limited in scope than many hunters, despite the frequent attempts by my loyal commenters here to enlighten me.
At any rate, I decided that I am personally pretty satisfied with hunters right now — as I usually am — with one exception. And that exception is the Spirit Beast family.
Now let’s be very clear here: I don’t think that spirit beasts are awful. I just think they could be better. And so I started plotting out ways that I personally would be happier with spirit beasts. Here’s what I came up with …
No More Spirit Beasts
First, let’s get rid of the Spirit Beast family. It’s such a weird mashup. I think it would make a lot more sense to move each of the existing spirit beasts into the corresponding normal family. So Loque’nahak and Gondria become cats, Skoll becomes a wolf, and Artcuris becomes a bear. That changes their skills, of course. (And changes Arcturis’ talent tree from Ferocity to Tenacity.)
Exotics Everywhere
But I don’t think the spirit beasts should be normal beasts, either. So let’s leave them as exotics. Yes, that gives us individual exotic beasts within a generally non-exotic family. And I think that’s okay. Even more, I think it helps restore a sane measure of individual variation within pet families. Some cats are normal cats; some cats are exotics with slightly better stats.
Of course, it would be annoying as a new hunter to have your heart set on a particular wolf and then find out when you go to tame it that it’s exotic. So we should really move the Beast Lore talent to level 10. (Indeed, it should have been moved there when they removed Pet Training.)
More ‘Spirit-y’ Pinnacle Pets
Spirit beasts are currently the pinnacle of Beast Mastery — and an outward sign that you are a serious pet collector. But cats, wolves, and bears shouldn’t be the only families pinnacle pets like this. So we’ll need to add more — one to each non-exotic family at least, and preferably one to the exotics as well. Like the current spirit beasts, these should be high level (70+ if possible), rare, and somehow spirit-y.
Skoll is an excellent example of how to have a very special look without going transparent, and I am sure that there are some really cool looks that the Blizzard artists could come up with. I imagine the artists are a little overworked right now, but I think that if we hunters knew we’d get two or three a month until they were all implemented, we’d be content enough to wait.
More Individual Exotics
But I don’t think that pinnacle pets should be the only exotics in non-exotic families. For one thing, even with one per family their rarity may still make them quite annoying for some hunters, especially with the more popular families. And lower level hunters should be able to have some fun also.
So let’s add a handful of non-spirit-y exotics to the non-exotics families as well. This gives us a great opportunity to introduce some of the currently unused or untameable beast skins, like a green carrion bird, a red warp stalker, or a blue dragonhawk.
For hunters in the know, these looks are immediately obvious and different. For non-hunters and hunters without our focus on pets, they aren’t any more confusing than learning that (currently) Gondria isn’t really a cat.
So anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower today.
184 Comments
What about the e-mail I sent you? :P
Thousand Needles will be flooded in the next expansion and the Vile Sting, along with the Silithid Ravager will more than likely be unable to be tamed since they’ll also be more than likely washed away with this upcoming event. It seems the water would sweep through Thousand Needles as a giant wall of force rather than leak in…
…which reminds me. (excuse the double post, I knew I forgot something I was going to mention :( )
What ever happened to getting to choose the talent trees for our pets? It was mentioned as being a possible addition to Cataclysm, so maybe if they did change that up it would be possible to implement your proposed change a little easier, wouldn’t it? Vile Sting could become a Ferocity scorpid and become very useful against rogues and healers again. My warp stalker could become a cunning pet with warp stopping her (Gezzarak) from taking so much damage and then the 20% damage reduction and snare-loss-of-control talent would kick in when needed.
I like the spirit beast being it’s own family. I also like how they get spirit strike and prowl. Now I know they don’t have a cc pvp type ability, but for pve they fair ok, and soloing, I also pvp with my two spirit beasts often when I off spec from my SV pvp spec.
I would rather they just keep adding different pet family models to the spirit beast family, like the wolf and soon the bear. It will be pretty cool using a spirit stirking feroicty bear. This route if they made a SB version of the other pet familys, then the cunning and tenacity models would be able to spirit strike and spec ferocity, and be pretty pve viable too. If they never implement allowing hunters to spec their pets in either cunning, ferocity, or tenacity as blizz has mentioned, adding the non ferocity familys to SB would still be a cool deal.
I just wish spirit beasts would have spirit strike get a significant buff. Being all rares and exotics, these pets should be top dog for damage pets, especially having to be BM to tame. I also feel they can still add rare and graphically buffed up pets to other pet familys, without having to discard the SB family. It would be nice to have more unique skins for non exotics beasts, does not have to be spirit beast like, but aotona for example looks awesome, and is uniques.
Maybe the problem isn’t just dps or talent tree based. Spirit beasts exist to give us that “rare” skin, but look around…almost everyone has one. Maybe like your char you could take your pet into the salon and customize its look for yourself. Keep the glowy and ghost effects for the rares sure, but let people individualize their pets as much as possible. This would lessen the urge to get that hard to get or rarely used pet and people would focus more on abilities.
I gotta say, I disagree. Uprooting the current SBs into the current families just seems to make them less ideal. Plus, I feel alot of this problem will be kind of null and void once (and if) Hunters end up choosing their pets’ talent trees. But…that’s just me; personally I don’t want to see Skoll or Loque being just a cat & wolf, that just seems so…boring.
I think once Spirit Strike gets a buff, pet scaling is in place, and we have the ability to choose our pets’ talents….SB’s will be fine. Simply put.
^
:)
Sorry for the short comment, but I have to agree with Rikaku. She makes a good point!
I’d love to see a Devilsaur Spirit Beast! If they do make a Devilsaur Spirit Beast, I’d really, REALLY love for it to be similar to Skoll! Whoever came up with Skoll’s very special lightning is a Hunters’ pets’ God! lol
I think you are on to something good Mania.
This was actually almost spot-on to what I’ve been thinking about lately. Spirit Beasts as a family are lackluster, and it’s generally a confusing setup because Skoll is visually a wolf, and Arcturis a bear, and neither should be able to prowl.
We are not going to see any major overhauls like family shifting/removals before Cataclysm. The stat transfer values will prolly be the biggest system-wise thing we’ll see. They’ve stated the hunterpet code is archaic and in bad shape (I mean, run a pet respec, and watch the stats after placing talents back. Then remount/dismount and watch stuff change even more. It’s ragged, stamina and dps update in increments.)
However, anything to voice support for bringing back some former-tameables would be fine in my book. I kinda feel like I’ve missed the boat on retired pets. Arikara will most likely be retired in Cataclysm, but I don’t think we’ll ever see the summon animation return on her…
Personally, I think spirit beasts should stay, but tweak the family somewhat to make it more special.
Replace Prowl with something else, or at least change the name to something like Spirit Walk or something. A Bear prowling just…doesn’t seem to be believable.
Second: give each skin of spirit beast that family ability, so you’d have Skoll using Furious Howl and Gondria using Rake.
I think that will give spirit beasts that niche in hunter ‘awesome pet’ thing. Other exotics should get a boost too, but spirit beasts, being rare, should be some of the best of the best pets, while hopefully not shooting BM too high in damage, which we still semi lack. We’re here we’re just not dazzling like the vegas strip like survival is.
Actually Ranshiin, bears can be very quiet in the woods when they want to be. I’ve stumbled upon two or three while walking that I had no idea where even around. Now they were brown bears, mind you, and in the woods, but I’d imagine that trying to find say, a polar bear on an ice cap would have a similar effect.
I’m…..kind of torn on this. On the one hand it would settle the spirit beasts into a more comfortable family role, but on the other it seems like it might take away part of that unique feeling they have. I also think that spirit strike is a large part of what they are. I like the idea, but at the same time it feels…..sort of off to me. If they were to take that route, I’d expect them to find a way to buff the spirit beasts in some way form or fashion, such as your previously mentioned stat buff. I’ve also championed the idea of giving them their individual family abilities along with spirit strike before, though there has been some trepidation over the idea.
*Laughs* Mania, we enjoy ‘educating’ you, as it were. I like to think we each bring something…..unique to the table. *Chuckles*
Mania I know you mean well, I know you really do mean well with this idea and suggestion and it would really fix things but, I didn’t tame Loque cause of him being a cat. And I didn’t tame Skoll for being a wolf; now I know I said I’d like Howl on him, that was only because of how Blizz has spirit beasts as low dps pets.
It’s, here it’s like this. It’d be like taking the Ghostdile, the Hydralisk and the Crocoslime, and turning them completely, into Crocolisks. The skin/models I mean.
Yes, they act like Crocolisks, but did we all tame ours, those who did anyways, because of them acting like crocolisks, or because of how they looked and acted?
Ive always wanted the spirit beasts to coexist within their families. And I would give them all spirit strike and a family racial, cats prowl, wolf howls, etc. And be in their family tree. That way I could have a spirit tank, pvp and pve pet if I wanted.
I’m in the “I didn’t spend hours and hours taming Loq and Skoll because I wanted a cat and a wolf” camp. They also are a bit beter dps then normal cats, which is what all of my other pets are. They are different, and they do take work to get, but so did Broken Tooth back in the day when different pets in the same family had differnt attack speeds.
What I would love a lot more then them removing something that I love so much and that so many people worked hard to get because well, they are different and their abilities are diffent, is if they concentrated on fixing the prowl/cower bug and things like pet pathing, which is a general pet AI problem.
Granted one of the lovely side benefits of havinga spirit beast, is that they are much much nicer pets to have when you’re doing quests in a crowded area. That ranged attack gives a chance to have a little bit of pet agro and tag things. Its just one of those things that makes life a little nicer.
I like the currect condition Spirit Beasts are in, the only thing that should change about Spirit Beasts is their talent tree. I think we should be able to chose the talent tree for them and every other pet. This way you could make the Wasps (ferocity) Cunning… their special ability seems more PvP’ish if you ask me…
Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot about Spirit Beasts… I don’t like how Blizzard keeps making them see-thru. Having a see-thru bear, and a see-thru cat isn’t that cool!! >:,(
P.S. My favorite Spirit Beast is Loque’Nahak (but I RP all the time, and he just seems like a better choice for my character)… Skoll and the see-thru’s I don’t like because they don’t seem like real beasts…
1. Make at least one Spirit Beast for every family
2. Get rid of Prowl. Yes, Blizzard, you wet yourselves every day over Cats, but Spirit Beasts don’t need their special ability. If they have to have two specials, make the second one more in line with what Spirit Beasts are.
3. Stop with the transparent/translucent models. Being see-through =/= Spirit Beast. Loque and Skoll are the perfect examples of how SB’s should look overall. Elemental skins, elemental effects around them, ornate patterns, and/or models that are a bit different than their normal cousins are all fine. But no more damn ghosts.
4. Make them, along with the other Exotics, stronger than the other pets, even if it’s just by a little. 4 extra skill points should not be the only reason to go BM-spec. You’re the ones who decided to make them unavailable to anyone but BM Hunters, Blizz, make them more special to give us more reason to be BM (and stop listening to the whiny little babies, they get two exclusive Shots and a bunch of other crap, Beast Masters should get more of their own exclusive toys).
5. Be able to choose their Talent tree. If you want a Tenacity Skoll, go for it. But once you make that choice, forever will it be that, unless you abandon him and tame him again.
6. Spinosaurus model for the SB Devilsaur. And the Avatar of Hakkar model for the SB Wind Serpent (the skeleton you fight in the Sunken Temple).
Mania, I couldn’t agree moe with what yu are saying!
As you all know, i was never a big fan of the spirit beast. At first, I didn’t understand why they made a cat with a blue face and everyone was obsessed over it. Then came the spectral tiger, and that was one of the best things ever! Now there were multiple spirit beats, so not everyone had the same one. Next, a wolf? OK, I guess wolves can prowl in the forest, camoflauged before their pack attack the prey.
…
Now a Spirit bear? Ok, there is a spirit bear in Moonglade, so it’s understandable. However, A new spirit beast for every family? That’s a great idea. I still think that the more spirit beasts there are, the better it will be! However, taking out the Spirit beast family as a whole is fine by me! Spirit beasts are just ways for hunters to say:
“HAHA! I’m better then you! You have that dumn worm and I have all three spirit beasts!”
… trust me, it happens…
Hunters for some reason are obsessed with a pet that is not even as powerful as some of the other pets. For the unique skins? of course! For the fact that they are rares and nearly impossible to get? maybe. However, They are completly over rated, and I believe that, as Mania said, That they should get rid of the Spirit beast family, keep them as exotics, and just let them be exotic and much more powerful then the other cats or wolves or bears in that family, along with any other new spirit beats they may have in the future
Mania, I got your back! when the Barrage of Spirit Beast fanatics see this, I will back you up in it!
Mitsuhide, about #3, I think you have confused Loque and Skoll with STD cat and the bear.
Spirit Bears have a myth that they ‘just disappear’, that’s it, just disappear. And seeing as the SB bear is most likely based upon a spirit bear, the fading effect it has, is alright with me. While I disliked it in STD cat, it’s mostly because we all thought that STD cat was a sign for HOW and WHY more SB would appear. But Skoll has shown, no, this is not true. And while he is not a unique model, like Loque, he has his own ties to what is it, Norse Mythology? As Arcturis[?] has ties to Spirit Bears.
What Blizzard REALLY needs to do is FIX the boxy-ness they have made with transparetising the creatures.
Rottingham: Then why not get rid of Devilsaurs? Put them in the family with raptors? Why have them exotics at all? Mean they’re nothing more than overpowered Raptors, with their own special attack. Lets get rid of what makes a Devilsaur a Devilsaur, because I have seen hunters just refer to them as ‘Raptors’, so that’s what they are. Aren’t they?
And what about Wind Serpents and Snakes? They’re both the same, so why have them in different family groupings? Peesha, one has wings? It doesn’t matter! And while we’re at it, why not group Dragonhawks and Worms in with them too, they basically share the same models!
Now. That rant aside, now do you see why, Spirit Beasts ARE different from the animals they look like? They aren’t cats. They aren’t wolves. They aren’t Devilsaurs or Bears or anything of the sort. As much as we would all love them to have some more ties to the families they represent, we aren’t going to have it, and it’s not because they’d be underpowered or anything like that, but because Blizzard is taking the lazy way out and not A: implimenting common and uncommon spirit beasts and B: making a better family skill for a spirit beast, outside of prowl and SS.
I did NOT tame Loque’nak just to have another cat on Ryai. I only had ONE cat on her and it was the Winterspring purple tiger, if I had wanted to keep a cat, I would have gotten and kept that.
I like, that my pets go pewpew with something that’s like a druid’s moonfire. And while not as spamable as it, it is still cool.
The other thing is, what would be the point, in keeping them exotics? Why? While as I said yes it might fix problems, it would only fix problems with their DPS. Outside of being special skins and spirit beasts as they are now- they’d be no different than the families they are put into, thus rendering their status as exotics useless, thus meaning they would become average day cats, wolf and bear.
We should NOT have to make an Exotic basically an exotic cat, wolf or bear, just to fix their damage numbers!
be overpowered* bleh
Ryai
First off, look at the elementals you fight in Wetlands… now look at wights and the berserker trolls… They use the same model, however they are not the same thing. Look at voidwalkers and the fire elementals, they look the same apart from one being on fire, but the are not classified under the same family. The same goes with kodos and thunderlizrds, and basalisks and crocolisks. Just because they use the same model doesn’t make them the same thing.
So I really don’t get your logic about the whole “Worm and Dragonhawk” thing…
And yes, I do understand that they are different, but I mean why not just have them become a member of the other family? Why did we have to make a completely different family of pets for things that look nothing alike? I mean, the cats and wolves are understandable. The wargs and wolves are all canine, and the cats, lions, and big cats are all feline. THe same gos with the outland models for raptors and windserpents as opposed to the models for the Azeroth ones. and the firefly wasps and SB wasps, they are all wasps never-the-less.
However, in this family you have two cat looking creatures, a wolf, and a bear. They have absolutly sothing in common besides the fact that they all have fur. So unles all the Spirit Beasts are goign to be creatures that are furry, then this family is just a combination of other families. just because they have a ghostly pressence makes them all the same family? Loque isn’t ghostly, he has a blue face, and Skoll is more lightning/elemental looking then ghostly. So you have two ghostly Spirit beasts, the bear ad the large cat.
And now that I think about it, keeping them exotic is just a little too weird if they were switched to the other families. But I mean it would still be a challenge for all hunters then, not just the BM ones,so it takes them out of the “We can get sweet pets that you can’t” kind of thing. That would be the only reeason I would like Spirit beasts to stay as Spirit beasts, so the BM have more then the rest of us. But still, That is the only reason.
I am not saying ’spirit beasts should stay spirit beasts so BM have more than other hunters’
I am saying that this is NOT fixing the problem at all. Not the real problem. Which is Blizzard messed with SB dps in the first place, admitted they were broken and have done nothing to fix them. So this, would NOT be fixing them.
Listen.
I did NOT tame Loque or Skoll to have a ‘wolf’ or ‘cat’, as much as I would like a better family racial than prowl. I know Skoll will never get Howl no matter how much I would love for him to get something better than prowl, and that Loque will never have Rake. And that STD cat will never have rake or SB bear will never have Swipe.
Now.
Listen.
Listen to me when I explain ‘Spirit Beasts’.
We all had the misconception that with Loque, they would A: all be cats or B: all be unique models. Unique as in, not a model rehashed or modified. Completely, and utterly, unique.
STD cat and so on proved, this is not the case.
Loque is the MATE of Harkoa, and if you know troll lore, the troll gods aren’t gods in the sense of ‘our’ gods or in warcraft terms, other races gods. They’re more ‘Spiritual’ than anything.
STD cat is probably a tie in to that, somehow. In some way. Seeing as Loque is Harkoa’s mate- and STD cat is a cat, and spawns in ZD.
Now there’s Skoll, who evidently does have some myths backing him up. And what is one equasion for myths? Spiritual crap.
The newest one, the bear, is probably partly in fact that as I said there ARE bears called SPIRIT BEARS.
CP tiem.
‘The Kermode Bear (Ursus americanus kermodei), also known as the “spirit bear”, is a subspecies of the American Black Bear living in the central coast of British Columbia, and noted for about 1/10 of their population having white or cream-colored coats. This color variant is due to a unique recessive trait in their gene pool—they are neither albino nor related to polar bears, nor the “blond” brown bears of Alaska’s “ABC Islands”.
Because of their ghost-like appearance, “spirit bears” hold a prominent place in the Canadian First Nations/ American Indian mythology of the area.[1]‘
From wiki.
Now I guess you didn’t get what I was saying about models, but the deal is. Spirit Beasts just RESEMBLE creatures of other families. It’s clearly evident by their lack of having any tie to any existing pet families, not including prowl or models, that they are clearly, not normal beasts. Not cats. Not bears. Not wolves. They are -spirit beasts-.
What you are basically saying is, just because they look the same as XX pet, they should be in XX family.
This is like saying because Windserpents and Dragonhawks are both flying reptiles, they should be in the same family. Or that since worms and snakes, share the same model, they should be in the same family.
Or that since Devilsaurs are buffed/beefed up Raptors when you get to the ‘core’ of their makeup, that they should just be grouped with Raptors.
It’s NOT about being ghostly. It’s NOT about being furry. It’s NOT about anything like that.
Loque = Harkoa’s mate [tho I rp mine as one of their children]. Troll lore = Their gods are very spiritual-esque things.
So. Loque = Spirit Beast.
STD Cat = somehow tied into Trolls = somehow tied into their gods = probably a tortured Harkoa/Loque offspring possible = Spirit Beast.
Skoll = Myth crap I don’t know about = Spiritual = Spirit Beast.
SB bear = Based offa Kermode/Spirit Bear = Spirit Beast.
Spirit =/= Ghost. It’s different things for the most part :/
And in the end this would solve nothing. This would just FURTHER proves Blizzard does NOT want to fix BM.
SV has explossive shots. MM has Aura and shots. All BM has is +4 talent points and shiny pets. If you support the normalization of pets, without giving BM any shots, what’s left to make BM special? What’s left to make it worth going BM?
I mean with this, I could just specc Ryai SV/MM say good bye to Jareth [not that I will] and have shiny pets + shots and or aura!
Now.
As I said I understand Mania was only trying to suggest a way to help- and I understand you all think this will fix things. But it won’t. This would be hurting hunters who never wanted a cat or a wolf or a bear, and they wanted something ethereal looking.
This is basically like saying; Explosive Shot, True Shot Aura, Black Arrow and Chimera Shot and Silence Shot, The Beast Within 1/2 should be made available to all hunters no matter what the specc.
And as you know that’d not solve anything in the end :/
This is an interesting thread –
I spent quite a while before I was able to tame Loque – and I appreciate the rarity of that. It isn’t why I tamed him, but rather I wanted to see what a Spirit Beast was about. After all, I choose Beast Master because I like to hunt with an animal partner, explore with a critter. I actually think that calling them pets nullifies the concept of a bond between an animal that wants to kill you, and one that is your partner to death.
I have always felt that Spirit Beasts weren’t quite right. Underpowered, as mentioned here a few times, in that we spend the extra time to get the apex of Beast to go with us and they don’t really do much, if at all, better than the family they are often mistaken for. I also don’t use prowl. ever. not since 2004, do not use it, nor do I want it – though probably now that I’ve said that, I’ll find a very good use for it. :)
Having Beast Master skills, you finally want to team up with the epitome of beast – one that can represent both your bond and what you expect in a fighting partner. After all, the beast is the fighter, you are both the second tank and healer. Your role is very different now, and the partnership is carefully developed. Only with Spirit beasts there is so little to distinguish them from the normal families, we start to think of them as Cats or Wolves. They really need to be unique, like the talent tree, and work that perspective from a clearly different POV. (no pun, really.)
I solo almost exclusively. I expect that my critter will be the best I can find that will complement that type of play. Oddly enough, the gorilla was the most powerful, and I do not like gorillas. I left mine behind as soon as I tamed a Spirit Beast, but there is no comparison in capabilities. I can’t swoop in with my spirit beast and gather up 15 or 20 critters, and pound on them till dead. They break off immediately and I’m the mush. Thunderstomp kept them in check. Why do spirit beasts have something other than a lookalike druid spell that is too low in power, and too long in cooldown to be of use?
I’m not really asking for something that would be so over powered that we’d be banned from group play, but, as a solo player, I’d like something to provide that balance so we operate as a capable team, the two of us.
Interesting thread – thanks.
/shibumi
To anyone who states spirit beasts dps/damage as bad, is not a true statement. If you took all the pet familys, thirty-two or so, the spirit beasts damage would be in the top five. As a BM hunter, a devilsaur has a higher damage output with monstrous bite stacking with rabid and other ferocity talents. While a spirit beasts damage output is not tops like the devilsaur, it is not in the toilet either, as some of you make it sound, or to those who just read things on the forum and incorporate them as law.
I would like to see spirit striked buffed to the point spirit beasts deal the most damage, as they should being all rare/exoctic. Maybee the spirit striked could deal damage, as well as increasing the damage of claw while active or something. Someone also mentioned spirit beasts having their own talent tree, that would be cool too, but I doubt that would happen, blizzard would likely try to balance that tree for pve and pvp, and the chanses are good they would botch it.
I like the spirit beast as a family, they are not supposed to be cats, wolves or bears, that is just the model they use, the spirit is what makes the beast. I really would hate if the spirit beasts were done away with and just tossed into each pet family, and inheriting the family ability. I like the fact that if blizz keeps adding spirit beasts, that there will eventually be one for each family, including all familys from cunning/tenacity, and having a ability in spirit striked that deals some damage, allowing the pet to be a decent choice for pve as well as pvp and soloing.
As far as the looks of spirit beasts, right now we have gondria who is glowy, loque who emitts some light around the mouth, but is not a glowy model so to speak as gondria, or the bear coming soon. Then you have skoll, who again has the lightning, but is not glowy as in gondria. I like the looks of the spirit beasts so far, and hope they continue some with the glowy look and others with some unique feature like skolls lightning or loques mouth etc. Out of thirty plus familys, we all kinds of pets to pick from who are not spirit beast looking, that is plenty, leave the spiri beasts unique looks as they are. It would be nice for blizz to add more rares like aotona for example, that is not exoctic, but still rare, unique, and has a different model then other pets of the same family.
For hunters who recently hopped on the WoW wagon, you might not remember the days before many of us ever heard of petopia. When you would seek out that special beast to tame because it had a standout stat, attack speed, run speed, skin, resistences etc. That was a lot of fun for old school hunters, and since pet normalization, blizz realized us hunters like unique, and rare hard to find pets. That is one of the reason of spirit beasts, and other rares like aotona, king krush etc. I like that blizz is still hooking us up with some cool, unique, and hard to find pets.
And I also do not agree with anyone saying, oh everyone has a spirit beast. Maybee now you see a few more hunters with one,but that is a far cry from being everyone, or even a large majority. For the simple fact alone most hardcore hunters spec SV or MM for raiding, even less spec BM, and even those who do raid as BM, might still pick a wolf for the attack power buff, over a devilsaur/spirit beast for raids. At least until spirit beasts gets a proper buff as they should, and I hope they do.
Every Hunter feels the urge/need to grab a pet that is rare or exotic (whether because it only existed at one particular time, or because it is so very hard to find.) I think the real issue is whether they’ll start adding more rare tames like Aotona, or limited time tames like Gezzarak, the Ghost Crocs, and the Sapphire Hive Queen.
Every Hunter wants to be in on that ‘hunt.’ But right now the safari seems limited to BM. I think if they were to add more special tames for the Hunter class as a whole, then the current nature of Spirit Beasts would cease to be such an issue.
Ergo: let me tame King Ping next week!
Tony: It’s not that it’s ‘bad’ per se, it’s more that it’s broken/bad because Blizzard didn’t want to make a pet that was on par with a cat, when it first came out because they cried mean raiders would bully hunters to use that pet.
When it’d have been they’d be bullied to use wolves and or cats if not BM.. rite?
It’s more of the fact SS fails to scale properly and for a long time SB’s for the most part did LESS damage than cats. Not much but, it was enough to really make them not ideal pets outside of being flashy.
Flink: No, no more limited time tames. No. Never again. As much as I love them, it locks up your stable slots and you are never allowed the chance to release them and catch them later, or release and catch on an alt.
On Ryai i would now perfer a bear, over Erebus, and have Ere on my belf hunter I’m currently leveling. But that will never happen again.
I’m all for more rare tames and more skins tho.
[to all those who don't know Ere is the 'Ghost Hydra', no longer tameable]
Ryai
LOL when reading your comments I started laughing because it sounds like you’re yelling at me, so i was picturing this person all red in the face from anger yelling as they typed because of what I said about the Spirit Beasts lol
But in all seriousness I do understand more of what you were saying now. I had forgotten that there were myths and lore about them… Which I normally never really forget about but for some reason i wa caught up in what i was sayign that I did, so that I appologise for :P
Anyways, I do understand what you were talkign about now, thanks for clearing that up.
Ryai, Ok so you have the lore that ties Loque to Harkoa etc, and -that- is why it is a spirit beast. Well then how would the removal of prowl on the non-cat-like SB’s and the switch of their talent tree affect this at all?
To me the spirit beasts all have a tie to the Ancients, and I include the primal gods of the trolls within this category, and this would not change no matter what else happened.
I personally feel that a large portion of the disagreement among hunters about SB’s is that the first two were both cat-like, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those who resented cats for so long. And now even with a wolf and soon to be bear version, prowl is still a blaring reminder that it might as well be another cat.
I still feel that they should give talent trees appropriate to the beasts they embody and exchange prowl for a more appropriate ability. While remaining the family spirit beast. Cuz to me they are either related to the ancients who resemble the beast, or some sort of ascendant of that beast family. This would not change their lore or significance, would possibly make them more useful while not op, and would not change the cat-like ones at all.
(The ancients Ursoc and Ursol were bear gods in wow btw, they “died” during the war of the ancients. perhaps Arcturis is realted to them.)
Rottingham
“We can get sweet pets that you can’t” kind of thing.
Sure, you can have all the sweet pets that we can have. all you have to do is spend 51 points in th BM tree. I would really like to have Explosive Shot on my BM hunter, but it’s not gonna happen. Sounds like you want your cake and you wanna eat it too.
On a side note it took me entirely waaay too long to figure out why Ryai kept calling Gondria STD cat… /facepalm lol
Rottingham:
You completely missed the point I think of Mania’s statement.
“Hunters for some reason are obsessed with a pet that is not even as powerful as some of the other pets. For the unique skins? of course! For the fact that they are rares and nearly impossible to get? maybe. However, They are completly over rated, and I believe that, as Mania said, That they should get rid of the Spirit beast family, keep them as exotics, and just let them be exotic and much more powerful then the other cats or wolves or bears in that family, along with any other new spirit beats they may have in the future
Mania, I got your back! when the Barrage of Spirit Beast fanatics see this, I will back you up in it!”
Are you telling me you don’t use your specific pet for a specific reason? Not every hunter tames a SB to go ‘oh look at me, I’m cool”. No. I tamed Skoll and Loque cause I liked how they look. Even if theywere common spawns, I would’ve tamed them.
Mania’s solution is more aimed at “they’ve screwed up SB’s for so long, perhaps this could solve it”. Your solution is (or, rather, sounds like) aimed at “I don’t like how other Hunters act/feel towards SB’s so lets remove them”.
The SB family should NOT go. They should be in place. Some of us don’t want another stupid cat or wolf, and that’s why we prefer SB’s. They give us a nice wolf or cat or bear model without it actually being a bear. I agree SB’s need work, but removing them is NOT the solution.
The point of the family was to have more pet-options, regardless of their dps, they do exactly that.
However, this topic was bound to get dirty (not saying your argument is dirty Rottingham), as SB’s are always controversial. I have a feeling a huge argument will break out =/
Second:
Rottingham: (mind you I only read one of your earlier comments)
“Ryai
LOL when reading your comments I started laughing because it sounds like you’re yelling at me, so i was picturing this person all red in the face from anger yelling as they typed because of what I said about the Spirit Beasts lol”
I had to point that out, that that made me laugh too. In fact, some people’s avatars on here with the >:0 face with the teeth showing always make me think someones rawring over the internet. XD
Ryai go to tame a devilsaur go solo a elite mob in a outland instance or a elite around your level. Then tell me they are the same as raptors.
To be perfectly honest, it doesnt matter what blizzard does, many of you will still find something to whine about!
There are how many tamable skins out there to choose from? How many families? And still we want more, we want this, we want that, we want what we don’t have.
Yes, MM/SV have their own shots, yes, BM’s core ability got changed (BW/TBW), yes spirit beasts are Rare, unique skinned, and have broken dps. Exotics are just for BM, doesnt mean we HAVE to use them, but gives us the -options- of having some really unique and cool pets to choose from.
Where will the spirit beast end up when all is said and done? only Blizz knows that, but from where we are, it looks like they are making atleast one for every exsisting family out there.
For me, atleast, I am happy to sit back and look for pets that *I* like the look of, rather then “oooh something new and shiney, lets tame it!”
Also: anyone else notice the pattern? Loque (solid), Gondria (transperant), skoll (solid), Articus (transperant). So, maybe 1/2 the SB will be solid and the other transperant.
Not Everyone is going to be satisfied with the SB family, or BM or this or that, but so long as there are people who DO tame SB, who do PLAY BM, then there are people who are satisfied, and/or content with whats going on. It is JUST a game after all, try to find things to enjoy rather then not.
Kroxis: It’s ok. Not everyone has as warped a mind as me Dx
Also, I never said it would affect them- it’s just Blizzard is to lazy to actually do something like give the Exotic a better ability.
@ all: Nuh it’s not rage face. It’s just.
I’m passionate Dx that’s one of my problems with debating, I get to into it/worked up and it’s not that I’m really ‘roid rage’ or ‘angry’… I just like talking to much :c
Guntitan: I have tamed King Mosh solo. No fear ward. No healing. No bubble. No TBW. No haste to Tame beast. Nada. Hands down King Mosh is one of the most difficult tames out there cause even on a 70 he still hits hard.
Now the other thing; That really has nothing to do what I was talking about. I was comparing that, wanting spirit beasts in the families they resemble, just because they resemble them, is about the same as putting Devilsaurs and Raptors together, or Snakes and Worms or Dragonhawks or Wind Serpents.
I could see putting them back in their respective families as being a very positive change. Right now, if a hunter fills his or her stables with spirit beasts, they have different skins of the exact same pet. The idea of returning them to their respective families would give them additional skills and trees. (If they add the ability to choose your pets’ talent trees, that’d be fantastic, but you’d still be sitting on pets with the exact same skill-sets.)
That said though, I’m survival anyhow, so I’m not terribly concerned what they do or don’t change about spirit beasts, it just seems like players are being punished for taming multiple spirit beasts by them being carbon copies of each other, barring appearances.
Always wanted a spirit beast. But on Scarlet Crusade, Loque is camped all day, every day, by about 20 people at any given point in time, both hunter and non, so he was never an option for me. Gondria was actually my second choice though, since I HATE the emaciated Northrend wolf look. Skoll did exactly zero for me, and I am a wolf fan. Beyond that, I don’t need more then one spirit beast.
One thing I think we can all agree on at least is that the Spirit beast needs to be fixed in some way form or fashion. While not the worst in DPS, they aren’t the best. And yet they are the only pet in existence that you have to camp for. Personally, and maybe this just me, but I think that extra effort should have been rewarded with more then just a cool skin. Higher DPS, two unique abilities, special talent tree, something.
Lilita:
“I could see putting them back in their respective families as being a very positive change. Right now, if a hunter fills his or her stables with spirit beasts, they have different skins of the exact same pet.”
Can’t you do that with any family though? Tame different variations of the same family? I don’t see how moving SB’s into their “respective” families changes that fact; you could very well just end up with a stable of cats of pretty colors.
“The idea of returning them to their respective families would give them additional skills and trees. (If they add the ability to choose your pets’ talent trees, that’d be fantastic, but you’d still be sitting on pets with the exact same skill-sets.)”
It’d give them 1 additional skill and they’d lose Spirit Strike (technically speaking it is SB only). So they don’t gain anything. They lose one, gain one, nuetral.
And your pets wouldn’t have the same skillsets if you chose different talents. If you had a tank SB, he’d have thunderstomp; a ferocity SB could never have Thunderstomp.
Palla:
“One thing I think we can all agree on at least is that the Spirit beast needs to be fixed in some way form or fashion. While not the worst in DPS, they aren’t the best.”
Agreed. And I’m not even saying all this because I like SBs. If I saw my Tallstrider wasn’t scaling properly, I would cry foul on that too (had to almost say I wrote fowl there). I don’t care if SBs get a dps buff or not, but they should have proper scaling with their main attack just like any other pet. End of story.
Makoes, one thing I have learned through playing multiple classes is that there are, by and large, two kinds of ‘whiners’. You have the people who just want more then what the other guy has, and you have the people with founded and valid concerns. The more classes you play, the more you start to realize and understand the imbalance that is inherent within WoW. By and large, there is a reason you don’t hear, say, warriors whine as much as mages. ((Mages is a bad example here. They whine about EVERYTHING.)) I don’t consider most of what has gone on in this thread as whining. An expression of desire in regards to the design of an interesting pet family, perhaps, but not really whining.
I don’t think that Mania was proposing that they lose Spirit Strike. What I gathered was that you’d have the pet families, and then you’d have a sub-family within those for their exotic counterparts, which would have their family skill and the special ability. (Spirit Strike for the spirit beast versions, and perhaps pets such as Aotona would gain exotic status within a sub-family of their own and obtain an addition special ability themselves.)
Lilita:
True, but if they kept spirit strike, that would further imbalance pets moreso then they are already. It would do more damage then help. The entire point of Exotics not being “OP” was to avoid forcing people to get “that one pet” (Think of Broken Tooth back in the day.)
If Loque was a cat, who had prowl rake and spirit strike (something no other cats had), why would you even get a regular cat 90% of the time? Sure, that War Tiger may be prettier, but for the same price you could get an extra powerful cat as a BM hunter. This would just force BM’s to take Exotics, which is what is what Blizzard has purposely tried avoiding.
In many ways, moving SBs into “respective” families would cause problems like this. Why do it in the first place?
I totally agree with the people who are saying that Spirit Beasts SHOULD be Exotics only! I hate the translucent/ethereal, so-called “Spirit Beasts” too. Beast Mastery Hunters should have more Exotic Tameables (compared to all of the non-Exotics, duh). Ewww, no “Spino” “model” for a Tyrannosaurus Rex Devilsaur. And Skoll IS unique.
Spirit beasts are not going to prevent blizz from making rares for other pet familys, this expansion added aotona, and king krush for example. I hope in the next expansion, some non exotic rares, and some new spirit beasts or exotic rares are added. I hope people don’t get in the habit of thinking that if spirit beasts exist, that it would prevent any rares for any non exotic familys to ever be added.
Rikaku
“Rottingham:
You completely missed the point I think of Mania’s statement.”
…
I imagine you know with the angered red face…
Anyways, i’m sorry if I confused people, and I’m sorry if I made Ryai’s passionate side come out… But it’s just my opinion. Why do you guys have to try and convert me to your ways when i don;t try to convert you to mine. I just stated my opinion, then I get red faced people yelling at me through the screen! (Exaggeration of course!)
I don’t really understand why People like the Spirit Beasts so much. I think that they’re ok, but I would still prefer my Wolf or Spider over them. And I’m not trying to have people think that the spirit beast is horrible! Not at all! I just stated my opinion then people have to correct me or get mad at me or tell me to ‘Listen.’
…
Anyways, that’s what I wanted to say :P Carry on…
Rottingham:
Oh I have no angered face at all. Unless you’re a certain troll =)
And I don’t think anyone is trying to convert you to… what is it that “we people” are? The SB fanclub? O_o I don’t really care if you hate SB’s or not, I was just giving my opinion on the subject.
Trust me, you can tell when I’m mad, and I’m totally not mad/yelling XD
“I don’t really understand why People like the Spirit Beasts so much. I think that they’re ok, but I would still prefer my Wolf or Spider over them. And I’m not trying to have people think that the spirit beast is horrible! Not at all! I just stated my opinion then people have to correct me or get mad at me or tell me to ‘Listen.’”
You pretty much answered your own question. You don’t understand why people like SB’s so much, but you like your Spider right? I freaking hate spiders in WoW for no other reason then, they freak me out! But that doesn’t mean I want the family removed XD
It’s pretty much how any Hunter feels towards their pet. I think Petopia blog is just a very hard place to judge though. I mean, generally the people who come to the blog are BM Hunters who have exotics in some way shape or form. So basically, you’re going to get alot of people who will defend their SB’s. But go in game, and you’ll find majority of Hunters are SV/MM or BM’s who don’t care about SB’s and prefer their own family. So I think the blog audience has a weird representation.
Your spider still creeps me out though D=
(PS: If I did come off as sounding mad/angry, my apologies. It totally was not designed to sound that way)
Rikaku, would that troll by chance be a death knight named Wight? If so, I have angered lots of people as him because I fight people one on one in bgs and take on level 78s as a 73… Yes, I tick people off in one on one…
best thing to do with spirit beasts is make them invisible to non hunters and take them off the stupid achievements, its stupid to wait for a 6-8 hour spawn only to have someone kill it for 10 nerd points or a portion of the meta. even worse than that are the people killing them multiple times.
All of this talk about the pet abilites brought something to my attention. I’ve yet to have someone critique it on the official WoW forums but I think part of getting to choose your pet’s talent tree would be pretty decent so I brought up scorpids and several other pet families that are hardly ever used because of how weak they are compared to other families.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=20677777219&postId=209472227295&ST=US-490072-KgqOoB5TY4GN0DvJfWMPN0dLEfbXFFqxOMX&rhtml=true
Rottingham: It’s the same thing as if people suddenly started saying Ghost Sabers and Ghost Wolves, should become Spirit Beasts, because they have ‘Ghost’ in their name. I’m not trying to ‘convert’ you or anything, I am just trying to explain why, your statement/view/opinion is not the best, concerning Spirit Beasts or why i think it’s flawed.
I never said you really need to obey me and think how I think and say what I say- but you need to understand that you were in support for a move which would anger and sadden alot of hunters who did not tame Loque, Skoll or STD cat or want to tame the bear, for being a cat, bear or wolf. We didn’t tame them because they’re rare, but the rare makes them special.
I personally adore Loque’s model. And i am pleased as pie about Skoll’s sound effects. I find it nice, frankly and I normally don’t like ‘thunder and lightning’ SFX. And the plus? The plus is they have a unique attack that I find dead cool.
Now if they were made normal cats and wolves and bears, they’d be camped even more, than they are now. And think about it. Everyone and their mother’s dog, would be gunning for it. Because suddenly SB’s are now viable. SB’s are as good as normal wolves and normal cats. You don’t think that’d make non BM hunters want to go tame them?
I personally am sick at the thought of Skoll and Loque, and even STD cat becoming the NEXT ‘flavor of the month’ pets :/
Sarissan: That will only happen if they remove all loot that they drop. Which they won’t. It’s also the cause as to why people kill them multiple times; for the rare BoE loot. I saw a necklace or whatever it is that Loque drops and part of me went AMIGAWD MY ORC CAN U- omg it’s from LOQUE.
Then I got a bit sick at the thought of even thinking I wanted to use it.
Rikaku: DEATH SCREAMING SPIDER
8D
you have now made me want to go tame one on an alt lol.
I actually very disappointed in this post. I have seen more hunters complaining about how hard it is to get Spirit Beasts, complaining about camping rare spawns as a whole, and wanting to be able to tame exotics at low levels (mainly due to their inability to actually work for something). Most of your ideas in this post catter to those lazy hunters out there. I thought you were a better hunter than that. The purpose for rare spawns, exotic pets, an Spirit Beasts being so hard to obtain is to make them unique. You don’t give veryone that shows up to the Olympics a Gold Medal just for being there… you have to earn it! I love running around with various rare spawn pets not because they may be best dps (Spirit Beast *cough*), but because they are my Trophies I earned for putting in the work for them. To those hunters who find it “too hard” to camp a rare spawn, then go get a common pet. Find something that is to your liking, tame it, and enjoy hunting with it. To those hard working hunters who strive for the best, keep up the good work! /salute
Wait what? Are you referring to my post? O_o
If they did something to alter the spirit beast family to boost its DPS, that would do nothing but cause more hunters to have to camp them and yell at anyone who kills them for achievements. I’m quite happy with Spirit Beasts not being top DPS, as it would be sheer frustration to be lacking in DPS just because you couldn’t find the rare spawn.
That said, something does need to be done about the Spirit Beast family as a whole. As it stands currently, if for some reason someone wanted all of the spirit beasts as a sort of trophy, they would have four of their five stable slots taken up by pets that were essentially the same. There would be no benefit to bringing out, say, the bear instead of the wolf, and then the hunter would be left with one free stable slot. Each to their own, but I don’t want to become a spirit beast collector and handicap myself. If I ever wanted one, I’d try and find Loque, but there’s nothing standing out about SBs in particular and exotics in general that make me want to spec BM at all.
Epyon, we’re not wanting- those who want SB’s scaling fixed, to be ‘top’ DPS. As it stands now the top two pets afaik are Wolf and Devilsaur. Followed by Cat/Raptor, possibly moth, and I know for sure SB. But when it first came out, SB’s were BELOW cats in damage. Not tied, not just a bit above, but actually LOWER in damage. Then Blizzard admited that A: they nerfed them because being ‘to powerful’ would have ‘to much grief for hunters’ when there isn’t enough grief atm? The other thing is because as Palla pointed out, or someone else and Palla has resaid- Spirit Strike isn’t scaling correctly.
I don’t want to have an SB ‘be top dps pet ever’ but it gets a bit boring to know that Jareth is my top dps pet and if I want to get anywhere I will have to most likely use him, because, my server is mostly elitist it seems, when it comes to raids. EVEN. TEN-MANS.
So it’s less ‘I’m forced to use a Spirit Beast’ and more ‘I’m forced to use my Devilsaur all the time unless I grow weary of how blooming big he becomes’.
That and it’s been said GhostCrawler has said Blizzard is looking into Pet Stable Slots or something since with Spirit Beasts and BM being turned into a ‘Gotta Tame Them All’ specc for the most part.
Tho tbh if you’re an avid fan of spirit beasts, why should you really care if all your stable slots are taken up? Same with if you’re an avid fan of crabs or spiders or netherrays or cats or wolves- etc.
I mean Mania has a Dorf with only crabs for the most part. And I and my friends are doing a theme on our dorf hunter alts, aka only pets of a certain color.
And you also admit that you find nothing interesting about Spirit Beasts or intriguing, or anything outside of a slight interest in Loque’s model- I personally know of your opposite. I’ve not seen him in person more than a few times while in Dal or questing near the turny, but he is evidently someone who does have Skoll, STD cat AND Loque, I am not sure if he has abandond one or another but I have seen him with all three pets at seperate times.
i agree with spock on this one tho i was once lazy ive recently started to make something of myself and learned about hard work.
Nanotrev:
Actually, I made a post long ago (you can even find the WoW link in the forums of Petopia) calling for Hunter’s being able to choose their own talent trees for their pets just after the pet “standardization” where every pet had +5% across the board. I also called for it in the Hunter Q & A.
I have alot of pride in the fact that my forum post originally called for it is no longer viewable (It was moved, not deleted, to some forum that players cannot see) the second that it came out that it was a possibility for Cataclysm.
Do I take it as it was my idea? Heavens no. But I do take pride in thinking that maybe…just maybe…someone up in Blizzard heard my post (and undoubtedly the others like it though I never saw them) and agreed. ;)
My original argument was posted on my blog and Mania’s forums for future reference.
(Maniasarcania.com) /forums/topic/feedback-pet-standardization
Remove parenthesis to view the forum.
Dobertommy:
I meant a forum Troll, but I do not recognize the name Wight either sorry. Perhaps a different battlegroup? ;)
Maybe I’m misreading this, but I believe Mania’s intention was to remove the Spirit Beast family because they’re confusing more than anything else, and it would be something of a slippery slope later down the road. Bats and worms with prowl? It would be a little strange.
That being said, Spirit Beasts, as they are, could be a godsend to fans of pets that have terrible abilities. With the nerf to Sonic Blast my poor bat’s not seen any use at all lately, and I don’t see this changing in the future. A Cunning pet with a terrible ability is just not worth using compared to any of my other pets, regardless of how much I like his model. If a Spirit Beast with a bat model is introduced, I’m afraid I’m going to have to drop him in favor of it and just say that he was ‘reincarnated’ or something to that affect. With Mania’s proposal, a spirit bat would have the same lousy family ability as an actual bat.
Spirit Strike may not be the l33t3st of the l33t when it comes to DPS, but I’d take it over an 80 Focus stun on a 1-minute cooldown any day, as I’ve no doubt other hunters would over some of the more lackluster hunter abilities that exist.
TLDR: I think Spirit Beasts should remain a single family, nonsensical or no, so that potential pets who’s ‘real’ family’s have terrible abilities could see some use/increased popularity.
Okay Spock, I have done difficult tames before. Spirit beasts? Not that. Spirit beasts are a camp fest, to see who is in the right place at the right time. I waited SIX MONTHS, constantly camping either Gondria or Loque in an attempt to get one, because both were so heavily camped on my server. Rare spawn does NOT equal difficult spawn. Just patient spawn. For that matter, rare spawn does not equal the best, either, in spite of your claims otherwise.
*takes a deep breath* Mania is NOT trying to dumb down hunters or hunter pets, and she is NOT trying to make things easier, and I am offended that you managed to some how get that out of her trying to fix spirit beasts. This is just a compilation of some random thoughts Mania had while taking a shower. It’s her ideas, and her opinion, not the end of the world. Just relax. Toss in your opinion on the ideas all you want, but that doesn’t make Mania a lesser hunter.
*rage face off*
@ Palla
“*takes a deep breath* Mania is NOT trying to dumb down hunters or hunter pets, and she is NOT trying to make things easier, and I am offended that you managed to some how get that out of her trying to fix spirit beasts. This is just a compilation of some random thoughts Mania had while taking a shower. It’s her ideas, and her opinion, not the end of the world. Just relax. Toss in your opinion on the ideas all you want, but that doesn’t make Mania a lesser hunter.”
“Exatly. Why does everyone complain about an Opinion?”
Another person red in the face and yelling at the screen…
*rage face off*
Dang it! Meant to put the “Another person red in the face and yelling at the screen…” under the “*rage face off”
Sorry :(
*Laughs* I actually wasn’t. I just thought it’d be funny to put it there. And very interesting quoting capabilities….*Grins*
I like the whole “rage face” sub-conversation that keeps cropping up. Though it reminds me of myself right now as I’m playing Dragon Age. xD
I just beat Dragon Age, Rikaku. *Laughs*
Hmm… Just thinking out loud here, feel free to ignore my post if you wish.
How best to deal with Spirit Beasts… There seem to be a few ways they could be handled (Again, just tossing around ideas here, don’t get flustered over something that seems OP.)
1. Leave them as their own family, fix their special ability so that it scales properly, leave them with Prowl, and buff BM in some other area.
2. Same as above, but replace prowl with family-specific abilities such as Furious Howl, Swipe, etc. to give them some variance of flavor.
3. Make them exotic-only, buffed members of the families their skins resemble (maybe +7% to everything instead of +5% or somesuch? Obviously the numbers would need tweaking, but it’s just an example).
4. Increase their availability in a variety of level ranges, so that they become just another run-of-the-mill pet family.
I’m personally in favor of #2, in addition to being able to choose what tree your pet specs into (Ferocity, Cunning, Tenacity).
A pet version of the barber shop might help alleviate this issue, but I doubt Blizzard would want to put in the work necessary to make it work.
I don’t really like the idea of a pet version of the barber shop. Part of a tame right now, for me at least, is finding the right pet to tame. I just don’t think I’d like to be able to shift my pets looks at will. Kind of defeats the purpose to me.
I think there should be at least ONE easy to tame SB skin. In fact, probably JUST one, with the rest being rare. If their only special feature is their looks then why should they be so rare? It doesn’t make much sense to me when there are other rare skins for normal families that don’t require the exotic talent to tame, such as wolves, or being able to tame night elf druid cat form. *Laughs*
In rethinking, fix ss, let them all keep it, give wolf a howl but a lesser one, and the bear a -lesser- bear move(both instead of prowl)and give them appropriate talent trees.
This way they stay spirit beasts, increase options over all, and don’t feel so lack luster.
I agree about the spirit beast camping it gets crazy at times but i got mine by just looking at different times of the day!! And i also have the silver dragon add-on but after i tamed Loque… I’m a big cat lover and wanted loque not so much for the spirit beast powers but his looks and he is the sleekest looking beast out there!! Not the typical squareish body style of the other cats and i also like gondria’s std look but i dont wanna see all spirit beast be transparent tho!! and yes Skoll is a very nice elemental look!!! I look for the hard to find rares for the the hunt!! sometimes it gets boring but once you find it sweet!! Spirit beasts are just what they are spirit beasts sure they need some work but they are not cats wolfs and bears just the look.. I think people wouldnt have a problems if they where all animals that havent gotten there looks from certain pet families??
thats why i always say lets get some new pet families in the game!! loque worked because he/she has its own body style/model but after that blizzard went back to same old body style new skin Imagine if the others had their own models and not that of just making a new skin color??
YOU NO TAKE MOONFIRE!
Hi, I’ve been prowling this forum for a LOOONG time, and love the discussions though I’ve never participated. So, just a “hi, I’m here” to start with.
And then, on to topic:
I actually tamed Gondria on three different hunters (don’t ask. I have lots of hunters.. and yes, all on the same server), two of which I dual-box together.
I love the Spirit Beast “ghostly” look of Gondria (STD Cat? I loved that the first time I heard it… almost gave my pets viral names to go with it).
As a matter of fact, I have always wished that the ghostly wolves in Shadowfang Keep were tamable. To me, those were the “ultimate look” in pets.
I don’t raid, I don’t PvP, I don’t do many instances nor actually group much (main reason I dual-box), so I like my pets as a friend at my side, and want a look that I’ll enjoy. I also like a pet that I can solo/duo with without worrying about getting smooshed on the tarmac.
Which does bring me to my only complaint about Spirit Beasts: I hate that they have Prowl. I always turn it off. And I’m terribly frustrated that I am basically losing one pet ability
automatically. I sort of wish Blizzard would make Prowl a pet talent instead of an automatic ability. That way, I could simply NOT learn it and use something else that might serve me better.
Oh, and I SO wish for a “spirit (ie: ghostly/transparent) wind serpent”. I’ve loved wind serpents since the days of “don’t tame those! their base stats suxorz!!!”
In terms of looks, whoever suggested using the bony wind serpent look as a wind serpent spirit beast has got the right idea. I think using some of the ‘bone’ looks would be a nice way to spice up and deviate the Spirit Beast look so that it’s not all ‘transparent = spirit beast.’
For the record I’ve always wanted to tame those bone condors in Icecrown too, so perhaps this partly influences me :)
~VelkynKarma
I have 3 hunters (80, 80, 63) of 3 different races. In my experience, Prowl is extremely useful to a Night Elf hunter, and extremely irritating to any other race.
On my Night Elf, I’m out questing, and the phone rings. Shadowmeld, Prowl, AFK.
So the problem isn’t that Prowl is an unwieldy, irritating, and unhelpful spell. The problem is that Night Elf hunters are stuck taming a cat in order to be able to go to the bathroom safely. Make Prowl into a racial ability for the hunter, remove it from both cats and spirit beasts, and rebalance (buff!) Rake and Moonfire. Night Elf rogues and druids have a racial stealth bonus. It would make a sort of sense for Night Elf hunters to be able to stealth their pets when they use Shadowmeld.
Yes, I know they got rid of class racials. I’m still bitter about the Fear Ward nerf.
i think when you tame a SB (Sprirt Beast) if they let you choose which one you want the SB talent tree or the orginal tree for that beast’s type. The salon ideal sounded like a good ideal but whats the point in the game if they just say “here you go a Spirit Beast for you” when you customize your pet in a Salon. But thats my opinon….just got another ideal why don’t they make some Hunter quests for beast’s like from Helmet Nesingway (sorry for the misspelling) like Tame this beast and then thats the only way you get him.
sorry for posting twice but the Red Warpstaulker would so so cool!!
Here’s a good suggestion (at least I think) for the SB situation.
Keep them in the SB catgory.
Give them the abilities of a normal pet of their style (swipe, rake, etc.) and let them also keep the spirit strike. Make the damage for each about the same so that using one over the other is a choice rather than an overpowered combo. It would take some number juggling, but it could be done.
Give them access to any “tree” (tenacity, ferocity and such).
The key here is to not be overpowered… but versitile. That would make them worth getting from a “usabilty” standpoint, but not make them mandatory for the BM spec.
I personally just want a few things.
1) Spirit Strike to scale properly.
2) Pets scaling with the Hunters stats.
3) AGI = 2 AP change in place.
That alone will solve ALOT of BM’s problems. Let me explain my thoughts as to why it’d help SBs and BMs overall.
1. Spirit Strike needs to scale. Period. There’s no reason for it *not* to. The issue with SS not scaling is not intentional and even if fixed it does not make an SB a top dps pet. It doesn’t matter what pet it is, all pets family skill should scale properly. End of Story.
This alone will pretty much help SB’s without all the mayhem of making Exotics within a family, giving them family skills, or so on so forth.
2. Pet scaling with Hunter stats. Ok once this is in place, all Hunters’ pets will become much much more powerful. SV and MM Hunters’ pets will be crit machines while BM’s are pure power, until the AP change thats due around Patch 3.3-4.0. This will allow pets to become even more powerful as suddenly Haste (and lesser Crit) become even more useful to BM hunters as Haste allows you pet more hits in less time and Crit (obviously) more critical hits.
I don’t need to explain the formula between the more hits in a specific time and the chance for crits in relation to Frenzy and Ferocious Inspiration do I? ;)
3. With AGI becoming equal to 2 Attack Power, BM will return back to it’s Pre-BC days of being AGI grabbers. Suddenly there won’t be a gemming issue between your Dual specced Hunter with her main being BM and sub being MM. Again, this will allow us to gear for AGI predominantly, allow our pets (with the scaling) to absorb some of that AGI and back to the math of #2 stated above.
When these things are in place, BM will be in better shape. Our pets will be in better shape, and finally, our SBs will be in better shape.
Personally, if they made a Spirit Beast Wind serpent i want a Model similar to Hakkar the Soulflayer, not no skeleton of his, but the actual skin, i love it.
I agree about 150% Rikaku =)
Estoy de acuerdo en que se deben diseñar mas modelos unicos de pet, NO mas transparencias!. Y en cuanto a el ultimo talento de BM, recomendaria ofrecer al jugador de tener DOS pet en cambio de una exotica. obviamente con una reduccion de stats y daño considerable. La ventaja la ofreceria la posibilidad de tener dos skill unicos propios de la mascota.
Lo siento pero ni lengua madre es español y solo puedo leer el ingles, no escribirlo.
Google traduction:
I agree that more must be designed unique models of pet, for example Loque’nahak. NO more transparencies!. And as for the last BM talent, would recommend
offer the player to have two pet in exchange for exotic. obviously
with a reduction of stats and considerable damage. The advantage of the offer
the possibility of having two own unique skill of the pet.
Sorry, my mother tongue is Spanish and I can only read English,
not write it.
…maybe you have forgotten how pets acted before the normalization patch? How some pets had say, shadow damage?
These are the pets that could be the ‘exotic’ family for the other trees. That would give them some shiney new toy while we keep or pokemon obssession to ourselves. >D
Frankly, I had a long dissertation set in my mind, but frankly, I have a fever and am sick, so I can’t think straight. Also, the cold medicine is kicking in, so I’m all over the place. Beh…/sleep
Shut up, Jangalian! It’s still to soon after Lupos lost shadow damage! *Que sad violin music*
I miss pet’s being more individual, more unique. Even when it was just simple things like different attack speeds, that was awesome. Pet’s having different behaviors, having different summon animations, so many things to separate pets. Unfortunately those days are long gone now, and I don’t think we’ll see them back any time soon.
Hola me amigo ((Or amiga…)) Shandita, and welcome to the Petopia community! And hullo Sukurachi , and I hate you! *Laughs* Not really, but congratulations on finding three Gonerias. Er, Gondrias. Please, as always talk as much as you like here. We like new comers. Usually.
Aslong as the Newcomers are not wearing the Troll special.
And Palla wouldn’t finding three of those be a bad thing? 8D
/flee
Anyways on a somewhat serious note, if you’re not using a program like X-perl or something, but basic WoW UI, you can have a ‘unique’ pet of sorts. The ‘Elite’ status upon scrolling over a pet is still there.
And sometimes if you have a quest and a hunter has the mob, not just the skin but the exact quest mob, the quest text, will show up.
Tho yeah I understand the urge to have unique pets. It’s why I can rarely ever double up on the same pet skin on another hunter lol.
Spirit beasts are fine where they are at. i have all 3 of them. problem is, not enough stable slots.
Spirit Strike needs to scale, Kanobi. That is one huge problem that needs to be fixed with spirit beasts. Otherwise this discussion is more about how to improve them, and less about how they suck. And as the cream of the crop as far as hunter pet’s go, they could use a little…..certain something.
I’ve deleted some off-topic comments. I generally don’t mind if you wander off into other pet-related areas, but let’s try to keep off-topic discussion of other commenters to a minimum, all right?
Yes ma’am.
With the introduction of the “idea” of being able to choose your pet’s talent tree in Cataclysm, Blizzard has said that they want to stray away from choosing one cookie-cutter pet to be the “ultimate” dps pet and instead allow hunters the freedom of choosing their favorites over the optimal. If we get rid of the Spirit Beast family and incorporate them as better-stat pets into their respective “look-a-like” families, we’d be going back to the rare-spawn system before Burning Crusade where everyone tamed the rare spawns because they had better stats. This was before the great equalization of the pre-BC patch (I think… I’m not too sure of the timeline) and would, I think, be counter-productive from that fix. Personally, I like seeing my spirit beast use a “druid” spell, even if that means it’s not up to snuff with Monstrous Bite.
Additionally, if we just incorporated the spirit beasts into their look-a-like families and made them “exotic,” we’d be having to switch into a BM spec just to tame a different looking cat instead of a new beast family. In other words, it would just be a vanity move, and Blizzard has shown signs of making the spirit beasts more viable as DPS pets with the occasional tweaking.
-prays to the WoW Gods for equalized dps across pets and the ability to talent tree change your pets so you can pick ANY pet for ANY raid and still do great.-
Mania:
Sounds good. Sorry it got to that point; it gets to the best of us it seems D=
On a related/unrelated note, I wonder where Nimizar is? He hasn’t posted in a while. I’d like to hear his feedback about this post of Mania’s.
meep sorry Mania D:
Here are my comments on the state of pets as a hunter since pre tbc. I haven’t read all comments above so sorry if some of them are duplicate.
I suggest they make pets have a selection of family skills which are more generic but named after the pet, so each pet can have either a dps skill, a root skill, an interrupt skill or an aoe tanking skill (chnage/add a few more as desired). Example: A cat could choose from one of the following: rake(dps), grab(root), maim(interrupt), and swipe (aoe tanking – perhaps called flurry of claws). A spider could have posion bite(dps), web(root), web strangle(interrupt) and poision spray(aoe tanking). Then you can choose the pet from looks and spec it to do what you want. The talent tree could be used for this and we wouldn’t have cunning/ferocity/tenacity trees/families. It will also make it much easier on the developers when introducing new pet families. Exotic pets could still have some exotic skills in addition, but please don’t make them overpowered on dps or tanking compared to other failies thus reducing bm’s choice. I still want my cat to have prowl, but not sure how many other failies that should have that, but such skills could be restricted to one per family.
When taking about pets; I wish they make pets have the hunter’s level, and rather use happiness as a barrier to tame and throw away pets. This means that happiness would increase much more slowly. As it it now you can be so lucky to tame a pet at your own level and start using it everywhere at once, or if not you have to level it thus reducing the freedom of choice. Happiness loss is also something I’d love to get rid of, as I feel the pet talents and the glyph is just a band aid on a bad mechanic. Perhaps we could then be able to feed them to heal them also.
I think it’ll be great when they make pets scale from all our stats, especially for BM. We’ll also see if they change the buff system as they said they considered so pets get the same buffs as the hunter, and no more asking for pet buffing. I’m both exited and terrified of the changes to hunter’s in Cataclysm.
tl;dr: Let us choose pets from looks, and then choose skills for it’s intended role. Reduce hassle with pets and let us bond with use not because we have to.
For many and certainly myself, Arcturis gives you pause for thought – on the one hand he’s a really cool ghostly bear, but on the other he has cat skills – something just doesn’t feel quite right.
I agree something needs to give, but my concern with adding a spirit version of every or even like say 30-40% of the “normal” pets is that it could make things a bit muddled, could make non-spirit beasts even more mundane by comparison, and that’s not even mentioning the likely difficulty of adding and maintaining the needed programming.
As a smaller scale approach, I wouldn’t mind seeing the spirit beast family split into 3 groups, with one going to each of the trees, so that people who want to just use spirit beasts can get access to more than just the ferocity tree.
If they went that route they could give all 3 prowl, since it can be said to represent their semi-tangible nature, but the tenacity and cunning versions would need to swap spirit strike with something else appropriate to their respective trees.
Other than that, I think rares should be non-ghostly alternative skins like the red warp stalker, blue dragonhawks and so forth.
In re: power level, I guess I’m a bit conflicted here – are they weaker than some other pets? Yes. But personally I’m okay with that (and I have all 3 on different characters); I’m happy enough just to have a cool looking uber-rare pet that’s still more than enough for casual grinding, and switch him out for a devilsaur, wolf, wasp or etc if I’m going to be grouping – if my spirit beasts were tops in power as well as looks then I doubt I’d feel the need to keep anything else – it would start to feel like I was being forced to replace my stable with spirit beasts after the mid seventies…
My 2 cents.
Scott: Tbh that’s not anything different than having to be forced to use my Devilsaur since atm Devilsaur > SB and I do not like wolves for the most part on Ryai- nor does she have the stable space for them. So it’s less a case of as said, blizzard forcing you to use spirit beasts and more a case of if you’re BM and you WANT to do top damage and you are NOT in a guild and have to PUG like I do, then no you’re not forced to use Spirit Beasts…
You’re forced onto Devilsaurs, Cats, Wolves and or Moths/Raptors.
Bumping up Spirit Beast dps or atleast allowing Spirit Strike to scale properly would allow me to bring my spirit beasts into instances.
And while I do have a wasp- she’s big. She’s BIG. She is -BIG-.
She is also only used for pvp to scare the hell out of people mwaha.
And how bad is it if Spirit Beasts are on par with the other pets? I mean really? Wouldn’t it also not be forcing, but giving people more variaty? I mean the only top Exotic in the top five really is DEVILSAUR. The rest for the most part are common animals.
So how would Spirit Beasts as I’ve said and am now repeating, being buffed, be forcing ANYONE to use them?
I mean we get down to this ‘blizzard is gonna force me to use spirit beasts’ and everyone seems to ignore the fact Blizzard is currently forcing hunters to use three pets for serious rading. Cats/Wolves/Devilsaurs. And the next two viable pets for the most part are Raptors and Noths. Then Carrion birds are being bumped up to viable ‘Curse of Weakness’ or ‘Demoralizing Shout’ replacements. Spirit Beasts should be in there as a pet with a DoT. A DoT that should crit [I don't think it does] and they aren’t, their dot is weak, it doesn’t scale, and while they are ‘exotic’ pets they do less dps than cats. Because Spirit Strike Doesn’t Scale.
I mean how is that not pathetic that there is only ONE exotic really, for ‘raiding pets’ and mean even Wasps can be thrown in there with Carrion Birds.
This is why I’m sick of the argument of ‘fixing Spirit Beast DPS will make every BM hunter who has or doesn’t have one, forced to use one’. Like that’s any different from being forced to use one exotic already.
And no, what’s the point of getting rid of Spirit Strike? They’re the only pet with an ‘arcane’ ability. That’s WHY they have Spirit Strike. It’s like how we have pets who can do fire/frost/nature/shadow damage. Holy is ofc out of the question- but Arcane isn’t far fetched and that’s why we got Spirit Strike or aka MOONFIRE [landowar evidently from common to orcish hur].
There’s nothing wrong with Dragonhawk’s or Wind Serpent’s attacks and they’re basically like SS, they only deal damage and nothing else. Or how Scorpids have a DoT. Etc.
So no reason to ditch Spirit Strike just because there’s the posibility that all talent trees are going to be opened up to pets.
This is blasphemic to say having anyone known me in game but its pointless to talk about beast Mastery is still a useless spec after everything they did to kill it. and even if you still have BM as a second spec the only reason is to walk around dalaran with skoll or whoever and see people go OOOooo and AAAhhhhh.
To me, Beast Mastery talent + exotic pet should be something like moving forward from simple master-pet relationship to something more like forming a genuine partnership and able to communicate each other.
I guess it could be similar to how shamans are suppose to be with nature and animal spirits but they seek guidance and wisdom from it while we embrace them and experience adventure together. This can be also good excuse to add Dragonkin and other intelligence creatures to form more personal relationship with hunter class.
Also allowing us to farther customize pets other than having unique skin or talent points would be pet gearing, like non-bm could only have access to few pet gear slots while BM hunters can have full access.
Also personally, I wouldn’t want spirit beasts to turn back to their original families with just unique skin. Having “exclusive” beasts with supposedly supernatural power or ghostly power sort of makes them stand above normal creature level, hence spirit beast. They may as well be avatars/demi-god of what they represent.
I kinda see where u are all going with this. yes Spirit beasts need higher dps, so does Devilsaurs ( i had one and his dps was not noticeable to be higher than all pets at the time ) and Ryai has a right idea.. if its a true family that needs to be Fixed , its Bird of preys. atlease take out Snatch all together and give them back Screech or Something that is more.. Bird of prey like. I also have the Idea that Spirit Beasts shouldnt have Prowl, but have Shadow Step instead or something to that effect.
I stopped reading at around post #40 so I don’t know if this has been suggested, it’s similar to Mania’s suggestion but also leaves Spirit Beasts’s core ability (Spirit Strike) alone.
Basically I don’t think there should be Exotic families, instead there should be Exotic Pets WITHIN families (similar to what Mania said). Loque’nahak for example would be the Spirit Beast of Cats (i.e. representing the spirit of the cat family – insert troll god lore etc here – essentially a spiritual representation of what a cat is). Spirit Beasts would be rare and exotic so only Beast Mastery Hunters could tame them (or at least use them if you tamed/respecced) and would keep Spirit Strike as an ADDITIONAL ability to the existing pet families – this would help with normalising DPS (and allowing the BM pets to have greater dps thanks to their additional move which could be buffed/nerfed accordingly to give BM their advantage without having to work accross multiple pet families).
Also, not quite related to Spirit Beasts on their own, but I hope that Blizzard do a redesign of the Pet Talent system as part of their “Pets Clean-up” that needs to be done and has one larger tree where throughout that tree you can choose how you want your pet to function. So for example you’d have some Ferocity-type talents (increases your pet’s damage), some Tenacity-type talents (increases your pet’s health) and some Cunning-type talents (removes all movement-impairing/stun effects) and you can take the talents you want to build the pet of your choice – either a strong damage dealer, a mitigating damage tank, a pet that has all sorts of tricks to keep himself out of trouble (and maybe help you out as well) OR some hybrid of these.
one of the ideas friends and I had kicked around was the concept of hunters having a totem animal, one which would allow them access to a spirit beast of that family, and some extra connection to those other animals of that species. This could be extra stat benifits transferred from the hunter. like extra stamina, or healing, and would make them easier to tame. If you had the ability at say 40 to choose a totem, and then work ith those animals, eventually at say level 70 being able to tame a spirit beast, it would open up the class to more hunters. You could stll restrict taming spiritbeasts of other families to Full BM hunters. I think that this wouldencourage Blizzard to open more spirit beast models to expand the available models as well
Scott:
“For many and certainly myself, Arcturis gives you pause for thought – on the one hand he’s a really cool ghostly bear, but on the other he has cat skills – something just doesn’t feel quite right.”
This first popped up when Skoll came around. Originally SBs were going to be mostly cat-like until Blizzard listened to players’ suggestions about extending BM to other families.
You just have to realize that while those skills feel “cat like” they are SB family skills, and that’s what all future SBs will have as well.
Tjissa:
“Spirit Beasts would be rare and exotic so only Beast Mastery Hunters could tame them (or at least use them if you tamed/respecced) and would keep Spirit Strike as an ADDITIONAL ability to the existing pet families – this would help with normalising DPS (and allowing the BM pets to have greater dps thanks to their additional move which could be buffed/nerfed accordingly to give BM their advantage without having to work accross multiple pet families).”
This wouldn’t help at all. In fact, it would make things worse by forcing BMs to take Exotics. I said it in an earlier comment as well, so I’m just gonna post it here again.
If they kept spirit strike, that would further imbalance pets moreso then they are already. It would do more damage then help. The entire point of Exotics not being “OP” was to avoid forcing people to get “that one pet” (Think of Broken Tooth back in the day.)
If Loque was a cat, who had prowl rake and spirit strike (something no other cats had), why would you even get a regular cat 90% of the time? Sure, that War Tiger may be prettier, but for the same price you could get an extra powerful cat as a BM hunter. This would just force BM’s to take Exotics, which is what is what Blizzard has purposely tried avoiding.
Rikaku:
“This first popped up when Skoll came around. Originally SBs were going to be mostly cat-like until Blizzard listened to players’ suggestions about extending BM to other families.”
This first popped up when Loque was released and everyone was speculating about the fact that the name “spirit beast” seemed intentionally broad and not restricted to cats per se.
“You just have to realize that while those skills feel “cat like” they are SB family skills, and that’s what all future SBs will have as well.”
Just like how I once “had to” “realize” that spirit beasts would “always” be cats.
Nope – the whole point of this topic is to speculate on ways spirit beasts could be further improved, and that includes the possible addition of new skills, as Mania commented on.
Scott:
No. No. No. You completely mis-read what I typed.
“Just like how I once “had to” “realize” that spirit beasts would “always” be cats.”
I never said SB’s would always be cats. I said BLIZZARDS ORIGINAL INTENTION was for them to be feline in nature. That doesnt mean I’m sitting here going “hey hey guys its cats only!” =p
And my comment about the SB skills MEANT that to many people are looking at the skill as “those are cat skills”. Well, hate to say, but now that they are on SB’s, they are the SB family skills.
“Nope – the whole point of this topic is to speculate on ways spirit beasts could be further improved, and that includes the possible addition of new skills, as Mania commented on.”
And I’m pretty sure I stated, and many others, ways that SBs can be improved and everyone else commented on the ideas just the same way. We’re not saying “No your idea sucks”, we’re saying “well if we did it this way, Problem A occurs. What if we change this, or this?”
Don’t get overly defensive about what other people write lol, this is a suggestion of ideas blog just like you pointed out. Everyone is bound to have their opinions and their opinions commented on, just like any other post. XD
Ryai:
“I mean we get down to this ‘blizzard is gonna force me to use spirit beasts’ and everyone seems to ignore the fact Blizzard is currently forcing hunters to use three pets for serious rading. Cats/Wolves/Devilsaurs.”
I get your point, but even serious raiders are limited to cats/wolves/devilsaurs/(insert “it” pet here), at least that small handful remains competitive – bump spirit beasts up on par with them and the raiding subset drops from 3 to 1, to a large extent.
And yes there is a larger problem when only 3-4 pets are considered head and shoulders better for raiding, but that’s kind of a topic of its own.
“So no reason to ditch Spirit Strike just because there’s the posibility that all talent trees are going to be opened up to pets.”
The only mention I made of this would be in the scenario where the current ferocity-only spirit beast gets split up into tenacity, ferocity and cunning versions (e.g. where things like Arcturis would be relocated into the tenacity-SB group); in that case, the ferocity model would remain as-is; anyone who likes their Loque, Skoll or Gondria gets to keep the same family skills.
But for the two being split out into tenacity and cunning (if you were going to do something like that), it would make sense to go with some other energy based move – for tenacity it could be an arcane blast with a debuff (to TS what venom web is to regular web, and it saves you a talent point on TS, etc), the cunning SB might have a mana drain with chain distribution back to the hunter and maybe up to 1-2 of his friends, etc etc.
But here’s the thing Rikaku – when you tell someone “look, this is how it is and always will be” (when the post is all about ways it could *change*), you’re not so much commenting on what’s wrong with one response as you are on the the premise of the entire post.
Which I’m happy to discuss with you, however I need a little more to reply to, like “here’s why I think it would be a good idea for a tenacity SB to keep spirit strike” – that’s a critique that would lend itself to more meaningful discussion. Etc.
Scott:
I have several comments regarding how to fix SB and SS all up a few posts above this one. Feel free to reply on them if you wish, but I really don’t feel like re-posting the longest one I wrote. I have commented on the premise of the post AND individual comments all throughout the blog, i can’t help it if people don’t go back and read them XD
I am not saying “this is how it will always be”. Nowhere in my comment did I even say “always”, so you’re jumping to that assumption purely on your own. My comments are written in the *here and now*. I cannot post on what MAY happen because I don’t know what may happen.
In the here and now, SB’s use claw and prowl. That’s ALL I said. I never said “they will always have prowl” “they will always be cat like”. So please stop making assumptions on what I’m writing and take it at face value for the here and now and not on what changes might come (in regards to my reply to you).
Like I said, if you want to reply to comments I’ve made, feel free to browse upwards and read my suggestions.
All exotic pets need to be normal it really is dumb to have use my precious stable space for a pet i can only use if i fully spec one way. None of the exotic pets are that much better then the normal ones anyways. For the most part they are neat or pretty. I would rather see a ton of new creature skins then one or two new spirit beasts.
105:
In the here and now, SB’s use claw and prowl. That’s ALL I said. I never said “they will always have prowl” “they will always be cat like”.
Okay, maybe I misread your earlier post. Let’s see…
100:
“You just have to realize that while those skills feel “cat like” they are SB family skills, and that’s what all future SBs will have as well.”
“while those skills feel “cat like” they are SB family skills, and that’s what all future SBs will have as well.”
“that’s what all future SBs will have as well.”
“all future SBs”
All.
Saying all future SBs will have the same skills is the same as saying they will always have the same skills, and that’s why your earlier post struck me as a bit odd.
That said, I realize you “are” your latest post, as with myself and everyone else out here, so no big deal – if you’re open to the possibility of SBs having different skills down the road, then there’s nothing to disagree about.
Post #2
And yes Rikaku, I will read your other posts but I’ll have to do it later tonight as I’m on the way out the door. :)
Scott:
Always and All are not the same words.
Maddak: And what, normalize all exotics and NOT give BM compensation for it? No +4 talents, +5 pet dmg/your dmg and NO BM shot? For shame :/
And you have at least 80. EIGHTY DPS skins for pets- once Cat comes out there will be lots of lovely skins but until then please don’t pull up the ‘Gief us shiny pets now’ rant, please.
Scott:
‘But for the two being split out into tenacity and cunning (if you were going to do something like that), it would make sense to go with some other energy based move – for tenacity it could be an arcane blast with a debuff (to TS what venom web is to regular web, and it saves you a talent point on TS, etc), the cunning SB might have a mana drain with chain distribution back to the hunter and maybe up to 1-2 of his friends, etc etc.’
Then you do realize Blizzard would have to do this for ALL pet families. Right?
And the thing is, what if SS is good for a single target. I mean Scorpids and Boars can tank single targets quite well, same with Worms and Crabs. While Bears, Turtles [depending on the set up] and Crocolisks can tank multiple mobs, with either their AoE abilities or Shell Shield.
And wouldn’t Shell Shield also be good for a dps pet? Mean 50~ dmg reduction give or take for a dps pet in pvp? Epic.
So no this is why I don’t want blizzard to ‘make more pet racials available’ UNLESS you can pick the racial :/
Second (cause I was busy too XD)
“All” and “Always” are not the same thing Scott. Simply put. Until I see a major change in content patches ala Owls being moved into Bird of Prey family change, SB will have those same skills.
Does that mean they ALWAYS will? No. I never used ALWAYS. I mean *as it stands, the future SBs will have those skills*. That does not mean they will NEVER change. I don’t know what
Be open minded to SB’s family skills changing? Sure I’m open to it.
Do I think it will solve the SB problem? Not. At. All. So no, I can’t agree with everyone here. But that’s my right to opinion.
I’m fully open to SB’s changing their skills if Blizzard deems it, but that doesn’t mean I think it will solve it.
Cause it won’t.
Spirit Strike is borked, it doesn’t matter if you give Loque Rake or Skoll Furious Howl. Their main skill is broken.
Moving them into exotic members of the normal families doesn’t help. It only forces BMs to that those specific Cats and Wolves which come with an extra shiny skill.
Pets need to scale, BM needs to be able to gem like it’s fellow hunters…there’s so much more wrong with Hunter BM and Spirit Beasts as a whole that changing just one of those problems does not solve the problem in my mind, in fact it only makes it worse.
Ryai:
“Then you do realize Blizzard would have to do this for ALL pet families. Right?”
No they wouldn’t – adding a tenacity spirit beast and a cunning spirit beast would have zero affect on any existing pets (well, other than Arcturis anyway, if you count PTR as “existing”).
Loque and Gondria wouldn’t change one whit… and neither would Skoll (since he’s obviously a ferocity creature).
Outside of Arcturis, I was just thinking forward to unreleased spirit pets – mainly tenacity ones in fact; the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think there would be no real need to add a spirit cunning critter.
Just give us something to meaningfully differentiate the “big” spirit beasts from the lean/mean ones.
And now I am going to pry myself away from the laptop. Really.
edit:
“I don’t know what the future holds XD”
I think spirit beasts were originally intended to JUST be cats, but they changed their minds a bit ago for one reason or another. That being said, I think that in itself is a miracle, and asking them to change the skills for individual spirit beasts probably isn’t going to happen. See, it’s one thing to change the coding to make this pet look like that pet. Like the hydra, and the slime. Both of those are marked as ‘tenacity’ and ‘crocolisk’, so they behave like that pet family. A spirit beast is marked as ‘ferocity’ and ’spirit beast’, and then the skin they use for each individual beastie. Making each skin look different is just an art change. The other would be an entire behavior change, and would basically be like making each different spirit beast it’s own pet family. Could it happen? If course. Will it happen? We’ll see.
Although those of you saying that claw and prowl don’t fit a bear kind of make me laugh. I know you wouldn’t think it by looking at them, but a bear in it’s natural habitat is actually fairly stealthy. And in any sort of combat, the first thing a bear is going to do is swipe with it’s front claws.
I don’t think anyone wants SB’s to be miles ahead in DPS. I personally am just asking for SS to actually scale, though to be honest the thought of them having duel family abilities is one that I like and have brought up before. I dunno, for me personally it is more that Blizzards reasoning as to why they SHOULDN’T be strong bugs me. Because you don’t want to force people into using a pet? Really? You know better, Blizzard. If a pet is even marginally stronger then another pet, about three fourths of the player base will go with the stronger pet, even if the difference is only .1. Granted that people would be more willing to branch out, but you’d still have the elitists going ‘You’re dumb for not using XX pet to squeeze out that .1 potential!’. They’ve just kind of relegated spirit beasts, and even exotics in general, to the ‘pretty and cool pet’ department. Some of them have some interesting effects, like devilsaurs monstrous bite kind of being raptor+1, but for the most part it feels like Blizzards current vision for exotics ((And this is reinforced with Mr. Spirit bear there.)) is for you to sit around in Dalaran so people can go “ooooooo!” and “ahhhhh!” at your Fuzzywumpkins or whatever.
Personally, I have never used a pet because it was ‘the best’. I’ve been using a wolf since 2005….way back when spirit bond was my 31 point talent. I have a lynx…..because it looks like druid cat form, and I thought that was awesome. I have a devilsaur, because I have been screaming since 2005 and the !@#$er’s were beasts and should be tameable. I have a chimera and a spirit beast, because frankly, they look awesome. I love the beast mastery talent, I do, but it really needs some kind of buff, because those four points ain’t cutting it, especially now.
You know what’d be an interesting buff to spirit beasts? And this is just me talking off the top of my head, but letting spirit beasts be affected by the full former duration of Beastial Wrath. Pet stays berserk for 18 seconds, the hunter just for 10. Just an odd little idea I thought I’d toss out there, maybe make it SB or even exotic only.
As my double, you do realize they are releasing one spirit beast per major patch, right? And one of those was wasted on a second cat model. That being said, I think we may see a spirit beast explosion in Cataclysm……
Scott:
… no you don’t get it :/
‘No they wouldn’t – adding a tenacity spirit beast and a cunning spirit beast would have zero affect on any existing pets (well, other than Arcturis anyway, if you count PTR as “existing”).’
Blizzard is, possibly, going to make all pets able to choose different trees. This means the ALL DPS/Ferocity tree of Spirit Beasts, would be able to switch to Tenacity or Cunning. Because you forget the ONLY ties to the animals they ‘represent’ is IN FORM ONLY. blizzard’s supurb lack of giving Spirit Beasts any ties to their ‘families’ or ‘trees’ is evident. Though to be honest they could rename Prowl to ‘Phase Shift’ which is what I think it’s supposed to be, since they are spirit beasts.
Not cats, bears or wolves.
Then there is also the fact that, yes if they do allow trees to be switched, and give Spirit Beasts THREE different Spirit Strike attacks, then that would mean all pets would need three different attacks.
A Tanking one, a DPS one and a Cunning one.
Which kinda defeats the point if like say you want a Core Hound to keep it’s DPS ability attack, but when you flip it to cunning it gets something else entirely.
Palla: Yeah I was thinking that myself. Since they are keeping one spirit beast per area, and that’s fair enough. In theory they could add up to 3 more beasts in Northrend as Icecrown doesn’t really scream ‘Spirit Beast Country’ to me. Then Outlands could get a few. And same with Azeorth. I’m not saying a Spirit Beast for every zone, but 4/5, and in the end, end up with 12 pets. Maybe have a few of those as COMMON to UNCOMMON pets, aka commons and then rares on a lets say 5~10 hour timer?
This of course goes hand in hand with the fact that existing pet families are probably getting more skins; that there are possibly new families available for all hunters to tame.
Etc etc etc.
tho I want Loque to remain Unique, Harkoa is a snow leopard ‘god’ and Loque is her mate.
Unless a different colored ‘Loque’ is available that’s tagged as Offspring of the duo then I’d be fine with that. Maybe a duller grey with deeper blues or something like that.
I have two problems with your suggestions.
1. Merging the spirit beasts into pet families based on their appearances.
A. They aren’t cats/wolves/bears/gerbils/jackalope/ect… They’re spirits of nature who have taken the form of an animal.
B. Skoll and Arcturis’ abilities make sense. The flaw is that Blizz used the same name (Prowl) to describe a cat hiding in the bushes as they did to describe a creature of spirit becoming incorporeal.
2. Having exotics within a pet family of non-exotics.
This could work if they did it right, but the logic behind the talent is that as beastmasters, we’re more in tune with animals, and thus are capable of taming things that are far more dangerous and/or intelligent. In general lion A is no more dangerous than lion B, so they would need to make the exotics fairly unique for this to work.
Example: Winna decided to add armor and metal claws to a corrupted saber that then went feral and ran off into the woods. (I can dream can’t I?)
instead of exotic beast gave full bm a bonus pet move like the stun but make it a dps move that puts bm on par with the other specs. with an 8 secs or 10 sec cooldown.
Maddak: you kinda completely lost the point. That just gives us ANOTHER liability. And why would we need another dps talent that requires the pet to be alive? I mean even on an AN run, since I have been in AN several times before and my pet never had problems, all a sudden in the first 5 minutes when I was focused on rotating steady+volley to kill the adds, my pet almost went belly up on me.
So that would have just rendered that attack completely useless.
BM would need it’s OWN shot PLUS something else to make up for a standarization for ’shiny pets for all’.
So my advice to you, is if you want dps then specc SV or MM. If you want a shiny pet, go BM.
Actually Ryai, that was something that was kind of bothering me. They are talking about removing the cooldown on shots in Cataclysm, saying that the balancing factor will be focus. By shots, that means Chimera and Explosive shot. Now I realize that’d make those two 60 focus shots, but for some reason that irks me, and feels off. Both of those are heavy hitting shots, and that would potential leave BM further behind…..then again, this is just speculation. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
AHHH!!!!! I HATE the idea of switching to focus… =( I don’t see why we need the switch, we work fine with mana atm. And personally I don’t give a rat’s *ss if we were meant to use focus in the first place, mana is NOT broken for hunters, and DOESN’T need to be changed… =/ Sorry about the rant, but I just get mad when focus is brought up every so often…
Well it’s not why I want the removal of mana Palla but yeah can understand your worry there :s
And Gimlion, it could be they’re focusing on the 5/man aspect or the leveling aspect. Then indeed, yes, mana IS broken for leveling hunters AND in 5/mans, but outside of that? We have AotV. There’s mana breaks. Mana pots. Yada.
I mean when I was still able to get into VoA 25, BEFORE the addition of the more lolbosses and even 10man, I never went oom, because there always seemed to be 3 rets, 2 Spriests and 1-3 SV hunters.
I mean I did everything I could, and it was HARD to go oom lol.
Yeah, but even at 5-mans I rarely ever go OOM, there are so many mana batteries running around nowadays that it’s almost ridiculous (not that I’m complaining). The main problem with the focus change is it will force us into learning a new playstyle, something, that if I wanted, I could just respec or play a different class for. That and it’ll make hunters seem like ranged Rogues with furry/scaly/ what have you, DOTs, and I am not a fan of rogues, well except the ones in my guild… =/
I agree but only to a certain extent.
Something has to be done for BM and especially for SBs but i think their family should remain as it is.
Yes, their dps should be the best or on par with the best because after spending hours looking for them it’s just not nice that you can’t bring them to raids because a common wolves outshines every other pet out there.
Exotics in general should be stronger than normal pets, i know that some may like their normal pets but you do have not one, but two other specs to use them effectively along with signature shots (Explosive/Chimera).
Exotics should basically be the signature ability of a BM hunter since we lack special shots as our final talent because it is indeed not fun that an overrated Cavedweller Worg is better than any exotic pet, it’s just like saying that Arcane shot in the end should be the same as Explosive/chiemra, just with a different look.
Sadly i don’t think this happening although something should really be done for BM and choice pet balancing in general.
Gimlion:
I’m with you 300%
I HATE the idea of switching to focus. And not because it feels “roguey” or anything.
OUT OF ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE BROKEN WITH HUNTER, WHY FIX WHATS NOT BROKEN!?
I put that in caps because that is what makes me SO FREAKING MAD about the Focus change.
How about fixing our stats first? Letting our pets scale first? How about that autocast bug? Seriously! There’s a million things on the to do list, but you focus on whats working just fine???
*pant pant* ><
Yeah, that too Rikaku, haha
@Palla: the comment threads have been too long lately for me to keep up with, so I’ve been avoiding them :)
I also didn’t have much to say about Mania’s idea other than “Yep, sounds like a good improvement to me”. Then the first few posts started clamouring for the bad old days of less homogenous pets and I decided to dodge the inevitable irritation (I still haven’t read most of the comments for exactly that reason, but here’s a hint for those that haven’t seen this particular rant from me before: non-homogenous pets is the way things used to be, there is a reason Blizzard changed it and if we get to choose our pet’s talent tree in Cataclysm, genuine pet choice will be the greatest it has ever been precisely because the only remaining non-cosmetic difference will be the family ability).
I like change, it’s one of the main reasons I keep paying Blizzard my money each month. If people want a game that stays the same and never changes in ways they don’t like, there are heaps of single player games that fit in that category. Playing an MMO means accepting that you’re just one player amongst thousands (or millions in the case of WoW) and the developers are going to do what they think is best for the game as a whole without getting your personal seal of approval first. Being too reluctant to make major improvements for the benefit of newcomers is a good way for an MMO development team to ensure that their product eventually stagnates and dies.
On the actual pet taming front, what I’d like to see are more tames where actually *taming* the beast is the tricky part, rather than merely finding it in the first place as has been done with the spirit beasts. Taming devilsaurs may be frustrating at times, but it certainly isn’t boring – the stuns and knockbacks and fears make sure of that.
@Rikaku: many would not agree with you that the hunter resource system is fine
I agree with your last Paragraph Nimizar, hard TAMES are fun, hard and lucky camping is not…
I’m just glad to hear from you, Nim. *Laughs* And I enjoy difficult tames. DIFFICULT is the key word, not rare. Like Gutripper. He was a difficult tame. Hence why I hate the current spirit beast implementation.
Yeah, or what the Ghost Wolf tame must have been like, a difficult tame. Or the Green T-rex, he’s hard to tame.
No, I’d say King Krush is impossible to tame solo, not unless you have something to really speed up haste + TBW + a crapload of stamina AND good luck.
I was just barely able to tame King Mosh on Ryai solo- the problem was he feared, he feared hard and randomly.
King Krush is a tame for you + priest friend.
I will adapt to whatever comes. I certainly would not mind some more ‘harder” tames. King Krush was nuts to tame, especially solo. Though he was also a rare tame on top of that.
I use my SB now for general purpose pets, and maybe for pvp untill they do something about cunning <3 my white sillithid
Ryai, thats how I did it. Enough haste to get tame withing TBW timer and a trash pet with a macro to cast bw and abandon the pet at the same time. Plus spec for health heh. So its not impossible solo, but required a lot of stuff.
Nimizar:
I’m willing to agree that it’s not fine for some. I agree that there are mixed results of it. For me, its fine, but I know that’s not across the board.
My issue still is with there’s lots of other major bugs and problems with Hunters. Even if you run out of mana alot, you have AotV, you have at least something to help restore it.
I can’t even fix my autocast bug without the help of an addon!
All I’m saying is, Blizzard needs to fix their priorities. Fixing Mana issues should be on there, but I don’t think a focus system is the answer.
Pall: I love your “Fuzzywumpkins or whatever” comment. ROTFL Glad Nimizar’s “back” too. He must’ve heard ya Pall! lol
I personally don’t think it’s right that a hunter should have more mana issues than a mage. Because my geared hunter does have huge mana issues in 5 and 10 mans (albeit next to no trouble in 25’s… but I think that can be said for most any class), whereas my boyfriend’s mage doesn’t need to stop and drink (or nerf dps while in viper, even if only for a minute)… at worst he’ll pop a mana gem. So I’m in some ways glad mana is getting removed, however I don’t really like the idea of focus. xD;
This next bit is entirely personal opinion. I used to be BM and loved it, but as a raiding hunter, regretfully made the change to MM (I couldn’t make myself go surv). Now, I don’t mind MM at all, but if BM was truly corrected I’d leap back to that spec in a heartbeat. Problem? Well, it looks like raiding BM will require or rely on exotic pets – or spirit beasts. For that reason, even if BM was the strongest spec out there, I would never be able to play it to its fullest potential: I have one pet, my boy and baby Karma, a nightsaber stalker from teldrassil, who has travelled with me for over 3/4 years (I forget exactly how long lol).
What I personally would like to see is more talents or improvements offered to ANY pet in the BM tree, not just exotics. BM already allows both exotic taming and 4 extra talent points to any pet. This leads me to see exotic pet taming as an added bonus, NOT a necessity to a successful end game hardcore raid spec. I would love to see BM work on the idea that exotics ARE pretty shiny “wow” dalaran pets, BUT still a viable raid feature – as would normal pets be. A spirit beast and a common cat would potentially hold equal dps should their trainers be specced the same, geared the same, etc. I don’t think it’s unfair to ask that, while it gets fixed, exotic pets remain an awesome opportunist feature that many people would enjoy, doubled with four extra talent points, but essentially from a raiding perspective an exotic and a normal beast would be the same.
Let’s face it: people will still tame exotics and sb’s because of the awesome wow factor. But for hunters like me, who genuinely love that pet and want to raid endgame with it as well as consider it to be as “intelligent” and “connected” to the hunter as an exotic is – it would keep us happy. Because seriously. Beast mastery or no beast mastery, something’s gotta be said for a 3-4 year pet/hunter relationship! :P
I’ve seen alot of posts about giving each individual SB skin its respective special ability (Loque=Rake, Skoll=Furious Howl), but think about something. Wouldn’t Blizz have to make many SB families and put each skin the right family for that? That could just take to long, or too big of a patch or something. I know of a bear that was (and may still be) an exotic but was still in the bear family that was in Ashenvale. So, putting SBs in their families according to skin could work, but as some people said above, would be too boring and some people might abandon their SBs altogether.
114:
“Although those of you saying that claw and prowl don’t fit a bear kind of make me laugh. I know you wouldn’t think it by looking at them, but a bear in it’s natural habitat is actually fairly stealthy. And in any sort of combat, the first thing a bear is going to do is swipe with it’s front claws.”
It’s not really claw I have a problem with – like everyone else I know bears have them and use them… it’s the idea of a bearlike critter that is not sitting on the tenacity tree, e.g. a bear with dash (they’re good at quick sprints e.g. charge, but are not the best long distance runners), who is optimized for offtanking and DPS when we all know bears were put in tenacity for a reason. As for prowl, I already said that would fit perfectly well with being a spirit…
Loque/Gondria/Skoll obviously belong in the ferocity tree, and I don’t mind them all having the same skills – but Arcturis seems a bit silly outside of the tenacity tree; in my view having a ferocity bear – ghostly or not – underscores the basic limitations of trying to cram all manner of different pet body types into one single talent tree, and suggests the need for something like a new SB-tenacity type to house Arcturis and any other particularly/large/tankish SBs that should be rolled out in future. If not, we could get even sillier things like a turtle or rhino with dash…
In re: spirit strike, I don’t really care much if they get that or something else; again the main thing is having access to stuff like TS, improved STA/armor and so on. I would *prefer* the tenacity-SB skill be something like arcane blast to make them that much more tank-relevant, but the talent tree is the main thing as I see it.
For cunning-type animals I suppose it doesn’t really matter; an SB wind serpent would be fine as ferocity with spirit strike and etc.
“You know what’d be an interesting buff to spirit beasts? And this is just me talking off the top of my head, but letting spirit beasts be affected by the full former duration of Beastial Wrath. Pet stays berserk for 18 seconds, the hunter just for 10. Just an odd little idea I thought I’d toss out there, maybe make it SB or even exotic only.”
I kinda like that actually – while sharing TBW is nice for raids, pvp and so forth, in solo PVE situations I’ve sometimes wished it was possible to selectively trigger beastial wrath on my pet ~only~, so that our dmg ratio skews that much more in its favor and helps me tank the tough fights better, and save the fullblown effect for times when pulling aggro isn’t so much of a concern, or when a warlock is giving me the stink eye.
Ryai -
We’re talking about two different things; Blizzard may or may not give all pets the ability to switch back and forth between the 3 trees. IF they do that (if), then Arcturis is all set AFAIC, since 90% of my beef with Arcturis is that he’s stuck in the ferocity tree, which seems like a square peg/round hole thing (which Blizzard management apparently has seen fit to solve by the expedient of a really big hammer in the form of one generic SB category).
So we’ll see – my suggestion was based on what happens if they ~don’t~ end up deciding to go with that route, and leave pets locked into 1 of the 3 trees from cradle to grave. Even if they do decide to allow pets to choose their own talent tree, what if that doesn’t happen until Cat? If the next big expansion is a year away, it might be nice to have the existing SB system tweaked a bit in the mean time.
Scott, you do know that Blizzard has put the tenative idea of allowing hunters to specc their pets how they want. Right? Meaning Cunning or Ferocity bears. Right? I mean one of the most fun pets I’ve taken into an instance on an alt, is a bear. The downside? Sure I can spam Tstomp and Swipe for massive AoE damage, but the threat is always the change of pet grabbing aggro, as it’s still lv 74+ dungeons as she’s leveling up, and the fact that my bear can’t really specc for much in the way of dps.
Also.
You don’t believe turtles can’t dash?
You never have seen a turtle, in real life, -dash-? Oh sure they aren’t the fastest things ever. But they can zoom when they want to. You ever have to chase after three turtles that you and your father rescued from possible death on a road?
Because you looked away for three seconds and they’ve shot off across the lawn in three different directions?
Turtles can dash Scott.
And you seem to forget, Arcutius is NOT a bear. It is a SPIRIT BEAST. :/
cause while yes I would love for Skoll to have furious howl and Loque and STD cat to have something instead of prowl, it’s not going to happen because now that I’ve been thinking more and more of it, especially with this thread.
Spirit beasts are NOT bears. Are NOT wolves. Or cats or dogs or birds or wind serpents. They are Spiritual Beasts.
And as I’ve said before if you want one pet family to have specially different skills for ‘cunning’ and ‘tenacity’ ’species’ in the ’spirit beast’ family, then all pets will have to have changes like this or the opportunity to pick your own ability out of three, because you do realize how camped, a tenacity SB would be.
Sense Arcutius would be the ONLY ‘Tenacity Spirit Beast’ out there.
Or would be the ‘only AoE Spirit Beast’ out there.
Ontop of how many are going to camp for him as it stands.. right?
Blizzard wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole, especially after all the cries of foul over ‘we’re not gonna make hunters have grief to camp a pet!1111!111′.
And because you replied while I was replying.
Scott if you don’t like the SB bear being stuck in the ferocitiy tree, just grab a normal bear. Nothing is wrong with a normal bear. It has everything you can want. Two AoE’s, and yada yada.
Ryai…
Whatever a sympathetic blue might say, Blizzard doesn’t care how hard it is for players to tame spirit beasts – not sure how it went for you but on the server I chose to go after him on, everyone and their brother wanted one, and plenty of people are still trying for him now – I can remember clusters of hunters camped around each spawn point, with easily a couple dozen + patrolling above. I don’t mind personally; Blizzard owes me nothing, just saying.
And as a tenacity SB, Arcturis wouldn’t be any more unique or in demand than Loque was back when he was the one and only SB. Everything’s got to start somewhere.
“Scott, you do know that Blizzard has put the tenative idea of allowing hunters to specc their pets how they want. Right? Meaning Cunning or Ferocity bears. Right?”
Ryai, you’re repeating what I just said – Blizzard may do this. They might. Or they might not. It’s all speculation; until this is a definite, the basic issue of tenacity/not remains up in the air. :\
As for turtles and dash – one, the wow pet already has charge; we’re talking about something a little more sustained, but that’s a quibble – here’s the thing: how big were your turbo turtles? If they were something that had to worry about cars, then I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they had nothing to do with turtle pets in wow; to get a comparison to that IRL you’d need to look at something like a galapagos turtle, and ummm… well, go ahead and try to tell me those guys are fast runners…
In re: bear/ghost/etc. Yes, I get what you’re trying to say about how a ghostly bear is a ghost first and foremost and as such could qualify for one generic skillset. That’s one way to look at it, and a perfectly valid one – but on this as with the other points we’re going to have to agree to disagree; personally, I like my ghosts a bit more individualized and with at least some sort of meaningful connection to the living creature they embody. But that’s just me.
Scott: You do realize WoW turtles are not like turtles period? Sure they have a back shell, but they lack the protective bottom covering of a shell. They’re also giant creatures. They also have teeth. I think the arugment of ‘a turtle of this size shouldn’t be able to do this because I say so’ is out the window when, the turtle is the size of a small car, has teeth and is built more like an elephant than a turtle. Ok?
And no I’m not saying ‘Blizzard cares’ I’m saying, do you really think they’re going to bend over backwards, backpedle SO SOON after they’ve cried out that they nerfed and left Spirit Beasts broken, because of possible grief for hunters? I ofc called them out on their bull crap.
It took them 3 years to fix Dead Zone. I give them about the same amount of time to realize the error in their ways and fix Spirit Beasts.
Getting back to the turtles: Those are actually TORTISES. But I digress, those monstrosities are that big because it’s their defensive ability in real life. That and afaik, there are really NO predators for them on the islands. Outside of man.
Then getting back to what I said, WoW turtles aren’t real turtles so it’s not impossible for them to have Dash or sustain it for short periods of times. We’re also talking about cats who can prowl in plain sight. Wolves who’s howls don’t strike fear, but instead bolster the attack of themselves and their master. Where we can tame raptors and two headed birds. Giant dinosaurs, Chimeras- so yeah again, trying to apply Reality/Logic to a game where logic is a bit redundant is a bit well er, not so good.
They aren’t ghosts Scott. They are NOT ghosts. If they were Ghosts then Ghost Sabres and Ghost wolves would be classified as Spirit Beasts now too- or the Ghost summons from the Oracle Dailies. Yet they weren’t and they aren’t. Spirits are different from ghosts, Spirits aren’t always ghosts or tied to ghosts. Spirit Beasts are more spiritual than ghosts.
Tho tbh your argument, while it may have some valid points, is turning into something like a Resto Druid wanting to be able to summon Treants, just because it can turn into a tree and Treants are trees.
If you want a bear that’s not ‘ghostly’ go tame a real one. Or go tame an undead/diseased one :/
Cause you’re forgetting the fact that we have now all started to realize by now sinze we’ve all sat down and thought long and hard about Spirit Beasts.
They are NOT BEARS WOLVES OR CATS. They are SPIRITUAL BEASTS.
@Cornett: wolves and cats are still decent non-exotic pet choices for BM. Blizz made it that way on purpose, precisely so players like yourself could go BM and not feel forced to use an exotic pet.
It’s Comett. :)
But that’s the thing, Nimizar. A lot of these proposed changes make exotics and spirit beasts in particular a “better” pet choice. Giving SB’s a scaling SS and another damage attack along with claw = better than boring old rake and claw. I personally would prefer exotics to have the “wow” factor for looks rather than superior damage abilities.
Btw……since the Arcturis comment thread was locked down, I’ll add this here. Pemburu on the ptr alerted me that he now has lewt, specifically a blue item called “Pristine Glowbear Pelt of the Heirophant” It’s a leather chestpiece, with 477 armor, 85 stam, 56 spr, 66 sp. It’s most probably a random enchant, and will just be Pristine Glowbear Pelt of the XXXXX.
They all have their focus dump, and I was fine with the SB’s keeping prowl and not getting rake. I would imagine if this route was taken the “Adopted” ability might be a secondary one when available. Not sure what bears would have other than swipe. Though Arcturis having swipe instead of prowl would not seem op to me.
IMO, the combination would only be “new” not necessarily “better” Even Comett used the phrase “boring old rake and claw”, Yes people would want to flock to it for a bit, however; things would level out after a bit.
Heeeeey guys. Why such the animosity? =D Here, I bring you treat.
/cupcakes
Swipe is AoE tho Kroxis and an AoE spirit strike ability instead of the normal spirit strike ability would probably give a false sense of increased DPS, for groups of mobs.
And bleh, a blue? Yeah way to go Blizz.
Bad enough just saw someone earlier camping for -Nuramoc- that wasn’t a hunter.
C-U-P-C-A-K-E-S.
EAT ONE.
I may have worded it poorly, didn’t mean an SS swipe, I meant ss and swipe instead of ss and prowl. While the cats kept ss and prowl.
Kroxis that’s what I meant. Arcutius would have -more damage dealing abilities- and thus would be camped more, and yada yada yada.
So yeah. Why all a sudden one bear looking SB gets a family skill; yet Skoll still prowls?
It ain’t gonna happen.
Tjhe problem with Spirit Beasts is A: prowl. B: people who want them to act exactly like the animals they represent when they shouldn’t and C: Blizzard not fixing their scaling/DPS problems. As no while they’re not bad per se, it is pathetic that the only real exotic in the top five tbh is the Devilsaur.
[which would in theory all be fixed for C if blizzard actually got off their butts and made common SB skins hurdurdalur]
A: Prowl- it needs to be reworked and renamed into something. Like ‘Phase Shift’ is for imps. Or wild Warpers who completely disappear from sight- but aren’t prowling. Maybe a combination of the two- the Spirit Beast becomes tangiable[?] and doesn’t lose speed while zerging silently towards it’s target. While in this state the SB can’t be attacked; aslong as it doesn’t attack.
Can’t be cast in combat/buffs first attack by XX%.
Because I don’t care- if the majority of top pets for dps aren’t exotic, then why the hell should anyone be BM for the majority of the time? There’s nothing wrong with being BM and still playing with your wolf, but what if you stayed BM or went to BM because of exotics? More than one Exotic needs to be viable. More than two. Having several be viable would fix this problem.
Such as Core Hounds, Spirit Beasts and Chimera become viable exotics. This means, BM wouldn’t be forced to use a devilsaur all the time [which is .. really all I see outside TWO core hounds and ONE chimera in Dal, amongst all the whoo shiny shiny spirit beasts] AND they would NOT be forced to use common pets if you never wanted to use them again in the first place.
B: People wanting them to act exactly like the animals they represent. This is mostly because SPIRIT BEAST DPS IS A BIT FAIL. That is mostly, well infact, all of Blizzard’s failure. They gave us an Arcane using pet- but purposely broke it, and then admited that they won’t fix it or that they can’t fix it. Or possibly both.
Common spirit beasts along with more rare spirit beasts, will fix this. Commons/Uncommons for those of us who don’t want to spend 3 weeks camping the same spot. And more rares for people who want to spend some time doing the insane.
for some reason ‘A Problem and fixing A problem’ decided to get in the middle of the rant :v
Mania, I tried. But no one likes cupcakes, apparently.
I see now. Though if I had my way Skoll would not prowl either but isntead would have a lesser howl. Well ok instead of swipe give it a demorilizing roar of sorts. And in Skolls case maybe, have his howl do something other than DPS increase.
Perhaps give each “family skin” SS and some sort of buff ability that is not dps oriented is a good solution. Or that would still work with SS and just one buff oriented ability. I don’t have any ideas for what that may be yet but I’m sure some of you could come up with some.
Alternately tweaking prowl and renaming it would be cool as well.
Just tossing thoughts into the air now.
I think if pets had something useful coming out of prowl, like a mini-pounce, then prowl would see a lot more use, and people might even drop charge to make more use OF it.
And Jangalian, you have to use cookies. Chocolate chip seem to work the best.
chocolate chip
*zombie voice* Coooookiiiieeeeees
moar serious note- that actually is a good idea Palla. And did read of someone suggesting a Shadow Step alike ability. A leaping pounce OR a shadow step or anything really would be epic.
But..but…I LIKE cupcakes. T^T Alright, for the good of the blog? forum? heehaw? I shall bend to you cookietastic ways.
/hot gooey fresh-from-the-oven grandma’s recipe chocolate chip cookies. And milk.
But I’m lactose intolerant?
Soy milk?
*steals a cookie and omnoms*
…I had forgotten completely about the Blue Dragonhawk Skin, even though I am working towards getting one for my hunter (18 mounts left, darnit DX) For a whole year (and a half or thereabouts according to the hubby) I lamented that the skin was on an untameable boss. Now if Blizzard were to release said skin on an “Exotic” pet, chances are one of my hunters would be out there day and night looking for him/her. Hmm. I might level Emberflare sometime this week…
Although, explaining to some people why Gondria roars like a cat but is considered to be a ghostly spirit “beast” was a bit of a headache, I must admit. Eventually I stopped trying to explain Maurgrim (Skoll) and simply said “the wolf got hit by lightning in a freakish accident”. Thus far, I’ve yet to be asked anything other than ‘what spawn point did you find him at?’
Spirit strike is awesome-looking, but it’s a novelty ability. Now had spirit beasts kept that awesome feral leap/pounce ability after taming, I probably wouldn’t be wondering what to do about my grumpy, snarly, sparking hissy fit of a Skoll.
And I’m all for more-rounded exotic pets with different skins and differentiating abilities unique to them on an indivual basis. I hope that made some sort of sense Oo
Hey, I’m lactose intolerant too! I just deal with the gut-wrenching pain and…other things. =) Soy milk is foul. F O U L. It’s like the tofu of the dairy world. I’d rather drink juice and nom cookies.
Before you jump on my back about tofu, I’ve had it baked (it was like french fries, not too bad), raw, shaped like a turkey (URGH) and made into a fakie steak (DOUBLE URGH). The only way I will eat it is if it’s disguised in miso soup, and even then I then to take it out. Ugh. I like miso better when it’s made with egg noodles.
On topic, I love hyenas, and had a red one forever, until Blizz did something to the model that when they stand still they have this terrible crink in their necks. It’s so sad. =*( I let my Slacker go after that. But I wish THEY had a more useful ability, like Sniff Stealth like the hyenas in game seem to be capable of. That was be a sweet ability for the spirit beast version…eff Prowl, I want the ability to find a rogue in the darkest of hours. >D Also, why are there no unique bear skins? Not Arcturis, I mean, actual bears. There’s grizzly, black, undead, blue/brown, and white. WHooooo…
@Lazona
I’m on mount 75. Blahrg. Although, I still need to hit up AQ for its mounts, and the Skyguard ‘rays. Oh, and one of the black talbuks, but after that, I can only get the Argent Tourney mounts…AND I DESPISE JOUSTING.
Side note, the reason they use the hawkstriders for the horde side as the generic vehicle mount is an homage to the classic game Joust, where you rode an ostrich and fought people mounted on dragons with a lance.
I’m a big time collector. 107 non-combat pets and 104 mounts so far. Though my registered name on warcraftmounts and warcraftpets is necrotan.
I remember that joust game I think I have it somewhere on a collectors disc for gamecube. It has a craptone of old games on it.
I spent so many brain-killing hours and so many quarters on that gaaaaaaaaame arrrghh.
I just showed my age. ARGGGHHHH.
Kroxis, I would be more of a collector, but I have to work full-time. That + family + dogs = less WoW time. XD I’m so addicted, I wish I could play for a whole straight day, just for once, but no. I’m lucky that I already have a few of the rare mounts (B3, Deathcharger, Brewfest Kodo), and that helps me towards my goal. I mostly type posts when I’m at work….I’m a lackluster employee. :D
I hear you can drink camel milk if you’re lactose intolerant. I’m not sure how true this is tho o.O as even tho it was on dirty jobs- it was said by ‘raw milk drinker fanatics’ or atleast people a bit like that.
And even if the damned sunreaver strider is a homage to an old game; there’s still the fact Alliance get a mount model that is ONLY available with recruit a friend and since I’m not in any EU state [american playing EU] I can’t ‘recruit a friend’ and get the damned mount :/
That’s why i hate Alliance getting a unicorn and all Horde get is -another- bloody chicken.
well I work second shift at a zoo, me and the wife both play. No kids yet though so that’s probably why I’m able to stay up after work and play heh.
And you -CAN- drink any milk… would is another question…
I have that collectors disc too Kroxis… it has the original Gauntlet too right?
You do see spirit beasts quite often now. For me, that’s why my favorite pet is King Krush :D
Yup Gimlion, older games can still be pure win.
Here’s a better fix. Remove that 10% buff to the hunter’s damage added in 3.2. Allow Beast Master hunter’s last talent to allow the hunter to have to pets (of different talent tree types) out at the same time. Vua-lah. Damage fixed. Everyone is happy because they can have 1 nice looking pet (or 2) and 1 more for damage. At the same time, get rid of the exotic pet system and let every hunter tame whatever they want. Win-win-win situation. BM won’t suck anymore!
I meant to have two pets*
Lol.
BM doesn’t suck Naturae, you just have to work your rear off to make it efficent, and to have two pets for an extended time? Even Shaman can only do that once every two minutes. To have a permanent pet situation like that, the pets would be glass canons. And how would that work? TBW and Mend Pet? If one is dead, what, is it suddenly invalid to use tbw? If one is los does it not cast? If one dies can you use Rezz pet, or do you have to wait for both to be dead?
And how would you feed pets if you had to feed?
This causes more problems, no solutions, and still forces BM to be so heavily dependant upon the pet it is not funny.
And no- no standardizing exotics into tameable species for all, UNLESS a VIABLE and a GOOD solution is given to BM.
So no it’s not a win-win situation :/
Tho, whoo canse I can make BM work. Pulled off 2.4-3.3k dps overall the last few days in dungeon runs.
Something needs to be done about pet damage. Mend Pet NEEDs to stack, I’m still finding Jareth taking a massive amount of damage when I even glance away from his portrait a moment to spampew my rotations.
Also seems warlocks are suffering the same ‘go xx specc and never look back’. Got told to specc destro.
But atleast I wasn’t ‘ridiculed’ like I was on Ryai t_t cause you know, the game is all about your dps. Not fun. DPS.
It is a solution. Blizzard needs to get off their lazy arses and fix the hunter class. BM is SUPPOSED to be reliant on the pet and if there are two pets out at once, blizzard HAS the man-power and money to come up with a solution. Never before, for any class, has blizzard just said “Here, have a free 10% more damage” and they only did that because IT SUCKS. BM is weak. Even in PVP either of the other specs have way more survivability.
mania u realy r on to somthing except the taking away the SBs personaly i thnk that they are one of the best pet famlies in the game. but the removing exotics could work but only certen pets like the hard to fing ones like devalsaurs but cheimeras in my opinion should be normal i mean u can find them in soliten (the place next to the barrens i just cant spell it lol) and it just pisses me off that there all around azeroth (the world) and there exotic since i dont have the time to level my hunter to 60 and then get him to the level to acuctly get the chemira i think they should just take them out of the exotic and put in something like… well nothing comes to mind at the time but u know what i mean some thing thats harder to find.
Despite what the word ‘Exotic’ actually means, I personally believe the Exotic pets are put as that because they show more intelligence and sentience than other beasts. The only exceptions are Raptors and Wolves because both Raptors and Canines are known to be very intelligent animals. But the Silithids, they once had an entire empire to themselves, ruled greatly. And the Chimaeras are KNOWN to have near human intelligence, as with most of those ‘flying’ beasties like Gryphons and Hypogryphs.
Sorry, but my cat is more intelligent than a grasshopper. Hands down. Therefore, Gimlion, as much as I adore silthids*, I wouldn’t accept that they’re smarter than my cat. XD;
*Am I the only one? My boyfriend thinks I’m insane. I hate all bugs in real life, but silthids are socute. :3
Silithids are so NOT cute. Lol…they’re bugs and bugs are icky. And in the game-world, pretty smart. Your theory is kind of making sense Gim. The Devilsaur portrays T-rex, a species of dinosaur which is already “extinct.” Mechanically, it’s dumb as a door-nail. It is most useful on a fight where there is no extended down-time or switching targets. “Simple-minded.” But then in this situation, and only in this situation is when a Spirit Beast can come in and out-dps a devilsaur on a boss fight. As BM, switching between these 2 pets (which next patch can be done every 5 minutes) would probably show you good results.
I agree with Mania, I mean I understand Blizzard wants to add a Beast Model in every known pet family to the Spirit Beast Family, but if you keep it up where you’ll have the same abilities..I mean..I know a few Pet families like a Devilsaur can claw at something (Mainly being the size it is tamed) Could be able to slash at you with its claws on the toes. In fact it’s one of the attack animations of a Devilsaur. But when you’ve got a Dragonhawk or a Wind Serpent…where the heck are the claws or talons? There are only a few Models I think just won’t look right being SS. (Mainly me being an Animal Lover/Observer =P)
@Naturae Silithuds are cute in their own way. You don’t think that little slight dance isn’t at least cute? Or it wagging it’s little behind like a doggie?
But seriously..Devilsaurs..in my experience Devilsaurs are one of the best pets you can use from a whole list of pets that can deal ALOT of pet damage to a single target. But that’s just because they don’t have a DoT or rend ability that can damage one target while then going after another. In my personal opinion Spirit Beasts would be more fitting for PvP, mainly for the Moonfire-like-ness.
But to be honest, when people asked Blizzard to give more pet family models to the Spirit Beast tree..I was not expecting them not changing the abilities at all. You know how Bite, Claw, and Smack are still the same ability, just with a different name to make it more realistic to the Beast? Same thing with Cats and Spirit Beasts. The only difference I can tell between Rake and SS is that SS is a distant attack. Atleast give it maybe another extra bonus not just because you worked your butt off to find it and it should be worth it, but because every pet family has a differentn ability to benefit it in battle.
Understand this. You may say “Well, Raptor’s Rend ability is like a Cat’s rake” Not only that, but it also has a chance to buff up the Raptor as well, while with Silithuds and Spiders, Venom Wep Spray actually deals damage to the target while also keeping it in place Spiders just shoot a web that keeps it in place. Not like I’m saying Pin from a Crab doesn’t do the same. But the Spider and the Crab are in different Pet Trees, so I’m fine with at least something HELPFUL being different if I spot two family abilities having the same effect.
With SSs and Cats being the same Tree, and having the same ability that basicly is the same when you look at what it does, I mean sure SS can be used from a distance..but I really only like ranged pet Abilities because they look cool to me. The only real useful ranged Pet Ability I can think of would be the Webs from Silithuds and Spiders again, because they hold the target in place. But when every single pet is a Melee for a Hunter, how is distant abilities other than those two really usefull besides getting the first strike when you’d probably shoot at it first? Besides, another non-big difference is that it deals Arcane Damage. In PvP, who stacks resistance? The only time I’d switch a SB is when I’m facing something that resists Arcane. Even that is sort of a pain.
Sorry for a double post, but excuse a few mis-spellings in my little rant. Can’t exactly say my fingers are up and awake tonight. =P
Why do all SB’s have to be in the DPS(ferocity) tree? Spirit Beasts in many cultures are protectors or guides; why couldn’t there be a tank SB? Yes, make him look unique, but give him tank-like abilities along with his Spirit Strike (or some other unique SB tank attack). Mix it up, but at least make one SB able to tank. Same goes for cunning.. why not a pvp style SB? SB’s will still be exotic and hard to find/tame, but why not go a little further? Make the SB a sub-category in all trees.
A 51 point talent should be for something more significant than a unique skin. Currently wolves beat Devilsaurs in dps (my testing) and regular cats beat SB’s(again, from my tests). My point is that a 51 talent to tame exotics shouldn’t just get you a new skin and middle of the road damage; there needs to be some sort of bonus, increased dps, new tank ability or something… anything.
Oh, Hunters need more stable slots!!
i know this isn’t exactly the place for this buuuuut
what if in cat to open up the BM tree hunters could use 2 pets simultaniously (with minor nerfs to damage so it’s not totaly OP) cuz 4 extra TP just doesn’t cut it for the end-rank talent
more specifically to the SB, spirit strike NEEDS a buff. i see bites from my wolf in my mm spec that do more damage than Spirit Strike does over its enttire duration with bestial wraith on.
now to the points mania raises, spirit beasts are their own family, a god shouldn’t be described as something as meager as ‘another kitty cat”.
if pos spirit beasts prowl should be replaced with something more befitting their status. Spirit beasts don’t sneak around, they walk the twisting nether and strike their foe with something that makes me think of shoop da whoop every time i see it. for all purposes it would look like prowl but not really be prowl. speaking of prowl it could use a buff too. i see hordies targetting my stealthed pet while they’re still on their mount charging at me and it makes the talent useless.
aanyhoo, i’m gonna end todays rant at here before my head explodes.
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