Beta build 12759 contained a bit of a surprise for hunter: three brand new pet families!
Monkeys, which had been grouped with gorillas into the Primate family, are now on their own. (And gorillas have gone back to being Gorillas.)
Meanwhile, foxes and mastiffs both moved out of the Wolf family into the Fox and Dog families respectively.
Family Stats
Now the design pass for pet scaling is underway, but work hasn’t yet begun on hunter pet talents and abilities. So we know that the specifics of these families are going to change, even if we don’t know how yet.
Still, let’s do a quick compare of how they look right now.
Gorilla vs. Monkey
| Family | Talent Tree | Family Skill | Diet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gorilla | Tenacity | Pummel | Bread, Fruit, Fungus |
| Monkey | Cunning | Pummel | Fruit, Fungus |
Wolf vs. Dog vs. Fox
| Family | Talent Tree | Family Skill | Diet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wolf | Ferocity | Furious Howl | Meat |
| Dog | Ferocity | Furious Howl | Bread, Cheese, Fish, Fruit, Fungus, Meat |
| Fox | Ferocity | Prowl | Fish, Fruit, Meat |
Where is this going?
I have to admit: I am puzzled as all get out by foxes.
The diets look fairly realistic for each family – although why gorillas eat bread and monkey don’t, I have no idea. But my dogs have always liked cheese.
And okay, monkeys make sense in the Cunning tree. Monkeys are supposed to be cunning, right? Even if they can never get their fist out of the jar? Plus it’s unlikely that families are going to switch talent trees, so this data might as well be set up now.
It also makes sense that Pummel carries over to monkeys and Furious Howl carries over to dogs. Since pet abilities are all going to be changing – and soon – copying this data to the new families is just a shortcut.
But … foxes have Prowl? And only Prowl? What the hell is that about?
At any rate, I am really hoping that we learn more about these new families soon – like in the next patch soon. I’m quite anxious to know where they are going to end up.
WTH, Foxes with ONLY prowl??? I don’t remember foxes being able to be that stealthy much… even in real life, although I know they’re very fast and agile to make up for their slightly weaker attributes than their stronger canine kin (i.e. dogs, and wolves in general). They are – at least according to most cultures – appear in folklore as a symbol of cunning and trickery, or as a familiar animal possessed of magic powers. It would make sense putting them in the cunning class IMO even if they only have stealth. To be honest, blizzard already have an overabundance of pet families already in the ferocity tree and now all three canine families will be available in there….. don’t make that much sense.
Monkeys on the other hand, are perfect for the cunning class, at least they got that one right.
i suspect that the family abilities are PH (placeholders) for the time being?
I also expect we’ll see foxes move to the Cunning pet category.
As Tyranda says, with many pet families still having DPS abilities rather than raid buff/debuff gap fillers, I’d consider all current family abilities to be placeholders. (GC has pointed out in the past that new beta builds will often still be pushed even if the devs are in the middle of something like an update pass to pets or classes)
More than suspect. Prowl is a secondary Family ability for every family that has it. They all have an attack ability that comes with it. I am surprised they didn’t copy Rake on top of Prowl for Foxes. It would actually make fairly decent sense for the family.
I am hoping these are not the only new families we see though. We are in desperate need of some new Exotic Pet families in this expansion so far. I was hoping we’d see at least one new flyer family as well. Here’s to hoping that the Silithid tank model becomes normally tameable and is its own separate family. Could mine those damn bugs for a few Exotic Families imho.
Hmm, I reckon Fox should have something on top of prowl that has something to do with speed? Maybe like, some bite that… Eh, I don’t know were im going with this. They should go into cunning though. Seems appropriate, what with the whole “Cunning as a Fox” line and crap.
Also, just cos i can be anal about it, Foxes are closer related to cats than dogs, so they better not blend it into one category; Canines or something..
Rant over.
How is it working with Pets in terms of Ferocity/Tenacity/Cunning? I thought it might be the case that pets could have a choice of talents so you could have say a Tenacity Wolf, Ferocity Turtle etc they just got “locked” into a tree the same way as for players but it looks like that isn’t the case?
Did i dream that was on the cards at one stage??? lol.
It made sense to me from the point of view that pet families could provide buff replacements in raids/instances/pvp, so say your Turtle brings an armour buff to your group that you want, you could spec it ferocity for dps and bring it to your dungeon group.
My Bullmastiff (from the WPL) is currently missing Dash in it’s Ferocity tree.
My silver fox I got after doing a questchain in tirisfal never got a name before the patch and for this I’m glad……..he still shows up as “Wolf” not “Fox”
He has got prowl but he’s also got bite, not sure if this is a bug or if its meant to be like this or if its just a placeholder, all I do know is it freaked me out when I took him from the stables to see him drop into stealth!
As most of us, I’m interested to see the pet pass too. Though it would make sense if a Fox became a cunning pet since foxes are known as crafty and cunning creatures.
Bite is a focus dump, not a family ability. That yours still has his makes sense.
I highly doubt Blizzard is done with these pet passes. My suspicion is that foxes only have prowl at the moment because Blizzard didn’t feel comfortable just copying rake from cats, and giving foxes both furious howl and prowl would be a bit ridiculous. Foxes will likely get something completely different.
I’d like to see the mastiffs become tanks, as well. It’d be interesting to say the least, if the gargantuan dogs fulfilled their natural role of hunting companion for large animals (they’re used in hunting wild cats, boars, bears, etc.) more for their tenacity than for their ferocity. :P
Curious little tidbit, the starter Mastiff is indeed still a Wolf. Whether or not this was changed in this latest build or not I’m unsure. I will have to try and grab another mastiff to see if its only the starter or not.
Hey, you’re right! I didn’t even notice that. My brand new worgen mastiff is named ‘Unknown’ when I first log in but changes to ‘Wolf’ when I relog, and the pet panel clearly shows his family as Wolf.
Well. That complicates my data some. I hope they fix this soon.
@ Drasnor,
Foxes are from the canine family. Foxes are part of the family called Canidea. (dogs). They are however, a different branch of that family. Dogs are in the Canini Clad, where as foxes are in the Vulpine tribe.
I think they should’ve just renamed the Wolf family to “Canine” and the Gorilla family to “Primate.” They wouldn’t have had to make all these more complicated changes then.
I suspect Blizzard didn’t give foxes “Furious Howl” because they know it’s going to be a popular pet and they don’t want every single Hunter using one as their primary like they all are on live with wolves. That’s just a theory, of course. It could be they’ll add it in later, but I can’t think of a pet in game at the moment that has two special abilities. Actually, come to think of it, cats and spirit beasts do have two specials. I suppose that’s because Prowl can’t be used while in combat, so they gave them a second one that could be (both of them DoTs). I wonder if that means they’ll give foxes a DoT?
New Pet Family Discovered!!!!!
Beetle’s are a new tenacity pet I found in 1000 Needles and Tanaris. Have posted an email to you Mania complete with screenies – hope you like them and repost them on here :D (Oh yeah and theres a little treat for those of you who wish to go look for one yourself, something rather big and rather yummy looking)
Happy hunting everyone