Pet Family Ability Disparity

[Pribbering]

Gonna post this here:

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=4806

There's been an inherent issue where out of the 17 pet families only 7 have family abilities. This leads to those 10 basically being ignored because aside from look, they just aren't as useful as the pet families that have an extra family ability. Not asking for balance changes or addressing how some Pet Family Abilities are better than others, but it seems like Blizzard just forgot to add any more abilties.

Easy fix would just be to expand the current Pet Family Abilities to be learnable by other Pet Families.

More involved fix would be doing what is first suggested in the above thread and adding new and custom ones.

Would love some extra input and traffic on this. I think it's right up the alley of Turtle's Vanilla+ goals.

[Seltsamuel]

I would rather go the involved solution and even add more abilities per family where you could pick and choose. Some of them could be shared between them, some unique like they are at the moment.

[Phoenixphire]

I have commented on this topic before, every family should have an unique ability, end of story. Was super dumb that it wasn't a thing in vanilla already. Without it it makes pet choices very dull and feels super cookie cutter.

[Gladeshadow]

Check out this link for removed pet abilities https://gist.github.com/barncastle/63a ... c04d6731ff. Pet abilities begin on line 714.
It would have been great if pets had been given more variety in flavor like was planned. Currently, cats are the default PvP pet since they have the best mix of abilities, including the unique prowl. A lot of pets, like raptors, are simply a worse version of cats or a different family. Correcting this would indeed be closer to what was imagined for vanilla.

[Pribbering]

Really I just think it's criminal that things like Raptors are left by the wayside because of something like this when they're one of the coolest pets to have.

Think of the Raptors.

[Mativh]

I think all pet families having unique abilities would be a welcome addition.
There are animal species that could be added as new pet families.
Rares have sometimes an ability no other animals do, but when they get tamed, that ability disappears and they are reduced to their pet family, I think they should preserve their rare abilities.

[Markuis]

+1 to adding more variety to the pet's abilities.

I think all pet families having unique abilities would be a welcome addition.
There are animal species that could be added as new pet families.
Rares have sometimes an ability no other animals do, but when they get tamed, that ability disappears and they are reduced to their pet family, I think they should preserve their rare abilities.

Could you mention any example? A few of those may be too broken, like some carrion birds having a stun with a 10 secs CD.
I also wouldn't like having to chase that OP rare that has a big respawn time and that is being camped.
I would see this working by adding some elites that hunters have to interact with in order to learn that pet family's spell ranks.
I.E. In order to teach prowl there are some (4 to 10 ) rare cats in the starting zone (Durotar, Elwynn, Mulgore...) and the player has to kill/tame/use an item on one of them/do some flavour quest in order to learn cat's signature ability.

[Mativh]

Could you mention any example?

Bjarn - rare bear:
Rend Flesh - Deals 1 damage every 3 seconds to the enemy in 12 seconds.
Ice Claw - Deals 4 damage to the target and increases the attack interval by 100% for 6s.

Krethis Shadowspinner - rare spider:
Shadow Shock - Use Shadow Magic to attack enemies and deal Shadow damage.
Shadow Shield - Protects the caster with Shadow Magic Energy for 30. Absorbs up to 200 physical or magical damage, dealing 10 damage to melee attackers.

Snort the Heckler - rare hyena:
Toxic Spit - Inflicts Nature damage to enemies.
Tendon Rip - Reduces the target's movement speed by 25% for 8s.

Strider Clutchmother - rare ostrich:
Dust Cloud - Reduces the nearby enemy's hit rate by 30% for 12s.
Lash - Let the enemy stun for 2 seconds and have a chance to disarm them.

Timber - rare wolf:
Rabies - reduces enemy's health regeneration by 50%, power by 1 and agility by 1 for 10 minutes.

Shadowclaw - rare tiger:
Curse of Weakness - damage done by the target is reduced by 5 for 2 minutes.

And there are more. The values are diverse because the rares are of various levels. Of course there are also non- rares that have abilities which disappear once tamed, but I think specifically rares should preserve these unique abilities.

A few of those may be too broken, like some carrion birds having a stun with a 10 secs CD.
I also wouldn't like having to chase that OP rare that has a big respawn time and that is being camped.
I would see this working by adding some elites that hunters have to interact with in order to learn that pet family's spell ranks.
I.E. In order to teach prowl there are some (4 to 10 ) rare cats in the starting zone (Durotar, Elwynn, Mulgore...) and the player has to kill/tame/use an item on one of them/do some flavour quest in order to learn cat's signature ability.

It'd be possible that the rare mob once tamed would forget their special ability and in it's place they'd learn a copy of it, the values of which (the damage, cooldown, %s or duration) woulbe be adapted to the overall power level of other pet abilities, so the hunter player doesn't feel coerced to pick it for the sake of more power, but could still choose to pick it because of personal preference.
Most of them don't seem too strong, they're just different and enhance roleplaying and would keep the rares being unique mobs not just reduced to a pet family, which many players could still prefer over the rares abilities.

[Kairion]

I dont like having these extra abilities only available on rares, it limits you to use that color schema and stalking rares in the open world might sound like it fits hunter class fantasy but in reality it boils down to lookingup the rares location on db and then watching netflix on the second screen for 6-8h

Broken tooth is already a stretch because he forces you to get it, but there are alternatives such as the zg bats that share his attackspeed and offer only 2-3% worse performance.

Abilities such as Bjarn being able to AoE and slow attackspeed are much much more potent than that.

[Mac]

Check out this link for removed pet abilities https://gist.github.com/barncastle/63a ... c04d6731ff. Pet abilities begin on line 714.
It would have been great if pets had been given more variety in flavor like was planned. Currently, cats are the default PvP pet since they have the best mix of abilities, including the unique prowl. A lot of pets, like raptors, are simply a worse version of cats or a different family. Correcting this would indeed be closer to what was imagined for vanilla.

Yeah, those are pretty good, and adding them back in would be really great.

[Pribbering]

I dont like having these extra abilities only available on rares, it limits you to use that color schema and stalking rares in the open world might sound like it fits hunter class fantasy but in reality it boils down to lookingup the rares location on db and then watching netflix on the second screen for 6-8h

Broken tooth is already a stretch because he forces you to get it, but there are alternatives such as the zg bats that share his attackspeed and offer only 2-3% worse performance.

Abilities such as Bjarn being able to AoE and slow attackspeed are much much more potent than that.

I see where you're coming from, but you have to remember that abilities are learned by the hunter after learning it from the pet. In this case you would tame the rare, learn the ability for the pet family, then be able to use it on any pet you want. Therefore the challenge would be finding and taming, but then your options as far as color scheme and model are still open.

[Kairion]

Oh yes, i forgot about pet training. Only because blizzard did an oopsie with the rare spirit beasts doesn't mean we have to repeat their mistake.

But i'd still suggest at the very least adjusting spawn rates of the beast rares and/ or make many of them share their spells so its not an excercise in frustration to aquire them

[Geojak]

I would love to see other pets made viable. But I think it's a bad idea to overload them with unique cc abilities. Need to stay csrfeull with these in my opinion. Sure can be balanced bit something like ice claw thaz increased tiem between attack by 100% for 6 sec would have extreme effect in raids for example.

[Shamma]

I would love to see other pets made viable. But I think it's a bad idea to overload them with unique cc abilities. Need to stay csrfeull with these in my opinion. Sure can be balanced bit something like ice claw thaz increased tiem between attack by 100% for 6 sec would have extreme effect in raids for example.

All pets are viable.. The difference between pets is small. Different pets are optimal in different scenarios, some are not optimal in any scenarios, but viable?! Cmon man. Such a small difference between all pets. If 1 is viable, all are viable!