Hunter Pet Re-Evaluation!!

[Striderbrah]

HUNTER PETS.
The system itself is unique, but look at Petopia twice (note: TurtleWoW should have its own hunter pet database, no?) and you'd see that curiously only about '4-5' hunter pets ever got the loving treatment. Some, like Wasps and Serpents, were forgotten entirely. In TBC, of course things got ridiculous and it became RAVAGER CITY, much like how Classic became BROKEN TOOTH CITY.
Any guesses for how many cat people worked at Blizzard?
As a result you only ever see: Cat, Owl, Windserpent, Wolf and then some boars for levelling.

My hope is that Turtle WoW will give some love back to the other pet families, here are some suggestions :)

Non-Dash/Dive pets - A lot of the pet families are neglected this for seemingly no reason. A bear can't dash?

Hyena - Screech for Hyena, perhaps in the renamed of 'Cackle' would make sense, it would make sense that a demoralising Cackle would work in the same way

Crocolisk - Why is the Crocolisk bite the same as the other 'Bites?' they should have their own, MUCH more powerful Bite. 'Bad Attitude' with more of a tweak perhaps.

Spider - I understand why a server would be weary of handing out 'stun' abilities, but spiders having a "slow" in the form of a 'Sticky Web' would be great.

Tallstriders - For some reason some Tallstriders had a poison, Scorpid Poison, or a 'Poison Peck' would be nice, alternatively, they could use 'Claw' in the same way that the Cassowary IRL uses it, that seems to make sense to me. Also they can't eat fish for some reason, cheese, but not fish... Ok Blizzard...

Gorillas - Improve Thunderstomp, in theory a very cool ability, one of the few pet family abilities included in Vanilla, and it's nothing.

Turtles - Turtles should still have more armour in this game, or another fun gimmick. They were designed by Blizzard to be this tank machine and it's not all there. Maybe 'Bubble', they blow a bubble and it makes the target wet and they have to go home and get changed idk.

hmmmmm Demon-adjacent beast pets??? Ok some of them are clearly demons, however a lot of them, like the demon dogs in Tirisfal and the plague-firey-looking ones etc should have a unique spooky ability. Like a 'Pestilence', or 'Rabies',
look at the diseased bears, are you going to tell me they don't have an ability that's like 'Rabies"?!?!? some plague that tears through armour or makes the target feel "woozy"

Wolf - Wolves are decent already, however next to Cats, they don't match up. I think Furious Howl could do a lot more, it feels like Hunters in late-game near raiding time were only brought for the wolves ability and it's not 'Claw' worthy by any means. You could always throw out a bunch of 1.0 attack speed pets or "balance" Cats, however I don't think it should be about nerfing.

It would just be nice if all animals were as good as the *cough* *cough* "cats",
thank you for reading. Someone told me in game that Turtle WoW had added new tameables but I don't know where I
would read about this. Thanks again.

[Striderbrah]

Another thing I had considered, but I shall leave it for a mere comment,
is perhaps that reaching maximum loyalty with a pet aka. "Best Friend", it could help out the aforementioned neglected hunter pet by doing something, damage-wise near to the cats maybe.
In retrospect it would be much easier to give Hyena's Screech (as Cackle), Tallstrider's Claw etc, but it is a fun idea, and it would mean that Pet Loyalty might mean more in a meaningful RP-way.

[Striderbrah]

posted this in the Hunter section

[Raukodor]

Did you read what i posted time a go? What u think about it?
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2738&p=21177&hilit ... ily#p21177

[Striderbrah]

I don't mind the PVP "meta-bility" of pets, people will always tame Broken Tooth and leave him named "Cat", I just don't want them to suffer completely in PVE.

A hunter shouldn't choose a pet because "it's good", it should always be "because I think it suits my character", that's the beauty of RP.

[Raukodor]

Yeah i agree with that. Id love have the pets more "lógical" skills like the one i suggested

[Phoenixphire]

I support any post about making pets cooler. I will pound the table for every pet type to have its own unique ability till the day I die. Would be an amazing feature.

[Striderbrah]

HUNTER PETS CONTINUED

Hello again, I have been doing more sleuthing to discover the lore behind Hunter Pet cut content, and WHEW, there is a LOT. It's quite sad indeed, especially the pets who got nothing, Blizzard clearly had a lot of ideas for pets but they never FULLY implemented them.
But, they ARE in the code.
If we look into the WoW SPELL.ID. files we can find (after a LOT of other spells) the remains of a bunch of ASSUMEDLY "beast training", "spend points to give X pet ability" ones, much like you might give a Boar, Charge Rank 2 etc.
To make this easier to read, and simpler to write, I have compounded the list of spells from the following:

spell ID: (Use, I think), Allows a hunter to teach tamed X the X ability. X does X, Requires Pet Level for Rank X.

(I have included the flavour text where appropriate, note I'm not adding beta-versions of later 'completed' pet skills)
I can't find the specific values, e.g. attack bonuses so these are mostly conceptual
Notes on implementation: these don't have icons, but you could just use the pet family icon that's in the game for them to match.

Ok, here goes:
5993 s.ID: ENRAGING BITE - Bear - Reduces an enemy's resistance to physical attacks as well as drawing attention,
in the next 2 IDs this turns into "Roar Of Fortitude" which increases the maximum health of everyone in the party. 13,22,36

5996: FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINE - Bird(Carrion?) - Increases the movement speed of the bird. 13.

5997: EYE PECK - Bird - Causes an enemy to miss more often in combat. 22

5998: PESTER - Bird - Pester greatly increases the attack speed of the bird at the cost of dealing less damage. Every successful attack while in this mode renders the target unable to cast spells for a short time. 36

5999: FEROCITY - Cat (do cats need anymore abilities, Blizzard?! Although this might have been good to make cats more like glass cannons) Ferocity inceases attack speed of the cat at the cost of receiving more damage when hit by (spelling mistake here) Physical attacks. 13. This becomes "Open Wound" at 36.

6001: TOUGH SHELL - Crab - Gives your crab a chance to increase it's armor value when hit. Lots of ranks, seems closest to development.
13, 21, 28, 36

6005: TIGHT PINCH - Crab - no 1st entry???, turns into Clenched Pinchers, holds an enemy in place whilst dealing physical damage over time to it. While holding the enemy, the crab will be unable to attack or perform any other actions.
22, 36

6007: QUICK SNAP - Crocolisk - Gives your crocilisk a chance to counterattack when hit. 22

6008: CONSUME FLESH - Crocolisk - Gives your Crocolisk a chance to stealth health from an enemy when attacking. 36

6009 - BRUISE - Gorilla - Gives your gorilla a chance to reduce the armor value of an enemy when attacking. 13 (there are no Gorillas at 13, this is common in the list) 25, 32

6010 - THROW ROCK - Gorilla - Throw Rock is a ranged attack. 22, 29

6015: QUICKNESS - Gorilla - Quickness is an attack that hits multiple enemies. 36.

(there's an ability for horses (like the Zherva???) in 6017, to increase their speed but they are not tameable, and then another to slow enemies)

6020: FEAST OF PREY - Raptor - Allows your raptor to recover health every time it kills an enemy. 13,
Vulnerable - Raptor - ????
6022 - TENDON SLICE - Raptor - Damage + Slow

6024 - CLAW COVER - Scorpid - Claw Cover increases your scorpion's chance to parry. 36.

6025 - SPIDER POISON - Spider - Like Scorpid Poison. 13, turns into Poisonous Spit, 36.

6026 - WEB - Spider - (I was so sure this was in the code, left out, and it is, sorry Spiders) Web renders an enemy unable to move. 22. 30. 37.

6030 - DISTRACTING SPIT - Tallstrider - Increases phys damage dealt to an enemy. 13

6032 - HEALING TONGUE - Tallstrider - Healing Tongue heals friendly targets from a short range
(this is really cool, maybe it could work like Furious Howl for Party Members) 28, turns into Strider Presence, regen Health and Mana, 36

6034 - THICK SKIN - Turtle - Gives your turtle a chance to increase its armor value when hit. 13, 25, 32

6038 - HAND SNAP - Turtle - Hand Snap disarms an enemy as well as causing damage. (This is fun, I hadn't thought of a disarming ability, sorry vanilla Turtles) 22

6040 - RABID MAW - Wolf (COULD BE A "DISEASED/ROTTING/DEMON HOUND/HYENA" PET family exclusive") Rabid Maw decreases an enemy's strength and agility. 36

__________
And there you have it, those cool pets you wanted to tame did have cool abilities all along, just never added in or made values for. What a shame.
I have my own ideas for pet family abilities of course, (give a rare Turtle a 0.9 attack speed)
but these are the "Blizz-like" ones, if this RP server wishes to remain faithful it should build on those foremost. What's that? You think Dustwallow Marsh should get a Hunter's Lodge on the coast with an innkeeper and a flight path? What a great idea! Message me in game at Rotbrah. Send me all the trinkets you want, we'll get this done. Thanks for reading.

[Raukodor]

Nice one. A extended version of some suggestions i told

[Striderbrah]

Those are all Blizzard concepts which were cut from the game.

[Witch101]

Personally I loved how Lupos used to do shadow damage. Turtle wow could add other rares that do something similiar. So hunters could select a pet for a specific damage type. Have the damage scale with gear. It could create different styles of building the hunter.
Sure there could be balancing issues, but everything doesnt need to be perfect. This is a game. Lets just have fun in it.
RP-wise they could be seen as cursed which caused the change.
And while we are there....maybe give the stable afew more slots. Whats the harm?

[Anythiah]

This is so cool and sad to read at the same time. I always played a hunter, because I love the pets and was disappointed to see, that they are mostly not unique. It's amazing what they had panned, but sad that it didn't come through.
Maybe turtle WoW could at least look into it. Although it's a lot to ask. I bet the workload would be too imense "just" to make the pets more unique.
I personally would love that, though.
Thanks for sharing. This was really interesting for someone, who has no clue about code and how a game really works.

[Striderbrah]

No problem, it was difficult to find out, but pets are fun and they ought to be more fun!

[Drezzy95]

HUNTER PETS.
The system itself is unique, but look at Petopia twice (note: TurtleWoW should have its own hunter pet database, no?) and you'd see that curiously only about '4-5' hunter pets ever got the loving treatment. Some, like Wasps and Serpents, were forgotten entirely. In TBC, of course things got ridiculous and it became RAVAGER CITY, much like how Classic became BROKEN TOOTH CITY.
Any guesses for how many cat people worked at Blizzard?
As a result you only ever see: Cat, Owl, Windserpent, Wolf and then some boars for levelling.

My hope is that Turtle WoW will give some love back to the other pet families, here are some suggestions :)

Non-Dash/Dive pets - A lot of the pet families are neglected this for seemingly no reason. A bear can't dash?

Hyena - Screech for Hyena, perhaps in the renamed of 'Cackle' would make sense, it would make sense that a demoralising Cackle would work in the same way

Crocolisk - Why is the Crocolisk bite the same as the other 'Bites?' they should have their own, MUCH more powerful Bite. 'Bad Attitude' with more of a tweak perhaps.

Spider - I understand why a server would be weary of handing out 'stun' abilities, but spiders having a "slow" in the form of a 'Sticky Web' would be great.

Tallstriders - For some reason some Tallstriders had a poison, Scorpid Poison, or a 'Poison Peck' would be nice, alternatively, they could use 'Claw' in the same way that the Cassowary IRL uses it, that seems to make sense to me. Also they can't eat fish for some reason, cheese, but not fish... Ok Blizzard...

Gorillas - Improve Thunderstomp, in theory a very cool ability, one of the few pet family abilities included in Vanilla, and it's nothing.

Turtles - Turtles should still have more armour in this game, or another fun gimmick. They were designed by Blizzard to be this tank machine and it's not all there. Maybe 'Bubble', they blow a bubble and it makes the target wet and they have to go home and get changed idk.

hmmmmm Demon-adjacent beast pets??? Ok some of them are clearly demons, however a lot of them, like the demon dogs in Tirisfal and the plague-firey-looking ones etc should have a unique spooky ability. Like a 'Pestilence', or 'Rabies',
look at the diseased bears, are you going to tell me they don't have an ability that's like 'Rabies"?!?!? some plague that tears through armour or makes the target feel "woozy"

Wolf - Wolves are decent already, however next to Cats, they don't match up. I think Furious Howl could do a lot more, it feels like Hunters in late-game near raiding time were only brought for the wolves ability and it's not 'Claw' worthy by any means. You could always throw out a bunch of 1.0 attack speed pets or "balance" Cats, however I don't think it should be about nerfing.

It would just be nice if all animals were as good as the *cough* *cough* "cats",
thank you for reading. Someone told me in game that Turtle WoW had added new tameables but I don't know where I
would read about this. Thanks again.

+1

[Striderbrah]

thank you

[Dangeraaron10]

Buff Raptors.

Really. Just slap Dash on them and they would close the gap significantly with Cats. Add Claw as well and then you could choose between Cat or Raptor based purely on personal preference.

Maybe, if we're gettin' crazy here, add a rare Raptor spawn/quest spawn that has Broken Tooth attack speed for giggles.

I'd settle for Raptor Dash, at the very least.

[Striderbrah]

I agree giving all the pets that currently lack a DIVE or a DASH, one for themselves is the most immediately positive action. The made the speed spells ubiquitous to all pets in Wrath and it seemed like a long time coming.
However, focusing on (1) particular race is how we got into this mess with Cats being vastly overpowered. Sadly, no vanilla server to my knowledge has added back in the cut content until Wrath and its either play Wrath and endure Belfs on Horde and Flying Mounts or endure incredibly poor pet viability.
we KNOW that Spiders can dash for enemies, so why they can't as pets is just bad design etc.
I know I'm talking into the wind here, because most people who don't play Beast Mastery would care, but it is a huge part of Hunter class identity being strong (forget about raids and Naxx power scaling pvp)

[Karbok]

I'd be happy if they'd spread around existing abilities to pets that have nothing to speak of. They don't even need to come with abilities so long as they can be taught appropriate abilities for that creature.

Raptors, prowl and dash, cat alternative.
Tallstriders, dash and charge, boar alternative.
Crabs, shell shield, turtle alternative.
Spiders, rename scorpid poison, alternative poisoner.
Bears, thunderstomp, gorilla alternative.
Hyena, charge or furious howl, wolf or boar alternative.
Crocolisk, rename thunderstomp to thrash, gorilla alternative.

That's what I would like to see. Just spreading around abilities to give unloved animals some badly needed love and provide more variety among hunter pets. I want to be able to tame a Tallstrider or a Crab or a Hyena without it being a waste of time.

[Magina]

Love all the ideas in this thread.

[Kazar]

Yo what up! Polar bears can run 40km/h (25mp/h). Gimme dash on my boi <3

[Noce]

pls make all pets a summ ability. like shamans wolves. with cd and duration and pets cant move away from masters. ty. also would be soo cool if locks can enslave any demon npc and have a "stable" of their own.

[Tamm]

Half of these suggested skills would make hunter too op in pvp.

[Kefke]

Very interesting to see what Blizz had planned, and pretty telling. I think a part of the reason for so many dropped abilities might have been in trying to keep Hunters from being too powerful. That said, it gives some good ideas, and bringing up all the pets to the same utility is definitely something that should be done.

[Foramce]

I'd be happy if they'd spread around existing abilities to pets that have nothing to speak of. They don't even need to come with abilities so long as they can be taught appropriate abilities for that creature.

Raptors, prowl and dash, cat alternative.
Tallstriders, dash and charge, boar alternative.
Crabs, shell shield, turtle alternative.
Spiders, rename scorpid poison, alternative poisoner.
Bears, thunderstomp, gorilla alternative.
Hyena, charge or furious howl, wolf or boar alternative.
Crocolisk, rename thunderstomp to thrash, gorilla alternative.

That's what I would like to see. Just spreading around abilities to give unloved animals some badly needed love and provide more variety among hunter pets. I want to be able to tame a Tallstrider or a Crab or a Hyena without it being a waste of time.

I agree with you. I don't understand why raptors don't have dash already or spiders without poison.

[Williamson75]

Bumping because it has been too long since it was

[Iraz93]

The mere existence of PvP is what keeps hunter pets with a capstone'd BM talent tree from being actually good in PvE content, regrettably.

[Bigsmerf]

I don't really play hunter, but the extra pet flavor would make it much more interesting.

[Booglesz]

bump

[Totokadoba]

I actually just hit google trying to look for more info about the new Turtle wow pets, to see if they are comparable to the usual suspects that OP mentioned (Cat, Owl, Wolf, Windserpent). Stumbling across this post during my search, I can't help but agree with the sentiment completely. The major problem I see with this idea, is the amount of work it would take to make some of these tweaks/new spells etc happen. I think maybe a more achievable goal, would be to simply keep all the spells as they are, and just add some of the standard spells to pets who have empty spell slots (or at least the ability to learn them if they can't currently). All pets should have an energy dump spell like claw, and a dash/dive like spell. They should probably all have either screech or Howl. And the last slot could be for growl, or it could be used for some of the unique abilities that some pets have/come with tamed so as not to make it difficult to code them out. It would also be good (if not too difficult from a dev pov) to bring all the pets to the same armor/damage/health rating as say a cat or maybe one of the more all rounded pets, so that is never something people consider when choosing a pet. With these changes I think it would open up all pets as viable options, and hopefully wouldn't be too difficult from a developers point of view.

[Grmeks]

I like the ideas in this post to give hunter pets some unique stats and abilities. Some of the before mentioned spells would probably make hunters too strong.
I really enjoyed how pets in vanilla wow at its early patches had much more flavour: Snarler had high spell resistances, Lupos did shadow damage etc.
I think those abilities weren't too OP but it certainly gave a much more immersive feeling.

[Charanko]

HUNTER PETS.
The system itself is unique, but look at Petopia twice (note: TurtleWoW should have its own hunter pet database, no?) and you'd see that curiously only about '4-5' hunter pets ever got the loving treatment. Some, like Wasps and Serpents, were forgotten entirely. In TBC, of course things got ridiculous and it became RAVAGER CITY, much like how Classic became BROKEN TOOTH CITY.
Any guesses for how many cat people worked at Blizzard?
As a result you only ever see: Cat, Owl, Windserpent, Wolf and then some boars for levelling.

My hope is that Turtle WoW will give some love back to the other pet families, here are some suggestions :)

Non-Dash/Dive pets - A lot of the pet families are neglected this for seemingly no reason. A bear can't dash?

Hyena - Screech for Hyena, perhaps in the renamed of 'Cackle' would make sense, it would make sense that a demoralising Cackle would work in the same way

Crocolisk - Why is the Crocolisk bite the same as the other 'Bites?' they should have their own, MUCH more powerful Bite. 'Bad Attitude' with more of a tweak perhaps.

Spider - I understand why a server would be weary of handing out 'stun' abilities, but spiders having a "slow" in the form of a 'Sticky Web' would be great.

Tallstriders - For some reason some Tallstriders had a poison, Scorpid Poison, or a 'Poison Peck' would be nice, alternatively, they could use 'Claw' in the same way that the Cassowary IRL uses it, that seems to make sense to me. Also they can't eat fish for some reason, cheese, but not fish... Ok Blizzard...

Gorillas - Improve Thunderstomp, in theory a very cool ability, one of the few pet family abilities included in Vanilla, and it's nothing.

Turtles - Turtles should still have more armour in this game, or another fun gimmick. They were designed by Blizzard to be this tank machine and it's not all there. Maybe 'Bubble', they blow a bubble and it makes the target wet and they have to go home and get changed idk.

hmmmmm Demon-adjacent beast pets??? Ok some of them are clearly demons, however a lot of them, like the demon dogs in Tirisfal and the plague-firey-looking ones etc should have a unique spooky ability. Like a 'Pestilence', or 'Rabies',
look at the diseased bears, are you going to tell me they don't have an ability that's like 'Rabies"?!?!? some plague that tears through armour or makes the target feel "woozy"

Wolf - Wolves are decent already, however next to Cats, they don't match up. I think Furious Howl could do a lot more, it feels like Hunters in late-game near raiding time were only brought for the wolves ability and it's not 'Claw' worthy by any means. You could always throw out a bunch of 1.0 attack speed pets or "balance" Cats, however I don't think it should be about nerfing.

It would just be nice if all animals were as good as the *cough* *cough* "cats",
thank you for reading. Someone told me in game that Turtle WoW had added new tameables but I don't know where I
would read about this. Thanks again.

Imo all pets should have dash, except scorpion turtles and crabs,crocs…
And adjust atack speeds of raptora to give it more diversity… also add more recolors for exotic/ rate pets… also make ashevale moose tamable for dat nelf rp ;)

Oh… and make helboars tamable from blasted lands ;)

[Charanko]

I like the ideas in this post to give hunter pets some unique stats and abilities. Some of the before mentioned spells would probably make hunters too strong.
I really enjoyed how pets in vanilla wow at its early patches had much more flavour: Snarler had high spell resistances, Lupos did shadow damage etc.
I think those abilities weren't too OP but it certainly gave a much more immersive feeling.

Yes homogenisation made the pets more “balanced” …but also made them alot more boring…

[Raukodor]

A much simpler idea

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2738&p=21177&hilit ... ily#p21177

[Kingswiftietv]

Buff Raptors.

Really. Just slap Dash on them and they would close the gap significantly with Cats. Add Claw as well and then you could choose between Cat or Raptor based purely on personal preference.

Maybe, if we're gettin' crazy here, add a rare Raptor spawn/quest spawn that has Broken Tooth attack speed for giggles.

I'd settle for Raptor Dash, at the very least.

+1