Adding unique abilities to pet families without them

[Nightowl]

Not all of hunter pets have unique abilities compared to the rest. Families such Bears, Crabs, Crocolisks, Hyenas, Raptors, Spiders and Tailstriders lack uniqueness that separates them from the Standard greats such as Turtle with their Tanking ability, Gorillas with their Thunderclap, Cats with Prowl etc.

It sort of always felt like pets were that one part they didn't fully finish within the game, and as such some pets got "shafted" in the uniqueness department. Figured that perhaps we can shoot the shit at each other and see if we can come up with something interesting for our neglected beastie friends?

Here's the list of pets without unique abilities and some suggestions I feel might fit them:

Bears - Swipe (hits 3 targets). Why overcomplicate? Take a page out of druid's playbook and slap it on good ol'bear and call it a day.

Crabs - disarm is the easiest answer since that's what they got later down the line. I personally feel that it's a bit op unless put on a long CD, so perhaps a cooldown of sorts would be better? "Crabrage": 20% damage reduction, and 20% damage increase for x amount of seconds? On a respactable cooldown obviously.

Crocolisks - your next 3-5 attacks perform by crocolisk will be criticals, but your crocolisk takes more damage while it's active. Pets ain't warriors, so I don't feel like giving 30min cd would justify it, since it's not really THAT much damage. They'll probably crit for like 200 damage before armor.

Hyenas - honestly. Shit I'm scratching my head here. Some form of bleed perhaps? Sword passive of pet attacks? Your hyena has 5% chance to do an extra attack each time it hits or something like that?

Raptors - Raptors have both Claw and Bite, so I feel that whatever they need needs to come in some form of utility that isn't overpowered. I was thinking retaliation: everytime your raptor takes a hit he returns damage as if warrior. On a respactable cd obviously. Perhaps something else?

Spiders - Web is the obvious choice but I feel that it would make hunters overpowered in PVP, so maybe some form of utility then? Intercept to a target so that the next hit they take is taken by spider instead?

Tailstrider - BEAKSTAB! IF your tailstrider is behind your target his can perform a beakstab that does 200% of his weapon damage at a respectable focus cost.

Bonus:

Level 60 Gorilla with a new rank of Thunderclap pls - return to monke.

In any case I would love to see your ideas as well!

[Mativh]

All pet types having a special ability, not just a few, would be a welcome change for sure!
Some suggestions are good, others might need more brainstorming.

What'd also be great is if the uniques that are tamed preserved their special ability they've had while while being an unique. I remember how I've been trying to tame one with my first hunter because of an interesting ability it had that almost killed me, but once tamed it became a generic pet type.

[Kairion]

I love the Idea. Thereis currently little use for many of the pet families because of lack of special abilities.

An easy change would be to introduce the TBC family abilities, but they might not fit with classics more limited class toolkits.

Having a pet family manipulate its crit chance in any way would be fantastic to give BM reliable way a to proc the pet version of flurry.

[Pribbering]

Gonna bump this since it came up in World last night. No reason not to share the Pet Family abilities across all pet families instead of making 3 or 4 families be viable because they're the ONLY ones with abilities. The others are just subpar, min/maxxing aside.

[Gladeshadow]

Posted this in the pet ability thread, but it’s relevant here too. The list of planned pet abilities that didn’t make it into the game.
https://gist.github.com/barncastle/63a ... c04d6731ff Line 714 is where the pet abilities begin. If pet abilities were added, such would be closer to the original vision for vanilla, so I hope it happens.

[Studbucket]

As someone who loves hunters and likes getting less commonly used pets, I wanted to bump this post. I love the idea of adding unique abilities to more pets, just to give more incentive to tame them. I get why it works the way it does, but having every end-game hunter with a bird, cat, or dog is not as exciting as it could be given all the various pet families.

Related thread: viewtopic.php?hilit=pet%20ability&p=300 ... 119773c70a

[Caotic]

+1

[Kefke]

So, I'm by no means a master Hunter player, but I thought I'd give my thoughts, based on what animals (or at least their real-world equivalents) are known for.

• Bear: The swipe ability seems decent to me. I'd agree with that as a nice, simple ability that fits a big ol' bear.
• Crab: When I think about crabs, it's their sideways movement and tendency to use their claws to intercept attempts to approach them that comes to mind. Also, from having caught crabs when I was younger, I know what quick little buggers they can be. I think that something similar to a Combat Rogue's increased parry and ability to follow up with a strong counterattack would be a good way to represent that.
• Crocolisk: Obviously, crocolisks are based off of crocodiles, and the most iconic thing about crocodiles is their famous "death roll". So maybe a several-second stun/root that deals a small amount of damage over time.
• Hyena: Hyenas are known for laughing. The obvious way to represent that would be a taunt, which could work, but they're not really a dedicated tanking pet. So instead, what about a "silence" physical ability? Call it Mocking Laugh, and theme it as them making the target too angry to use abilities.
• Raptor: I think simpler is better here. How about a knockdown that applies a bleed?
• Spider: Like you said, web is the obvious choice, but an extra net ability would be very powerful. Alternatively, give them a "weaker web", either in the form of a disarm as suggested for crabs, or a damage and swing/hit reduction, representing just the enemy's weapon being webbed.
• Tallstrider: ...okay, honestly, "beakstab" made me snicker, and I think that alone is reason enough to give them a backstab ability.

[Studbucket]

Great ideas Kefke. I love the flavor!

[Noce]

the idea of each beast have unique ability whould be expected, i agree. it would be a nice touch. but, then again, ppl would min-max things as usual and would end up with all wolves i guess. it would be nice to see alot of different pets but then abilities gotta be set up in a way that it wouldnt matter much which pet u took, rather than a personal pref. so keep it simple, each pet role to have similiar ability or to do exact thing in a different way/name.

it would be also nice if warlocks could have an ability to pick up any demon they want, similar to hunts.

on the other hand.. to disappoint all pet class lovers, i would like to see all pets made as summons: instant cast, 5 min cd (bm 4 min, or make it able to summ 2 pets-2 different even), 2 min duration (bm 3min), smtn like that.
or make it like that a pet cant leave masters side, that it need to be close. so that u cant send pet to do ur biddings.
what u think about that?

[Hauntingsforum]

This would be absolutely killing the Hunter class. Terrible idea from a balance perspective but also from a immersion stanpoint. The whole class fantasy would be destroyed and replaced by a simple button. Pets and Hunters is a love story u have to tame em and keep em well fed to gain their trust. Its a cool and deep mechanic letting me always roll a hunter sooner or later. I would rather expend on that system then cutting it down to cater other classes. Simplefying things is not always a good thing thats why were here in a Classic Realm and not in Retail. That what made classic so good. Dont take this as an attack on u personal i just think the idea is short sighted and motivated by personal preference instead of the quality of the game in mind.

[M4ximili4n]

Well, first of all bump.

More pet variety and abilities would be great, balancing must be done well though.

I also think that it would be cool, if even more rare / hidden pet's existed.
Hunting for them was always fun.
Maybe most of them are not viable as a main pet, but they can have learnable abilities to give passive improvements to other pets.

Like taming a beast that is mostly aquatic, gives increased swim speed as a passive ability you could teach to other pets.

Maybe some quest lines that take players to places and only if that quest was done a rare mob will start to spawn somewhere.. Idk

There are many ideas, but expanding hunter pet choice und rare mobs could be fun.

[Booglesz]

Well, first of all bump.

More pet variety and abilities would be great, balancing must be done well though.

I also think that it would be cool, if even more rare / hidden pet's existed.
Hunting for them was always fun.
Maybe most of them are not viable as a main pet, but they can have learnable abilities to give passive improvements to other pets.

Like taming a beast that is mostly aquatic, gives increased swim speed as a passive ability you could teach to other pets.

Maybe some quest lines that take players to places and only if that quest was done a rare mob will start to spawn somewhere.. Idk

There are many ideas, but expanding hunter pet choice und rare mobs could be fun.

Thats part of it for me,the "thrill of the hunt" if you will. I also wish more beasts would be tamable. Not for the dps but for the look. I mean imagine if youre in pvp and a Zebra charges at you