Yes its early,
Its both early in the morning and very early in the beta testing. As was so eloquently pointed out we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 months before WotLK finds its way into live servers and until then (indeed even after) everything is subject to change without notice.
The proposed changes to hunter pets are for the most part welcome. I think the whole Talent tree thing is a particularly great idea, but I sincerely hope that the respeccing cost of a pet is either free or nearly so. Am I being greedy? Wanting it all? Hardly, read on.
One of the other proposed changes is removing pet loyalty. Pet loyalty was always a bit of a nuisance, especially at higher levels it would take forever to get to be “best friend” to your pet. It really did need to be reworked, however I would have liked it to stay in the game in some form.
While I think both of these are good changes in their own way, I think I may see a bit of a issue in how they would interact both with each other together with minimal stable slots open to hunters. I think can already see the dawn of the “disposable pet”. Not a temporary pet you grab to go learn a skill but a full fledged throwaway pet.
Lets assume that there is available in the game a level 80 cat of some sort. I would say that is a safe assumption, but that’s all it is. Why tie up a stable slot with one? Why pay to re-spec? If you need a cat go grab a cat. Tame complete *bam* instant best friend. Spec for what you want to do and throw it away when you are done. There is even the possibility with a little planning of using “Tame beast” as a form of crowd control in instances, similar to the way enslave or mind control is used to pull one enemy from a group and have it fight for you. The difference would be that It won’t wear off.
Everything I see can in fact be used as an advantage. I am not really complaining just thinking out loud. I am pondering weather taking away pet loyalty to the hunter coupled with a lack of stable slots serves to take away the hunters loyalty to the pet, and if so how I feel about that.
I suppose I can keep two pets that I actually needed to put a few levels on in the stables and keep one slot open for the pet of the day. I could but I don’t think I will. My pets are not throw aways to be used up and discarded. I am not a Warlock.
Something to ponder as I watch the calendar slide past towards release day.
Filed under: World of Warcraft | Tagged: hunter, pets, WotLk |
Dechion's Place 
I’d have to say that it depends on the hunter! I’ve actually seen a hunter come into an instance without a pet and then subsequently tame and release animal creatures as a form of crowd control. Mind you, I’d never do that myself; I still have the strigid owl Eszti tamed back in Teldrassil at level 10!
I am far from saying it would not be vaible crowd control. If anything it would work better now with removing loyalty and skills like growl coming preloaded.
I am willing to bet with practice a person could tame a beast, send it back to attack and have it specced by the time it got there, while still autoshooting skull in the background.
I was more referring to was people ditching pets simply as a way to save money or travel time. For instance if I have a level 80 wolf already specced one way and I want to change it, why take the time to go azeroth to the pet trainer and unlearn my talents (and pay to do it) when I could just release it and go tame another one that looks just like it?
it puts me in a position where I will be punished both financialy and with wasted time for actually keeping my pet instead of considering it “disposable”