In a post tonight, Nimox talks to players regarding how pets work in WoW, including the changes made to WoW’s story, primarily targeting Hunters.
The identity of pets is important, as is the fact that they are unique. These are two objectives which in a way oppose each other. Turtles are necessarily an armored and robust creature. Cats are often agile and graceful creatures. Foxes are generally smart and cunning. Although the pets are not designed according to reality, it is necessary that the families of pets are different. There are a lot of families in all three categories, and things probably aren’t perfectly balanced when it comes to abilities. Could it be better? Most likely. Would it be better if these were exactly the same and just looked different? Maybe. Is the Turtle you’re up once morest a tough Turtle or secretly a Turtle with Mortal Wounds? Currently, we know the answer.
Hati, from Artifact Beast Mastery, was a unique situation. Many players choose a specific pet archetype for the character being used. Artifacts had a lot of visual customization. Introducing a second pet with a distinct wolf appearance to all Beast Mastery Hunters for the entire expansion was not something the developers wanted, hence the Essence Swap as a solution. The ‘second pet’ feature was kept with the Animal Companion talent, letting you choose this via your stable.
Regarding Animal Companion, there is a known issue where this talent reduces the damage of all your pets and other summoned units instead of only reducing that of your second pet. Animal Companion will be retained, and this issue will be fixed so that other abilities that summon pets no longer create bad synergies. No details regarding the arrival of this change.
The difficulty of using Resurrect Pet and Dismiss Pet is an intentional change and the developers are not planning any adjustments at this time. For a time, the solution for parts of the game was to tame 5 pets, do some stuff where your pet would die, drop it and re-summon a different pet, then re-tame 5 pets later. Dismissing a pet was instant, and this ability now has a 3 second cast. Your pets aren’t intended to be disposable items, at least for Hunters – Warlocks and Death Knights have certain mechanics they steal from their pets, but that matches their identities. You have to care regarding the pets you use and care regarding keeping them alive.
The developers are always looking to improve the paths for players and pets and make things smarter and easier to use. This is an ongoing process for the game as a whole. The team is discussing issues with pets during encounters where players are teleported or forced to move around a lot. The developers play classes with pets and understand these frustrating elements. There is no simple solution, players move in very complicated ways, use a lot of tools to do so, and the team doesn’t want pets to appear to float or teleport all the time. time.
Pets are an important part of the identity of Hunters, Warlocks, and Death Knights (and Mages). The team wants to improve these, add new ones and do cool things for them and their respective classes.