I would rather have some sort of compromise. Clearly, by a landslide, spirit beasts are MVP in stats and cosmetics to most hunters as you rarely see a BM hunter not using a spirit beast. There should be a change to bring their OP levels down, but not butcher the pet to being tenacity...
this could end badly.
Locking a pet to a spec is, in my opinion, pretty stupid. Just makes you unable to use 60% of pets for a certain situation. Giving all pet families a special ability is nice, if it had more flavour. Currently it's basically what, 5 abilities? A slow, increased dodge, decreased damage, buff removal, mortal wounds.If you're gonna give each family a "flavour ability", then make it fun ! Give our dragonhawks their fire breath back. Give felines increased attack speed. Give bats a sonic attack that silences and incapacitate for a few seconds. Give warp stalker their teleportation back. Give wolves the attack power buff they used to have. And give those abilities huge cooldowns and limited effects if you want to keep balance. I'm sure most hunter want to be able to choose their pets based on their looks, not their stats. A flavour spell like that would just steer their decision in a certain direction "Oh if I want burst aoe I should take a dragonhawk, if I want a crowd control I should take a bat" ...), without limiting hunters to it.
So a Clefthoof and a Mushan Beast can't tank, but a Shale Spider and a Tallstrider can. Ok.
My main is a lock and I have an old beloved hunter-alt which I play quite often. As a warlock at heart I never understood why all hunter pets are basically the same... The analogy would be that my Felhunter or Sucubus could tank as well as my Voidlord with a click. And that my Voidlord could deliver the same dps as my Imp. I don't think any warlock would want that...
I still have specializations per pet. I want certain ones to always be my tank and certain ones only for pvp etc. With luck, my prefs per pet add up to their type! :)
ill be honest, i was hoping to see more improvement on pets movement, since legion brought glitch and glitch with pets... having to resummon pets due to being stuck.
All pets who have lust as a special ability are ferocity anyway.
YES ! This is awesome! :3 All the pets felt the same to me, plus, I always felt weird when I swaped my turtle to Ferocity. xD I like this a lot. ^^
Does this mean Direhorns are losing their Spell Reflect? I mean it wasn't that good but it was something...the Reflective Armor Plating.
Oh great, getting some class identity skills back so classes can feel useful again. That's why it feels great that now every godamn ferocity pet gets my shaman's bloodlust. As if mages and nether rays weren't enough... Seriously, if everyone gets lust at least make this iconic shaman ability since warcraft 3 a better one.
Notto disu %^&*to agen...
I really like this change. Now pets are not just empty shells or skin for some abillities. They are beasts with their special traits. Now you have to be hunter, tamer and have couple of killer machines for different situations. Not just lady with white doggy in fabulous sweater you like to see.
Not sure how I feel about this. I've been looking forward to playing a Zandalari hunter and only using devilsaurs, direhorns, and raptors, so if this stays the way it is I'm in luck because those three families happen to cover all three specs. Personally, I don't really mind being forced to use different pets for different situations; it adds another layer of strategy and gives you a good reason to use multiple pets instead of just having one "default" pet that can do everything, which I think are both good things.But after giving us the freedom to allow any pet to fulfill any role, this definitely doesn't sound like an improvement. Think of any pet that has a shielding ability; they all make great tanks, but that ability also gives that pet better survivability as DPS and that might make it a more appealing choice than a DPS-oriented pet. Taking away our ability to make choices like that doesn't add anything to the game, imo. Hopefully they give this some more thought.
I'm torn. On one hand I like that this change will bring more variety and choice back to different pet families. On the other hand, I dislike that Blizz is massively changing the families of the pets, for example: Dragonhawks and Spirit Beasts to Tenacity? Come on, I already have a sweet flamin' turtle as my tank! I don't need more tanks! I don't want to shelf my Skoll as well as my Hati!I'm glad that I don't have to lug around a core hound for 'lust, but I'm not entirely sure the tradeoff is worth it.