If you were worried about losing Hati, worry no more. In today’s alpha build a new talent has appeared called Animal Companion:
“Your Call Pet additionally summons the first pet from your stable. This pet will obey your Kill Command, but cannot use pet family abilities.”
It replaces Way of the Cobra. It doesn’t seem quite as fully featured as Hati since it doesn’t mention Bestial Wrath or Beast Cleave, but it at least casts Kill Command. I suspect if they added all 3 it would be too powerful for a level 15 talent. As long as it still uses Dash with the main pet and they make a bit of an effort to improve the AI (simply forcing the /petattack command without having to macro it fixes 90% of issues).
This does mean it competes with Dire Beast, though. However, the wording on some talents and abilities has changed to imply Dire Beast is becoming baseline again, but that did not happen in this build. So I’m not sure what’s going on.
This makes the pet spec locking sting a little less since you’ll always be able to have at least 1 pet that’s purely a cosmetic choice. Also in this build, Kill Command’s range has been buffed from 40 to 50 yards which is pretty nice.
I’m still not in the alpha so I can’t test things out for myself. If I find any more details I’ll update the post.
Please let this be a viable talent or baseline.. i love having a second pet purely for cosmetic reasons.
I suppose it’s still to early to draw any conclusions… but if we might maybe not go through the torture that was Legion Alpha and Beta, it would be wonderful. Too bad the devs don’t really care about what we have to say.
I swear, if they make Dire Beast baseline again I’ll flip my shit. They should just dump the whole idea of Dire Beast summing a bunch of pets. I’d rather it be like the Dire Beast of old where you just summon a random beast and it does some dps for you. Having it compete with Dire Frenzy just seems to cause problems.
Am I the only hunter who prefers having only one pet, I feel so crowded.
nope you are definitely not alone. I cant wait to get rid of Hati…I prefer to focus on the bond i have with my main pet.
play surv or mm then
I love BM, I just don’t enjoy feeling crowded. And Hati? I picked each and every pet in my stables with a lot of care. I had zero connection to Hati. He was just this extra animal I did not choose and yet had to have at my side the whole expansion. Is there a reason they could not accommodate both types of hunters? And is there a reason for that kind of attitude, where your opinion takes precedent over someone else’s?
how about no? It should be a choice at best to have a second pet. No hunter should have to drop the spec they prefer to play because of things like this…so imo you comment doesnt wash
Mef, 1 pet for beast masters is better than 2. Hati belongs to Thorim, and rightfully so!
Oh my god, Blizz did something nice for once. This makes me really happy! Sometimes I only want one pet out, but it definitely turned into a major thing for my main, that she has two companions with her at all times.
I’m totally okay with having two pets by my side, going into Battle for Azeroth. What I’m not okay with is how much was stripped away from hunters in Legion. I thought WoD pruning was shocking, but Legion pruning picked them bare. “Class Fantasy”, one of their big selling features for Legion, was a joke as far as I’m concerned. There was/is really nothing left of hunters to create class fantasy. They are just shadows of their former selves. I really do hope the hunter devs consider giving us some spells back like:
(I am speaking as a BM hunter, maybe the other specs have some of these still.. I haven’t really played on my once-Main hunter in Legion, got her to max level then couldn’t stomach it anymore)
– Serpent Sting
– Arcane Shot
– Camoflage
– Glaive Toss (it was a fun spell)
– Cobra Shot as casting and focus shot (I miss this, it was a great filler, too… now I feel like I’m standing doing nothing, waiting for GCD’s to reset)
– Aspect of the Cheetah the way it was (no CD)
– Deterrence
– Kill Shot
– Master’s Call…. for every hunter
I am not a fan of the pet spec locking, either. I hope the devs will change their minds on that. I miss pet uniqueness, too. The different spells they had. Made going out and finding them to tame more interesting, and fun.
Devs, please return some of our spells and make my hunter fun and enjoyable to play again. It’s not fun for me to press so very few buttons. Make my pets more meaningful again instead of the carbon copy clones they all are now. That’s not streamlined, it’s plain boring.
Also…. more stable space would be awesome and very appreciated 🙂
Thank you, Bendak, for keeping us updated.
edit: Master’s Call for all types of pets**
If you get in please play a bit of MM as well.
Curious to hear if the spec will feel as slow to play as it sounds (3 sec cast time on aimed)
I would be sad if I didn’t get to throw a horde of pets but also have two pets at the same time.
Thats bs they need to make it a BM passive not a talent, having two pets is a defining feature of bm now. They cant take it away.
I can only say I don’t want this to be a talent, it SHOULD be a baseline effect much like Lone Wolf for MM.
If you have one pet out, it does a certain amount of damage with it’s abilities.
If you bring out that second pet, your main pet does slightly less damage but instead that damage is transferred to the second pet, performing the same attacks as the main pet.
Mostly, I want this because I would like to pick Dire Beast along with having 2 pets out. Like Bendak said though, due to some text changes to various abilities we might get Dire Beast back baseline with DF once again becoming a talent(hopefully).
Created a new thread recently on the Hunter Forum about bringing offensive Aspects back for the BM spec(hopefully in an interesting way). I know it’s on the EU Forums but if anyone wants to check it out and/or bring it to other forums, feel free to do so. Here’s the link:
https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17618114495