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Q u o t e:
Very optimized players might be willing to tame an untextured cube if it had the highest dps.

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Hey, don't diss the cube.

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Q u o t e:



Hey, don't diss the cube.

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Hey dont diss varimathas! He is a very sensitive demon u know!

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Q u o t e:

1) Exotic pets should be a choice. We do not want every BM (or every hunter for that matter) feeling like they have to get an exotic pet to be competitive. We spent a lot of effort to get say gorillas, crabs and spiders up to snuff so we didn't want hunters to actually enter LK with fewer pet choices. Even a 51 BM hunter should feel like a crab (especially a crab) should be a useful pet.

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I can see what you're saying, but OTOH, exotic pets are a 51 point talent. Don't you think that BM Hunters who spec down that far should get some sort of bang for their buck? Otherwise, you're just speccing 51 points to get 4 extra points for your pet.

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Q u o t e:
3) Our target is that the exotic pets are slightly better than normal pets. The key word is "slightly."

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Again, I can see where you're coming from. You don't want the 51 point talents to be the "be all, end all" of the class. However, the problem with this is, often "slightly" becomes "negligible" and then players wonder why they spent 51 talent points.

There's already numerous hunters who only spec 50 BM because that last talent just doesn't seem worth it. Maybe it's just my opinion, but shouldn't the last talent in the tree always seem "worth it"?

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Q u o t e:
5) We disagree that the 4 extra pet talent points are useless.

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They're not useless at all, but considering what it takes in order to get them, do they seem impressive?

It sort of sounds like you guys don't want to punish people for speccing 50/21 or whatever, and I can kind of understand that, but at the same time it seems like that if players don't get more power or more synergy or whatever when they spec down a specific tree, what is the point of even having different talent trees?

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Q u o t e:

6) If you think that no hunter cares about the look of their pet, you are just wrong. :) Very optimized players might be willing to tame an untextured cube if it had the highest dps. However, a great many hunters (I would argue probably even the majority) rolled their class because they wanted to tame pets. Being able to tame exotic pets is very exciting for them.
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Yeah 4 year old kids oh mommy look at the big red dinosaur all the while pissing his pants

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Q u o t e:


I KNEW IT! GC favors crabs.

Next patch. Dual wield crabs!

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Not true, remember GC abandoned his crab in an instance in somewhere in his 50's :P GC hates crabs.

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Q u o t e:

... At the end of the day, the BM 51 is just one talent point. It shouldn't grant you a 10% dps increase.
... Very optimized players might be willing to tame an untextured cube if it had the highest dps.

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OOooOHhh ... where can I tame the +10% dps cube?!?!?

Just kidding, of course. On a serious note, I appreciate the effort to give us some unique and hard to tame mobs like the white spirit beast. While I myself have never been much of a "rare" tamer, even I am tempted to snatch him up. I think the situation from BC with the spirit guide wolf highlighted the extend some of us would go to in order to have something unique and special. Adding one or two additional rares that are this unique in appearance would be a nice addition to the content patches.

Thank you for looking into the pet spell book bugs as well. While it is hardly a game-breaking issue, correcting some of the odd behavior would definately be a positive thing.

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Q u o t e:
Very optimized players might be willing to tame an untextured cube if it had the highest dps.

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Oh god please make this pet a reality.

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Q u o t e:

We like for the 51 point talents to be attractive but not mandatory.

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Like others have noted, this statement is just plain stupid when talking about Hunters. 51 point talents should be the bread and butter of a tree, it should define the tree. If I want to be a Marksmanship Hunter, I need to get Chimera Shot to deal damage. If I want to be a Survival Hunter, I need to get Explosive Shot. If I want to be a Beast Master, I should need to get Beast Mastery.

However, I'm not an advocate of only one spec being the best in raids. All three specs should be doing equally well in raids, maybe only excelling at encounters that favor one spec over another. Marksmanship is satisfactory, I like what you're doing with Explosive Shot, but I'm still waiting for a change to Beast Mastery. Exotic pets aren't doing any better than Scorpids, and those extra 4 points are only valuable for survivability which is not an issue on boss fights at the moment.

My suggestion is to get rid of the Exotic Pet tag and add a Beast Master specific shot to add to our rotation. It could do damage and apply a buff that affects our pet in some way.

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Q u o t e:

1) Exotic pets should be a choice. We do not want every BM (or every hunter for that matter) feeling like they have to get an exotic pet to be competitive. We spent a lot of effort to get say gorillas, crabs and spiders up to snuff so we didn't want hunters to actually enter LK with fewer pet choices. Even a 51 BM hunter should feel like a crab (especially a crab) should be a useful pet.

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Find another talent for BM please and not limit the pets based on spec. It was so disappointing to go into NR only to find the pets I want requires me going back to a spec I've never enjoyed.

FIRST FIRST ZOMG IM FIRST
....
:P

So you are saying that TG is budgeted the same as say... Armored to the Teeth?

Sorry, I just had to go there, and it's seriously 2am, why are you here?

Sorry to bud in and post potentially-unrelated information in the thread, but while the Spirit Strike / Longevity fix is appreciated, Blizzard has not yet confirmed two other glaring issues with Spirit Strike that prevent the Spirit Beast from being a solid pet than can compete with even non-exotic pets:

1) Kill Command does not work with Spirit Strike. Extensive testing done with all abilities except the Strike turned off prove that no charges are consumed, and the damage of Strike, both initial and DoT, remains unchanged.

2) The initial hit of Spirit Strike cannot crit. Unless it is changed to function like Rake, hunters who use a Spirit Beast will be receiving less procs of Invigoration, Ferocious Inspiration, and Frenzy than if they were to use a regular Cat. This would be an overall nerf to damage and, if specced into Invigoration, sustainability as well.

Again, I apologize for going on a tangent from the original topic, but as a Spirit Beast fan and owner, I'm quite determined to see them up to snuff :)

I don’t think I was clear enough: the PTR build does not reflect the new numbers for cat and scorpid. If I remember, I will post what those new numbers are since there seems to be a lot of concern about it (but I don't have them in front of me).
[/quote]


That is worrisome by itself for other specs :/

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Q u o t e:
I don’t think I was clear enough: the PTR build does not reflect the new numbers for cat and scorpid. If I remember, I will post what those new numbers are since there seems to be a lot of concern about it (but I don't have them in front of me).

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Please do, because I'm sick of my choice of pet being a several hundred DPS downgrade.

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Q u o t e:

That is not our design. If the 51-point talent defines the tree then you are closing the door on a hybrid spec of some kind ever being viable. The rest of a talent tree should not be filler to reach the 51 pointer. That is why we budget them exactly the same as the first tier talents. Now there are specs for which the 51 feels more mandatory and those for which it feels less mandatory. We’re okay with that too. Talent trees should be diverse and what works for one class might not work for another.

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You guys (and gals) seem 'okay' with just about everything it seems. I'm sorry, but as stated time and time again it would be ludicrous to have a PvE Marks build without Chimera and a Survival build without Explosive. You know it. I know it. The American people know. Bob Dole of Russell, Kansas knows it.

I won't belabor the point that the 51 point BM talent needs to be buffed, either directly or indirectly through adding new talent points accessible only with the extra four points the talent provides. You mentioned you all are looking at it and considering it. I would only stress again that the strong evidence in favor of the talent being marginal at best is the number of raiding/serious PvE'ing hunters that don't have the talent despite being 50 points (or more) in the BM tree. That should send up a red flag. Ok, well, I guess I did belabor the point but, quite frankly, that is how bad the talent currently is... trust me, it's bad. Really bad. Like Baddie McBaderson hopping the Bad Train to Badsville bad.

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Q u o t e:
I don’t think I was clear enough: the PTR build does not reflect the new numbers for cat and scorpid. If I remember, I will post what those new numbers are since there seems to be a lot of concern about it (but I don't have them in front of me).

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Well, I certainly hope that a scorpid -- a non-ferocity, TANK focused pet -- isn't doing more damage than a Devilsaur/Spirit Beast or any ferocity pet for that matter.

All of that aside I do appreciate your continued attention to this thread.

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Q u o t e:

It sort of sounds like you guys don't want to punish people for speccing 50/21...

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The irony is that with the readiness nerf there really isn't any compelling reason to spec 50/21 unless you are desperate for hit rating or something.

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Q u o t e:

That is not our design. If the 51-point talent defines the tree then you are closing the door on a hybrid spec of some kind ever being viable. The rest of a talent tree should not be filler to reach the 51 pointer. That is why we budget them exactly the same as the first tier talents. Now there are specs for which the 51 feels more mandatory and those for which it feels less mandatory. We’re okay with that too. Talent trees should be diverse and what works for one class might not work for another.

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Huh ?

So what the hell is the 51pt talent in BM useful for? You've said it yourself, the 4 points addition to pet talents is useless and if Exotic pets won't give any sort of DPS boost, wtf is it doing then? Talk about the ultimate useless talent ...

And don't talk about hybrid specs. As if 1 talent point in BM will completely null any hybrid builds. Have you ever seen a 36/25/0 hunter ? I don't think so. You're very hard pressed to see ANY class being hybrids and be proficient at anything (aside from DK (which shows how much love they received from the devs) and possibly rogues).

Thank you for the continued feedback, Ghostcrawler. Again, this level of transparency is both welcome and appreciated by the silent majority.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing the new Cat and Scorpid numbers.

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Q u o t e:
Thank you for the continued feedback, Ghostcrawler. Again, this level of transparency is both welcome and appreciated by the silent majority.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing the new Cat and Scorpid numbers.

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If its 400 dps lower would you still be so soft spoken?