Is it possible to ask developers to make a rare tamable male lion in WotLK, I would love to have the possibility to have a lion by my side again after having to ditch the Rake at some point.

My list from most to least important (they're all important, though ;-):

1. The fact that attempts at balancing for PvP usually has a negative effect on PvE and vice versa.
2. Pet issues (pathing + inability to feed in combat + scaling could still be better).
3. Too little utility in groups.


Allow me to elaborate:

1. The people who are seriously into PvP are rarely the same who are seriously into PvE because there's simply not enough hours in the day to really excel at both. I know there's a big gray area with people who are into both aspects on the game on a more casual basis (I'm personally mostly PvE, but I do the occassional BG or arena just for fun). I suggest that a bigger effort is made to make skills and mechanics work differently in PvE and PvP. Something like this is already in the game (for example, warlocks can't use Curse of Doom in PvP and most kinds of CC have shorter durations as well as diminishing returns in PvP), but I think it should be extended to a wider range of skills and mechanics, as we who care mostly for PvE are constantly taking nerf bat crits because some of our abilities are apparently considered overpowered in PvP. Well, then nerf them in PvP, but don't change them in PvE. It goes the other way around too; when a buff or other class change is proposed, we often get "no, that would be OP in PvP". Well, then make it not work or work differently in PvP. I'm seeing an increasing tendency of "normalization" across all the classes, where none really stands out in any situation anymore because all have to be equal in PvP (still not quite there yet, but I see the tendency), and that is a shame for us PvE'ers. An example is the 2.2 nerf of scorpid poison; it was probably a bit much in PvP, but I don't think it was OP at all in PvE. A solution here could be reduced scaling or what not against PvP targets.

2. Not much to add here. We need to be able to feed pets in combat. Pet pathing has been seriously screwed up since 2.3, mostly inside instances and in other situations where the pets have to move in narrow spaces, especially between levels (such as up staircases or slides). Pet scaling could still use some work; especially regarding our hit rating and crit rating, and I imagine the PvP people would like resilience scaling too.

3. Hunters bring good dps and CC to groups. But oh wait, there's a bunch of other classes that do the same, and has other valuable treats, such as group buffs, food/water, healthstones, etc. Hunters need a bit more in that department - one simple idea would be to make all our aspects group buffs (like AotW and AotP already are), similar to paladin auras, with a range suitable for our range (around 45 yards would be good - 41 is too little if the tank is turning the mob away from the raid). It would especially give hunters some nice synergies when grouped with other hunters; for example, one hunter could have AotH up and another could have AotV up, which would go a long way to solve mana problems without losing dps in long boss fights. Making Improved Hunter's Mark add melee attack power as it builds up, instead of only the base amount, would also be nice, but I still think it should only build up on ranged attacks.


/Calli

BM Gear- YES OH YES! LET ME BE THE BM I WANT TO BE!!!!

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Q u o t e:
Viper Sting (priority 3)
Viper Sting is a nice ability against Mana users. However, this ability can be dispelled (not counting “Improved Stings”) and it doesn’t drain much Mana (1368 Mana or with talents 1778,4 Mana). Reducing this ability to 10 seconds (currently 15 seconds) will help a lot and makes sure we can’t chain cast it. Adding a mana-return effect on the sting also helps to counter the mana issues in PvP and PvE.

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Should be Prio1 since FD/drink isn't option anymore.
Since MM doesn't buff casters anyway, they rarely get any sort of +mana advantages from raidgroup, instead of dumped into group with rogues and dps warriors(due TSA).
very usefull buff for imp. stings talents(no need for 100% mana-return, mayby 50%?)

but anyways, if developers can fix most of these useful ideas to live servers before WotLK, many would be pleased

I would add just one less mentioned issue from last patch: auto shot + macro.
Auto shot have been changed to trigger instead of cast, so it can not be used in /castsequence macro to queue it. May be blizzard can think new idea how to use auto shot in macro ?
I see idea why this was changed, pushing auto shot button as command to start dps is now more begginer friendly. But this change was bad for endgame hunters.
May be I am wrong at pointing out cause why /castsequence steady shot, auto shot macro is now broken.

I still do not agree with you about tier sets in the slightest:

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Q u o t e:
The thing that does matter however is the way how we deal damage:
BM: Speed attacks and pet
MM: High damage, low crits
Surv: Low damagw, high crits.

Lets look at the main two stats a Hunter needs for those trees:
BM: AP (since this gives pets more scaling)
MM: AP/INT (since AP gives the most scaling and INT helps with giving AP)
Surv: Agil/Crit (since this makes Expose Weakness stronger and keeps it up most of the time)

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Shot speed from BM is not the whole story, the scaling of damage by crit from those 20 marksman talents that everyone takes is still greater than any scaling the pet currently receives even after all the talents and pet damage modifiers. If pets had a much higher personal crit rate I'd agree with you. The speed of attack simply works by reducing "dead air" time to basically nil, you cant push it much further within the current mechanics of the game.

Saying marksman is all about attack power scaling is completely ignoring the lower tiers of the tree, you still need to leverage that AP against the scaling mortal shots gives. Survival hunters still need to do damage and agility is the best raw stat (non green writing part if you will) for all specs of hunter. For a BM it gives AP to both hunter and pet and crit to the hunter, for a MM or survival it gives both AP and crit.

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Q u o t e:
Looking at the Tier armours they mostly focus on AP/INT rather then Agil/Crit. I'm currently in a position to pass on Tier armour because they don't fit my requirements. As a weighted extra, most Survival Hunters take Leather items because they focus a lot on these stats.

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The INT component on our sets is primarily there to allow us to DPS for the duration of a fight taking into account consumables, sure if you have an external mana battery feeding you all the time you can completely kit yourself out in leather gear for that little bit extra agility/crit and even AP, the same holds true for every spec not just survival.

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Q u o t e:
Along side that, it could be possible to give BM Hunters pet specific gear. This will give BM Hunters two choices: Either increase yourself (+scaling pet) or increase your pet.

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If you check my gear you'll see full tier 6 and sometimes i'll be wearing the pet shoulders from Kaz'Rogal. Anytime I can stick my pet on a boss for 100% of a fight those shoulders are slightly better, if I have to move it out anytime during a fight other shoulders are better. This is the problem you will have if you focus a set on pet stats at the cost of your own but magnified by the number of pieces in the set. You become entirely too reliant on Blizzard designing pet friendly encounters first time every time. If you are progressing with a guild it is unlikely that you will have the luxury of taking multiple set tokens so you will lock yourself into this problem. You also lose the ability to leverage your gear in another spec if the occasion demands it.

I'm still against multiple tier sets, I see it as cumbersome, unnecessary and potentially damaging. The current off set drop idea works fine for providing a bit of customization.

I agree with Strongmint's comments regarding multiple tier sets - the reason there are multiple paladin, shaman, priest, warrior and druid sets is because each talent tree in those classes does something completely different to the others and requires slightly different stats to do so each time. As a general rule the most important stat for any hunter is agility, with the differences in AP, crit and int being relatively miniscule personal choices which can be gained through assembling gems and enchants by individual hunters. To me pet buffing and scaling for BM hunters is a different issue, one better solved through pet-specific enhancements.

I feel our specific gear problem is that we need to look for too many stats these days, and item budgets only stretch so far. Your average healer is looking for int, Mp5, +heal, maybe spell-crit or spirit. Your average DPS caster is the same, except you can drop spirit and +heal for +damage and spell-hit (I've purposely ignored stamina - we all want plenty of that). Hunters however are looking for, as a bare minimum, agility, AP, int, Mp5 (because we have no other way of naturally generating mana now), crit and hit. Adding bonuses specifically for pets or weighting for specific combinations of the above stats will seriously harm our itemisation and lead to a situation where we have to collect multiple sets, much to our detriment given that we are already one bag slot short.

I don't PVP, so here's my top 3 PVE priority. I am currently raiding Karazhan / Zul'Aman with a BM spec.

1. Ammo - I'd rather it scales on a dps/cost level - i.e. 1s per dps per stack, so 50dps arrows cost 50s/200, 37 dps cost 37s/stack. Also any shot/spell/ability that uses an arrow should have that arrow's dps added to it, or not use the arrow.

2. Mana - I have to chug potions in pretty much every boss fight, as soon as the cooldown is up. Aspect of the Viper just doesn't cut it, and I need to use Hawk to stay on par with the mages dps. While my mana pool is on the lean side, I shouldn't have to be this hamstrung in order to do my job as a dps.

3. Money - ammo, potions, warp burgers, pet food & repairs all add up to a lot. My raid expenses is normally 2nd only to our tanks.

My biggest complaint right now is the incredibly rude and callous way the last round of hot-fixes were implemented. Please read that thread, all 16+ pages of it.

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Q u o t e:
Only thing not added yet is "haste rating problem". So Lactose can you provide even more info.

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Expect more information this weekend. I'm going to write a (detailed) post about it, and make a summary to be included here. Between being sick and going to work, I won't have time to do this before the weekend.

For me its a big issue to have the pets buffed in minor but many ways. All in all the Hunter class is defined to rely heavily on the pets, at least to 50%. Its totally ok for me if I would receive smaller but many buffs here and there instead of few large buffs. Enriching the pets as detailed in this list would be a huge morale boost for I think every kind of hunter, wether he plays largely PvP, PvE Raid or PvE Single. I think its not only me who is speaking but all in all every hunter would love to be able to receive more minor tweaks, buffs, colors, items, skills to his/her pets choice. Part of the Hunter class is the pet and only part of the hunter class can be customized to a wide degree. So my priorites at the moment are focused on pets.

Priorities:

5. Pet Customization
3. Pet Skills Variety
1. Pet Survivability


Suggestions:

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Q u o t e:
Call of the beast (priority 2)
Some Hunters use pets for specific aspects of the game. However, Hunters constantly need to run back and forward to the Stables to keep switching pets. This will allow Hunters to pick a pet even when not near a Stable. It would of course have a cooldown. A Hunter would have three new spells; each spell for each pet (“Call of <name>”).

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Why not have craftable "magical" Items, e.g. [Leash of Unleashing Animal], [Mighty Leash of Unleashing Animals] and finally [Mighty Leash of Unleashing Animals of the Whale]. Maybe involving some magical item makes it more logic to "carry" around animals ready to be called for. At the moment actually it makes perfectly sense to run to the stable in order to fetch my fellow companion the size of a bear or crocolisc, so by having such magical items one can prevent the unlogic situation that I call my Bear and my Cat disapears. Magic Items can do everything ;-)

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Q u o t e:
Collars (priority 3)
Being able to customize a pet is what makes being a Hunter fun. With the pet normalizing change, all pets are the same. Only thing that can vary is the looks and abilities they posses. Adding Collars to pets might help increasing the uniqueness. A collar will be a new Hunter item slot for the pet. Some ideas are:
- Increases focus by XX
- Increases crit chance by XX
- Increases hit chance by XX
- Increases ability YY by XX
- Increases Armour by XX
This will also deal with such things as Hunter pets not scaling with crit and hit chance.

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Why not expanding this to maybe 3 Item Slots. 2 Slots which can be used for Bags or Inventory Stuff (helping to counter the one already missing Bag due to need of a Quiver/Pouch; 1 Inv Slot would be a goodie) and 1 Slot as already suggested which can contain a maybe craftable Collarlike Item. It makes perfectly sense that my companion not only helps me in fighting my enemies, but to carry away the treasure they may carry ;-)

Edit: Messed up the numbers for priority, 5 is highest and 1 is lowest, fixed ;-)

I can't post with my 70 hunter atm, as that account's paid time has expired, but I can still recall the issues I have:

1) Pet Levelling, availability, training, taming.
It's not just the fact that we have to spend so much extra time levelling pets up, it's the fact that some "style/class" of pets aren't available at higher levels, most specifically those pets that get classified as "tanking" pets - bears, boars, and to a lesser extent turtles. None are found anywhere in any TBC zones, meaning that should you decide to swap to this kind of pet (for soloing harder mobs perhaps, or for the different skills) you have to go back to the old lands and spend a week training them up from lvl60 or even lower. I've recently spend 2 full gametime days levelling a boar from 24 to 60, but with the switch to the increased XP requirements at 60 (more than doubling the required XP to level), coupled with my foolish idea to respec back to my beloved BM because I thought my pet would finally hold aggro at this level... It's become so much of a chore I can't stand it. It was bad enough that I'd had to fight the same lvl62 mobs for those 2 solid days (more like 2 weeks of "real time") because nothing lower would gain my pet any XP... Surely some kind of buff could be created to allow the pet to fight at a higher level or something, like the City of Heroes "sidekick" system, where you can fight at the level of your sponsor but you can still only use the abilities your true level allows?

Also, when we could tame one pet while another was only dismissed, it was easy to learn new skills for new pets and no-one needed to be "thrown away" - remember, we're supposed to develop an attachment to these animals, why else would we be required to micromanage their health and happiness so much? Now, not only can we not do this dismissed-taming trick but to add insult to injury (quite literally) we CAN spend the full 20 seconds taming before we're told "oh, no you can't do that, sorry" - and in some cases die from the damage we've endured throughout the taming process that pre-2.1 would never have been allowed to start. WHY must our armour be reduced to zero? What is the point? I can understand that we can't fight back, but surely we shouldn't have to strip naked to gain the trust of a wild animal?

2) Growl scaling with AP.
This is something I'd not really thought about before, because I was MM spec throughout "old WoW" and BM throughout TBC. However, when I started my epic pet retraining from 24 to 70, I got very bored very quickly with losing such a large percentage of my DPS from the pet, and figured I'd try swapping things around to get the mobs down further before they reached melee range. Blow me if a respec to MM didn't increase my AP by a good 40%... even if my total whitedmg dps actually fell? Ah well, I'd gained crit chance, Aimed Shot, Scatter, and other little tweaks and now yes, the mobs would be much closer to dying when they finally caught up with me. Then wonder of wonders, my pet actually started holding aggro on occasion - and this was when my new pet was a mere morsel, just lvl50 or so compared to my target's lvl62 (the lowest level beasts I could fight and gain XP for my pet.)

"Great," I thought, "I can respec back to BM and the extra damage they do will help them hold aggro even more!" Boy was I wrong. Beasts that my pet could hold solid aggro on 2 or 3 levels ago now lose interest in them the instant I attack, and this is with me doing LESS damage and my pet doing MORE! I'm a Beast Master! My pet should be the fiercest thing my target has ever encountered, the fiercest thing they will ever encounter because it'll be the last thing they encounter before death... With the speed at which I can engage new targets, I cannot rely purely on Misdirect and Intimidate to ensure my pet keeps the aggro. I even tried taming a higher level pet just as a comparison, and it's not until lvl67 when pets can finally hold aggro unassisted against my DPS (barring threat spikes from lucky crit chains)... And it's not due to my insane DPS because I'm in decidedly under-par gear.

Scaling Growl off of our AP is fine for MM hunters who have AP out the backside; for BM hunters with a third less AP, it's pathetic. I don't know how it is for Surv hunters, I can't play that way so I can't try it properly. Scale it off our DPS, or better still scale it off the pet's AP/DPS so it benefits from their buffs.

3) Pet Buffs, including Pet Food.
The new pet foods are great, and yet at the same time they're rubbish. Why? Because they add Stam or Strength, which is fantastic, and they also add Spirit, which is frankly useless for pets. If warlock pets need extra spirit, perhaps make them a special manaregen food, but take the spirit off these hunter-friendly foods and put something more useful on there, like an extra couple of stam/str!

All pets now receive the same Paladin buffs as warriors. This is... Well, it's not entirely bad, but it can lead to some strange setups. You see, that means the warlock and hunter pets are all considered to be warriors... Which means that warlock pets can't get caster-friendly long-duration buffs, which sucks if they're not Fel Reavers - how many Imps really need Blessing of Might? So, ok, you bless the warrior with one Greater Blessing, and then bless all the pets individually... Er, no; no paladin's going to be interested in wasting all that time, no raid leader will put up with it either. The answer is ridiculously simple: put Hunter Pets and Warlock Pets into their own "classes" so they can get better more accurate buffing.

Oh, and perhaps it could be possible for hunters to be able to cancel buffs on their pets - if my pet's gained Salvation and then needs to be used as an emergency (off)tank, there's currently no way to do it without finding the right paladin to rebless the pet to remove the offending buff, by which time it's likely that someone will have died...

There, that's my 3 main areas of interest, and they're all pet-related. For myself, I have no problems playing my hunters just fine as they are, especially now that Kill Command works even while I'm "casting" Steady Shot. Half of my class now seems to work; now please fix the other half, the half that defines my class.

*gah, dammit - one more thing: make this forum remember me for more than 5 minutes so I can actually type all this in one go without having to log in 3 times!*

First of all - big thanks to Schwick :D
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I am PVE oriented, BM hunter (raiding 41/20/0 classic) and have raided only as far as all SSC and 3/4 TK, hence feedback and examples.

1. Aspect of the Vipor
Although it provides reasonable mana management on long boss fights, in its current state it hurts hunter dmg while the main reason hunter gets raiding spots is because they are ranged damage dealers.
Some raid specific tasks a hunter takes depend entirely on the damage output (e.g. doing solo 2 stair patches of elementals on Vashj+stings/slowing to striders)

I don't have statistics at hand, but when I have to switch to the Aspect I slide from the 1st-2nd place on dmg meter to about 5th-6th. As:
- I loose 155 RAP
- I am wasting 5 talents points I invested in Improved Aspect of the Hawk
= I loose attack speed->dps+chance to crit->chance to use Kill Command

2. Pet scaling of +hit and +crit.
It makes me always a very sad panda when I sacrifice other stats to get enough +hit for myself and yet see all those numerous attacks my pet misses on bosses. Isn't a hunter about also his pet doing damage?


3. Itemisation in PVE/Differnt types of armor sets
Having different armor sets sounds exiting, especially as I absolutely hate my t4 shoulders being a BM hunter (common, 0 agi on a hunter item??)

However, I am against the idea for several reasons:
- Changing between specs is different from changing your class's role (dps to healing/tanking or healing to dps). There is thus no justification to be treated seperate from other classes that can't change their role.
- It has been mentioned already, that we are barely in a position to take several tokens for the gear, thus once type of a set is chosen a hunter would be stuck with it and accordingly with a specific talent spec. Instead of increasing flexibility, this will actually limit it.
-Also, introducing a set that enhances pet stats sounds exciting at first, but when I think that many fights past Karazhan are not particularly pet-friendly (Al'ar phase 1, whirlwind on Leonar etc), I tend to see such a set type as potentially limiting hunter dps. When your pet cannot constantly be on the target, you will loose the main benefit of such a set. Also, as nothing comes for free, the +pet stats of such a set will most probably result in gimping other stats of the hunter itself.

What I would suggest instead of different armor set types is to introduce more flexibility for hunter armor via gems. Sockets are there to allow for more flexibility, so allow more of them on hunter armor and then we can customize the item via gems according to our spec.

Example: Gauntlents of the Dragonslayer, very good item in my opinion: it has all hunter base stats and can be modified by gems to fit any spec (+agi/+ap/+crit etc). The very same flexibility is missing e.g. from set gloves that have no sockets.

Also, introduce a new instance set with pet-enchancing stats and set bonus for non-raiding hunters that. The set can then be used by those who would like to increase the viability of pet as off-tank in heroic instances. I also very much liked the idea of collars for pets (this will benefit both raiding and non-raiding hunter).

4. Pet leveling
It is a pain, and I am speaking of experience of leveling a lvl23 Humar to lvl60 when I was already lvl60.
Moreover, I don't see a reason why we actually have to level our pets seperately - warlocks have their pets automatically the level they are, why not hunters as well?

Our pets are nerfed enough anyway - the size, normalization of attack speed, choice of pets with viable abilities (there is a reason why we don't see too many hunters with netherrays as pets). Why not let us have pets gaining our level automatically.

Worst Bug

-->Pathfinding (I am BM)
Pet not attacking, ceasing to attack cause the mob turned wrong way, pulling extra mobs while trying to get behind target etc - all has been mentioned already.

But tbh, I don't even see the need for pathfinding..
Yes, warriors hate our pets to attack from in front and then parry a boss, but this doesn't happen often and that is also what pet micromanagement is for.. We are able to steer our pets and the position they attack from by positioning ourselves and then sending a pet forth, knowing that it will attack from your direction.

I haven't raided past SSC and 3/4TK, but in those encounters pet micromanagement was more than sufficient...


Edit: typos

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Q u o t e:
Keep it short and detailed cause that's something the devs can use :-)

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It will be as long as needed. I'll try to more succinct than in some of my other posts, but the issues I see do need some explanation - a paragraph or two will not suffice.

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Q u o t e:


Keep it short and detailed cause that's something the devs can use :-)

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I think I speak on behalf of alot of the hunter community when I say that these changes do indeed need a thorough explanation, because whomever implemented these changes was clearly not aware of how far reaching the changes would be.
On a related note, how can we be sure they get it right the next time if they only get one or two lines?
From a problem-solving standpoint, I'd say that the more info you have at hand, the easier/quicker it would be to solve the problem at hand, am I right?

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Q u o t e:
A good old saying says 'quality over quantity', which is very true in this case. Feedback that is short, easy to read and straight to the point is preferred over large essays containing lots of filler text. Nobody says you have to restrict yourself to just one or two lines of text when writing feedback, but try not to over-do it.

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Somewhat related to all of this, how were my previous 'TBC Hunter Concerns' threads in this regard? Would posts written in a similar manner fit your criteria for good feedback?