[7.0.3] Pet Specs Tied to Hunter Instead of Pets

[Kaeth]

Shamelessly copying my post from the official forums for those of you who aren't already aware of the lovely change Blizzard made to our pet specializations:

In case some hunter players are still not aware, as of 7.0.3 your pets all share the same specialization (Tenacity, Ferocity, or Cunning) at any given time; you can no longer assign specific specializations to individual pets. If you want a tank pet for solo content, you have to get out of combat and respec your pet. Going into a dungeon? Respec your pet again.

For me, this really destroys the illusion (and thus, immersion in the game world) that my pets are anything but interchangeable DoTs with legs that happen to have names and unique skins. I've gone from collecting various unique beasts and camping elusive rare spawns for weeks on end to running around with just two pets: a core hound for Ancient Hysteria and a spirit beast for Spirit Mend.

I used to keep a tenacity turtle for emergencies, a cunning spider for spontaneous world PvP ... but that's over. These pets lost their identities and their role in the game the moment their spec(s) became attached to me, the hunter, rather than to the pets themselves. There's no point to having a "tank pet" when it's no more able to do its job -- without a ten-second out-of-combat channel -- than whatever pet I'm already running with. World PvP? Excuse me for a moment while I respec this spider that I summoned. What? You're attacking me already? No, stop, I need to be out of combat to respec my pet!

I'm still optimistic that this is a bug, and that it will be fixed in the coming weeks. I'm enjoying the crap out of 7.0.3 so far on my druid, and this pet spec problem is the only thing preventing full enjoyment of my hunter. But if it was an intended change, a) I implore you to reconsider, and, if not, then b) at least just let the hunter community and myself know so that I may either move on or suck it up and try to find a way to enjoy playing my hunter despite this great step backward in pet diversity.

[3clipse]

Devs don't really read over here. You could try tweeting at them?

Also, I know for a fact that they read the WoW subreddit, try posting on there.

[Kaeth]

I didn't suspect that the devs read this forum. I was reposting something from the official forums for the sake of anyone who didn't already know how our pets had been screwed up in this patch.

It's probably intended, though. I'll accept that. And, as I said in my post, I'll just run with the same 2 or 3 generic pets when I play my hunter.

Hey, does this change mean that now I can say when I'm questing that I'm a Tenacity Beast Mastery Hunter? Because it's my spec, not the pet's ... so hunters can have nine talent specializations, everyone!

[Fang7986]

I am really hoping this is a bug. I have 3 hunters. I first heard about this on my main hunter and I tried to replicate it and I could not as my pets seemed to be keeping their set spec ( i could have a tenacity pet out, dismiss it and summon another and it would be ferocity spec'd) But on my other 2 hunter pet's were following the behavior OP mentions, whatever pet I summoned it came out with the spec of the pet I had just dismissed. Then last night the pets on my main hunter which hadn't been switching spec's started to so now I am completely confused. Especially since I had not noticed this happening in the Beta a couple weeks ago.

[Glowbear]

Any word yet on whether or not this is being looked at?

This is an awful, awful change and I really hope it is fixed, whether or not it's a bug. I can't believe more noise isn't being made about it.

I'm worried that it's a consequence of the removal of character dual spec, as the pet spec system seems to be more or less the same. If that's the case, it may be that it's not actually intended but it's something they either overlooked or couldn't be bothered to fix. For the moment I'm using macros to work around it (one which toggles between Ferocity and Tenacity for my current pet, another which summons specific pets and instantly sets their specs), but this is obviously an inadequate solution, as we still need to be out of combat to respec (not to mention wait for the cast bar). So no more pulling out a tanking pet to save the day in a dungeon. I'm really worried that this represents a move towards pet diversity being nothing more than a series of interchangeable skins

[Tokee]

I made a tweet to them about it twitter dot com/Anockalypse/status/758680698051977216

[Glowbear]

Still nothing on this issue from the developers.

I'd really like some sort of acknowledgement of this problem. Even if they were to say - nope, sorry, working as intended - would be better than just silence.

[FertsBlert]

Yup different pets are basically cosmetic now unless you are BM, they all have the same moveset based on which spec they are in and you change the spec of your current pet to match whichever role you want it doing. So they may as well remove the extra slots for all hunters except BM hunters and call it a day. That'll be great for the leveling hunters who will have nothing to learn at all after their mid 50's except mastery at 78..... though 2 pet slots are hardly exciting in any case.

I'm really hoping it's a bug that has snuck in there were some issues with pet specs for me on the beta but it was more that pets wouldn't retain their set spec and would always revert to their tamed spec on dismiss\resummon. Reported it of course.

There are a lot of issues with pets for all pet classes atm, AI is broke, avoidance seems to be broke for SOME area attacks mostly physical cleaves from what I've seen, this issue, pathing on dropping down is back to the bad old days where you'd pull entire instances, pets are squishy as hell even when specc'd as Tenacity or a tank pet, overall pets are just plain shit.

[Kaeth]

Hotfixed this morning according to the change list. Pets have their own specs again!

[Edit: Either requires a server restart, or the change didn't work. Pets still sharing one spec. Will check again after maintenance.]

[Glowbear]

Thank goodness for that! Here's hoping it works after maintenance.

This was one of my biggest misgivings about Hunter in 7.0 so very happy!

[Kaeth]

Confirmed fixed. Hunter pets now maintain the spec you assign to them. It's not a global value. I'm doing a happy dance right now.