Blue Post on Pet Speed NormalizationFollow

While I'm not thrilled with the idea, I think people are more upset than they should be. While the attack speed is being normalised, the DPS will remain the same. I would like to see more pets with abilities (like giving venomous spiders a poison attack similar to scorpids once tamed). People are overlooking the special abilities many pets provide for a faster attack speed that really just benefits PvP.

I think it's a shame, personally, though I would say that as my PvP weapon of choice is Broken Tooth. As it is, the cat is merely a particularly bland model that I will soon be releasing come expansion.

I think the blue response is somewhat patronising and belittling in its tone: "You'll be able to choose a pet now based on many defining characteristics instead of just which one hits faster". Well, attack speed was a pretty interesting defining characteristic. Sure I can now have a pet with a pretty skin, but that is the only "defining characteristic" remaining in the same pet family.

Also, plenty of people didn't just choose for "hitting faster"; the slow 2.0 cats for Prowl attacks, and Ursius/Young Elwynn Bear for Kill Command in BC. Considering that all pet families *still* don't have their abilities, you'd think Blizzard would have a little more give and a little less take.

I feel now it'll be more "tame a pet for the skill it has, keep till pet with higher rank of skill shows up, abandon current pet". At least it'll solve the problem of people not having enough stable slots.

While I agree with the concept, reality isn’t the best basis for an argument. Just think how much fun, and realistic, it would be for a tin plated warrior to have to deal with a diarrhea emergency during the big instance boss battle. *grins*

From what I understand, there will be two talents under beast mastery that can speed up pet attacks. One increases the base attack speed and the other is frenzy. I think the end result is an attack speed of about 1.3 while frenzied. So there will be a way to get faster attack speeds. But I think Blizzard specifically wanted to stay away from specific beast families having faster attack speeds in hopes of encouraging hunters to tame many different types of pets.



While I too would like to see some family wide differences in attack speeds, along the lines of what you mentioned, I do like the idea that there aren’t differences within a pet family. If all cats, for example, are created equally then players will feel free to choose the cat they think looks the best instead of feeling required to tame one just for its stats. And even with the 2.0 normalization I still expect there to be camping. Some players will still want a black lion or a pink tallstrider or a red spider.

Personally I never cared about attack speeds. So this change won’t affect me at all. But I am a big advocate for choice. So it does sadden me that there will be fewer differences between pets. Hopefully Blizzard feels the same and the powers that be will add in more abilities to make up for it.

I don't like their justification.

If they were to go further down that same line, why should one beast family do more damage? You don't want people neglecting tank pets in favor of dps pets, do you?

Make all pets do tank pet dps. There, now you don't have to choose cats and bats and raptors! You can pick any pet you want! Because they're all the same...

Edited, Nov 16th 2006 at 5:18pm PST by Sayis

Spot on, same here. I have tried to capture most of the rare spawns for each family, not to use but just for the accomplishment. I usually take them to a specific spot, take a few screenshots and then release them.

Spending 2 days tracking Broken Tooth from that pillar in the badlands trully made me feel like a hunter.

I think hunters seriously lack a lot of things other classes get.
Look at warriors or warlocks for example, they have loads of class quests, especially those of the warlock are actually quite interseting and fun. All we get is a farming class quest at lv 51 and our epic quest, which I have not done yet but those who have tell me that the sense of accomplishment after killing the demons is the best.