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Hunter Problems, Pet Scaling and Proposed Changes

By Skurridizo

Hello! I'm Skurridizo. Some of you may already know me from the Hunter guides I have made for Turtle WoW. This will be a long message explaining all my decisions deeply, if you want a short version just scroll down to the next message in which I made a short resume.

Having raided weekly with up to four different Hunters, covering all the possible Hunter playstyles, I have gained a considerable amount of experience and a broad perspective of the class. This includes both progression content and speedrunning, which I believe gives me a good position to evaluate the current state of the Hunter.

The purpose of this post is not to complain or simply ask for buffs.

My goal is to highlight things that currently do not work particularly well and propose some quality-of-life improvements. The final decision regarding buffs or nerfs should always belong to the developers and should not be influenced by community pressure.

There are going to be many different proposed changes in this post, each accompanied by possible solutions. I am certainly not suggesting that everything should suddenly be implemented overnight. However, I would like the development team to be aware of the different issues that exist, the possible improvements that could be made, and the general direction I believe the class could take.

I am also aware that many people play Hunter and that many unrealistic or absurd suggestions have been made over the years. I will try to be much more conservative with my proposals and focus on changes that I believe could realistically be implemented.

This will be a long post, so let's get started.

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1. Coin Shop and Hunter Quality of Life

Ammunition and Repair Bots

There is currently a Repair Bot available for 200 Coins that sells reagents for every class, but it does not sell arrows. Meanwhile, Hunters have a separate reagent vendor that only sells arrows and cannot repair equipment, despite costing the same 200 Coins.

There is no clear reason for this separation.

Proposed change:

Either the Repair Bot should also sell arrows, or the Hunter ammunition vendor should also be able to repair equipment.

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Hunter-specific Coin Shop Gameplay Advantages

There are currently several Coin Shop purchases that directly affect Hunter gameplay.

Excluding Druid skins, Hunter is essentially the only class with multiple class-specific Coin Shop purchases that can directly affect raid performance:

• The ammunition vendor.
• The portable stable, Caretaker Brambleclaw, for 200 Coins.
• Glyph of the Beastkeeper, which increases stable capacity from 4 to 5 pets for 300 Coins.

I have always felt that Hunters should naturally have access to more stable slots.

Imagine if Paladins could only store three equipment sets in their bank, plus the one they were currently wearing, for a total of four sets. Then imagine that the only way to gain one additional slot was by spending 300 Coins.

Different situations require different pets. There is no single pet that is best for every situation, and there is certainly no single pet that is optimal for an entire raid.

I understand that the server needs monetisation, and I understand why Turtle WoW chose to monetise this feature. However, increasing stable capacity was something Blizzard eventually implemented because it became necessary for Hunters to properly manage the class at maximum performance.

It does not make much sense to allow Hunters to change their talents while preventing them from changing the pet required for the new build. This becomes increasingly restrictive during late-game content.

Proposed change:

Add a portable stable item that can be obtained through a trainer with a 10-minute cooldown, similar to the Goblin Brainwasher Device.

The Coin Shop version could continue functioning as it currently does, but the 1-minute debuff after changing pets should be removed. Instead, the item should simply be unusable while in combat.

This would prevent the well-known Gorilla exploit.

Alternatively, removing Thunderstomp from Gorillas would also eliminate the possibility of exploiting pet swapping in combat.

In addition, Hunter stable capacity should naturally receive at least +1 additional slot, while Glyph of the Beastkeeper should provide something more significant, perhaps +3 additional slots.

This would increase the current capacity of four pets to a possible total of eight, although I personally believe even more slots would still be useful.

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2. Hunter Scaling and Late-Game Problems

Scaling must not break low-level Hunter

Before discussing scaling, it is important to remember something: Hunter is one of the strongest classes while leveling and in the 10–19, 20–29 and 30–39 battleground brackets.

Any change made to Hunter scaling must therefore be carefully designed to avoid accidentally breaking the class at lower levels.

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Ranged Weapon Scaling

Hunter has some of the best DPS during the early stages of the game, including early raid content.

Because of pets, the way ranged weapons work, and the modifications made to the Survival tree, Hunters can achieve high base damage with relatively little equipment.

However, as other classes obtain better gear, Hunter scaling begins to fall behind unless the player is using Survival and taking advantage of additional consumables, buffs and melee weapon scaling.

Hunter abilities scale with the base damage of the weapon, which is why slow weapons with high damage are generally preferred.

This also synergises with ammunition. Because arrows add DPS rather than a fixed amount of damage, slower weapons gain more actual damage from the same ammunition.

For example, one of the strongest bows available in Turtle WoW, Rain of Spiders from Mephistroth in Kara40, has 144–255 damage with a speed of 3.10, resulting in 64.4 DPS.

Meanwhile, Might of Menethil, generally considered one of the strongest two-handed weapons from Naxxramas, has 289–435 damage with a speed of 3.80, resulting in 95.3 DPS.

Even the best ammunition currently available, Doomshot arrows from LBRS, only adds +20 DPS. With a 3.10-speed weapon, this translates into approximately +62 damage to both the minimum and maximum weapon damage.

Even after adding this ammunition, the bow still falls significantly behind Might of Menethil.

In general, from the Blackwing Lair crossbow Ashjre'thul, Crossbow of Smiting onwards, ranged weapons begin to lose power compared to melee weapons.

Proposed change:

Rebalance the damage values of all ranged weapons from AQ40 onwards.

The weapons could maintain approximately the same DPS while becoming 0.1 seconds slower, increasing their base damage.

In addition, stronger ammunition should be introduced beyond the current LBRS Doomshot arrows.

These arrows could be crafted through the Survival profession using a recipe obtained from raid content.

Different ammunition types could also exist, such as:

• Arrows with additional damage against Undead.
• Arrows with additional damage against Demons.

This would improve ranged Hunter performance in PvE without unnecessarily increasing Hunter power in PvP.

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Melee Attack Power Buffs vs Ranged Attack Power

Many raid buffs and consumables affect Melee Attack Power but not Ranged Attack Power.

Examples include:

• Blessing of Might.
• Winterfall Firewater.
• Strength-based buffs and consumables.

At the same time, Trueshot Aura increases melee attack power for other classes.

On top of this, Windfury Totem cannot be used with a bow.

As long as this remains the case, ranged Hunter builds will naturally benefit from fewer raid buffs and consumables than melee-oriented builds.

This is one of the reasons why Survival remains the dominant late-game Hunter specialization.

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3. Pet Problems and Pet Diversity

The next major issue is related to Hunter pets.

I will try to summarise this section because the subject is quite extensive, and I imagine that many players are not fully aware of the current situation.

In Classic, pets have always had modifiers affecting their attack, health and armour.

Among these, the attack modifier is generally the most important because it directly affects the physical attacks made by the pet.

These modifiers range from approximately -10% to +10%.

In Vanilla, Cats were generally the obvious choice because they had a +10% damage modifier and more useful abilities than the other pet family with a similar modifier, Raptors.

Other niche pets, such as Owls or Wind Serpents, were sometimes used because of their +7% damage modifier combined with their specific abilities.

In Classic Vanilla, most pets learned Bite, while only a few could learn Claw. Because Claw was more exclusive, it was generally the stronger ability.

Turtle WoW introduced many changes to the pet system.

Among them:

• Bite is now generally stronger than Claw.
• Claw has become almost obsolete.
• The Cobra/Serpent was introduced with a +13.5% attack modifier.
• Every pet family received a characteristic ability.

The intention was clearly to create more variety.

However, in terms of DPS, there are currently only three pet families that can realistically be considered:

• Raptor, because it has an armour-ignoring bleed that scales with 15% of Attack Power.
• Scorpion, because its poison is the strongest DPS ability during long fights when playing Beast Mastery.
• Wind Serpent, for enemies immune to poison and/or bleed effects.

Many creative and useful abilities have been added to other pet families, but because their modifiers are poor or the pet contributes very little DPS, they are rarely used.

It is unfortunate that so much potentially interesting content remains unused.

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Special Pet Families

Proposed change:

Create special pet families capable of learning multiple characteristic abilities from other families.

Alternatively, one family could be capable of learning every ability.

The following examples reuse the Cobra's total modifier distribution as a reference point.

Chimera

• Health: +5.5%
• Damage: +10%
• Armour: +5%

Hydra

• Health: +9.5%
• Damage: +10%
• Armour: +0%

Worm

• Health: +13.5%
• Damage: +0%
• Armour: +6%

Silithid

• Health: +6%
• Damage: +13.5%
• Armour: +0%

Currently, the natural maximum number of trainable pet abilities is four.

This is not because pets cannot theoretically learn more abilities, but because four is currently the natural limitation of the pet system.

The idea would therefore be to provide each special family with a larger pool of possible abilities while allowing the player to choose which four abilities to use.

Generic abilities

All of these pets would be able to learn:

• Bite.
• Claw.
• Cower.
• Dash.

Chimera

No restrictions. It could learn every available characteristic pet ability.

The idea would be to create a fully flexible pet capable of experimenting with unusual combinations.

Hydra

• Strider Presence.
• Furious Howl.
• Pollen Burst.
• Death Roll.
• Web.
• Savage Rend.
• Lightning Breath.
• Roar of Fortitude.
• Poison Spit.

Worm

• Scorpid Poison.
• Thunderstomp.
• Bubble Barrier.
• Grace.
• Shell Shield.
• Screech.
• Roar of Fortitude.
• Pollen Burst.
• Charge.

Silithid

• Poison Spit.
• Scorpid Poison.
• Lightning Breath.
• Savage Rend.
• Packleader.
• Charge.
• Prowl.

This would create four new pets with four different identities while combining the best aspects of the current system.

These pets could be obtained through a level 60 quest that requires significant Hunter progression.

For example, the requirement could involve learning every pet ability at maximum rank, or even collecting every available rank of pet abilities.

This would also partially solve the Hunter stable slot problem while allowing every player to build their own pet strategy.

Players could choose between builds focused on utility, survivability, crowd control or pure DPS.

The intended identities would be:

• Chimera: Complete flexibility and experimentation.
• Hydra: Crowd control and PvP.
• Worm: Tanking and auras.
• Silithid: Pure DPS.

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Pet Abilities That Need a Rework or Buff

Grace currently provides +30% dodge for 12 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown.

The ability is extremely difficult to justify without another mechanic that supports it.

Bubble Barrier absorbs 335 damage. When the barrier breaks or expires, it deals 72–85 Frost damage to enemies within 10 yards.

Its scaling is currently extremely poor.

Shell Shield reduces all damage taken by the pet by 50%, but increases the time between pet attacks by 35%. It lasts 12 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

In Classic, pet threat is generated primarily by attacking. Reducing attack speed therefore works against the idea of using the pet as a tank.

I have also previously proposed several changes for abilities that are currently too weak or have almost no practical use.

Proposed changes:

• Make Claw hit up to 3 targets.
• Change Claw's Attack Power scaling from 1 damage per 42 AP to 1 damage per 35 AP.
• Reduce Thunderstomp's cooldown from 40 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Increase Thunderstomp's Spell Power scaling from 0.21 to 0.3.
• Reduce Roar of Fortitude's cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.
• Reduce Screech's cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

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Dismiss Pet and Happiness

Another change introduced in Turtle WoW is that casting Dismiss Pet causes the pet to lose 51 happiness.

This can be verified through the Combat Log.

The change was apparently introduced for roleplaying purposes, but it does not make much sense to penalise the player for casting a five-second spell when the player can simply send the pet more than 100 yards away and allow it to disappear due to distance without losing any happiness.

This is an unnecessary penalty that can be bypassed by simply using another method.

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4. Beast Mastery

Once the intrinsic problems of pets have been discussed, the natural next step is to move to the Beast Mastery talent tree.

Perhaps in the future, additional changes could allow a Beast Mastery off-tank playstyle focused on increasing pet threat and resistance while using Aspect of the Beast.

At the moment, Aspect of the Beast is extremely situational. Its primary effect is preventing other Hunters from detecting you while tracking humanoids.

For now, however, I will leave the off-tank concept aside and focus on the talents that currently feel weak or lack a meaningful purpose.

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Improved Eyes of the Beast, Improved Revive Pet and Improved Mend Pet

There is a group of three talents that could have much better synergy with each other but are currently extremely situational:

• Improved Eyes of the Beast.
• Improved Revive Pet.
• Improved Mend Pet.

Improved Eyes of the Beast currently has two main uses: certain Hunter farming strategies and clipping the fifth stack of Scorpid poison.

The problem is that using the ability requires a two-second cast, making it uncomfortable to use.

Improved Revive Pet has another problem: reviving the pet does not restore its happiness.

Because of this, the talent is rarely useful, even for Beast Mastery players while leveling.

In most situations, preventing the pet from dying is more valuable than investing points into improving its resurrection.

Mend Pet has several issues.

It costs 480 mana, channels for up to five seconds, heals up to 1225 health and only has a range of 25 yards.

In many situations, particularly when playing at range, the pet will be more than 30 yards away.

Casting Mend Pet therefore results in a significant DPS loss for a relatively small heal with a very high mana cost.

Proposed changes:

• Improved Eyes of the Beast: Also increases the attack range of the pet by +1 yard per point, up to a maximum of 2 yards.
• Improved Revive Pet: Increases the range of Mend Pet by +10 yards per point. This should not stack with other similar range increases, such as the Tier 1 bonus.
• Improved Mend Pet: While channeling Mend Pet, activates the +15% / +30% damage effect from Improved Eyes of the Beast.

This would solve Mend Pet's range problem, give Eyes of the Beast a meaningful combat purpose, make healing the pet feel less like wasted time and make clipping the fifth stack of Scorpid poison easier.

[hr]

Bestial Discipline

Bestial Discipline is currently a very weak talent.

In later expansions, the talent provided +100% energy regeneration, increasing pet energy regeneration from +25 every four seconds to +50 every four seconds. Other mechanics also allowed pets to gain energy when landing critical strikes.

In the current version, Bestial Discipline only provides 2/5 additional energy.

It also reduces the cooldown of the pet's characteristic ability by 10/20%, which is usually irrelevant and can even be detrimental in some cases, such as the Cobra.

With the exception of Bears and Wolves, the cooldown reduction has very little practical impact.

Many pets, however, would benefit significantly from being able to spend energy more aggressively.

Proposed change:

Increase the energy regeneration bonus to:

• +5 energy at rank 1.
• +10 energy at rank 2.

This might still be insufficient to create a dramatic change, but it would help pets that use Claw.

Currently, even with full Kara40 Best-in-Slot gear, Claw can deal approximately 75 damage to a single target.

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Frenzy

In the past, I also proposed several smaller changes to other talents, such as reducing the number of points required or moving the movement speed talent to a different tier.

However, the final significant change I would like to discuss is Frenzy.

Frenzy is currently a talent where five points are almost never invested.

It is generally used as filler, and the fourth and fifth points provide increasingly poor value.

Most players would normally use Frenzy at 2/5 or 3/5.

The talent currently provides a 20/40/60/80/100% chance for the pet to gain 30% attack speed for 8 seconds after landing a critical strike.

Proposed change:

Convert Frenzy into a 3-point talent.

The effect would activate with a 100% chance whenever the pet lands a critical strike, while the duration would become:

• 3 seconds at rank 1.
• 5 seconds at rank 2.
• 7 seconds at rank 3.

Assuming a pet with a standard 2.0 attack speed, the 30% attack speed bonus would reduce the attack speed to approximately 1.51 seconds.

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Late-Game Pet Scaling

Another problem with Beast Mastery is late-game scaling.

Pets have very strong base statistics, but these become increasingly less valuable as the game progresses.

This happens because the primary way for pets to scale is through Spirit Bond.

In later expansions, this type of pet scaling became a baseline mechanic for all Hunters regardless of specialization.

In Classic, Spirit Bond provides 2% maximum health regeneration every five seconds to both the Hunter and the pet.

In Turtle WoW, it additionally provides pet scaling:

• The pet gains 25% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power as Melee Attack Power.
• The pet gains 15% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power as Spell Power.

This may sound strong, but the problem becomes more noticeable in late-game gear.

Many items require the player to sacrifice a small amount of Attack Power in exchange for +1% Critical Strike, +1% Hit, +1% Haste or similar statistics.

Those statistics increase the Hunter's damage but do not increase the pet's damage.

Since there is no dedicated pet-scaling equipment set, the most logical solution would be to add additional scaling through another talent, a tier bonus, a Hunter-specific trinket or another similar source.

Possible pet scaling additions:

• The pet gains 25% of the Hunter's Critical Strike chance.
• The pet gains Attack Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
• The pet gains Spell Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
• The pet copies the Hunter's consumable buffs.

For reference, my Beast Mastery Hunter with raid consumables in Kara40 reached approximately 42% Critical Strike chance and 239 Intelligence.

That can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/YlLu0SJY_0U?t=4546

With the proposed scaling above, this would translate into approximately:

• +11% Critical Strike chance for the pet.
• Approximately +62 Attack Power.
• Approximately +62 Spell Power.

This may appear to be a significant increase in Critical Strike chance.

However, considering that the pet's critical strike chance against raid bosses is approximately 17%, this would not be particularly game-breaking at such a late stage of progression.

If this additional scaling were combined with the proposed Claw changes, including the possibility of hitting up to three targets, Beast Mastery Hunter could go from having almost no AoE to having reasonably useful AoE.

It would still remain significantly behind the other Hunter specializations in that area, but at least it would move from having almost nothing to having something.

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5. Marksmanship

Marksmanship Hunter is currently in a good position.

However, it still suffers from the problems associated with depending on ranged weapons and missing certain buffs and consumables available to melee-oriented builds.

Another current issue is that the Experimental Ammunition rotation depends on using an Arcane damage ability, a Fire damage ability and a Poison damage ability in order to remain effective.

I do not know whether this ability was intentionally designed around enemies being immune to certain damage types or whether the resulting inconsistency was unintentional.

Proposed change:

Add +1 Physical damage to the relevant abilities.

This would ensure that, when the attack successfully hits, Experimental Ammunition can apply its effect without forcing the player to skip parts of the rotation because the target is immune to a specific school of damage.

Apart from this issue, Marksmanship is still a relatively new specialization.

For now, I would not propose additional changes until we see how the specialization develops in the future.

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6. Survival

Survival is currently a talent tree that does not create much synergy as a secondary specialization with either Beast Mastery or Marksmanship.

Proposed change:

Survivalist, which currently increases maximum health by up to 10%, should also inherit the additional effect currently found in Lightning Reflexes.

The effect would be:

+100% of the Hunter's Agility converted into Melee Attack Power.

Lightning Reflexes would then lose this effect.

This change would not affect the performance of a full Survival Hunter.

However, it would allow more unusual hybrid builds.

For example, a Beast Mastery Hunter using Nightfall as a support build could sacrifice additional trap damage in exchange for a stronger pet.

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7. Proposed Talent Builds

Below are the Beast Mastery talent changes I previously proposed, shown with all talent points invested:

https://www.talent-builder.dev/calculat ... KoACQYBA--

And below are the proposed Survival talent changes, also shown with all talent points invested:

https://www.talent-builder.dev/calculat ... NAKBSAIo--

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Conclusion

These proposals are not intended to be implemented all at once or without testing.

The main purpose of this post is to identify the areas where Hunter mechanics, pet scaling, talent synergy and late-game progression could be improved.

Hopefully, this can help create a discussion focused on realistic changes and the long-term direction of the class.

TL;DR – Short Version

For those who do not want to read the full post, here is a simplified list of the main issues and proposed changes.

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Coin Shop & Quality of Life

• Allow the Repair Bot to sell ammunition, or allow the Hunter ammunition vendor to repair equipment.
• Add a trainer-accessible portable stable with a 10-minute cooldown.
• Keep the Coin Shop portable stable without the 1-minute pet swap debuff.
• Prevent portable stable usage while in combat.
• Alternatively, remove Gorilla Thunderstomp to eliminate combat pet swapping exploits.
• Naturally increase Hunter stable capacity by at least +1 slot.
• Increase the value of Glyph of the Beastkeeper, potentially providing +3 additional stable slots.

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Ranged Weapon Scaling

• Rebalance ranged weapons from AQ40 onwards.
• Keep similar DPS while making the weapons slightly slower to increase their base damage.
• Introduce ammunition stronger than LBRS Doomshot.
• Make high-end ammunition obtainable through the Survival profession.
• Add specialised PvE ammunition, such as extra damage against Undead or Demons.
• Improve the interaction between ranged Hunters and raid buffs/consumables.

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Pet System & Pet Diversity

• Create special end-game pet families with broader ability pools.
• Allow each special pet to choose up to four abilities from its available pool.
• Add four different pet identities:

Chimera

• Flexible pet with access to every characteristic pet ability.
• Health: +5.5%
• Damage: +10%
• Armour: +5%

Hydra

• Focused on crowd control and PvP.
• Health: +9.5%
• Damage: +10%
• Armour: +0%

Worm

• Focused on tanking and utility.
• Health: +13.5%
• Damage: +0%
• Armour: +6%

Silithid

• Focused on pure DPS.
• Health: +6%
• Damage: +13.5%
• Armour: +0%

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Pet Ability Changes

• Rework or buff Grace.
• Improve Bubble Barrier scaling.
• Rework Shell Shield's attack speed penalty.
• Make Claw hit up to 3 targets.
• Change Claw scaling from 1 damage per 42 AP to 1 damage per 35 AP.
• Reduce Gorilla Thunderstomp cooldown from 40 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Increase Thunderstomp Spell Power scaling from 0.21 to 0.3.
• Reduce Roar of Fortitude cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.
• Reduce Screech cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Remove the happiness penalty caused by Dismiss Pet.

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Beast Mastery

Potential future direction

• Explore a Beast Mastery off-tank playstyle focused on pet threat and survivability.

Improved Eyes of the Beast / Improved Revive Pet / Improved Mend Pet

• Improved Eyes of the Beast: +1 yard pet attack range per point.
• Improved Revive Pet: +10 yards Mend Pet range per point.
• Improved Mend Pet: Activate the Improved Eyes of the Beast damage bonus while channeling Mend Pet.

Bestial Discipline

• Increase pet energy regeneration from +2/+5 to +5/+10.

Frenzy

• Convert Frenzy into a 3-point talent.
• 100% activation chance when the pet critically strikes.
• Duration: 3/5/7 seconds.

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Pet Late-Game Scaling

• Allow pets to inherit 25% of the Hunter's Critical Strike chance.
• Allow pets to gain Attack Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
• Allow pets to gain Spell Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
• Consider allowing pets to inherit Hunter consumable buffs.
• Allow additional pet scaling through talents, tier bonuses or Hunter-specific trinkets.

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Marksmanship

• Ensure Experimental Ammunition can function against targets immune to specific magical damage schools.
• Add +1 Physical damage to the relevant abilities so the effect can still trigger on a successful hit.

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Survival

• Move the +100% Agility-to-Melee Attack Power effect from Lightning Reflexes to Survivalist.
• Allow Lightning Reflexes to lose that effect.
• Create more synergy between Survival and Beast Mastery/Marksmanship hybrid builds.
• Allow more unusual builds, such as Beast Mastery support builds.

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In Short


Better ranged scaling.
More pet diversity.
More viable pet abilities.
Better Beast Mastery talent synergy.
Improved late-game pet scaling.
More hybrid build possibilities.
Hunter quality-of-life improvements.


The full post below explains each issue and proposal in detail.

I am completely against the suggested idea of "special" families that can learn several if not all pet abilities. Doing this would kill every other family instantly. The whole point of the pet rework in TWoW was to increase pet variety and diversity. While there's still much more work to be done on that front, it was a good start. Families need to be balanced so they have niches or become more competitive for PvE DPS. This balancing can be done through their modifiers, their family ability, talents, etc. The hyena is a good example of a family with a potentially cool ability but no niche. It'd require tweaking for it to become competitive DPS-wise, for instance, but it's totally possible. I've provided some feedback on that front here: https://octowow.st/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1900

That said, I do agree with introducing new families, as outlined in this other post: https://octowow.st/forum/viewtopic.php?t=282. Of course, more stable slots are crucial but through in-game gold like bank tabs, not IRL money. Stable slots should be accessible to all.

I also agree with improving pet scaling. Ferocity could become a 3-point talent that gives 4-6-8 crit % to the pet and then transfers 10/20/30% of the hunter's melee or ranged crit (whichever is higher) to the pet. Numbers are just an example, they can be toned up or down as needed. I also agree with using intellect as a source of damage for our pets. While the post suggests a conversion of 25%, even a 100% int to AP and 50% int to SP conversion would be fine. Alternatively, 1 intellect = 1 RAP for all hunter specs is also a possibility.

Blessing of Might could also buff RAP and/or Trueshot Aura could go back to giving 55 AP + 5% (this is basically 55 + 50 AP per 1000 points of AP). The 30 + 3% that exists right now is quite lackluster.

The BM talent tree is also bloated: too many talents require 5 points and the second-to-last row has a whopping maximum of 9 with Frenzy never being filled out, as the post suggests. I agree with buffing Bestial discipline, some ideas: let it affect all pet abilities (also fix the cobra interaction by allowing more than 1 spit on the same target or reducing the duration of the spit to 6 seconds while keeping the same overall damage), buff it to 30%, let it regen 5/10 focus and/or give the pet 5/10 focus when the hunter critically hits as an additional effect.

Ranged weapons being weaker than melee weapons is something that was fixed in TBC when they increased the damage of all of them. This might be too strong here but worth considering regardless.

While it can create some curious situations with the scorpid, Improved Eyes of the Beast should simply go (and make EotB last 2 minutes by default). Eyes of the Beast should not be required for a build to function and its place can be taken by a worthwhile BM-centric talent.

Hunters also need additional ways to heal their pets but this is mostly an issue in raids. Healers often ignore pets and won't heal or dispel them because they don't put them in their frames/dispelling addon. While this is a skill issue on the part of the healer, it's a very frustrating situation for BM, the spec whose pets are essentially another player. Therefore, some way of healing pets in these cases would be ideal, be it through vampirism, making Mend Pet a long range HoT like TBC, having any healing taken by the hunter to be taken by the pet, etc. Properly tuning Avoidance so it works on AoE DoTs would also help here. In the current phase, it's mostly Magmadar that poses a threat with his fire DoTs (and Golemagg if a dog decides to go ham on your pet) but having avoidance work on the lava bombs would mostly solve the problem. But in other cases such as Lucifron's curse, your pet will be stuck with it unless dispellers are aware.

Growl's aggro generation should scale with the pet's MAP so that BM pets can actually keep threat against their hunter. Kill Command could also do with a 50% threat reduction considering its explosive damage when it crits under raid buffs.

Finally, let arrows stack to 400. We consume them at much faster rates compared to Vanilla and this change would simply make us restock less often but at the same price. Our best quiver only has a capacity of 18-slots and the best ammo pouch 16. Also consider giving us more 15% attack speed ammo pouches.

Lane157 wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2026 10:24 am I am completely against the suggested idea of "special" families that can learn several if not all pet abilities. Doing this would kill every other family instantly.

I understand most of the people will disagree about 4 new pet families able to learn a lot of abilities, but the only way to include some creative builds is just that, allowing some pets to learn multiple skills and see some nice combos. For example all pets with defensive abilities are useless if they only have that ability, but if they could learn 3 defensive ones and a buffing ability it would be very different. I dont mind if its the Hyena the one able to learn 5 new skills or the Gorilla, but the idea is clear that we might combine those skills with some special pets. I thought the best way to do it is to have 4 special pets, you will only see 4 different pet skins but each one will be trained differently, not like it happens nowadays... all raptors are a copy of each other.

Lane157 wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2026 10:24 am Hunters also need additional ways to heal their pets but this is mostly an issue in raids. Healers often ignore pets and won't heal or dispel them because they don't put them in their frames/dispelling addon. While this is a skill issue on the part of the healer, it's a very frustrating situation for BM, the spec whose pets are essentially another player. Therefore, some way of healing pets in these cases would be ideal, be it through vampirism, making Mend Pet a long range HoT like TBC, having any healing taken by the hunter to be taken by the pet, etc. Properly tuning Avoidance so it works on AoE DoTs would also help here. In the current phase, it's mostly Magmadar that poses a threat with his fire DoTs (and Golemagg if a dog decides to go ham on your pet) but having avoidance work on the lava bombs would mostly solve the problem. But in other cases such as Lucifron's curse, your pet will be stuck with it unless dispellers are aware.

If Mend Pet becomes a HoT, all hunter's farms are gone unless there is a way to cancel the HoT and stop generating agro. Maybe a second healing ability instead? But its true pets need to increase their way to survive, that is why I included a new talent providing the pet +2% lifesteal and a better mend pet.