Hunter pets are generally quite good, each offering unique utility applicable to both PvP and PvE. Compared to WoW Classic, they have undergone a great rework, yet I feel the job remains unfinished.
My main suggestion is simply to adjust the damage and scaling of certain abilities—specifically for the Beast Mastery specialization—so that any pet can compete at high levels in terms of DPS output.
Currently, there are two *meta* pets: the Raptor (with the "Rend" ability) and the Poison Serpent (with "Poison Spit"). These two abilities deal damage literally equivalent to 3–7 "Bites" for the same Focus cost.
To encourage the use of a wider variety of pets in raids—rather than just these two—I propose something like that, to lower the new ability damages and push the other ones :
Actual Abilities looks like this approximatively :
Bite : 35 focus; 90 dmg, 6s CD
Claw : 25 focus, 45 dmg
Rend : 35 focus, 45 dmg + 45dmg x4 (x5 if crit), 10s CD (~56 dot dmg in beast spec)
Poison spit : 35 focus, 40 dmg x4 8s CD (~110 dot dmg in beast spec)
New Abilities could be :
Bite : 20 focus; 90 dmg, 6s CD
Claw : 15 focus, 45 dmg
Rend : 35 focus, 35 dmg + 25dmg x4 (x5 if crit), 10s CD (~35 dot dmg in beast spec)
Poison spit : 35 focus, 20 dmg x4 8s CD (~50 dot dmg in beast spec)
With that kind of changes, serpents or raptors will do almost same damages as cats or wolfs or birds with claw/bite.
The main idea would be to not NERF and not UPGRADE hunters, just make all pets more *META*
I know the game is easy, we can raid with any pets and do good parses / damages, but this changes could make players that love theorycraft and meta things to use pet skins they like a little more in raids/dungeons.
Let me know what you think, what could be do, if there is a better idea etc...
Have a nice game, Love to all hunters
Thx for listening me devs if you see that.