From the Official Blizzard Hunter Class Forum:
Quote from Kaivax
I just reviewed yesterday’s Q&A, and came away with a follow-up question that I then posted to the devs privately. The question submitted yesterday was “”Have you considered having a pet stampede spell where our 5 pet stable rushes our enemy for a 5min cooldown? Or is that too epic?”
The response was “yes”, but there were two questions there, and we didn’t make it clear that we were responding to the first question.
Here is a Ghostcrawler quote for you —
“One of the potential ideas we’re considering for a new hunter ability is one where they send all 5 of their current pets to attack, for a short period of time, on a long cooldown. No guarantees that we’ll go with it, but we’re at least considering something like that.” (Source)
That could be a lot of fun!
Later followed up with this…
Quote from Kaivax
It isn’t a certainty, but it is very likely that this will be implemented with 5.0. (Source)
Were this to be implemented, it sounds like it would be an amazingly fun (and powerful) ability. An Army of the Dead for hunters, but with a lot more personality. 😉
My question, obviously, is how much control we’d have over our pets during this spell, and would the additional pets be able to utilize their unique abilities or just their basic attacks…
NIce
hmmm so how long before we have a list of the 5 best pets to bring for pve/pvp
and color co-ordinated with our transmog sets 😀
My 2 cents on the official thread went like this:
Keep it simple. Make it work similar to Feral Spirit. Summon 4 pets only, you already control your current pet. Forget about using special abilities, just have the 4 Stampede pets as extra dps.
Don’t make Hunters need to fill all pet slots. Use a generic pet skin for the spell, with the option to use your own pets as optional skins, depending on how many unsummoned pet slots are fill with a pet.
Could you imagine the fun time FIVE (5) Rhinos would have?
My mind boggles!
Or imagine all the S*** flying through the air with FIVE (5) Monkeys!
Or the enemy grinding to a halt against FIVE (5) lots of Froststorm Breath from a bevvy of Chimeras!
Ahhhh what fun I could have….
I could care less about min/maxing the damage from a Stampede. I just wanna roll some face with 5 spirit beasts. That would look AWESOME!!!!
…same as army of death for DK in Arenas. It was able at beginning of WoW (WOTLK),but you cant use it now.
I dont think that it will be able for Arenas…
I don’t think it would be unprecedented for a stampede ability. Mages have Mirror Image, DKs have Army of the Dead, or can have up to 16 pets out and attacking at once, Shaman have Feral Spirit which summons two wolves at their command.
The distinction, it seems, is between Combat Pets (e.g. Hunter Pets) and Guardian Pets. Snake Trap could be considered a Guardian Pet because they are summoned by activating the trap, immediately attack enemies and disappear after a short time or are killed.
My guess is that to implement a Stampede type ability, they would have to do it as Guardian Pets that cannot be directly controlled. In this way, they may be more like mirror images of the pets in our active, current pets with limited or normalized abilities that will disappear after a limited amount of time or are killed. But like Army or the Dead and Mirror Image, it should be a boost to our DPS when calling this ability.
There was a fun quest in Wrath when doing the D.E.H.T.A. chain where you get a horn which summons a stampede of beasts to trample the target mob for 50% health. My dreams of a hunter Stampede ability began then. 🙂
So they’ve done it several times before, for other classes and quest lines… now give us our stampede (and don’t make it only for BM, please)
BM ONLY! MAKE THE FINAL TALENT OF THE TREE BECOME WHAT YOU GET FOR HITTING 10 AND HAVE STAMPEDE BECOME THE LVL 69 FINAL TALENT.
That does sound really fun!
There is one problem, though. If they do it in the obvious way, then it will be important for a dps-maximizing hunter to min-max their stable. For example, 5 wolfs might give the maximum dps from a stampede. If hunters actually started doing that, it would take away the ability to fill your stable with pets with different raid buffs.
Perhaps it could be fixed to prevent it. For example, maybe they’ll all just melee, with some fixed damage level, no matter what kind of beast they are.
The part that is “likely” to be implemented with 5.0 related to removing the daze on Aspect of the Cheetah, not stampede. The way you snipped the quotes seems to suggest that Stampede is the likely one.