Perhaps.
In the Blizz Developer’s Blizzchat on Twitter today, one of the questions raised was the ever so popular topic of adding more stable slots. The response was both interesting and favorable.
Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.
A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.
I like this concept. BM Hunters will be allowed to “collect” more pets (ie: Spirit Beasts), yet there will be a practical convenience limiting factor in place for all hunters. Pet happy hunters won’t be capped to how many they can acquire, with the only trade-off being that Call Stabled Pet may be limited to 3 choices, down from the 5 we have now. I’m liking this direction.
Having 3 pets to choose from on the fly is plenty, especially if this preference can easily be changed through each stable slot visit.
On to the next topic at hand…
Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast – are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?
A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.
I’m happy with this response as well. Mongoose Bite is a huge dud. Kick it to the curb and make Counterattack a baseline ability.
I have a hunch Aspect of the Beast might see some love very soon here. Buffing this talent would add a little spice to the BM spec – something that it sorely needs and deserves.
Well… what do you think? Are you excited about these changes. Being a pet happy hunter, I know I’m tickled over the possibility of more stable slots.
On a side note… anyone open up a can of whoop ass on the Blizz devs via the random BG LFG on the PTR today? They mentioned they would be queueing for a few hours.
I’d really like to see Aspect of the Beast get some love.
One of the things I noticed in one of the earlier blue posts was that the devs aren’t interested in buffing pet damage any further. If the pet dies, well, then that’s an even bigger chunk of a BM Hunter’s DPS that goes down the tubes.
I read that and thought… buh? I mean, as a BM Hunter, I think I’ve only seen my pet die against Gal’darah and Skadi when I’m a dumbass and forget to recall during their whirlwind attacks.
In a raid, where the AoE damage is mitigated by the pet’s AoE damage reduction, I can’t think of a time when I’ve seen my pet kick the bucket. Maybe way back in Naxx during the Heigan fight? But even then, if I had 2/2 Imp. Mend Pet, and the disease was getting cleansed quickly, I rarely lost my dino.
Are the devs jumping at shadows? Or am I the only one who has a durable dino while y’all are running around with paper puppies?
On another note, from the musings I’ve had…
…there’s a disproportionate number of DPS specs/classes vs. tank specs/classes. What if some talents were introduced to the BM tree to allow for effective pet-tanking? Combo Eyes of the Beast with Aspect of the Beast and a talent akin to the Druid tank’s auto-defense-cap thingie… Crazy, I know, but part of me gets a little giddy thinking of a crocolisk going toe-to-toe with a raid boss ;D
HAPPY FREAKING DAY!!!!!!
I, too, think this is the PERFECT compromise to the stable slot issue. It lets pet obsessed BM hunters like me collect all the rare-spawns we can hunt while allowing all hunters to still have a small selection of combat ready companions. PLEASE make this change a reality!
In regard to the AotB hinted change…since they indicate that it may be beneficial to BMs specifically, I think it would be a great idea to have an AP bonus multiplied by the number of rare-spawn “Beasts” that hunter has “Mastered”. Something along those lines would be appropriately powered AND flavored.
Bah, I hit enter or something to post yet I meant to add this to my previous post regarding Aspect of the Beast, would be kinda neat if we took on the form of a beast to play as for a but, think of a locks Illidan form 😀
Well I welcome this change also if it comes to pass, now on to my QQ of letting Arcturis go last week in favor of a real bear for tanking -_- Think they would restore him ? 🙁
More stable slots would make me very happy. There are some pets I let go of that I want back. Namely my scorpid and core hound. 3 active and storage sounds very good to me.
And before anyone complains if this happens. Forget about getting the gold back for the last two active slots you bought. It’s the price of playing the game within the game.