Blizzard have revealed they are planning to redesign Hunter pets for World of Warcraft’s upcoming Battle for Azeroth expansion.
For more details on the upcoming expansion, check out everything we know about WoW: Battle for Azeroth.
Several days ago, Wowhead shared changes to WoW’s Hunter pet specialisations which had been datamined from Battle for Azeroth Alpha. These changes included “abilities related to each specialization, new specializations for certain pet families, and new utility abilities for families that were previously lacking them.”
Now, Blizzard class designer ‘Solanis’ has confirmed changes are being made to Hunter pets and revealed that Blizzard are “by no means finished” redesigning the companions. “We have reached a place where we want to share some insight into our plans and explain some of what you might see in development as Alpha continues.”
The designer went on to reveal a variety of changes being made to pets, including moving past the idea of a DPS or tank pet specialization.
“All pets will have equal damage, health, and armor. All can tank or DPS equally,” Solanis reveals. “Choosing to put a particular pet into ‘Tank spec’ feels outdated, so we’re going to shift all pets to a setup that will work as though they’re specced into both Ferocity and Tenacity (in Legion terms).”
These changes will mean that pets no longer fall into a specific category of either tank or damage – all pets will be able to do both.
“All offensive and defensive passive abilities such as Blood of the Rhino and Combat Training will be rolled into every pet by default,” Solanis adds. “Charge will be removed, and all pets will have Growl and Dash/Swoop. Some spec-specific actives will be redistributed where appropriate. We are keeping the names Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning as the broad groups that all families fall into. They are no longer changeable, and each has a new passive and active ability that are useful in almost any situation. “
Blizzard also plan to emphasise pet family uniqueness by adding a special ability to all pet families that were missing one. In addition, exotic pets will keep their unique ability as well as gain a new special ability.
Changes will also be made to Bloodlust, making it available for “a third of the tamable pet families rather than just two,” while Battle Res for pets is being completely removed.
“In a world where we are proliferating abilities to many families, our first inclination was to add Battle Res to a separate third of those families,” Solanis explained. “After seeing that landscape, it felt odd to fully embrace Resurrection as part of the Hunter kit.”
The class designer went on to give specifics of the Battle for Azeroth design for hunter pets and examples of how they will work in-game, you can read all the details here.
Solanis emphasised that all the changes are subject to change, however these are the current plans Blizzard have.