I’ve been spending quite some time testing Hunter pets during the WoW: Forever beta, and wanted to consolidate several observations and issues into a single thread.
Some of these have already been reported by other players, while others are based on my own experiences. Rather than creating separate threads for every issue, I thought it might be useful to bring them together, especially since several of these mechanics appear to influence each other.
First of all, I really appreciate that WoW: Forever is retaining the Classic pet system, including different pet families, attack speeds, loyalty and trainable abilities. These are some of the things that make playing a Hunter particularly enjoyable.
My intention isn’t to make all pets identical, but rather to ensure that the existing variety remains meaningful and balanced.
1. Greater Stamina and Natural Armor appear to be broken
Training Greater Stamina or Natural Armor through Beast Training doesn’t seem to increase the pet’s actual stats.
-
Greater Stamina doesn’t appear to increase maximum health.
-
Natural Armor doesn’t appear to increase the armor value displayed in the pet’s character tab.
I’ve also seen reports about trained ranks not updating correctly in the pet spellbook.
This needs verification to determine whether it’s purely a display issue or whether the actual stat bonuses aren’t being applied at all.
2. Continuous focus regeneration creates an imbalance between Bite and Claw
In Classic (Era), pet Focus regenerated in periodic ticks. In Forever, Focus appears to regenerate continuously, much like Rogue Energy.
While this may seem like a small mechanical change, it has a significant impact on pet abilities.
Bite-only pets:
-
Bite has a 10-second cooldown.
-
Pets that rely primarily on Bite frequently sit at or near maximum Focus.
-
Even though Focus is available, they cannot spend it on additional damaging abilities.
-
As a result, a substantial amount of Focus regeneration is effectively wasted.
I’ve tested the above with a wolf on Era and Forever Beta, both talented in 2/2 Bestial Discipline; the wolf in Era almost never sits at max focus in combat combining bite and growl, while the wolf in Forever Beta is constantly focus capped.
Claw pets:
-
Claw has no cooldown.
-
With continuous Focus regeneration, pets can use Claw very frequently.
-
These pets can convert additional Focus directly into additional damage.
This especially affects the talent Bestial Discipline.
The talent now provides additional pet Focus regeneration alongside the Hunter’s own mana regeneration benefits. While the mana regeneration is useful regardless of pet choice, the additional Focus regeneration benefits Claw pets much more than pets that only have Bite as a regular damaging ability.
This potentially makes the talent considerably less effective for certain pet families, despite Hunters wanting to invest in it for the mana regeneration.
I don’t necessarily think continuous Focus regeneration needs to be removed. However, the interaction between Focus regeneration, Bite’s cooldown, Claw’s lack of a cooldown, and Bestial Discipline deserves another balance pass.
3. Attack speed normalization within pet families
Another issue, already discussed extensively on the forums, is the apparent lack of appropriate damage normalization between different attack speeds within the same pet family.
For example:
-
A Cat with 1.2 attack speed currently deals more DPS than a Cat with 2.0 attack speed.
-
A Bear with 2.0 attack speed appears to outperform a Bear with 2.5 attack speed.
Other players have also demonstrated substantial DPS differences between Wolves with different attack speeds, despite having identical base stats and abilities.
In Classic Era, different attack speeds were balanced through differences in damage per hit, so a faster pet did not automatically gain a large sustained auto-attack DPS advantage over a slower pet of the same family.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that all pets should have their attack speeds normalized to 2.0.
I actually enjoy different attack speeds and think they’re an important part of Hunter pet variety. A faster pet should attack more frequently for less damage per hit, while a slower pet should attack less frequently but hit harder.
The objective should be comparable baseline DPS within the same pet family, rather than making individual pets significantly stronger purely because of their attack speed.
That would allow Hunters to choose pets based on appearance, preference and playstyle without being penalized heavily for choosing a slower pet.
4. Unleashed Fury – Fixed
Unleashed Fury previously wasn’t correctly increasing pet damage.
This has now been addressed in the October 8 beta development notes, so thank you for fixing this!
5. Ferocity – Character tab display
Ferocity appears to function correctly in combat, but its additional critical strike chance is still not reflected in the pet’s character tab.
As I understand it, this display issue has already been acknowledged by the developers.
6. Beast Lore does not provide the expected information
Beast Lore currently appears to be missing important information that was available in Classic (Era).
Specifically:
-
It doesn’t properly identify which trainable abilities a beast has, such as Bite or Claw etc.
-
It doesn’t display the beast’s attack speed.
-
It doesn’t display the beast’s pet type (Defensive/General/Offensive)
Both are particularly useful when deciding which beasts to tame or when looking for new ranks of abilities.
7. Additional reported pet training issues
There are also several issues reported by other Hunters that deserve attention:
Abilities disappearing: Some players have reported losing learned abilities or ranks after relogging, dismissing pets or switching pets through the stable.
Training point resets removing innate passives: Players have reported that resetting a pet’s training points can permanently remove its inherited Faster Attack passive, resetting its attack speed to 2.0.
Pet happiness: Several players have reported (and I’ve also noticed this) that pet happiness doesn’t decrease over time as expected, potentially affecting the intended loyalty and happiness mechanics.
I haven’t personally verified all of these additional reports, but they’re worth mentioning as part of the broader pet system feedback.
It would also be helpful to know which of these differences are intentional design decisions and which are known issues still being addressed.
Thanks to the developers for their continued work on the beta, and to the other Hunters who have already been testing and reporting these problems.