Pets need a lot of love, tweaking and fixing so that more families can be used. Right not most of them have no niche because they’re missing abilities or their scaling is bad. Scorpids after the change were meant to deal good damage with 5 stacks of the poison yet they barely scale.
Unless something’s done, the same families will be used again for DPS: cats, wind serpents, raptors and maybe owls.
In regards to the topic, special beasts like Lupos were changed because they sadly warp the game around themselves. Back in the day, it wasn’t that known or relevant but allowing Lupos to keep his shadow damage attacks would mean every hunter would run with it and cause trouble. Same goes for Snarler’s huge resistances or the frostwolves extremely high speed.
Still, it would be cool if pet families had some unique features to them so that they were more varied and competitive.
I’ve provided feedback before about hunter pets, in case it interests you: Not Another Hunter Pet Post - #7 by Mattilda-firemaw