Pets Now Scale With Your Gear

This is the biggest change to how pets work, and it comes with both benefits and drawbacks.

Your pet now gets stronger as your gear improves. Every gear upgrade you equip also increases your pet's power. This means your pet can keep up with your progress instead of becoming less useful as you level up and improve your equipment.

However, pets can no longer benefit from player buffs that increase their stats. This is a significant change for raiders. For example, your pet can no longer receive Blessing of Kings or other raid buffs that previously Blockedword/sentencee it stronger.

There's a side effect worth noticing too. For every other class, a gear upgrade improves one character. For a pet Hunter it now improves two, which makes any given item on the auction house worth more to you than to the person bidding against you. Gold simply goes further on a Hunter than it does on most classes, and that's new.

Forever has no Token, so that gold comes from farming it or from buying WoW Forever gold off another player. Read what Blizzard has said about gold buying before you go the second route, because they've been closing accounts over it.

Every Pet Family Now Has a Unique Ability

Every family now has one ability that no other family can learn. Eighteen families, eighteen abilities.

Crocolisk's Dismember is especially useful for PvP players because it cuts the healing the target receives by half, making it a powerful pet ability. Wolf still has Furious Howl, the only pet ability that increases the damage of your entire party.

There are also two important changes that apply to all pet families. Every family can now learn Bite or Claw, and some can learn both. Also, every family can learn Dive or Dash to move faster. This means you no longer have to choose a pet family just to get a basic attack or a speed boost. Instead, you can focus on the unique ability each family offers.

One name change to remember: Owl is now called Bird of Prey.

Foxes Are the New Pet Family

Foxes are the one genuinely new family, and their ability is Trickster's Dance, which raises the pet's dodge chance and attack speed for 12 seconds.

Blizzard hasn't published the numbers. Beta reporting puts it at a 50% dodge increase and 30% faster attacks on a three-minute cooldown, which would make it a strong defensive and offensive window rolled together, but treat those figures as unconfirmed until Blizzard says so.

The shape of it is clear enough either way. It's a cooldown rather than a passive, which makes Fox a pet you time rather than one you set and forget.

Traps Work in Combat Now

Traps are usable in combat. That's the single biggest utility change in the deep dive and it rewrites how Survival plays, because trapping no longer requires you to drop combat first.

Two costs attached. The cooldown went up to 30 seconds, so traps became a considered move rather than something you spam. And Frost-based and Fire-based traps now run separate cooldowns, which cuts the other way and lets you use one of each without them competing.

The limitation Blizzard deliberately kept: you can still only place traps at your own location. No throwing them. If you want a trap somewhere, you go there.

Every Hunter Talent Change by Spec

Beast Mastery

Summon Hawk is the new 16-point gold medal talent. It deals instant damage and summons a Hawk to attack your current target for 18 seconds, you can have two Hawks out at once, and it shares a cooldown with Arcane SBlockedword/sentence.

Focused Fire is new and increases all damage both you and your pet deal while your pet is active, which is the talent that makes going pet-heavy a real build rather than a default.

Elsewhere, Endurance Training absorbed the old Thick Hide so it now grants your pet health and armour together, Aspect of the Monkey gives double dodge and passes half of it to your pet, Intimidation now also grants your pet 100% increased crit on its next attack, and Unleashed Fury and Ferocity both had their pet bonuses trimmed but now apply to Hawks as well.

Marksmanship

Lone Wolf at 11 points is the headline, and it gets its own section below.

Sniper SBlockedword/sentence is the new 31-point capstone and it's a genuine artillery button. Four second cast, 15 second cooldown, more damage than Aimed SBlockedword/sentence, a base range of 45 yards, and it extends the range of your next three SBlockedword/sentences by 10 yards. It needs TruesBlockedword/sentence Aura as a prerequisite, which moved up to the 21-point slot.

Careful Aim is the sleeper. It converts 20/40/60/80/100% of your Intellect into melee and ranged Attack Power, which turns a stat Hunters mostly ignored into a primary one.

Also worth knowing: Lethal Attacks now grants crit to all attacks rather than just sBlockedword/sentences, Barrage lost some damage but now applies to Aimed SBlockedword/sentence as well as Multi-SBlockedword/sentence and Volley, and Improved Hunter's Mark and Aimed SBlockedword/sentence were both removed as talents because they're baseline now.

Survival

Strider Kick at 21 points is an instant weapon damage attack that also gives you 30% movement speed for 3 seconds, which is a kiting tool as much as a damage one.

Lacerating Strikes at 31 makes Mongoose Bite apply a bleed over 21 seconds, scaled to how hard the Mongoose Bite landed.

Predator's Edge increases melee crit damage and boosts off-hand damage while dual-wielding, which is Blizzard explicitly supporting a melee Hunter.

The tree also consolidated. Improved Tracking merges Monster Slaying and Humanoid Slaying into one talent that boosts damage against wBlockedword/sentencever you're currently tracking. Resourcefulness absorbed Wyvern Sting, Blockedword/sentenceer Instinct and Improved Feign Blockedword/sentence, and now cuts the mana cost of traps and melee abilities. Entrapment always triggers now, with talent points extending the duration rather than raising the chance.

You Can Now Play Hunter Without a Pet

Lone Wolf grants 20% increased damage with all attacks while you have no active pet. It's an 11-point gold medal talent in Marksmanship, which means it's reachable early rather than being a deep investment.

Put that next to the pet scaling change and the picture makes sense. Pets stopped drawing power from your raid and started drawing it from your gear, which makes them something you invest in. Lone Wolf is the alternative investment. Blizzard built both sides of the same decision in the same patch.

Blizzard states the options plainly: double down on ranged combat, go pet-focused, choose not to have a pet at all, or add sBlockedword/sentences that let you move between ranged and melee.

And you don't have to pick permanently. Dual Specialization is available at level 40, so a Marksmanship Hunter can carry a Lone Wolf build for solo play and a pet build for group content without paying a respec every time.

What Hasn't Changed

Blizzard's own counterweight, and it's worth reading before anyone decides the class got strictly better.

Hunters still have one combat role. Damage, and that's it, though the pet can tank in solo and small group play.

Still the longest range of any class, and still crippled inside the dead zone. Ranged abilities become unavailable within 8 yards of your target, which is the oldest Hunter problem there is and it's untouched.

Still no stun and no interrupt. WBlockedword/sentencever the Aspects and traps give you, those two gaps remain.

And traps still only drop at your feet. Combat usability is a real improvement, but it didn't come with throwing.

Final Thoughts

The pet change is the one to sit with, because it's a trade and Blizzard presented it as one. Your pet climbing with your gear is better for everyone who plays alone or in fives. Losing stat buffs is worse for everyone in a raid. Which of those you are determines whether this patch helped you.

What's genuinely new is that the pet became optional without becoming pointless. Lone Wolf at 11 points is cheap enough to reach while levelling, Focused Fire makes the opposite choice real, and dual spec at 40 means you can carry both. Hunter spent twenty years as the class defined by having a companion. It's now the class that decides whether to.