I was originally going to make this post based on the warlock's felhunter, but I've decided I will expand it to all their pets due to some of the thoughts I had in the process. My in-a-nutshell question is: either due to the weakness of other pets, or perhaps its just being too strong, does anyone else see the felhunter as the warlock's "mace spec" in arenas right now? Besides the felguard, I can literally count on one hand the number of times I have seen all the other pets (put together).

Due to the majority of its skills, it's pretty obvious it should be an anti-caster pet, which in itself would make it a desirable arena pet. However, due to the tainted blood debuff and paranoia, it's anti-melee and doubly anti-rogue as well. In 5v5 and to some extent 3v3 this is not an issue, because generally you have enough dps that someone will die in a reasonable amount of time. It's also pretty pointless to focus the pet in those brackets. In 2v2, however, killing it is sometimes the only way to win a match.

That is the crux of the problem. I feel the pet is too durable against everything (but hunters) for being so strongly anti-caster and anti-healer at the same time.

Offensive casters - dispels buffs, counterspell, resistant to all attacks
Healers - dispels buffs, HoT's, long cooldown abilities like innervate, counterspell
Melee - resistant to attacks, debuff reduces PVP gear attack power by ~1/4-1/3
Rogues - also resists wound poison applications, making it very hard to kill

The possible solutions to this issue would obviously fall into 2 categories:
1. Nerf the felhunter and/or
2. Buff the other pets to be more interesting

From a PVP standpoint:

Imp
HP aura - mildly useful
Fire shield - extra purge required, might be helpful

Voidwalker
Sacrifice - only thing I've ever seen one used for in arena

Succubus
Seduction - while it could be useful as CC, I've never seen this pet in an arena
Invis - good for keeping the pet out of trouble until it does its thing

Felhunter
Paranoia - anti-rogue/druid
Spell lock - anti-caster/healer
Devour Magic - anti-caster/healer
Tainted blood - anti-melee
Hard to kill - very useful

Felguard
Intercept - very useful
Cleave - mildly useful
Hard to kill - very useful


My first thought would be to spread some of the love around to the other pets. I realize, though, that the imp and voidwalker are primarily pve pets unless they get a major overhaul. The imp is so fragile, but phase shift gives it a valuable use in raids. The voidwalker is very strong defensively, but weak offensively. It's useful for soloing. The succubus, however, is very rarely used at all. In PVE, most warlocks I have talked to would rather juggle fears than deal with keeping the succubus alive after 1 seduce, since it has to channel the spell and cannot move.

My best idea would be to give Paranoia and Tainted Blood to the succubus. It would get a much-needed survivability bonus and would become the utility pet, perhaps finally seeing some use in arena. Other creative ideas: perhaps make the fel hunter resistant to heals since it's so resistant to all other spells.

Maybe I'm focusing too hard on the fel hunter, but I honestly do see a problem with diversity in pet selection. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the topic.

Thinking outside of the box here:

1. Bring back the machine gun imp. Arena specs shun destro most of the time, but if you're willing to go deep enough for improved firebolt (which is never gonna be a good PVE talent) you should be amply rewarded with some good PVP power. Maybe even switch its place with the "deeper" Improved Searing Pain, thus making it less of a misfit talent as well.

2. Make the voidwalkers taunts affect players and lengthen the -10% melee hit aura slightly (or make it that way after the Imp. Voidwalker talent, another heaping pile of shit.) This will irritate the watchful, who have to retarget, beat the lazy, who will be targeting the wrong thing and not react fast enough, and emphasize the voidwalkers defensive side as "blueberry punching bag" while still not being a DPS pet.

3. Remove the diminishing returns on Seduction. Fear is a problem because a soul linked warlock with 400 resil and 12KHP is a very difficult thing to take down and can cast over and over again. Taking out an immobile squishy succubus is very doable in comparison.

Hell, go crazy, give Lash of Pain and Soothing Kiss (minor) irritating effects as well.

I can't believe that the way to fix this perceived imbalance is to buff all the existing pets so that they match power with the already overpowered felhunter. Realistically, all hunter pets are the same, and warlocks already have it sweet with each pet being geared for a different job. The anti-caster pet should be just that, and paranoia and tainted blood are just superfluous buffs to a pet that already has enough (or too much) merit for arenas.

Were I to propose a legitimate fix, keeping the fel-puppy's anti-caster utility down to a reasonable level while bringing it even with the other pets (namely voidwalker sacrifice and succubus seduce) it should probably be stripped down to only one, or perhaps two pvp-relevant abilities like the other pets. I think fel puppies would still be played, but not exclusively, if they only had the innately high resists and spell lock for instance. Frankly, tainted blood is just bad and not truly relevant in pvp, and as the other pets have similarly marginal abilities I think the felhunter is free to have something like this to fill its bar. But truly, paranoia and devour magic are just too much, and too unnecessary.

All hunter pets are equal except for the Scorpid, which is the only pet used in serious arena play. The utility of that pet is fantastic because of how much mana it forces an opposing healer to lose, either from dispelling Scorpid Poison or from a consequently unremoved Viper Sting.

And really, no one is using a Felhunter for Paranoia or Tainted Blood, those are just bonuses, nor do they have much of an effect on matches (take that with a grain of salt, I am human so I have Perception). Blizzard could remove those abilities completely and every Warlock would still use a Felhunter because of how useful a magic dispel and counterspell are.

A greatly overlooked aspect is healing recieved from devour magic. The ability to keep itself alive really helps tons in both soloplay and group situations.

silence > *

You probably won't. The huge nerf to seduction 2 years ago made the Succubus completly useless for group PVP. After all that time I don't see Blizzard fixing this pet. I mean, infernal and Doomguard have been broken for much longer than that and Blizzard isn't even talking about fixing them.

One idea I had for improving the Imp would be to make the Fire Shield more like the mobs in Mechanar. Make it an AoE tick rather than the Thorns-esque functionality that it has now. That would give warlocks an edge against the rogues that they all hate so much, and would be great for Affliction spec warlocks kiting people with CoX.

The Voidwalker could receive an ability like the drakes from BWL, or the elementals from the first boss in Setthekk Halls. Make it so that the Voidwalker's melee attacks could put some sort of stacking debuff on an opposing player. Increased shadow damage, reduced AP, reduced resistances, etc. It could also explode on death like several other voidwalkers in Outland.

Except that the number of roles/viability isn't fairly balanced at all (felguard being viable for raiding, levelling, 5 mans, and PVP) and some are very limited/silly.

Calling the voidwalker the "levelling" pet is ridiculous. He's great for 10 levels, early on in the game. Then you should be using something else. He has no PVP viability whatsoever, except in being sacrificed while you summon a real pet.

The voidwalker (and the infernal/doomguard, but that goes without saying) are all epic failures. After level twenty, the extent of my voidwalker summons are tanking on Garr... and once I think to sacrifice running away from a warrior in an arena and back towards my healer. His "role" is pathetic. After level 40 or so, I would literally rather level with *any* of the other permanent pets available.

Oz and Opi, you both have interesting ideas on the imp. I like both of them.

The voidwalker needs something, but not a taunt... PVP taunts are bad mojo for rogues, because if one happens to go off while you are pressing your ss/backstab/muti/whatever key, you just lost all your combo points on what *was* your target.

The succubus doesn't need the diminishing returns on seduce removed, that would make it borderline overpowered in 1v1, 2v2, and maybe 3v3. Its purpose is to give locks the ability to crowd control 2 different people at the same time, ala the old Drakedog movies. It needs a survivability buff of some sort to be more viable.

The felhunter is fine except for the tainted blood effect, but I also still don't believe paranoia belongs on it. Tainted blood reduces AP on any attacking melee by 475... if you do the math, that's about 61 damage per swing for a dagger rogue using 1.8 speed mainhand, which is close to 15% damage reduction. You'll see similar numbers with other specs and classes: they will be affected less since their special attacks aren't percentage-based, but I'd say it probably averages out to the value of 300 melee-resilience.

For being 41-points, the felguard could use a buff - I just don't know what. Maybe a warstomp ability on a 45 second cooldown.

-Edit-
I disagree with you very strongly on the part of the succubus... It is easily the most fragile pet at the moment and can usually only get 1-2 seduces off before getting killed unless someone else picks up the crowd control. This is assuming seduce will even work - a great deal is immune to it.

Back in the day, the succi was a very good small-scale pvp pet. I think this is its intended role and that it does need a survivability buff to see more use.

So 1v1 just goes Seduce, Shadowbolt, rinse, repeat?

I don't think warlocks need anything else to increase their ability vs single players.

My issue with the felhunter pet is that there's no reasonable way to remove it. If a scorpid is causing problems, your team can devote time and resources to killing it. If a felhunter is causing problems, well . . . there's not a whole hell of a lot that can be done. Its avoidance is simply too high. If you do manage to kill it, the offending warlock can simply summon another one - instantly. Killing two felhunters would likely take my 4dps team significantly longer than it would to kill a single player - in other words, it's never worth even attempting.

So, the felhunter is there. It's just a fact of life. Rather than being one of those interesting facets of pvp that you might plan some sort of strategy around, it's an uninteresting, uncounterable, unremovable annoyance that sticks around for the entire match. Its devour and spell lock abilities are certainly very powerful, but perhaps an equally substantial ability is the way it puts a stop to drinking. Water is incredibly important at high levels of arena play in all brackets. Being able to drink isn't a convenience, it's an absolute necessity. And, if there's a felhunter on you, you need to jump through hoops to get even a tick or two off - while someone trying to drink on the other team probably needs a player to divert his attention just to stop the drinking.

Bottom line is, if someone sticks a felhunter on you, chances are good that when you run out of mana, you'll stay out of mana. For a caster, this equates to a countdown clock to complete uselessness. The warlock needs to do absolutely nothing to cause this state of affairs except issue the initial command for the felhunter to attack you, and you can do absolutely nothing except to attempt to muster your team for a herculean effort that would probably have more success in killing a player.

Seems unreasonable.