Procs That Target the Pet

Grinkles

Grinkles

Developer
Staff member
Procs are commonplace in decent equipment and are often the defining aspect of a given item. Usually, these procs target the enemy or the player. However, a few rare procs target the player's pet instead. The downside is that this unique mechanic is highly underutilized.

After doing a little Google sleuthing of the wiki, I've managed to turn up just six items that contain procs targeting the pet -- note that these are procs and not clickies:
Here are the problems I see with this info:
  1. The distribution of these items is poor; one can be acquired at level 5, one at 45, and the rest are mid- to high-end raid loot.
  2. Four of the six items involve variations on the same mechanic -- healing.
  3. Four of the six items are BST-only.
  4. Five of the six items are for the same slot -- wrist.
There may be logistical reasons why procs targeting the pet are so rare. Maybe it is difficult to code for, or maybe it was determined to be too hard to factor into itemization. However, I wonder if it might simply be an oversight. These items are so few and far between and get such little exposure that I doubt this mechanic ever gets much thought during development of new loot tables, quest rewards, and so on.

So, would the staff consider adding some pet-centric procs to the game in the interests of diversity? I know it's easy to rattle off ideas as a non-developer, but here are some things that might be worth considering:
  • There isn't a single [BIND ON EQUIP] item with a pet proc on it. This is a huge void, considering the hundreds of buyable items with every other kind of proc on them!
  • No chest item with a pet proc exists. This is a completely untapped mechanic, ripe for a developer's picking!
  • While Beastlords are indeed intimately associated with their pets, Magicians are just as reliant on their pets -- maybe even more so. Why in the world is BST the only class given special representation in the above items?
  • Pet-targeted procs could give unique options/benefits to less conventional pet classes, such as the Shaman with her wolf or the Enchanter with his animation. These could bolster pet survivability (through runes, +% avoidance boost, etc.), add situational utility (having a chance to "cannibalize" the pet's HP in exchange for mana, for example), or even add cosmetic fun (such as a short-duration melee buff that also turns the pet into the already-global lion model).
  • Lastly, note that one of the existing items procs Minor Healing -- an ordinary, targetable spell and not a pet-only heal like Renew Elements or Mend Bones. This presumably means that any existing single-target spell from Shield of Brambles to Death Pact to Horsing Around can be adapted to target the pet via proc! Of course, this could create confusion/ambiguity; only Fomelo would be able to determine if the proc is pet-oriented or not. Maybe the item names would need to hint heavily at this or something...
With all this said, is there any reason why this mechanic couldn't be fleshed out a bit more? The only argument against this that I can think of is that, at least at the high end, existing procs are so deeply ingrained that there's too little room for diversification. I doubt a T12 Shaman, for instance, would be keen on giving up dual GHeal wrist procs for a gimmick for their wimpy pet dog. Still, there's a ton of room in the earlier itemization, right?
 
AFAIK, it *is* difficult to code for at present, because the existing spell system only has some pretty basic types: target (what you're hitting or healing), self, group, pbaoe, target aoe, etc. There is no target type that says "my pet." I am running into the reverse problem with the new BST pet proc - I want it to target a pets OWNER, but not his group. So it *can* be coded for, but to my knowledge (without having looked at it yet, just surmising) it requires hard-coding in the core, which we tend not to like if we can avoid it. As I work on BL pet procs, I will see if it is feasible to do something more generic and add this type of proc (and its reverse), the biggest problem being that I don't believe our spell editor would support it and so we'd have to do a little fancy footwork.
 
Ah, thanks for the reply. I always wondered about the scarcity of this mechanic and hope the BST revamp sheds some light on the matter. Out of curiosity, what happens if a natively pet-only spell is added as a proc to an item? I am guessing that a breastplate with a reactive proc of, say, Mend Bones would simply cast the heal on the player and not his pet, right?
 
I'm not sure - I'd have to look at the code. It would probably either a) do nothing or more likely b) automatically target your pet, which would be super annoying.
 
inc pet heals bracers for mage! necro bracers that give their pet mana! beastlord boots that make thier better do double damage! robes that cause pets to beserk out at seeing thier masters hurt!
better yet put it on augs!
do i hear bounty rewards no removable augs!
OH the possibilities!
 
Just to wade in here, belatedly, and from my own years-out-of-date item-making experience:

There aren't that many buff-granting procs in general for a variety of reasons, namely buff slot limits, stacking, the potential "irreplacability" problem of some effects, scaling value of some effects (e.g. the value of haste scaling more with your gear than a typical dd proc would), the general chore of making new buffs (see: stacking) and limits on the number of spells that can exist in our client. Plus, there just aren't that many effects that are both relevant and meaningful in short, repeated, in-combat-only bursts but also something you would easily give up for something else when a non-buff-procing upgrade comes along (see: irreplacability).

Pet-targeting procs inherit all of that ('cept buff slot limits), compounded by only being relevant to a few classes, who are mostly better served by simpler-to-make straight damage or maybe occasionally self-targeting effects. May need to consider differences in the relative power of (top-end) pets as well.

So yeah, few pet heals, not much else. Could do runes, I guess, but those aren't that different from heals in the whole scheme of things.
 
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