Avoidance prereqs need to be removed

It is likely we will just replace the hunter pet Avoidance talent with one that increases pet dps. It is too situational to have as a talent now. Hunter pets will just take 90% less damage from creature AE the same as other pets do (meaning "for free"). We offer that avoidance as recognition that Fluffy doesn't have the AI to get out of the fire on boss fights and likes to go in straight lines between you and a target, even if that means crossing fire.

Ninety percent avoidance should be enough to survive almost all boss AE attacks for a second or two -- enough to get a heal or move your wolf (or sporebat). It isn't intended to let your pet just ignore AE completely and stand in void zones. If you're a pet class, you are going to have to manage the pet a little in dungeons and raids.

It was never our intent that pets just shrug off AE in PvP situations. In fact, it's a little goofy if you think about it. We just technically couldn't distinguish between creature and player AE before. We only go to that distinction as a last resort, since we like for PvP and PvE to work similarly. However we thought it was necessary in this case, since the complexity of boss encounters just doesn't always leave pets with a way to avoid the AE damage. We think PvP AE damage often is avoidable (dude isn't literally Bladestorming the entire arena at once), but we still understand that this is a PvP nerf to pets and we may buff them in other ways to compensate.

Q u o t e:
I'd prefer that instead of adding another dps talent in that position, the existing dps talents in pet talent trees be buffed. Talent bloat is already extensive, even for BM hunters, and many talents go completely unused because there's just not enough points to go around.

That is by design. Before we added the bottom row of pet talents, BM hunters felt that their 51-point talent wasn't attractive because they couldn't actually improve pet dps with those points. If we made it too easy to cherry pick the dps talents, I fear we'd be in the same situation again.

You can have 5 different pets now, so even if you find a talent somewhat situational, you can probably find a pet to give it to.

Besides, judging from these responses, most pets already had the points in Avoidance, so you should just see pet dps increase with the current build (assuming we stick with this plan).