Greater Pet Family Ability Diversity Needed!

Far too many pets within the same families (Cats, Moths, Birds, Snakes etc) share the exact same set of six abilities that are unlocked at exactly the same levels. This is bad for the Pet Battle System for a couple of reasons.

First, it removes incentive to explore and expand your Battle Pet collection. Because effectively once you have one Cat...you have them all.

Second, by having hundreds of redundant skill sets in the system, you reduce the strategic depth of the gameplay, which revolves largely around reacting to the unknown abilities your opponent will be throwing at you.

This has the added effect of reducing the value of even having these Pets in your collection at all. Because essentially once your opponent sees you have a Cat in your lineup, he already knows what three Abilities it will use, because every Cat in the system has the same ones.

If I may be so bold as to offer a couple possible suggestions for this issue. I'm just using Cats as an example here, but understand that the problem is widespread in the system among Pets of similar types...

-1- Take each type of Cat, and remove ONE of the six redundant Abilities, and replace it with another Ability from another Pet in the system.
Pro: Each type of Cat is now unique, collectible, and (potentially) strategically valuable.
Con: Fire Breathing or Burrowing Cats may look a little silly.

-2- Scramble the order the Cats unlock their Abilities such that each is slightly different.
Pro: This will add diversity to Cats at lower levels.
Con: Some low level Cats may be stronger than their peers. All Cats will become redundant again at max level.

PLEASE consider doing a pass to add greater diversity to Pet Family Abilities. Having so many Pet "Clones" is really a black eye to what is otherwise shaping up to be the best feature in the entire Expansion!

- Forbs
"For Gnomeregan!"