Please consider making master rumours have a higher pet chance. That alone would have gotten people away from kebbit spam experts (if the team is super against this, despite it being much more fun than the general hunter rumour gameplay loop).
I think both pet chance and overall XP/hr rates would be what the team is looking at as far as rumour rebalancing is concerned, so would imagine it's very much on the table (especially in light of even the early feedback from today)