V. WHAT SHOULD I TRAIN MY PET IN?

V. WHAT SHOULD I TRAIN MY PET IN?
Date: 05/18/2007

What skills you should train your pet or what ranks of skills is entirely situational and up to you. For example, if I'm going to Molten Core, I'll be training up my pet's fire resistance, but not training it in nature, shadow, frost or arcane resistances. On the other hand, for Stratholme, I'll be training in Nature and Shadow resistances, but not in Fire, Frost or Arcane. Think about your pet's weaknesses and strong points and what you'll be doing to decide how to train it. Pets like ravagers with low health and high armor naturally probably need trained in great stamina more than they need trained in Natural Armor, etc.

Note also, your pet can only know 4 active skills, for most pets that is not a problem, but for some you'll have to choose which 4. For example, a cat can learn Dash, Prowl, Claw, Bite, Cower, Growl. When I train my cat, I have to take into account what I'll be doing to decide which 4 skills I want it to know.

WHAT PET SHOULD I GET?
Read the guide to choosing your pet linked at the top of this guide and visit http://petopia.brashendeavors.net

VI UPDATES

1. As of Patch 2.2 it appears that Raptors will finally be gaining the "Dash" pet skill. Assuming it goes live (as by all indications it will) this will put raptors on par with cats as dps pets. Raptors have a -5% to base health stat, whereas Cats only have a -2%. However, Raptors also get a +3% armor and cats have no plus to the base armor. Both have the +10% modifier to base dps.

2. Scorpids have become a Raid pet of choice for many BM hunters as their poison scales with attack power so a hunter can pop Bestial Wrath and all his trinkets and bump up the damage caused by a scorps poison and since the poison stacks 5 times and all the stacks do is continue to refresh the first application, the hunter gets a large 5-700 damage per tick application going that stays up as long as he can keep the poison stacked. Very good for long boss fights. For normal 5 mans and trash mobs though, this is of negligible value since most mobs will be dead by the time you get up to 5 applications. Some claim this is unintended, no word from Bliz though so who knows if it will be nerfed or not. If you go for this, use scorp poison rank 4 instead of rank 5 since the duration is 10 vs. 8 seconds and the ability to ensure it stacks and stays stacked and give the most number of high ticks of damage is enhanced.

3. WARNING As of patch 2.1 Hunters can "dismiss" rather than "abandon" a pet and tame another pet. It appears Bliz is working on the complaint of many hunters that 2 stable slots isn't enough since, at least until 70, you are limited to 2 pets and have to keep a slot open so you can train a pet and learn new skills. Now you don't have to do that. However, the system appears to be bugged with people dismissing pets and training new ones and ending up with pets stuck in the stable, pets disapearring, etc. If you want to dismiss a pet and train one to learn a new skill, make sure that as soon as you learn the skill you abandon the temp pet and go get your original pet out of the stable right away or you risk the bug messing up all your pets. Hopefully Bliz will refine this and get the bugs worked out soon, until then, proceed with extreme caution if you dismiss a pet instead of abandon it before you tame a new one.