(This guide was created by Zoa, level 70 blood elf huter of the eu server, Vek'nilash. All credit is due to her for this wonderful guide. Date: 03/09/2007)
Tempest Keep
Lots of fire and arcane mobs - heck, nearly all mobs here have some sort of magic spell that can rip your ravager to ribbons if you are not carefull. If Tumbler dies too often, consider training some fire/arcane resistance on him.
Al'ar
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Lots of things going on here, some which can instantly kill your pet. When Al'ar switches places, your pet might get aggro if it attacks straight away, and trust me, your pet can't hold up to the mighty phoenix. You might want to stop your pet as its running to a new position, just to give the tank some time to gain a bit of aggro. When Al'ar does his Fire Quill, be sure to recall your pet. When you get into Phase 2, you are probably best off dismissing or sacrificing your pet. It can be targeted for flame patch, which can hurt your tanks, it can be blown away by the phoenixes as your raid kills them, and it can be smashed by a meteor. Don’t let Wolfie die!
Void Reaver
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: While your pet wont be targeted for an arcane orb, it will be hit by pounding, doing around 2700 damage over 3 seconds to a pet with avoidance, every 15 seconds. A mend pet is usually enough to keep your pet up but you might want to recall it if it gets dangerously low on health. Be sure to make sure your pet is on the same side of Void Reaver as you are, so it is in range of mend pet and kill commands.
High Astromancer Solarian
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet can be targeted for arcane missiles, but is otherwise pretty safe in this fight. Wrath of the Astromancer was changed in 2.2, and is no longer a risk to your pet. Confirmation needed: Im truly not sure. I did TK last week, and my pet didnt get targeted by wrath, and i cant imagine that the spell has been designed to blow your pet up into the air, but if somebody has seen otherwise, please let me know.
Kael'thas Sunstrider
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Boy, Tempest Keep isn't a very pet-friendly place, and the fight against Kael is no different. Your pet *can* attack Thaladred the Darkener, but is in risk of getting a nasty rend on him. Your pet can go all out on Lord Sanguinar, but not on Grand Astromancer Capernian. It might help the raid on Master Engineer Telonicus, as it can be the recipient of remote toy. When the weapons spawn, keep it clear of the bow, and make sure that your pet attacks the shield from behind, which is actually the "outer" side of the shield. Steer your pet away from any AOE'ing phoenix', and at gravity lapse, be sure to recall your pet. If it keeps attacking Kael, it will die from the clouds around him. Mount Hyjal We travel back in time, to meet up with a lot of old friends. Shadow resistence can be helpfull, but it is not overly needed. Fire resistence can help aswell, but if your pet is caught in a fire attack, it wont matter much in the long run. Rage
Winterchill
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: On the waves before Rage Winterchill, keep your pet away from those nasty abominations. When fighting Rage Winterchill himself, make sure your pet isn't standing in the Death & Decay (red bubbles) but that shouldn't be a surprise.
Anetheron
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet is pretty much safe here. It will take hits from Carrion Swarm (which is migraded by Avoidence), but it wont be that difficult to keep it up. The only real threat would be AoE from the Towering Infernals if it would happend to spawn near the pet. Whiskers will not be targeted by the infernal spawn.
Kaz'rogal
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: This is a pretty straight forward fight, at least for your pet. Make sure that your pet stays behind Kaz'rogal to avoid his cleave, and you should be in the clear.
Azgalor
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Azgalor's Rain of Fire will be the big issue here. Azgalor will target a random raid member and rain down fire (hence the name, her her her). In addition to the initial damage, it will place a dot on the target dealing some 1700 damage each second for five seconds, meaning your pet will take a total of 4250 damage from the dot. Your main priority should be to pull the pet out of Rain of Fire if it is cast on melee, and start mending. Your pet shouldnt be in any of the danger spots unless it has at least 50-75% hp and has a mend pet ticking on it. I suggest recalling it and keeping it near you until its healed, or until you have gotten a feel for the fight. Be sure to stand at max range so your are unlikely to get rain of fire while your pet is standing next to you. We wouldnt want Whiskers to be hit by another rain of fire when he runs to you, would we?
Archimonde
Pet danger: Insanely super humongusly high
Boss notes: Roll a dice. If you roll a six, you have probably wasted what little luck you had of keeping your pet alive on this fight. If you are a BM hunter, improved revive pet, and improved mend pet is a must here. The danger comes from Doomfire, a spell that Archimonde loves to use, and does so frequently. If your pet is hit by this, it will take 1200 damage, and a non dispellable dot that deals 20400 damage over the next 45 seconds.* Your pet will surely die from this, so if you are dependant on your pet, be sure to get it ressed again. Improved Mend Pet cant dispell the doomfire dot, but it can dispel Grip of the Legion, an attack that does 250,000 damage over 5 minutes. Your pet wont grant Archimonde a soul charge if it dies, but it will take damage once he uses that (2000-2500 damage).
* I am going to assume that the Doomfire is an area of effect attack, and thus lowered by avoidence, but the dot probably is not, so your pet will take the full damage. Confirmation on this is needed.
Black Temple You made it. You are finally here. Illidan is cowering in his little castle, and you come in at him hard, from the sewers. If you made it this far, then congratulations!
Some of the fights in The Black Temple can be punishing for your pet. If you want to ease your stress a bit, pump your pet full of shadow resistence and perhaps a bit of frost.
High Warlord Naj'entus
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Your pet can take damage if it's standing next to somebody getting hit by a needle spine explosion, and it will take 4250 damage when his Tidal Shield is broken. Two mend pets should be enough to get it back to full health most of the time.
Supremus
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Your pet will be completely safe during phase 1, unless your offtanks are sleeping and your pet pulls aggro - which it wont. Suprisingly, the scary blue flames will not hurt your pet at all. When he goes into phase 2, however, thats an all different matter. Your pet will take damage from the volcanos that spawn, but while your pet will never be gazed, he will be killed if Supremus charges someone. For some reason, he does some AoE damage whenever he charges to a new target (if that target is within 40 yard range), which is sure to make short process of the pet. Keep him at your side in phase 2, and let him go all out in phase 1.
Shade of Akama
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: If you are in one of the groups taking care of the Spiritbinders, Elementalists and Rogues, your pet might take aggro on one of them and get hurt, but if your tank is fast enough it shouldnt be a problem. I suspect that the pet might be able to tank the Spiritbinder while it gets burned down, which would let the tank build aggro on the Elementalist and the rogue - that all depends on what your kill order is, naturally.
Teron Gorefiend
Pet danger: Middle
Boss notes: This fight has a lot of factors and sadly, you cant control any of them. Your pet can be attacked by the blossoms, but it seems that it is safe for the Incinerate. Your pet can also be a target for the Shadowy Construct, but that is more of a blessing than a curse. Seeing how a Shadowy Construct severely gimps your group, it's better that a pet dies to it than a raid member. If you get Shadow of Death, keep your pet attacking while you run away and wait for your doom - your pet will despawn perfectly as you die, so your pet bar is free to display the ghost abilities.
Gurtogg Bloodboil
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Gurtogg Bloodboil is a nasty boss, that has a lot of area, cone and cleave attacks, and your pet can suffer most of them. In an ideal world, your pet wouldnt have to take any damage at all, but the world is hardly ideal. Gurtogg Bloodboil is most dangerous in phase 1, so if you want to use your pet you have to plan ahead a bit. After a few tries you should see where your main tanks are tanking him, and in what direction he is facing. Then you have to make your pet idle so that when your tanks has aggro, your pet is directly behind him. About 5 seconds before he changes to phase 2, you should click passive on your pet bar, which will make it run back to the spot you assigned to it. This is a dangerous spot aswell, though, and your pet might be hit by both acid and geysers while Gurtogg Bloodboil runs for his target in phase 2. A much safer way is to have your pet by your side in phase 1 - or at least standing in the caster group since it shouldnt move with you when you move out to take the bloodboil. This will lower your damage output, but allow you to keep your pet up for longer if you are having problems. Be aware to make your pet stay at his original spot if you get Fel Rage. If your pet is standing next to you when you are tanking Gurtogg Bloodboil, it will surely die.
REST COMING SOON!
Showing posts with label Pets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pets. Show all posts
[Guide] Raiding with your pet: Gruuls Lair
(This guide was created by Zoa, level 70 blood elf hunter of the eu server, Vek'nilash. All credit goes to her for this wonderful guide. Date: 03/09/2007)
Gruuls Lair
Gruul's Lair is fairly safe for your pet. No special resistances should be needed.
Maulgar & Co.
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: As a hunter, you will probably be charged with tanking the shaman. Be sure to not send your pet to attack him, however, as this will trigger his AOE attack and knock you back, as well as damaging your pet. Send it to another target instead. Your pet should also keep far away from the mage, and you should have a timer (such as Deadly Boss Mods) to show you when Maulgar will do whirlwind, and get your pet out a few seconds before.
Gruul the Dragonkiller
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Your pet will not trigger shatter on other players, but it is affected by cave-ins. Usually a mend pet will take short notice of that, but you should watch out for several cave-ins on the melee, and compensate for that - Skip wont hold out long after a few of those.
Magtheridon's Lair
Magtheridon's Lair is fairly safe for your pet. No special resistances should be needed.
Magtheridon
Pet danger: Middle
Boss notes: When doing the 5 channelers, your pet may be damaged by a stray shadow bolt volley or infernal. When Magtheridon is released, your only pet concern is to make sure that Fang is behind him, and to keep him clear of the fire that will erupt on the floor. World Bosses There are quite a lot of world bosses on Azeroth, but only two in Outland. Both are fairly safe for your pet.
Doom Lord Kazzak
Pet danger: Middle
Boss notes: Consider your pet a rogue on this fight. He should be attacking Kazzak from behind, but your tank should turn Kazzak around anyways. When Kazzak does his shadowbolt volley, be sure to have mend pet up. It is considered an AOE attack, so Avoidence will lower the damage, but your pet will still take up to 7.000 damage. It should be able to survive that, at least with a mend pet on, and if you are afraid that you will get a second volley, keep mend pet up all the time after the first. Confirmation needed: If your pet dies, it will not heal Kazzak. (?)
Doomwalker
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Your pet will be damaged by his earthquake for a total of 4.000 damage, and it will also help chaining the chain lightning which hits your pet for around 1.000 damage. There is a good chance of your pet getting smashed, but you should still use it for as long as you can, and keep mend pet up when its alive, especially if you are a beast master, so you can take advantage of beastial wrath. Serpentshrine Cavern Serpentshrine Cavern has a lot of nature based attacks and some bosses uses frost attacks aswell. If you find that you are stilling having problems keeping your pet up on some encounters, spending a few points getting nature and frost resistance up could be a solution.
Hydross the Unstable
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet wont be tombed, and he is usually safe on this encounter. However, since Hydross resets aggro at each transition, you should call your pet back before he changes, and don't send it in before the tanks have aggro on him again.
The Lurker Below
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: The only attack that your pet is in danger of is whirl, which can be healed easily, and a cleave from a stray add when Lurker goes down underwater. You should position your pet to stay on the outer edge of the circle around Lurker, and just send it to attack when he emerges. When Lurker submerges, your pet will run back to his spot and wait there. Don't recall the pet, since that will cause it to teleport to the outer islands where you will probably be standing, and it wont be able to run back again, meaning you have to spend time on repositioning it.
Leotheras the Blind
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Leo clears his aggro at every switch and after every whirlwind, meaning your pet will be moving a lot. You should call it back a few seconds before each phase transition, and about 5 seconds before a whirlwind. Even worse, if you should happen to get an inner demon, you will be mind controlled if your pet gets the finishing blow - this applies to snakes as well, if you are using snake trap to get over your internal struggles.
Fathom-Lord Karathress
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet can take a hit from a stray enemy pet, the whirlwind or the Spitfire Totem, but it's not much to worry about.
Morogrim Tidewalker
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: The only thing you should worry about here is to make sure your pet is behind Morogrim and out of the way of his little bubbles when you get him to 20%. Recalling him for a few seconds as you reposition and sending him back in will take care of that.
Lady Vashj
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Although high sounds a bit ominous, it might be a bit drastic to mark it as such. Your pet cannot get static charge, but it can be damaged by nearby raid members that have it. It will also be hit by Vashj's forked lightning, as well as the poison attack from a Tainted Elemental, and the poison on the ground from the Spore Bats. Watch out for that health, and keep your pet far away from any striders or nagas that can hit it.
Gruuls Lair
Gruul's Lair is fairly safe for your pet. No special resistances should be needed.
Maulgar & Co.
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: As a hunter, you will probably be charged with tanking the shaman. Be sure to not send your pet to attack him, however, as this will trigger his AOE attack and knock you back, as well as damaging your pet. Send it to another target instead. Your pet should also keep far away from the mage, and you should have a timer (such as Deadly Boss Mods) to show you when Maulgar will do whirlwind, and get your pet out a few seconds before.
Gruul the Dragonkiller
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Your pet will not trigger shatter on other players, but it is affected by cave-ins. Usually a mend pet will take short notice of that, but you should watch out for several cave-ins on the melee, and compensate for that - Skip wont hold out long after a few of those.
Magtheridon's Lair
Magtheridon's Lair is fairly safe for your pet. No special resistances should be needed.
Magtheridon
Pet danger: Middle
Boss notes: When doing the 5 channelers, your pet may be damaged by a stray shadow bolt volley or infernal. When Magtheridon is released, your only pet concern is to make sure that Fang is behind him, and to keep him clear of the fire that will erupt on the floor. World Bosses There are quite a lot of world bosses on Azeroth, but only two in Outland. Both are fairly safe for your pet.
Doom Lord Kazzak
Pet danger: Middle
Boss notes: Consider your pet a rogue on this fight. He should be attacking Kazzak from behind, but your tank should turn Kazzak around anyways. When Kazzak does his shadowbolt volley, be sure to have mend pet up. It is considered an AOE attack, so Avoidence will lower the damage, but your pet will still take up to 7.000 damage. It should be able to survive that, at least with a mend pet on, and if you are afraid that you will get a second volley, keep mend pet up all the time after the first. Confirmation needed: If your pet dies, it will not heal Kazzak. (?)
Doomwalker
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Your pet will be damaged by his earthquake for a total of 4.000 damage, and it will also help chaining the chain lightning which hits your pet for around 1.000 damage. There is a good chance of your pet getting smashed, but you should still use it for as long as you can, and keep mend pet up when its alive, especially if you are a beast master, so you can take advantage of beastial wrath. Serpentshrine Cavern Serpentshrine Cavern has a lot of nature based attacks and some bosses uses frost attacks aswell. If you find that you are stilling having problems keeping your pet up on some encounters, spending a few points getting nature and frost resistance up could be a solution.
Hydross the Unstable
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet wont be tombed, and he is usually safe on this encounter. However, since Hydross resets aggro at each transition, you should call your pet back before he changes, and don't send it in before the tanks have aggro on him again.
The Lurker Below
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: The only attack that your pet is in danger of is whirl, which can be healed easily, and a cleave from a stray add when Lurker goes down underwater. You should position your pet to stay on the outer edge of the circle around Lurker, and just send it to attack when he emerges. When Lurker submerges, your pet will run back to his spot and wait there. Don't recall the pet, since that will cause it to teleport to the outer islands where you will probably be standing, and it wont be able to run back again, meaning you have to spend time on repositioning it.
Leotheras the Blind
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Leo clears his aggro at every switch and after every whirlwind, meaning your pet will be moving a lot. You should call it back a few seconds before each phase transition, and about 5 seconds before a whirlwind. Even worse, if you should happen to get an inner demon, you will be mind controlled if your pet gets the finishing blow - this applies to snakes as well, if you are using snake trap to get over your internal struggles.
Fathom-Lord Karathress
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet can take a hit from a stray enemy pet, the whirlwind or the Spitfire Totem, but it's not much to worry about.
Morogrim Tidewalker
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: The only thing you should worry about here is to make sure your pet is behind Morogrim and out of the way of his little bubbles when you get him to 20%. Recalling him for a few seconds as you reposition and sending him back in will take care of that.
Lady Vashj
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Although high sounds a bit ominous, it might be a bit drastic to mark it as such. Your pet cannot get static charge, but it can be damaged by nearby raid members that have it. It will also be hit by Vashj's forked lightning, as well as the poison attack from a Tainted Elemental, and the poison on the ground from the Spore Bats. Watch out for that health, and keep your pet far away from any striders or nagas that can hit it.
[Guide] Raiding with your pet: Karazhan
(This guide was created by Zoa, level 70 Blood Elf hunter of the the eu server, Vek'nilash. All credit goes to her for this wonderful guide. Date:03/09/2007 )
Table of contents:
Introduction
Controlling your pet
Choosing a good raid pet
- Cats and ravagers
- Owls and Bats
- Wind Serpents
- Scorpids
- Wolves Talents Raiding encounters
- Karazhan
- Gruul’s Lair
- Magtheridon’s Lair
- World bosses
- Serpentshrine Cavern
- Tempest Keep
- Mount Hyjal
- Black Temple
Feedback, flaming, questions and the author
Introduction
A long, long time ago, even before I played a hunter, I would team up with hunters in parties. They would be doing damage, and all that they were supposed to, yet I would notice that most didn't use their pet. When I asked them why, they said the pet didn't do much damage. My theory has always been that all damage, even the slightest bit, would be beneficial, and concluded that the lack of pets was either because the pet was at danger of dying or that it was hard to control. Granted, before The Burning Crusade, pets were much less strong than they are now, but I still hold on to the claim that using the pet is always beneficial, no matter the spec - even in raids.
This guide is all about raiding, and is mostly aimed for beast mastery hunters, although a hunter with any spec should try and keep his or her pet active and healthy for as long as possible. But since beast mastery hunters rely on their pet, and many seem to spec away from beast mastery for fear of losing their damage when their pet dies, it's important for a beast master to know what to do and what to expect in raids.
This guide will provide tips and tricks to keep your pet, and thus your contribution to the raid, up.
Controlling your pet
There are many means for which hunters can control their pets. Some use key bindings, some use macros. Of the popular macros there are the classic hunters mark/pet attack macro, but I personally feel it limits me when I want to do either one of those. But in the spirit of teaching, here it is anyways:
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack Instead of this, I prefer to use key bindings.
Two simple buttons: Q and E. My "Pet Attack" key binding (default is shift + T) is bound to Q, and my hunter's mark is bound to E, meaning every time I want to attack something, I press those buttons simultaneously, and the pet runs off while I apply hunters mark. I can then proceed to use whatever skill I want after that, and if I should want to make my pet attack something else, I can quickly send it to that target without losing my hunter's mark on the first. Use whatever method you prefer to, but remember that it is important that you are able to keep your pet completely under control during a raid.
Choosing a good raid pet
There are many pets out there, and lots of fun ways to use them, but not all are great for raiding. If you are new to raiding, you a probably best off by getting a pet that focuses on DPS (cats, ravagers etc) rather than utility (owls, wolves etc) rather than that cool looking bear. Here is a list of pets that I would recommend for raiding:
Cats, raptors and ravagers: High in damage, these pets are often the prime choice for hunters. They can learn high damage skills as well as dash, and have a lot of cool and unique skins.
Owls and bats: Although we don’t see many bats and owls in Outland, they can still be a good choice for damage and utility. Both have the ability "Screech" which does somewhat low damage, but lowers attack power of all enemies in melee range by up to 210, which is a considerable amount. You might drop a tiny bit in damage, but 210 attack power off an enemy is still significant.
Wind Serpent: Though the wind serpent is past its glory days, it’s still a viable pet for some hunters. A survival hunter combined with "Go for the throat" talent, will cause your pet to spew out lightning breath like it was born to, and will rack up the damage quite nicely. Sadly it falls behind on fights where the enemies have a lot of nature resistance.
Scorpids: Scorpids has been a good alternative for beast mastery hunters because of the neat "bug" concerning their scorpid poison. This has been fixed in patch 2.2, yet it is still a malicious little pet. If you want to use a scorpid, pop all trinkets and bestial wrath before it applies the first poison and the strong effect gained from this will stick on the target as long as the scorpid can reapply it.
Wolves: Although the damage from wolves is lower than that of cats and ravagers, some might find its ability "Furious howl" a nice treat. Furious howl, which is on a 10 second cooldown, increases the damage of nearby party member’s next physical attack by 45-57 damage, which is effectively another 5 DPS for each melee in your raid. You will most likely not be in range for the buff, however.
Talents:
There are tons of good suggestions for raid specs on the various forums all around, so I am not going to post suggestions of my own. I am, however, going to name some key talents to pick if you are speccing beast mastery:
Improved revive pet: If you are a beast master, and your pet dies, you lose about 35% of your total DPS. You need to get it up again fast.
Improved mend pet: Cheaper healing and an easy way to clean your pet from that nasty poison. Frenzy: A pet with frenzy as well as serpent’s swiftness and cobra reflexes will attack incredibly fast, which is also nice for the next talent.
Ferocious inspiration: 3% more damage to all of your party members is arguably one of the best buffs out there. It scales perfectly, and increases not only the damage of you and your pet, but also your party members. With a fast attacking pet, this will be up most of the time, giving you a great damage boost.
For most fights, massive resistance on your pet is not needed.
Raiding encounters:
Here follows the main point of this guide - the raid encounters you will meet on your way to defeat the mighty Illidan and what you should expect to do to keep little Fluffy alive. This is based largely on my own experience, and of tips from other hunters.
Karazhan
The Tower of Medivh, and the first raid instance you will meet. One some encounters, arcane resistance will help your pet survive. This is fights such as The Curator and Shade of Aran, but it shouldn't be too hard keeping your pet alive without any resistance talents.
Attumen the Huntsman
Pet danger: None
Boss notes: This is a pretty straight forward fight. The only time you have to call your pet back is when Attumen jumps his mighty steed, in which case he will clear all aggro, putting your pet in a vulnerable spot. Just call your pet back, wait until the tank has a bit of aggro, and send it back in to rip Attumen to pieces.
Moroes
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: From time to time, Moroes will vanish and garrotte a member of your raid, and sadly, Mittens can be a target of this. You won’t be able to keep your pet up with mend pet, and your healers are sure to neglect your pet altogether and see it as a free card. I tend to sacrifice my pet and then resurrect it unless the boss is nearly down.
Maiden of Virtue
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet will be a benefit here, but it will take damage. Maiden's AOE damage, which affects all melee, is spread out among the people that are affected by it, meaning your pet will lower the damage even more. With Avoidance rank 2 and a mend pet once in a while, you will have no problem keeping your pet alive.
The Curator
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: While Curator doesn't pose a threat to Barney, the Astral Sparks that he summons are very dangerous. Not only will they target your pet, but your pet will also chain the lightning to other members, and your pet will be at high risk when killing the sparks. I suggest leaving your pet at the door, and only send it in to damage Curator during his evocation. Other people prefer to stick the pet on Curator for the duration of the fight, but beware that your pet will take at least one hit from each Astral Spark when it spawns.
Terestian Illhoof
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: While this boss is more or less safe for your pet, you might see it aggro Illhoof's imp if its tank isn't fast enough. Once in a while your pet will also take a hit from a small imp, but that damage is hardly anything to note.
Shade of Aran
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Aran can be a nasty old bugger if you don't keep your pet under control. When he teleports you to him, just before an arcane explosion, you must be sure to drag your pet along as you run to the wall, or your pet will surely take a lot of damage. When he does blizzard, you should recall your pet for a second or two while you dodge it yourself, which will position your pet on the same side of Aran as you, and usually keep it out of harms way. Your pet can move freely when Aran does flame wrath, as it will not trigger the explosion.
Netherspite
Pet danger: None
Boss notes: Surprisingly, your pet won’t take any damage on this fight at all. He isn't affected by the constant damage, and can even stand in the black pools of death without being hurt. Prince
Malchezaar
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: While your pet won’t be affected by Enfeeble, it will be hit by his Shadow Nova, but with Avoidance rank 2, your pet will only take 1500 damage. The only other thing you have to look out for then, is the infernal spawns - your tank might not be in range of their fire AOE, but your pet might, so keep and eye out for that and reposition if needed.
Nightbane
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Unless you manage to get your pet behind Nightbane, you won’t have to worry about it getting hit by Nightbane's tail. You should move your pet out of the Charred Earth, as it will do some 400 DPS to your pet, which can burn the fur and give you a cranky pet. When Nightbane goes up into the air, be sure to notice that he can target your pet with Rain of Bones. Park it away from the main group if this happens, and throw it a mend pet.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Controlling your pet
Choosing a good raid pet
- Cats and ravagers
- Owls and Bats
- Wind Serpents
- Scorpids
- Wolves Talents Raiding encounters
- Karazhan
- Gruul’s Lair
- Magtheridon’s Lair
- World bosses
- Serpentshrine Cavern
- Tempest Keep
- Mount Hyjal
- Black Temple
Feedback, flaming, questions and the author
Introduction
A long, long time ago, even before I played a hunter, I would team up with hunters in parties. They would be doing damage, and all that they were supposed to, yet I would notice that most didn't use their pet. When I asked them why, they said the pet didn't do much damage. My theory has always been that all damage, even the slightest bit, would be beneficial, and concluded that the lack of pets was either because the pet was at danger of dying or that it was hard to control. Granted, before The Burning Crusade, pets were much less strong than they are now, but I still hold on to the claim that using the pet is always beneficial, no matter the spec - even in raids.
This guide is all about raiding, and is mostly aimed for beast mastery hunters, although a hunter with any spec should try and keep his or her pet active and healthy for as long as possible. But since beast mastery hunters rely on their pet, and many seem to spec away from beast mastery for fear of losing their damage when their pet dies, it's important for a beast master to know what to do and what to expect in raids.
This guide will provide tips and tricks to keep your pet, and thus your contribution to the raid, up.
Controlling your pet
There are many means for which hunters can control their pets. Some use key bindings, some use macros. Of the popular macros there are the classic hunters mark/pet attack macro, but I personally feel it limits me when I want to do either one of those. But in the spirit of teaching, here it is anyways:
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack Instead of this, I prefer to use key bindings.
Two simple buttons: Q and E. My "Pet Attack" key binding (default is shift + T) is bound to Q, and my hunter's mark is bound to E, meaning every time I want to attack something, I press those buttons simultaneously, and the pet runs off while I apply hunters mark. I can then proceed to use whatever skill I want after that, and if I should want to make my pet attack something else, I can quickly send it to that target without losing my hunter's mark on the first. Use whatever method you prefer to, but remember that it is important that you are able to keep your pet completely under control during a raid.
Choosing a good raid pet
There are many pets out there, and lots of fun ways to use them, but not all are great for raiding. If you are new to raiding, you a probably best off by getting a pet that focuses on DPS (cats, ravagers etc) rather than utility (owls, wolves etc) rather than that cool looking bear. Here is a list of pets that I would recommend for raiding:
Cats, raptors and ravagers: High in damage, these pets are often the prime choice for hunters. They can learn high damage skills as well as dash, and have a lot of cool and unique skins.
Owls and bats: Although we don’t see many bats and owls in Outland, they can still be a good choice for damage and utility. Both have the ability "Screech" which does somewhat low damage, but lowers attack power of all enemies in melee range by up to 210, which is a considerable amount. You might drop a tiny bit in damage, but 210 attack power off an enemy is still significant.
Wind Serpent: Though the wind serpent is past its glory days, it’s still a viable pet for some hunters. A survival hunter combined with "Go for the throat" talent, will cause your pet to spew out lightning breath like it was born to, and will rack up the damage quite nicely. Sadly it falls behind on fights where the enemies have a lot of nature resistance.
Scorpids: Scorpids has been a good alternative for beast mastery hunters because of the neat "bug" concerning their scorpid poison. This has been fixed in patch 2.2, yet it is still a malicious little pet. If you want to use a scorpid, pop all trinkets and bestial wrath before it applies the first poison and the strong effect gained from this will stick on the target as long as the scorpid can reapply it.
Wolves: Although the damage from wolves is lower than that of cats and ravagers, some might find its ability "Furious howl" a nice treat. Furious howl, which is on a 10 second cooldown, increases the damage of nearby party member’s next physical attack by 45-57 damage, which is effectively another 5 DPS for each melee in your raid. You will most likely not be in range for the buff, however.
Talents:
There are tons of good suggestions for raid specs on the various forums all around, so I am not going to post suggestions of my own. I am, however, going to name some key talents to pick if you are speccing beast mastery:
Improved revive pet: If you are a beast master, and your pet dies, you lose about 35% of your total DPS. You need to get it up again fast.
Improved mend pet: Cheaper healing and an easy way to clean your pet from that nasty poison. Frenzy: A pet with frenzy as well as serpent’s swiftness and cobra reflexes will attack incredibly fast, which is also nice for the next talent.
Ferocious inspiration: 3% more damage to all of your party members is arguably one of the best buffs out there. It scales perfectly, and increases not only the damage of you and your pet, but also your party members. With a fast attacking pet, this will be up most of the time, giving you a great damage boost.
For most fights, massive resistance on your pet is not needed.
Raiding encounters:
Here follows the main point of this guide - the raid encounters you will meet on your way to defeat the mighty Illidan and what you should expect to do to keep little Fluffy alive. This is based largely on my own experience, and of tips from other hunters.
Karazhan
The Tower of Medivh, and the first raid instance you will meet. One some encounters, arcane resistance will help your pet survive. This is fights such as The Curator and Shade of Aran, but it shouldn't be too hard keeping your pet alive without any resistance talents.
Attumen the Huntsman
Pet danger: None
Boss notes: This is a pretty straight forward fight. The only time you have to call your pet back is when Attumen jumps his mighty steed, in which case he will clear all aggro, putting your pet in a vulnerable spot. Just call your pet back, wait until the tank has a bit of aggro, and send it back in to rip Attumen to pieces.
Moroes
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: From time to time, Moroes will vanish and garrotte a member of your raid, and sadly, Mittens can be a target of this. You won’t be able to keep your pet up with mend pet, and your healers are sure to neglect your pet altogether and see it as a free card. I tend to sacrifice my pet and then resurrect it unless the boss is nearly down.
Maiden of Virtue
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: Your pet will be a benefit here, but it will take damage. Maiden's AOE damage, which affects all melee, is spread out among the people that are affected by it, meaning your pet will lower the damage even more. With Avoidance rank 2 and a mend pet once in a while, you will have no problem keeping your pet alive.
The Curator
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: While Curator doesn't pose a threat to Barney, the Astral Sparks that he summons are very dangerous. Not only will they target your pet, but your pet will also chain the lightning to other members, and your pet will be at high risk when killing the sparks. I suggest leaving your pet at the door, and only send it in to damage Curator during his evocation. Other people prefer to stick the pet on Curator for the duration of the fight, but beware that your pet will take at least one hit from each Astral Spark when it spawns.
Terestian Illhoof
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: While this boss is more or less safe for your pet, you might see it aggro Illhoof's imp if its tank isn't fast enough. Once in a while your pet will also take a hit from a small imp, but that damage is hardly anything to note.
Shade of Aran
Pet danger: High
Boss notes: Aran can be a nasty old bugger if you don't keep your pet under control. When he teleports you to him, just before an arcane explosion, you must be sure to drag your pet along as you run to the wall, or your pet will surely take a lot of damage. When he does blizzard, you should recall your pet for a second or two while you dodge it yourself, which will position your pet on the same side of Aran as you, and usually keep it out of harms way. Your pet can move freely when Aran does flame wrath, as it will not trigger the explosion.
Netherspite
Pet danger: None
Boss notes: Surprisingly, your pet won’t take any damage on this fight at all. He isn't affected by the constant damage, and can even stand in the black pools of death without being hurt. Prince
Malchezaar
Pet danger: Low
Boss notes: While your pet won’t be affected by Enfeeble, it will be hit by his Shadow Nova, but with Avoidance rank 2, your pet will only take 1500 damage. The only other thing you have to look out for then, is the infernal spawns - your tank might not be in range of their fire AOE, but your pet might, so keep and eye out for that and reposition if needed.
Nightbane
Pet danger: Medium
Boss notes: Unless you manage to get your pet behind Nightbane, you won’t have to worry about it getting hit by Nightbane's tail. You should move your pet out of the Charred Earth, as it will do some 400 DPS to your pet, which can burn the fur and give you a cranky pet. When Nightbane goes up into the air, be sure to notice that he can target your pet with Rain of Bones. Park it away from the main group if this happens, and throw it a mend pet.
Fumi's pet guide, everything about pets
(This guide was created by Fumi, level 70 Night Elf hunter of the eu server. All credit goes to her for this wonderful guide. Date: 03/02/2007)
Contents of this guide
Introduction
Taming
- Finding a pet / types of pets
- Taming a pet
- Naming your pet
Training your pet
- Feeding your pet
- Giving abilities to your pet
- Levelling your pet
- Pet stats
- Loyalty Playing with your pet
- The pet action bar
- In combat
- Healing
- Fleeing
- Dungeons
- Obstacles
Stable Master
Macro’s
Addons
Useful websites
Introduction
At level 10, every hunter gets a quest from their hunter trainer to learn how to tame a pet. Be sure to take that quest and complete it until the very end! After that you can have up to three pets. This guide will tell you everything you have to know about your pets. If you think anything is missing, or if you still have a question, feel free to post it here. This guide is build up very easily. Every paragraph starts with a title, followed by a long detailed text, and it ends with a short summary. To use this guide, just look for the right paragraph and read the summary. If you still have a question you can read all the details, or ask it.
Taming
Finding a pet / types of pets
Beasts live anywhere. But what kind of pet do you want? Basically, there are three types of pets:
- Defensive pets have a little more armor, but deal a little less damage. Defensive pets are those that have a high family modifier in either armor or health. For armor, a high modifier is +10% or above; for health, it is +4% or above.*
- Offensive pets deal a little more damage, but have a little less armor. Offensive pets are those that have a high family modifier -- +5% or above -- in DPS.*
- Well-round pets are somewhere in between. A well-rounded pet has no high family modifiers, the medium modifiers are balanced between offensive (DPS) and defensive (health and armor).* The difference is very small, so if you go for looks that’s not a problem. For more info on what kind of pet you have or for some stats: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
Click on "Pets Stats & Analysis" for all the global stats and the stats per pet type (direct link: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/stats_main.shtml). Some beasts are elite or have special names (and are stronger). After taming they will be just like any other beast, but they may sometimes have a special skin, what makes them unique. Their stats won't be different from normal beasts!
* according to Petopia. There are defensive, offensive and well-round pets. Elite or unique beasts won't be stronger than normal beasts after taming.
Taming a pet
The trainer first asks you three times to tame a specific type of beast. After you’ve done that you get the taming skill. But be sure to also take the follow up, which gives you the skill to feed and train your pet.
Once you can tame, train and feed a pet it’s time to tame one!
But you cannot tame everything you see in the wild. You may only tame monsters marked as “Beast” and even not all of them. Kodo’s (f.i.) are not tameable. No worries, most pets are tameable. With some luck your pet even has a nice extra skill. Skills will be discussed later.
You can use the spell Beast Lore to see if a certain beast is tameable, and what it's diet is. There is one more but, you can only tame beast of your own level or below. Just go out in the wild and find yourself a pet you like, then try to tame it. Don’t forget that you cannot tame a beast if you already control a pet. Dismissing won’t work. Store your pet at the Stable Master, or abandon it (which is permanent) if you want to tame another one.
Be careful though, if you start taming a pet it starts attacking you. This does not interrupt your taming, but if you’re not careful it might get you killed, especially if the taming fails. It takes 20 seconds to tame a pet. If you can place a Freeze Trap, do so. The pet gets stuck in the ice, so it cannot attack you. This does not stop or interrupt your taming process. If other people (in your team, or not in your team) attack the beast, the taming will fail as well. So if you want to tame a pet inside a dungeon, make sure the team does not attack it!
Some beasts are very big when you see them. After you've tamed them they may shrink, so don't be surprised if this happens. The looks will be the same, it's only the size that changes a bit. For a list of looks of several pets you can have a look at this website: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ There you can also see what skills that pet has, and where you can find that pet. Some pets require a higher level than 10 or 11, so maybe you cannot yet tame the best looking pet. In that case it’s best to find yourself another pet, one you can tame.
You can tame a beast by selecting it and then pressing “Tame Beast”. You only tame beasts of your level and below. The taming will stop when other players attack the beast.
Naming your pet
Each pet you tame has the name “Cat” or “Wolf or “Owl” or whatever type of pet you tamed. You can give it a custom name only once per tamed pet. Think about a name very carefully, because renaming is impossible. There are a few tricks to give another name to your pet, which are a lot of trouble. To name your pet, right-click on the pets portrait and press the “Rename” button. You get a small window where you can enter a name. After pressing the okay button you get one last confirmation. After that the name is set and cannot be undone.
If you are unhappy with the name of your pet there are only 2 options:
1. Abandon the pet by right-clicking the portrait and clicking on “Abandon”. A confirmation window appears, warning you that you will permanently abandon your pet.
After this you can tame a new pet with the same looks, and give it the name you want. The problem is that a pet with the same skin is much lower level than you, or much higher. So that means you have to level up more, or you’ll have to level a new pet all the way up.
2. This is an option I will not advice. You can contact a GM to ask him/her to change the name of your pet. This might however only work if the name of your pet is against the naming policies or - on a roleplaying realm - against the additional roleplaying naming policies I repeat myself: I do not advice using this option, it’s a lot of trouble, and you shouldn’t give your pet a name against the policies to start with.
You can name your pet by right-clicking on it's portrait and pressing the button "rename". This can only be done once!
Training your pet
Now that you have tamed a pet it’s time for some training. Don’t go into fight yet! There are some other things you must know first. Have you seen that your pet’s portrait is now under your own portrait? The bars of your pet shows his health (green bar) and focus (red/orange bar) and it’s happiness level. A few pets use mana instead of focus, in that case they have a blue bar. (I haven't found mana using pets yet, I've been told that Serpents and Warp Stalkers might use mana, but I've tamed those for their skills, and they used focus. Maybe they used mana some time ago, and maybe that's changed with a patch.) You pet might be able to do a skill, if not you can learn them a skill. All skills require focus, just like you need mana for your skills. Skills will be discussed a little bit later. First it’s important to be sure your pet is happy. To do that you need to feed it.
Feeding your pet If the happiness level of your pet shows “Unhappy” (red picture) or “Neutral” (yellow picture) you’ll have to feed your pet. You can also mouse over the happiness logo and read what it says. By doing so you can also see that at lower happiness it deals less damage. If you have just tamed a pet, it’s automatically unhappy with you. To feed your pet, open your spellbook and go to the Beastmastery tab. Look for the “Feed Pet” spell and click on it (you might want to drag it to one of your actionbars). Then select some food from one of your bags, with the glowing cursor.
Instead, you can also directly select food from a bag, left click on it and then left click it again on your pet. What’s that you say? Your pet doesn’t like the food? Maybe you gave your pet the wrong type of food. Not every pet likes it all. Cats only eat meat, while a turtle eats only fish, fruit and fungus. And boars eat almost everything. If you want to know what your pet likes, press [shift] + p. You have just opened your pet window. In the upper left corner you can see the happiness level again. Mouse over it and you can see what it eats (Diet: …). In most capital cities you can find meat vendors, bread vendors and fruit vendors. If you don’t have the needed type of food with you, buy a little bit. At higher levels you might need higher level food. You can also find food in the wild. Most beasts drop meat if they get killed, but other mobs can also drop fruit or bread.
Now you have the correct type of food, feed your pet 1 food. Click on your pet or it’s portrait to select it. You now see a buff with a little food icon. This means your pet is eating. Slowly the happiness is rising. If you send it into combat now, the eating stops, and the happiness won’t rise anymore. After the pet is finished eating, it might not yet be fully happy (green happiness logo). Feed it again until it’s done eating. By now it should be happy, if not feed it again.
Over time your pet loses happiness and needs to eat again. Also, when it dies it loses 1 happiness level and you’ll have to feed it. Unhappy pets leave you after a while!
You can make the feeding easier by using an addon or macro. Read the addon and macro paragraph for more info.
Feed your pet when it’s Neutral or Unhappy by pressing the “Feed Pet” button and then select food from your bag.
Giving abilities to your pet
If your pet has an ability, like Bite, you cannot yet teach it to any other pet. Go and fight some with your new pet. After a few fights you should get a message in your chatwindow, saying you’ve learned the spell. It’s now available to other pets you tame.
Another way to get new abilities for your pet is to visit the Pet Trainer. Those usually can be found near a Hunter Trainer. The Pet Trainer teaches you how to give your pet extra stamina, armor or specific resistances. It also gives you the ability to learn your pet how to Growl, which is very useful if you go out into the wild alone, with only your pet with you.
Good, you got yourself some nice tricks for your pet. Now open your spellbook and go to the General tab. Look for the button “Beast Training” and click it. This is like the spellbook for your pet. If you select a skill you can see how many training points are needed, and what level is needed. That level is the level of your pet, not your level!
Your new pet probably has no training points yet, so you can only learn it Growl. Do so, you’ll see it’s very useful.
If your pet gains loyalty (coming to that later) and levels it gains training points, which you can spend for other abilities. Some abilities still can’t be learned by your pet, because some abilities are for specific types of beasts only. F.i. Prowl can only be learned by cats.
Every pet can learn Great Stamina, Natural Armor and the several nature resistances. But this is where it gets tricky. You cannot learn the highest rank of everything! So you’ll have to choose. That choice is totally up to you. For beginners who are just levelling up I would advice to take Natural Armor and Great Stamina. The resistances, like Fire Resistance are more useful in endgame dungeons (level 60 without The Burning Crusade, or level 70 with TBC).
There is one very tricky thing about giving your pet new skills. If you have learned your pet Great Stamina rank 1, which requires 5 training points, you can learn it Great Stamina rank 2, if it has only 5 training points left, and the right level. If you learn it a higher rank, the training points from the previous rank are “refunded” though it’s not visible. So if your pet knows rank 1, which costs 5 training points, you can learn it rank 2, which costs 10 training points, even though you see that your pet has only 5 training points left.
Any specific skills can be found here: http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html That website also tells you what pets hold the skill you want.
A level 60 pet with loyalty level 6 has 300 Training Points to spend. At level 70 it has 350 Training Points. If you want to know the amount of Training Points for your pet, you can use this formula: Training Points = PetLevel * (LoyaltyLevel - 1)
If you have learned your pet an ability, but it didn't show up on the Pet Action bar, or if you removed it by accident, you can simply get it back by opening your own spellbook (p by default) and then go to the Pet tab, which is found at the bottom. There's a list of all the skills your pet has!
You can learn skills from the Pet Trainer or by taming wild beasts. The “Beast Training” button opens your pet-spellbook from where you can learn skills to your pet.
Levelling your pet
Levelling your pet is very easy. If you have your pet active and defeat monsters that give you experience, your pet also gets experience. But it only works if your pet is at a lower level than you are! As soon as it’s at the same level as you, it won’t get any experience anymore, until you are a higher level again. At level 70, you won’t get anymore experience, but if your pet isn’t level 70 yet, it will still get experience for monster that have a green, or higher level.
Your pet doesn't have to fight in the combat. If it's on Passive and only stands next to you, it can still gain experience.
If you are level 70 and your pet is level 10, it won’t get experience from level 11 monsters! That’s why it’s very hard to level up a low level pet.
Your pet will only get experience from kills, not from quests! So that's why you can still level up a bit faster. To level lowlevel pets fast, it's easiest to kill level 62 monsters, those are the lowest to give experience. Another method of leveling a lowlevel pet fast is doing 5 men dungeons. This gives less experience per monster, but monsters do get killed faster in a group, so it's more monsters per minute. 10 or more men raids are usually very slow methods for pet leveling.
Your pet only gets experience when you do, and only if it’s at a lower level than you are, until it’s at your level. Pets won't get experience from quests.
Pet stats
Every pet has the same base stats.Those stats increase every level. The type of pet you have also has a little influence on those stats. All the stats can be found at
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/stats_main.shtml
The link "Base Pet Attributes by Level" has all the base stats per level, while the link "Family Roles" tells you everything about you need to know about the changes in the stats, affected by pet type. You can upgrade the stats of your pet with several talents from the Beast Mastery talent tree. Buff from scrolls, or other classes (like Power Word Fortitude) can also give your pet a nice boost.
Your own stats also have some effect on the stats of your pet. That influence is very easy, according to Petopia:
Pets have basic stats, which are affected by their family, talents, buff and the hunter stats.
Loyalty
The higher the loyalty of your pet, the more Training Points your pet has. The maximum loyalty is level 6. By pressing [shift] + p you open your pet window. On top you can see the loyalty of your pet. At lower loyalty levels your pet might not listen to you when you give it a command. Pets with happiness Neutral or Happy will gain loyalty. You also need to fight with your pet in order to increase loyalty. If a pet has a lower
Playing with your pet
Fighting with your pet means you control yourself fully and your pet only for some part. For how much you control your pet depends on the settings in the pet action bar.
The pet action bar Above your own action bar is an extra action bar for your pet, as long as your pet is active. This action bar has three standard options, followed by some empty spaces or trained skills, and three other standard settings. I’ll describe all the standard actions and settings and also explain how to use the custom skills.
Attack
This is the most left button. Simply select an enemy and press the attack button, and your pet goes attacking that enemy.
Follow
If there’s a yellow bar around this option, your pet will always walk next to you, or a little behind you. After a fight is comes back to you and will follow you again.
Wait
Makes your pet to stop. It won’t follow you and won’t move, unless you command it to attack, or it goes attacking a nearby enemy (when your pet is on Aggressive or Defensive). After an attack it moves back to the location where you made it stop.
Aggressive
When your pet is set on Aggressive it will automatically attack any enemy that’s close to you or your pet. In most cases this option isn’t really helping. There are some cases where this option is useful…try and learn for yourself!
Defensive
In this mode your pet will also automatically attack enemies, but only enemies that are attacking either you or your pet.
Passive
Passive mode makes sure your pet does never attack an enemy, unless you command it to attack.
Custom skills
Custom skills can be very different. Growl is a custom skill that your pet can use to keep or take agro. Other skills can poison a target, daze it, lower attack, or just cause extra damage. There are several skills for your pet. For more info, have a look here: http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html The custom skills are on by default. This means the pet uses them automatically at it’s own will. If the button has yellow linings moving around the button this means the pet uses the skill at it’s own will. If you right-click the skill the moving lines will stop. This means the pet will not use the skill. Only if you left-click on it, it will use that skill. Right-click again to set it to on again.
When you go on your mount, the Pet action bar gets grey. Your pet goes on Passive and Follow automatically. You cannot control your pet as long as you're mounted. When you get attacked, a pet may still cast some of it's skills, like Furious Howl, which can attract more enemies. If this happens and if you dn't want this, you may turn the autocast off before mounting.
With your pet action bar you have full control over your pet. Play with it and turn the skills on or off, until you have found the right playstyle.
In combat
You have a pet, you know how to feed it, and you know how to control your pet. There is one more thing you must know, then we can go for some action!
Be sure your pet has learned Growl, and make sure it’s used automatically if you go fighting without someone to tank (like a warrior, or druid in bear form). Remember the fighting without your pet? You fire arrows at the enemy, it gets too close and you have to use your other weapons to attack it. Those other weapons deal only a few damage. Now your pet will growl and keep the enemy busy. Ready?
Select an enemy and make your pet attack it. Then just fire the enemy. Your pets keeps the enemy away from you, and it also does some extra damage! Basically, from now on this is how you fight. But beware: sometimes you deal so much damage, the growl from your pet can’t keep up with it and the enemy still comes after you. It happens, you can melee it, or you can use your tricks to get some distance to shoot again (I’m not going to tell you those, this guide is about pets, remember?).
Select an enemy and send your pet to attack it. Then you can fire from a distance with a large chance the enemy won’t attack you.
Healing
The Hunter Trainer will learn you the ability Mend Pet, which you can use to heal your pet. If your pet is getting low on health, you can heal it with Mend Pet. You can also bandage your pet if you got the First Aid profession, but that will only be useful out of combat. If you bandage your pet in combat, the bandaging will stop if your pet gets a hit from an enemy.
Heal your pet with Mend Pet when in combat. Out of combat you can also use bandages.
Fleeing
This is most effective after level 30, if you can Feign Death. Before level 30 it’s only effective with 1 or 2 enemies and when they attack your pet. Sometimes you find that you cannot take down an enemy, or multiple enemies show up, more than you can handle. It’s time to make a run for it! First, try to run away from the monsters. Then Feign Death, so the monsters either go back to their location, or go after your pet. Then stand up, switch to Aspect of the Cheetah and run. Be sure not to run into other enemies! If they attack you, you get dazed. If you are running, put your pet to Passive and command it to follow you. It will keep up with your Aspect of the Cheetah, but won’t get dazed! Sometimes your pet gets killed, or you’ll have to sacrifice it for an escape. Don’t worry, you can resurrect it.
Another, more tricky technique is Feigning Death, and when you're at safe distance you can dismiss your pet. The enemies often reset.
Another method is just fleeing yourself, without taking your pet with you. If the distance between you and your pet is long enough the pet will be automatically dismissed, without losing loyalty. There is a slight risk that your pet gets killed before it's auto-dismissed.
To flee, Feign Death, then run for it with Aspect of the Cheetah. Make your pet to follow you so it has a chance to survive as well.
Dungeons
In a dungeon, always set your pet to Passive. Otherwise it can go after enemies and with that it can pull in new groups of enemies, which is unwanted. Your pet does have the same agro range as you do. Also, be sure to know where your pet is, always.
Also, make sure your pet won’t use Growl in a dungeon. There is always someone to tank, like a warrior or feral druid in bear form. For a tank it’s very hard to take the agro from a pet that is also trying to take agro.
In some cases it can be useful to use Growl. You’ll learn when and when not to use it by trying. For a more detailed guide on using a pet in dungeons you should have a look here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=14351597&sid=1
This guide is basically written for the level 60 dungeons though. Also know that most healer wont heal your pet, unless they have the time and the mana for it. Healing players is more important than healing a pet. You can heal it yourself, and you can easily resurrect it when needed. With some luck you get a great healer who often heals your pet as well.
Your pet may have other abilities, like Furious Howl. When those are on autocast they may sometimes be cast when a nearby enemy does an action. With some bad luck you may get attacked when your pet casts such an ability. The enemies go after the pet, before the tanks can get agro, and if nobody was prepared the team may wipe. Be sure you know what abilities are safe and which aren't!
Make sure your pet is on Passive and that Growl is turned off. Your pet is on the bottom of the healing list, so don't get angry when it's not healed in time.
Obstacles
Sometimes you need to jump down a cliff or something in order to proceed. Especially in dungeons it’s important to know how your pet will react. If possible, the pet won’t jump, but will walk the long way around to you. When it does, it can pull full groups of enemies with it. This isn’t what you wanted. In a dungeon your entire team might get a bit angry at you if that happens! Here’s how to guarantee a safe jump. Actually, there are 2 options:
1. Most people will find this the best option: Dismiss your pet (not abandon, just dismiss), jump down the cliff and call your pet again.
2. Put your pet on Wait, so it won’t move anywhere. Use Eyes of the Beast to gain full control over the movement of your pet. Then use it to jump your pet down. Then go out of the Eyes of the Beast by waiting until the 1 minute is over, or by right-clicking the Eyes of the Beast buff next to your minimap. Be sure to keep your pet in Wait all the time. Jump down yourself. Once down, you can turn your pet into Follow mode again.
When jumping down, make sure you know what your pet does. Dismiss it, jump down and call it back again.
Stable Master
At pretty much every inn, and in every big city is a Stable Master. There you can stable pets you are not using, so you can train or tame another pet. Talk to the Stable Master to stable or take pets. There are three slots for a pet. The most left slot is the pet that is with you. The two others are for pets that are stabled. You will have to buy those two slots one time to use them. They’re very cheap.
You can drag pets between slots to move them to you or the Stable Master. It might be wise to have one slot empty all the time, so you can store your own pets when you ever want to tame another beast for a skill only. You can have only one pet with you. If you want to tame a new beast, you cannot have a pet with you.
You can have only one pet with you. Other pets can be stored at a Stable Master.
Macro’s
You can make some easy macro’s to make working with your pet easier. Yes, even you can make those macro’s. Simply open a chatwindow by pressing [enter] and typing “/macro”, then press [enter] again. Make a new macro by clicking on “New”, find a sign icon for it and name it. Once that’s done you must enter the code. You can [shift] + click a code from your spellbook for a /cast code. Or you can copy and paste the codes below.
To feed your pet with one simple click:
# show Roasted Quail
/cast Feed Pet
/use Roasted Quail
You can remove the Roasted Quail part and type another name for other food.
You can also [shift] + click the food from your bag for the name. The "# show" part causes the macro's name to disappear and put the number of food you have left. on the button instead. You can make a macro with "# show- " always to easily see how many of that item you have. Don't forget to place the macro on an action bar.
To send your pet into attack and cast Hunter’s Mark:
/Petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
If you also add a line “/cast Auto Shot” you will also start your own Auto Shot.
Addons
There are also addons you can use. A document on how to use them is usually comes with the addon.
http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/details/1277/fizzwidget-hunters-helper/
This addon adds some info to the tooltip. If you mouse over a beast that might be able to learn you a skill, it’s shown in the tooltip.
There are also several addons that help you feed your pet. You will still have to click a button, or press a key on your keyboard to do so (yes, with some addons you can bind a key to it). A small list can be found here:
http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/search/?cat=1&q_labels=1&q=feed You can also make the feed macro and bind a key to it (yes, you can bind keys to all your actionbars or just a single button on it).
The zHunter addon got a nice popup bar for your pet abilities (feed/heal/ressurect/etc) http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/details/2610/zhuntermod/
(thanks to Zevena)
Contents of this guide
Introduction
Taming
- Finding a pet / types of pets
- Taming a pet
- Naming your pet
Training your pet
- Feeding your pet
- Giving abilities to your pet
- Levelling your pet
- Pet stats
- Loyalty Playing with your pet
- The pet action bar
- In combat
- Healing
- Fleeing
- Dungeons
- Obstacles
Stable Master
Macro’s
Addons
Useful websites
Introduction
At level 10, every hunter gets a quest from their hunter trainer to learn how to tame a pet. Be sure to take that quest and complete it until the very end! After that you can have up to three pets. This guide will tell you everything you have to know about your pets. If you think anything is missing, or if you still have a question, feel free to post it here. This guide is build up very easily. Every paragraph starts with a title, followed by a long detailed text, and it ends with a short summary. To use this guide, just look for the right paragraph and read the summary. If you still have a question you can read all the details, or ask it.
Taming
Finding a pet / types of pets
Beasts live anywhere. But what kind of pet do you want? Basically, there are three types of pets:
- Defensive pets have a little more armor, but deal a little less damage. Defensive pets are those that have a high family modifier in either armor or health. For armor, a high modifier is +10% or above; for health, it is +4% or above.*
- Offensive pets deal a little more damage, but have a little less armor. Offensive pets are those that have a high family modifier -- +5% or above -- in DPS.*
- Well-round pets are somewhere in between. A well-rounded pet has no high family modifiers, the medium modifiers are balanced between offensive (DPS) and defensive (health and armor).* The difference is very small, so if you go for looks that’s not a problem. For more info on what kind of pet you have or for some stats: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
Click on "Pets Stats & Analysis" for all the global stats and the stats per pet type (direct link: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/stats_main.shtml). Some beasts are elite or have special names (and are stronger). After taming they will be just like any other beast, but they may sometimes have a special skin, what makes them unique. Their stats won't be different from normal beasts!
* according to Petopia. There are defensive, offensive and well-round pets. Elite or unique beasts won't be stronger than normal beasts after taming.
Taming a pet
The trainer first asks you three times to tame a specific type of beast. After you’ve done that you get the taming skill. But be sure to also take the follow up, which gives you the skill to feed and train your pet.
Once you can tame, train and feed a pet it’s time to tame one!
But you cannot tame everything you see in the wild. You may only tame monsters marked as “Beast” and even not all of them. Kodo’s (f.i.) are not tameable. No worries, most pets are tameable. With some luck your pet even has a nice extra skill. Skills will be discussed later.
You can use the spell Beast Lore to see if a certain beast is tameable, and what it's diet is. There is one more but, you can only tame beast of your own level or below. Just go out in the wild and find yourself a pet you like, then try to tame it. Don’t forget that you cannot tame a beast if you already control a pet. Dismissing won’t work. Store your pet at the Stable Master, or abandon it (which is permanent) if you want to tame another one.
Be careful though, if you start taming a pet it starts attacking you. This does not interrupt your taming, but if you’re not careful it might get you killed, especially if the taming fails. It takes 20 seconds to tame a pet. If you can place a Freeze Trap, do so. The pet gets stuck in the ice, so it cannot attack you. This does not stop or interrupt your taming process. If other people (in your team, or not in your team) attack the beast, the taming will fail as well. So if you want to tame a pet inside a dungeon, make sure the team does not attack it!
Some beasts are very big when you see them. After you've tamed them they may shrink, so don't be surprised if this happens. The looks will be the same, it's only the size that changes a bit. For a list of looks of several pets you can have a look at this website: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ There you can also see what skills that pet has, and where you can find that pet. Some pets require a higher level than 10 or 11, so maybe you cannot yet tame the best looking pet. In that case it’s best to find yourself another pet, one you can tame.
You can tame a beast by selecting it and then pressing “Tame Beast”. You only tame beasts of your level and below. The taming will stop when other players attack the beast.
Naming your pet
Each pet you tame has the name “Cat” or “Wolf or “Owl” or whatever type of pet you tamed. You can give it a custom name only once per tamed pet. Think about a name very carefully, because renaming is impossible. There are a few tricks to give another name to your pet, which are a lot of trouble. To name your pet, right-click on the pets portrait and press the “Rename” button. You get a small window where you can enter a name. After pressing the okay button you get one last confirmation. After that the name is set and cannot be undone.
If you are unhappy with the name of your pet there are only 2 options:
1. Abandon the pet by right-clicking the portrait and clicking on “Abandon”. A confirmation window appears, warning you that you will permanently abandon your pet.
After this you can tame a new pet with the same looks, and give it the name you want. The problem is that a pet with the same skin is much lower level than you, or much higher. So that means you have to level up more, or you’ll have to level a new pet all the way up.
2. This is an option I will not advice. You can contact a GM to ask him/her to change the name of your pet. This might however only work if the name of your pet is against the naming policies or - on a roleplaying realm - against the additional roleplaying naming policies I repeat myself: I do not advice using this option, it’s a lot of trouble, and you shouldn’t give your pet a name against the policies to start with.
You can name your pet by right-clicking on it's portrait and pressing the button "rename". This can only be done once!
Training your pet
Now that you have tamed a pet it’s time for some training. Don’t go into fight yet! There are some other things you must know first. Have you seen that your pet’s portrait is now under your own portrait? The bars of your pet shows his health (green bar) and focus (red/orange bar) and it’s happiness level. A few pets use mana instead of focus, in that case they have a blue bar. (I haven't found mana using pets yet, I've been told that Serpents and Warp Stalkers might use mana, but I've tamed those for their skills, and they used focus. Maybe they used mana some time ago, and maybe that's changed with a patch.) You pet might be able to do a skill, if not you can learn them a skill. All skills require focus, just like you need mana for your skills. Skills will be discussed a little bit later. First it’s important to be sure your pet is happy. To do that you need to feed it.
Feeding your pet If the happiness level of your pet shows “Unhappy” (red picture) or “Neutral” (yellow picture) you’ll have to feed your pet. You can also mouse over the happiness logo and read what it says. By doing so you can also see that at lower happiness it deals less damage. If you have just tamed a pet, it’s automatically unhappy with you. To feed your pet, open your spellbook and go to the Beastmastery tab. Look for the “Feed Pet” spell and click on it (you might want to drag it to one of your actionbars). Then select some food from one of your bags, with the glowing cursor.
Instead, you can also directly select food from a bag, left click on it and then left click it again on your pet. What’s that you say? Your pet doesn’t like the food? Maybe you gave your pet the wrong type of food. Not every pet likes it all. Cats only eat meat, while a turtle eats only fish, fruit and fungus. And boars eat almost everything. If you want to know what your pet likes, press [shift] + p. You have just opened your pet window. In the upper left corner you can see the happiness level again. Mouse over it and you can see what it eats (Diet: …). In most capital cities you can find meat vendors, bread vendors and fruit vendors. If you don’t have the needed type of food with you, buy a little bit. At higher levels you might need higher level food. You can also find food in the wild. Most beasts drop meat if they get killed, but other mobs can also drop fruit or bread.
Now you have the correct type of food, feed your pet 1 food. Click on your pet or it’s portrait to select it. You now see a buff with a little food icon. This means your pet is eating. Slowly the happiness is rising. If you send it into combat now, the eating stops, and the happiness won’t rise anymore. After the pet is finished eating, it might not yet be fully happy (green happiness logo). Feed it again until it’s done eating. By now it should be happy, if not feed it again.
Over time your pet loses happiness and needs to eat again. Also, when it dies it loses 1 happiness level and you’ll have to feed it. Unhappy pets leave you after a while!
You can make the feeding easier by using an addon or macro. Read the addon and macro paragraph for more info.
Feed your pet when it’s Neutral or Unhappy by pressing the “Feed Pet” button and then select food from your bag.
Giving abilities to your pet
If your pet has an ability, like Bite, you cannot yet teach it to any other pet. Go and fight some with your new pet. After a few fights you should get a message in your chatwindow, saying you’ve learned the spell. It’s now available to other pets you tame.
Another way to get new abilities for your pet is to visit the Pet Trainer. Those usually can be found near a Hunter Trainer. The Pet Trainer teaches you how to give your pet extra stamina, armor or specific resistances. It also gives you the ability to learn your pet how to Growl, which is very useful if you go out into the wild alone, with only your pet with you.
Good, you got yourself some nice tricks for your pet. Now open your spellbook and go to the General tab. Look for the button “Beast Training” and click it. This is like the spellbook for your pet. If you select a skill you can see how many training points are needed, and what level is needed. That level is the level of your pet, not your level!
Your new pet probably has no training points yet, so you can only learn it Growl. Do so, you’ll see it’s very useful.
If your pet gains loyalty (coming to that later) and levels it gains training points, which you can spend for other abilities. Some abilities still can’t be learned by your pet, because some abilities are for specific types of beasts only. F.i. Prowl can only be learned by cats.
Every pet can learn Great Stamina, Natural Armor and the several nature resistances. But this is where it gets tricky. You cannot learn the highest rank of everything! So you’ll have to choose. That choice is totally up to you. For beginners who are just levelling up I would advice to take Natural Armor and Great Stamina. The resistances, like Fire Resistance are more useful in endgame dungeons (level 60 without The Burning Crusade, or level 70 with TBC).
There is one very tricky thing about giving your pet new skills. If you have learned your pet Great Stamina rank 1, which requires 5 training points, you can learn it Great Stamina rank 2, if it has only 5 training points left, and the right level. If you learn it a higher rank, the training points from the previous rank are “refunded” though it’s not visible. So if your pet knows rank 1, which costs 5 training points, you can learn it rank 2, which costs 10 training points, even though you see that your pet has only 5 training points left.
Any specific skills can be found here: http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html That website also tells you what pets hold the skill you want.
A level 60 pet with loyalty level 6 has 300 Training Points to spend. At level 70 it has 350 Training Points. If you want to know the amount of Training Points for your pet, you can use this formula: Training Points = PetLevel * (LoyaltyLevel - 1)
If you have learned your pet an ability, but it didn't show up on the Pet Action bar, or if you removed it by accident, you can simply get it back by opening your own spellbook (p by default) and then go to the Pet tab, which is found at the bottom. There's a list of all the skills your pet has!
You can learn skills from the Pet Trainer or by taming wild beasts. The “Beast Training” button opens your pet-spellbook from where you can learn skills to your pet.
Levelling your pet
Levelling your pet is very easy. If you have your pet active and defeat monsters that give you experience, your pet also gets experience. But it only works if your pet is at a lower level than you are! As soon as it’s at the same level as you, it won’t get any experience anymore, until you are a higher level again. At level 70, you won’t get anymore experience, but if your pet isn’t level 70 yet, it will still get experience for monster that have a green, or higher level.
Your pet doesn't have to fight in the combat. If it's on Passive and only stands next to you, it can still gain experience.
If you are level 70 and your pet is level 10, it won’t get experience from level 11 monsters! That’s why it’s very hard to level up a low level pet.
Your pet will only get experience from kills, not from quests! So that's why you can still level up a bit faster. To level lowlevel pets fast, it's easiest to kill level 62 monsters, those are the lowest to give experience. Another method of leveling a lowlevel pet fast is doing 5 men dungeons. This gives less experience per monster, but monsters do get killed faster in a group, so it's more monsters per minute. 10 or more men raids are usually very slow methods for pet leveling.
Your pet only gets experience when you do, and only if it’s at a lower level than you are, until it’s at your level. Pets won't get experience from quests.
Pet stats
Every pet has the same base stats.Those stats increase every level. The type of pet you have also has a little influence on those stats. All the stats can be found at
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/stats_main.shtml
The link "Base Pet Attributes by Level" has all the base stats per level, while the link "Family Roles" tells you everything about you need to know about the changes in the stats, affected by pet type. You can upgrade the stats of your pet with several talents from the Beast Mastery talent tree. Buff from scrolls, or other classes (like Power Word Fortitude) can also give your pet a nice boost.
Your own stats also have some effect on the stats of your pet. That influence is very easy, according to Petopia:
Starting with Patch 2.0, hunter pets now benefit from "pet scaling". Pet scaling just means that your pet gets to add some of your stats to his own stats, so that his power scales with your power. The basics are very simple: # Pets get about 30% of the hunter's stamina added to their stamina. # Pets get about 35% of the hunter's armor added to their armor. # Pets get about 22% of the hunter's ranged attack power added to their melee attack power. # Pets get about 12.5% of the hunter's ranged attack power added to their spell damage. # Pets get about 40% of the hunter's resistances added to their own resistances.
Pets have basic stats, which are affected by their family, talents, buff and the hunter stats.
Loyalty
The higher the loyalty of your pet, the more Training Points your pet has. The maximum loyalty is level 6. By pressing [shift] + p you open your pet window. On top you can see the loyalty of your pet. At lower loyalty levels your pet might not listen to you when you give it a command. Pets with happiness Neutral or Happy will gain loyalty. You also need to fight with your pet in order to increase loyalty. If a pet has a lower
Playing with your pet
Fighting with your pet means you control yourself fully and your pet only for some part. For how much you control your pet depends on the settings in the pet action bar.
The pet action bar Above your own action bar is an extra action bar for your pet, as long as your pet is active. This action bar has three standard options, followed by some empty spaces or trained skills, and three other standard settings. I’ll describe all the standard actions and settings and also explain how to use the custom skills.
Attack
This is the most left button. Simply select an enemy and press the attack button, and your pet goes attacking that enemy.
Follow
If there’s a yellow bar around this option, your pet will always walk next to you, or a little behind you. After a fight is comes back to you and will follow you again.
Wait
Makes your pet to stop. It won’t follow you and won’t move, unless you command it to attack, or it goes attacking a nearby enemy (when your pet is on Aggressive or Defensive). After an attack it moves back to the location where you made it stop.
Aggressive
When your pet is set on Aggressive it will automatically attack any enemy that’s close to you or your pet. In most cases this option isn’t really helping. There are some cases where this option is useful…try and learn for yourself!
Defensive
In this mode your pet will also automatically attack enemies, but only enemies that are attacking either you or your pet.
Passive
Passive mode makes sure your pet does never attack an enemy, unless you command it to attack.
Custom skills
Custom skills can be very different. Growl is a custom skill that your pet can use to keep or take agro. Other skills can poison a target, daze it, lower attack, or just cause extra damage. There are several skills for your pet. For more info, have a look here: http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html The custom skills are on by default. This means the pet uses them automatically at it’s own will. If the button has yellow linings moving around the button this means the pet uses the skill at it’s own will. If you right-click the skill the moving lines will stop. This means the pet will not use the skill. Only if you left-click on it, it will use that skill. Right-click again to set it to on again.
When you go on your mount, the Pet action bar gets grey. Your pet goes on Passive and Follow automatically. You cannot control your pet as long as you're mounted. When you get attacked, a pet may still cast some of it's skills, like Furious Howl, which can attract more enemies. If this happens and if you dn't want this, you may turn the autocast off before mounting.
With your pet action bar you have full control over your pet. Play with it and turn the skills on or off, until you have found the right playstyle.
In combat
You have a pet, you know how to feed it, and you know how to control your pet. There is one more thing you must know, then we can go for some action!
Be sure your pet has learned Growl, and make sure it’s used automatically if you go fighting without someone to tank (like a warrior, or druid in bear form). Remember the fighting without your pet? You fire arrows at the enemy, it gets too close and you have to use your other weapons to attack it. Those other weapons deal only a few damage. Now your pet will growl and keep the enemy busy. Ready?
Select an enemy and make your pet attack it. Then just fire the enemy. Your pets keeps the enemy away from you, and it also does some extra damage! Basically, from now on this is how you fight. But beware: sometimes you deal so much damage, the growl from your pet can’t keep up with it and the enemy still comes after you. It happens, you can melee it, or you can use your tricks to get some distance to shoot again (I’m not going to tell you those, this guide is about pets, remember?).
Select an enemy and send your pet to attack it. Then you can fire from a distance with a large chance the enemy won’t attack you.
Healing
The Hunter Trainer will learn you the ability Mend Pet, which you can use to heal your pet. If your pet is getting low on health, you can heal it with Mend Pet. You can also bandage your pet if you got the First Aid profession, but that will only be useful out of combat. If you bandage your pet in combat, the bandaging will stop if your pet gets a hit from an enemy.
Heal your pet with Mend Pet when in combat. Out of combat you can also use bandages.
Fleeing
This is most effective after level 30, if you can Feign Death. Before level 30 it’s only effective with 1 or 2 enemies and when they attack your pet. Sometimes you find that you cannot take down an enemy, or multiple enemies show up, more than you can handle. It’s time to make a run for it! First, try to run away from the monsters. Then Feign Death, so the monsters either go back to their location, or go after your pet. Then stand up, switch to Aspect of the Cheetah and run. Be sure not to run into other enemies! If they attack you, you get dazed. If you are running, put your pet to Passive and command it to follow you. It will keep up with your Aspect of the Cheetah, but won’t get dazed! Sometimes your pet gets killed, or you’ll have to sacrifice it for an escape. Don’t worry, you can resurrect it.
Another, more tricky technique is Feigning Death, and when you're at safe distance you can dismiss your pet. The enemies often reset.
Another method is just fleeing yourself, without taking your pet with you. If the distance between you and your pet is long enough the pet will be automatically dismissed, without losing loyalty. There is a slight risk that your pet gets killed before it's auto-dismissed.
To flee, Feign Death, then run for it with Aspect of the Cheetah. Make your pet to follow you so it has a chance to survive as well.
Dungeons
In a dungeon, always set your pet to Passive. Otherwise it can go after enemies and with that it can pull in new groups of enemies, which is unwanted. Your pet does have the same agro range as you do. Also, be sure to know where your pet is, always.
Also, make sure your pet won’t use Growl in a dungeon. There is always someone to tank, like a warrior or feral druid in bear form. For a tank it’s very hard to take the agro from a pet that is also trying to take agro.
In some cases it can be useful to use Growl. You’ll learn when and when not to use it by trying. For a more detailed guide on using a pet in dungeons you should have a look here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=14351597&sid=1
This guide is basically written for the level 60 dungeons though. Also know that most healer wont heal your pet, unless they have the time and the mana for it. Healing players is more important than healing a pet. You can heal it yourself, and you can easily resurrect it when needed. With some luck you get a great healer who often heals your pet as well.
Your pet may have other abilities, like Furious Howl. When those are on autocast they may sometimes be cast when a nearby enemy does an action. With some bad luck you may get attacked when your pet casts such an ability. The enemies go after the pet, before the tanks can get agro, and if nobody was prepared the team may wipe. Be sure you know what abilities are safe and which aren't!
Make sure your pet is on Passive and that Growl is turned off. Your pet is on the bottom of the healing list, so don't get angry when it's not healed in time.
Obstacles
Sometimes you need to jump down a cliff or something in order to proceed. Especially in dungeons it’s important to know how your pet will react. If possible, the pet won’t jump, but will walk the long way around to you. When it does, it can pull full groups of enemies with it. This isn’t what you wanted. In a dungeon your entire team might get a bit angry at you if that happens! Here’s how to guarantee a safe jump. Actually, there are 2 options:
1. Most people will find this the best option: Dismiss your pet (not abandon, just dismiss), jump down the cliff and call your pet again.
2. Put your pet on Wait, so it won’t move anywhere. Use Eyes of the Beast to gain full control over the movement of your pet. Then use it to jump your pet down. Then go out of the Eyes of the Beast by waiting until the 1 minute is over, or by right-clicking the Eyes of the Beast buff next to your minimap. Be sure to keep your pet in Wait all the time. Jump down yourself. Once down, you can turn your pet into Follow mode again.
When jumping down, make sure you know what your pet does. Dismiss it, jump down and call it back again.
Stable Master
At pretty much every inn, and in every big city is a Stable Master. There you can stable pets you are not using, so you can train or tame another pet. Talk to the Stable Master to stable or take pets. There are three slots for a pet. The most left slot is the pet that is with you. The two others are for pets that are stabled. You will have to buy those two slots one time to use them. They’re very cheap.
You can drag pets between slots to move them to you or the Stable Master. It might be wise to have one slot empty all the time, so you can store your own pets when you ever want to tame another beast for a skill only. You can have only one pet with you. If you want to tame a new beast, you cannot have a pet with you.
You can have only one pet with you. Other pets can be stored at a Stable Master.
Macro’s
You can make some easy macro’s to make working with your pet easier. Yes, even you can make those macro’s. Simply open a chatwindow by pressing [enter] and typing “/macro”, then press [enter] again. Make a new macro by clicking on “New”, find a sign icon for it and name it. Once that’s done you must enter the code. You can [shift] + click a code from your spellbook for a /cast
To feed your pet with one simple click:
# show Roasted Quail
/cast Feed Pet
/use Roasted Quail
You can remove the Roasted Quail part and type another name for other food.
You can also [shift] + click the food from your bag for the name. The "# show" part causes the macro's name to disappear and put the number of food you have left. on the button instead. You can make a macro with "# show
To send your pet into attack and cast Hunter’s Mark:
/Petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
If you also add a line “/cast Auto Shot” you will also start your own Auto Shot.
Addons
There are also addons you can use. A document on how to use them is usually comes with the addon.
http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/details/1277/fizzwidget-hunters-helper/
This addon adds some info to the tooltip. If you mouse over a beast that might be able to learn you a skill, it’s shown in the tooltip.
There are also several addons that help you feed your pet. You will still have to click a button, or press a key on your keyboard to do so (yes, with some addons you can bind a key to it). A small list can be found here:
http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/search/?cat=1&q_labels=1&q=feed You can also make the feed macro and bind a key to it (yes, you can bind keys to all your actionbars or just a single button on it).
The zHunter addon got a nice popup bar for your pet abilities (feed/heal/ressurect/etc) http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/details/2610/zhuntermod/
(thanks to Zevena)
Grizhak's guide to "gray" pet levelling at 70
(This guide was created by Grizhak, level 70 Orc hunter, of the eu server. All credit is due to him for this wonderful guide. Date: 20/03/2007.)
After reaching Outland and level 70, people complain about the types of pets available to them on that level. This guide will hopefully give you a look on how to level a pet from a level from totally useless to above 60 - where raw grinding and instance runs take over.
Of course, you *can* do instance runs with your level all-too-low pet, but as most people tend to hate and blame a low level pet for everything, far less permit the hunter to bring it, I will focus on getting the little bastard to 60 for now. The hard way, all solo of course. Be warned, once the pet reaches 60, the process of levelling will go much slower as he will require almost four times the amount of xp needed to gain a level. If someone could provide me with the exact numbers I will include them here (with credits, of course).
Table of Contents Part 1
- Getting started Part 1a
- Skills and talents Part 1b
- Equipment Part 1c
- Pet skills Part 2
- The technique Part 3
- Places to grind Part 4
- Conclusion
Other stuff
Part 1 - Getting started
Part 1a - Skills and talents
Skills
- Aimed Shot
- Concussion Shot
- Scatter Shot
- Steady Shot
- Aspect of the Viper
- Hunter's Mark
Talents
A good marksman build with a few points in survival and beastmastery works well here. The trick to this way of doing it is to down the enemy before it gets too close without burning too much mana and without using your pet at all. I will give you a sample build and explain some of it now.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=mVbhZEE0RVzMxotcG - 10/43/8
This build has a few survival talents that helps against the enemies featured in this guide as your prime target - humanoids. It also features Hawk Eye, which is almost mandatory for a hunter these days, even so for us in this situation. Efficiency points may be sacrificed for Careful Aim, depending on your preference. Remember, this is an optimized variant of my character's levelling build, and a more general approach would be preferred if you plan to do other things than just levelling a grey pet. The other Beast Mastery talents helps your overall damage and survivability in melee. As long as your build contains the above mentioned skills and preferrably Savage Strikes and Hawk Eye.
Part 1b - Equipment
Nothing really fancy. A good dps gun with a steady shot rotation you're familiar with and an OK melee weapon. I prefer slow two-handers for Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike, but do what you feel is best.
My weapon of choice: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23748 - Ornate Khorium Rifle. Good, slow and with a nice DPS to boot. A bit more expensive than
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31303 - Valanos' Longbow, but I recommend either of these for the task ahead.
Oh, and a decent crit rate (15% and more) is a plus, but you can manage without. It'll just be a bit slower.
Part 1c - Pet skills
Before you tame your pet of choice, be sure to have learned all the skills you plan to teach him. For example, before getting my Ashmane Boar I had to tame a Rip-Blade Ravager to learn it's Gore rank 9, a Plagued Swine for Charge rank 6 and I already had Dash rank 3.
See http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html for a list of pet skills and where to get them.
Part 2 - The technique
So, how to do it? I'll give you a short walk trough an average battle:
Hunter's Mark when running to range, Aimed Shot, Concussive Shot (if melee mob), Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot (Concussive Shot will have worn off by now). Depending on your number of crits and the mob's health you can now either finish him off in melee, try to finish him off while still at range, or Scatter Shot him and do a Steady Shot + Auto Shot. He should be dead by now.
If you fight casters, you might want to use Silencing Shot. If you get the distance right, he will stop running towards you and start casting again before getting too close for you to shoot him.
In any case, remember to use Aspect of the Viper. Don't be ashamed if you get some downtime, personally I solved that by not using Arcane Shot unless the mob was closing in on me with 2000+ health. With decent gear that won't happen often anyway.
Rinse and repeat in your area of choice or until the pet gets level enough to hold aggro. That's when you can begin the "ordinary" grind.
Side note: Traps
I tried using traps for this kind of grind, but it's not worth the time or mana. Use some extra mana on your shots instead.
Side note 2: Stings
Not worth the mana either. The mob will die before too long has passed, and the dot effect of Serpent Sting breaks Scatter Shot. Mana better used on something else.
Part 3 - Places to grind Grind.
A terrible word. But that's what it is - experience grinding. I have chosen these areas out of efficiency, not out of drops. These are the areas I have tried and have experience with, you might have other favourites. The level range is from 62 and above because at level 70, neither you or the pet (at ANY level) will get experience from mobs at 61 and below.
Preferred place, second if not alone: Firewing Point (Terokkar Forest) - around 70,35
Mob level range: 63-64
Mobs: Around theglowing centre with the manabomb - Mainly warlocks, which stays at range most of the time. Casts shadowbolt and immolate, often resisted. Some melee mobs. All the mobs have a small chance to drain about 1200+ mana if you're closer than approx. 20 yards. Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth, water and bread, Firewing Signets (low-level scryer rep) and very rarely Arcane Tomes.
Great if you are alone, because you can mainly grind off warlocks. Only technique to worry about is to keep distance. Once they start casting they'll stay at range. Downside is that the place is a quest place, making it quite possible someone else is there too, "stealing" your mobs. Also the warlocks do some damage, making it likely you will get some downtime. Otherwise a brilliant spot :) Can also be used at levels above 60.
A close second: The Den of Haal'esh (Hellfire Peninsula) - around 26,75
Mob level range: 62-63
Mobs: Melee and ranged casters. Some grey level birds, easily avoided. Melee mobs might get a running speed buff, which makes raptor strike useless. Use Scatter Shot instead to gain range if needed.
Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth, a few pieces of meat and some water. Also tons of light feathers.
This is the place I found the most effective in pure xp value. The mobs respawn quickly, the ones questing in the area leave as soon as they are done and there are no high level gankers around. Also, if you are horde like me, the vendor at Falcon Watch is only a minute away.
A close third: Veil Shienor (Terokkar Forest) - around 58,23
Mob level range: 62-63(?)
Mobs: Melee and a few stationary ranged casters. A named quest mob.
Common drops: Silver, Arakkoa Feathers (used for Lower City rep), Netherweave and Runecloth, Light Feathers, meat and water.
The skettis camps in Terokkar is often crawling with both alliance and horde, and mobs can be scarce at times. The Arakkoa Feathers make these camps popular for level 70 rep grinders. Still, I find Veil Shienor, just northeast of Tuurem, to be the better choice over the others. If you are alone, you will soon find your own "rounds" in the camp without waiting for respawns.
Fourth: The Hewn Bog (Zangarmarsh) - around 33,33 and as far as the ogres go
Mob level range: 62-64(?)
Mobs: Melee and semi-ranged casters with fire nova totems. A named quest mob. The melee ones enrages on low health. The casters are slow patrollers, but not enough to be a problem.
Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth.
Between both alliance and horde towns, these ogres are close to both and a good grind. The distance between them tends to be big if you cleared out an area, and they don't respawn as fast as the arakkoa in Hellfire and Terokkar. Low health and easily downed if you got a good gun. Still, you hardly get your rythm going because of gankers and other questers killing the mobs.
Part 4 - Conclusion
So there you have it. That's how you can level any pet of any level to level 60 and above with (hopefully) minimum amounts of pain as far as soloing goes. Great thanks to... umm... Blizzard for making this game and my Ashmane Boar Borka for staying with me. He's been level 70 for some weeks now, and now it's the Noxious Plaguebat Greywing's turn!
Other stuff
Some nice to know facts:
- You and your pet shares the aggro range, regardless of level. That means the pet won't aggro pull because of its low level.
- All pets will are able to learn Cobra Reflexes. No need to level King Bangalash just for that skill. - There are no beast-class (tameable) boars above level 60.
- For most pet-related questions, see http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
- Cower sucks.
After reaching Outland and level 70, people complain about the types of pets available to them on that level. This guide will hopefully give you a look on how to level a pet from a level from totally useless to above 60 - where raw grinding and instance runs take over.
Of course, you *can* do instance runs with your level all-too-low pet, but as most people tend to hate and blame a low level pet for everything, far less permit the hunter to bring it, I will focus on getting the little bastard to 60 for now. The hard way, all solo of course. Be warned, once the pet reaches 60, the process of levelling will go much slower as he will require almost four times the amount of xp needed to gain a level. If someone could provide me with the exact numbers I will include them here (with credits, of course).
Table of Contents Part 1
- Getting started Part 1a
- Skills and talents Part 1b
- Equipment Part 1c
- Pet skills Part 2
- The technique Part 3
- Places to grind Part 4
- Conclusion
Other stuff
Part 1 - Getting started
Part 1a - Skills and talents
Skills
- Aimed Shot
- Concussion Shot
- Scatter Shot
- Steady Shot
- Aspect of the Viper
- Hunter's Mark
Talents
A good marksman build with a few points in survival and beastmastery works well here. The trick to this way of doing it is to down the enemy before it gets too close without burning too much mana and without using your pet at all. I will give you a sample build and explain some of it now.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=mVbhZEE0RVzMxotcG - 10/43/8
This build has a few survival talents that helps against the enemies featured in this guide as your prime target - humanoids. It also features Hawk Eye, which is almost mandatory for a hunter these days, even so for us in this situation. Efficiency points may be sacrificed for Careful Aim, depending on your preference. Remember, this is an optimized variant of my character's levelling build, and a more general approach would be preferred if you plan to do other things than just levelling a grey pet. The other Beast Mastery talents helps your overall damage and survivability in melee. As long as your build contains the above mentioned skills and preferrably Savage Strikes and Hawk Eye.
Part 1b - Equipment
Nothing really fancy. A good dps gun with a steady shot rotation you're familiar with and an OK melee weapon. I prefer slow two-handers for Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike, but do what you feel is best.
My weapon of choice: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23748 - Ornate Khorium Rifle. Good, slow and with a nice DPS to boot. A bit more expensive than
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31303 - Valanos' Longbow, but I recommend either of these for the task ahead.
Oh, and a decent crit rate (15% and more) is a plus, but you can manage without. It'll just be a bit slower.
Part 1c - Pet skills
Before you tame your pet of choice, be sure to have learned all the skills you plan to teach him. For example, before getting my Ashmane Boar I had to tame a Rip-Blade Ravager to learn it's Gore rank 9, a Plagued Swine for Charge rank 6 and I already had Dash rank 3.
See http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html for a list of pet skills and where to get them.
Part 2 - The technique
So, how to do it? I'll give you a short walk trough an average battle:
Hunter's Mark when running to range, Aimed Shot, Concussive Shot (if melee mob), Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot (Concussive Shot will have worn off by now). Depending on your number of crits and the mob's health you can now either finish him off in melee, try to finish him off while still at range, or Scatter Shot him and do a Steady Shot + Auto Shot. He should be dead by now.
If you fight casters, you might want to use Silencing Shot. If you get the distance right, he will stop running towards you and start casting again before getting too close for you to shoot him.
In any case, remember to use Aspect of the Viper. Don't be ashamed if you get some downtime, personally I solved that by not using Arcane Shot unless the mob was closing in on me with 2000+ health. With decent gear that won't happen often anyway.
Rinse and repeat in your area of choice or until the pet gets level enough to hold aggro. That's when you can begin the "ordinary" grind.
Side note: Traps
I tried using traps for this kind of grind, but it's not worth the time or mana. Use some extra mana on your shots instead.
Side note 2: Stings
Not worth the mana either. The mob will die before too long has passed, and the dot effect of Serpent Sting breaks Scatter Shot. Mana better used on something else.
Part 3 - Places to grind Grind.
A terrible word. But that's what it is - experience grinding. I have chosen these areas out of efficiency, not out of drops. These are the areas I have tried and have experience with, you might have other favourites. The level range is from 62 and above because at level 70, neither you or the pet (at ANY level) will get experience from mobs at 61 and below.
Preferred place, second if not alone: Firewing Point (Terokkar Forest) - around 70,35
Mob level range: 63-64
Mobs: Around theglowing centre with the manabomb - Mainly warlocks, which stays at range most of the time. Casts shadowbolt and immolate, often resisted. Some melee mobs. All the mobs have a small chance to drain about 1200+ mana if you're closer than approx. 20 yards. Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth, water and bread, Firewing Signets (low-level scryer rep) and very rarely Arcane Tomes.
Great if you are alone, because you can mainly grind off warlocks. Only technique to worry about is to keep distance. Once they start casting they'll stay at range. Downside is that the place is a quest place, making it quite possible someone else is there too, "stealing" your mobs. Also the warlocks do some damage, making it likely you will get some downtime. Otherwise a brilliant spot :) Can also be used at levels above 60.
A close second: The Den of Haal'esh (Hellfire Peninsula) - around 26,75
Mob level range: 62-63
Mobs: Melee and ranged casters. Some grey level birds, easily avoided. Melee mobs might get a running speed buff, which makes raptor strike useless. Use Scatter Shot instead to gain range if needed.
Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth, a few pieces of meat and some water. Also tons of light feathers.
This is the place I found the most effective in pure xp value. The mobs respawn quickly, the ones questing in the area leave as soon as they are done and there are no high level gankers around. Also, if you are horde like me, the vendor at Falcon Watch is only a minute away.
A close third: Veil Shienor (Terokkar Forest) - around 58,23
Mob level range: 62-63(?)
Mobs: Melee and a few stationary ranged casters. A named quest mob.
Common drops: Silver, Arakkoa Feathers (used for Lower City rep), Netherweave and Runecloth, Light Feathers, meat and water.
The skettis camps in Terokkar is often crawling with both alliance and horde, and mobs can be scarce at times. The Arakkoa Feathers make these camps popular for level 70 rep grinders. Still, I find Veil Shienor, just northeast of Tuurem, to be the better choice over the others. If you are alone, you will soon find your own "rounds" in the camp without waiting for respawns.
Fourth: The Hewn Bog (Zangarmarsh) - around 33,33 and as far as the ogres go
Mob level range: 62-64(?)
Mobs: Melee and semi-ranged casters with fire nova totems. A named quest mob. The melee ones enrages on low health. The casters are slow patrollers, but not enough to be a problem.
Common drops: Silver, Netherweave and Runecloth.
Between both alliance and horde towns, these ogres are close to both and a good grind. The distance between them tends to be big if you cleared out an area, and they don't respawn as fast as the arakkoa in Hellfire and Terokkar. Low health and easily downed if you got a good gun. Still, you hardly get your rythm going because of gankers and other questers killing the mobs.
Part 4 - Conclusion
So there you have it. That's how you can level any pet of any level to level 60 and above with (hopefully) minimum amounts of pain as far as soloing goes. Great thanks to... umm... Blizzard for making this game and my Ashmane Boar Borka for staying with me. He's been level 70 for some weeks now, and now it's the Noxious Plaguebat Greywing's turn!
Other stuff
Some nice to know facts:
- You and your pet shares the aggro range, regardless of level. That means the pet won't aggro pull because of its low level.
- All pets will are able to learn Cobra Reflexes. No need to level King Bangalash just for that skill. - There are no beast-class (tameable) boars above level 60.
- For most pet-related questions, see http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
- Cower sucks.
A Beastmaster's Guide to pets and bosses
(This guide was created by Hoju, level 70 dwarf hunter of the Wildhammer server. All credit is due to him for this wonderful guide. Date: 05/12/2007)
I've seen quite a few posts asking about the viability of beastmaster builds in kara and beyond due to pets liveability. Ever since the hunter talents we're changed I have been a beastmaster hunter and I just want to share my tips to keeping your pet up and attacking for bosses in karazhan and gruul's lair. (I dont have enough experience with Ilhoof or Prince or Nightbane or Gruul to put them in at this time, hopefully will add in strats shortly)
For spec, i've been raiding with either a 41-17-3 or a 41-20-0 depending on what we're running. For pet, i've been using a cat. He's trained with the maximum stamina, +150 arcane resist, dash, claw, and growl, and a small armor buff if i remember. The arcane resist helps in kara a lot, especially with the curator.
As far as group composition goes, a shadow priest is always a big help to help heal your pet. A warlocks stam buff is a nice addition too. Make sure your pet is getting buffed with everything you are so that he can max health.
Updated 6/2/07
Karazhan
Midnight/Huntsmen - Pretty pet friendly fight. My pet is right with me on midnight until the huntsmen mounts up. I'll pull him off to allow the tank to re gain aggro for a few seconds, and once mounted he has a cleave that does a fairly large amount of damage. If your pet gets hit by a cleave or two, pull him back to you. Usually my pet can stay on target for the whole fight, but on some unlucky encounters i will have to keep him back after getting hit by a few cleaves.
Moroes - Another pet friendly boss. My pet will be attacking with me on the adds in the order they need to go down and will be on moroes after. Once on Moroes there is little danger for your pet. I don't think ive ever noticed Moroes garrote my pet, but i suppose its possible, and would be some bad luck. The only real danger to your pet will be Lord Robin Daris, who has a whirlwind that hits very hard.
Maiden - One of the harder fights to keep your pet active for. Due to her holy wrath, your pet must be used in short periods of time. If theres a lot of melee in the group, only send your pet in after she has AoE'd and pull him out after about 15-20 seconds to try to avoid the next. Also, the timing of your Beast Within is very critical - its best used AFTER a repetence, so that you will no longer be under the effects of TBW for the next. If your are, you and your pet immune the stun, and your pet will likely be one shotted by maiden before the tank grabs her. If your pet gets hit with a holy fire, hope that a healer in your group will toss him a heal or two. Once you get the AoE timing and TBW timing down your pet will survive this fight and will do good damage, even though he wont be in the whole time.
Curator - I've tried it several different ways with curator and so far the best strategy has been to leave my pet on curator the duration of the fight. I've found the having him with me and moving on the adds will just add stress to the healers through the chain lightnings, or the flares will come right to my deadzone if targeting my pet, and healers wont waste mana on a pet for this fight. I will just send kitty right on to him from the start (this is where the arcane resist is almost a must - its a major help) so that he is still doing damage, giving FI buffs, ect, without causing much grief to the raid.
Shade Of Aran - While your pet is completley usefull during this fight, keeping him up will be a matter of luck sometimes. If shade decides to target him with a fireball or a frostball a few times your pet wont last long. However, I have been able to keep him up the entire a lot. Usually i will use TBW right away when running in and continue using it every time its up. Make sure when he does the arcane blast that as soon as you are pulled to the center, you put your pet to passive so that it will follow you out of the blast. It may also help to use dash or dive (if your pet has it) to get out of range before he does it. The same idea applies for blizzard - sometimes your pet will be safe staying on shade during blizzard, other times you may need to pull him out right away. Or, occasionaly the blizzard will eventually hit your pet, and i wont pull him out until the last second. Your position is very important for your pets surviability- make sure you are positioned so that your pet wont run through the blizzard to get to you. If someone gets conflagged its wise to pull your pet back as well so that he doesnt get hurt. Again, sometimes your pet will get nuked very quickly, other times you can use him the entire fight.
Netherspite - Easy fight for your pet. Always keep your pet visible to you, as the only danger will be the void spawns. If one pops on your pet or near your pet, call him back, reposition, and send him back in. We run out during the banish phase and my pet comes with us when we do this.
Gruul's Lair
High King Maulgar - For this fight I have been one of the two tanks on Kiggler. Our guilds been running this with two hunters - myself and a marksmen hunter. The marks hunter does the intial pull with a misdirection on the MT for Maulgar while I pop TBW and get some aggro on Kiggler. Beastmaster hunters help a lot for this, since we will be immune to his sheep for the duration, allowing us to grab a lot of aggro and also allowing the other hunter to do the pull and get aggro on kiggler. As for my pet, he will initially be right next to me to prevent any LOS issues when trying to use TBW, but then will be attacking whichever target the raid is attacking. It helps for this fight to have a macro for your pet to assist a raid memeber that will be on the appropriate targets the entire fight. When it comes to Maulgar time, be mindful of the whirlwind and other times when melee needs to back off.
Gruul - Very pet friendly fight after 2.1. As someone has said, pets are no longer affected by shatter and so can be used freely throughtout this fight. The only issue is the cave ins. If u notice your pet getting hit by it simply pull him out and send him back in when its gone or reposition slightly and resend him in.
BONUS INFO ADDED BY LEVEL 70 ORC HUNTER ZARAGA OF THE SERVER HAKKER AND LEVL 70 NIGHT ELF HUNTER ISHAAEL OF THE SERVER AZGALAR
(10/06/2007 )
Prince Malchezaar: Pet friendly fight. Not affected by Enfeeble, all you have to worry about is recalling pet before Shadow Nova and avoid Infernals. Phase 3 can be difficult to determine when Shadow Novas go off due to no Enfeeble.
Gruul: Pets are not affected by Shatter or Stoned now in 2.1! Feel free to keep him on gruul at all times and throw a Mend Pet on him with Cave In. Huzzah for free dps!
Illhoof: Send it and forget it pet fight. Just keep pet always on Illhoof and dont worry about him the entire fight.
Nightbane: Due to the narrow location, Charred Earth can take up the entire area your pet is attacking, which sucks. Also pets CAN be targetted for Rain of Bones. Not my favorite fight as a BM hunter.
SSC:
Hydross: Generally a fairly friendly pet fight, only issue is if you dont pull your pet off the boss as the phases transition as with its insanely fast attack speed it could cop the first autoswing and die.
Lurker: With current changes pets no longer take spout. End result, you leave your pet on lurker whenever hes "emerged" and keep up a mend pet. in the "submerged" phase you call him to you, fd drink for a few seconds should you be of the "i dont spend money on excessive mana pots" opinion, then re-send your pet onto the main melee add to be dpsed *dont attack the front, it cleaves*. your pet can take multishots. rinse repeat, res your pet if your any more than 20% of the fight to go.
Morogrim: Completely pet friendly. You start the fight with your pet on the backside of the boss, and it never for any reason moves.
Fathom-lord karathress: this fight depends ENTIRELY on your guilds tank positions. Generally start with your pet on the shaman who is usually the first dps target. Once he and his spitfire totem are dead stick your pet on the hunter and afterwards his pet. Most guilds then dps the priest, however she has heavy aoe which your pet will eat and probably die to. Much preferably stick your pet on fathomlord himself and then shoot the priest with the rest of your guild (entirely optional. was an amazing option when you could scorpid as it was generally about that point in the fight your cooldowns came up so you got a huge dmg boost by not breaking the poison stacks. still a good idea though).
Leotheras: you start dpsing the adds, the boss comes out and one of the hunters generally uses an MD. you then start dps on leotheras, making sure you have a boss-mod with the whirlwind enabled. around 5 seconds prior to his first whirlwind (10 seconds into his popping up) call your pet back and get to a decent range. NOTE: during this fight you can often fd and drink to full if you dont have the potions / mana efficiency. You can also use any of the times your pet dies to whirlwind to res him and FD feed him as generally you have a few seconds tanks are regaining aggro. The first time leotheras appears he will do 2 whirlwind phases. For the next 75% he will only do 1 per "human phase". Basically you pull your pet out nice and early, and you and he keep it safe, after the whirlwind you have another 20 or so seconds of humanoid form, then another minute of demon, and a further 10seconds of human before the next whirlwind forces you to call him back.
vashj: helps to give your pet lots of nature resist. Pull your pet back whenever a melee gets the lightning shield (name escapes me) in phases 1 and 3. for phase 2 pretty simple, almost all hunters are on the elementals, you're given an area to cover and you do just that, killing anything that comes across your path. If a tainted spawns in your area, or near enough to help with, you drop w/e your doing, blow any cooldowns you can and burn it. For phase 3 your pet should take zero damage from the spore bat poison cloud, and your guild will probably ask you to dps spore bats as they come in. Without hawk's eye it requires multiple hunters to coordinate on them, and after a while it wont be worth keeping up.
I've seen quite a few posts asking about the viability of beastmaster builds in kara and beyond due to pets liveability. Ever since the hunter talents we're changed I have been a beastmaster hunter and I just want to share my tips to keeping your pet up and attacking for bosses in karazhan and gruul's lair. (I dont have enough experience with Ilhoof or Prince or Nightbane or Gruul to put them in at this time, hopefully will add in strats shortly)
For spec, i've been raiding with either a 41-17-3 or a 41-20-0 depending on what we're running. For pet, i've been using a cat. He's trained with the maximum stamina, +150 arcane resist, dash, claw, and growl, and a small armor buff if i remember. The arcane resist helps in kara a lot, especially with the curator.
As far as group composition goes, a shadow priest is always a big help to help heal your pet. A warlocks stam buff is a nice addition too. Make sure your pet is getting buffed with everything you are so that he can max health.
Updated 6/2/07
Karazhan
Midnight/Huntsmen - Pretty pet friendly fight. My pet is right with me on midnight until the huntsmen mounts up. I'll pull him off to allow the tank to re gain aggro for a few seconds, and once mounted he has a cleave that does a fairly large amount of damage. If your pet gets hit by a cleave or two, pull him back to you. Usually my pet can stay on target for the whole fight, but on some unlucky encounters i will have to keep him back after getting hit by a few cleaves.
Moroes - Another pet friendly boss. My pet will be attacking with me on the adds in the order they need to go down and will be on moroes after. Once on Moroes there is little danger for your pet. I don't think ive ever noticed Moroes garrote my pet, but i suppose its possible, and would be some bad luck. The only real danger to your pet will be Lord Robin Daris, who has a whirlwind that hits very hard.
Maiden - One of the harder fights to keep your pet active for. Due to her holy wrath, your pet must be used in short periods of time. If theres a lot of melee in the group, only send your pet in after she has AoE'd and pull him out after about 15-20 seconds to try to avoid the next. Also, the timing of your Beast Within is very critical - its best used AFTER a repetence, so that you will no longer be under the effects of TBW for the next. If your are, you and your pet immune the stun, and your pet will likely be one shotted by maiden before the tank grabs her. If your pet gets hit with a holy fire, hope that a healer in your group will toss him a heal or two. Once you get the AoE timing and TBW timing down your pet will survive this fight and will do good damage, even though he wont be in the whole time.
Curator - I've tried it several different ways with curator and so far the best strategy has been to leave my pet on curator the duration of the fight. I've found the having him with me and moving on the adds will just add stress to the healers through the chain lightnings, or the flares will come right to my deadzone if targeting my pet, and healers wont waste mana on a pet for this fight. I will just send kitty right on to him from the start (this is where the arcane resist is almost a must - its a major help) so that he is still doing damage, giving FI buffs, ect, without causing much grief to the raid.
Shade Of Aran - While your pet is completley usefull during this fight, keeping him up will be a matter of luck sometimes. If shade decides to target him with a fireball or a frostball a few times your pet wont last long. However, I have been able to keep him up the entire a lot. Usually i will use TBW right away when running in and continue using it every time its up. Make sure when he does the arcane blast that as soon as you are pulled to the center, you put your pet to passive so that it will follow you out of the blast. It may also help to use dash or dive (if your pet has it) to get out of range before he does it. The same idea applies for blizzard - sometimes your pet will be safe staying on shade during blizzard, other times you may need to pull him out right away. Or, occasionaly the blizzard will eventually hit your pet, and i wont pull him out until the last second. Your position is very important for your pets surviability- make sure you are positioned so that your pet wont run through the blizzard to get to you. If someone gets conflagged its wise to pull your pet back as well so that he doesnt get hurt. Again, sometimes your pet will get nuked very quickly, other times you can use him the entire fight.
Netherspite - Easy fight for your pet. Always keep your pet visible to you, as the only danger will be the void spawns. If one pops on your pet or near your pet, call him back, reposition, and send him back in. We run out during the banish phase and my pet comes with us when we do this.
Gruul's Lair
High King Maulgar - For this fight I have been one of the two tanks on Kiggler. Our guilds been running this with two hunters - myself and a marksmen hunter. The marks hunter does the intial pull with a misdirection on the MT for Maulgar while I pop TBW and get some aggro on Kiggler. Beastmaster hunters help a lot for this, since we will be immune to his sheep for the duration, allowing us to grab a lot of aggro and also allowing the other hunter to do the pull and get aggro on kiggler. As for my pet, he will initially be right next to me to prevent any LOS issues when trying to use TBW, but then will be attacking whichever target the raid is attacking. It helps for this fight to have a macro for your pet to assist a raid memeber that will be on the appropriate targets the entire fight. When it comes to Maulgar time, be mindful of the whirlwind and other times when melee needs to back off.
Gruul - Very pet friendly fight after 2.1. As someone has said, pets are no longer affected by shatter and so can be used freely throughtout this fight. The only issue is the cave ins. If u notice your pet getting hit by it simply pull him out and send him back in when its gone or reposition slightly and resend him in.
BONUS INFO ADDED BY LEVEL 70 ORC HUNTER ZARAGA OF THE SERVER HAKKER AND LEVL 70 NIGHT ELF HUNTER ISHAAEL OF THE SERVER AZGALAR
(10/06/2007 )
Prince Malchezaar: Pet friendly fight. Not affected by Enfeeble, all you have to worry about is recalling pet before Shadow Nova and avoid Infernals. Phase 3 can be difficult to determine when Shadow Novas go off due to no Enfeeble.
Gruul: Pets are not affected by Shatter or Stoned now in 2.1! Feel free to keep him on gruul at all times and throw a Mend Pet on him with Cave In. Huzzah for free dps!
Illhoof: Send it and forget it pet fight. Just keep pet always on Illhoof and dont worry about him the entire fight.
Nightbane: Due to the narrow location, Charred Earth can take up the entire area your pet is attacking, which sucks. Also pets CAN be targetted for Rain of Bones. Not my favorite fight as a BM hunter.
SSC:
Hydross: Generally a fairly friendly pet fight, only issue is if you dont pull your pet off the boss as the phases transition as with its insanely fast attack speed it could cop the first autoswing and die.
Lurker: With current changes pets no longer take spout. End result, you leave your pet on lurker whenever hes "emerged" and keep up a mend pet. in the "submerged" phase you call him to you, fd drink for a few seconds should you be of the "i dont spend money on excessive mana pots" opinion, then re-send your pet onto the main melee add to be dpsed *dont attack the front, it cleaves*. your pet can take multishots. rinse repeat, res your pet if your any more than 20% of the fight to go.
Morogrim: Completely pet friendly. You start the fight with your pet on the backside of the boss, and it never for any reason moves.
Fathom-lord karathress: this fight depends ENTIRELY on your guilds tank positions. Generally start with your pet on the shaman who is usually the first dps target. Once he and his spitfire totem are dead stick your pet on the hunter and afterwards his pet. Most guilds then dps the priest, however she has heavy aoe which your pet will eat and probably die to. Much preferably stick your pet on fathomlord himself and then shoot the priest with the rest of your guild (entirely optional. was an amazing option when you could scorpid as it was generally about that point in the fight your cooldowns came up so you got a huge dmg boost by not breaking the poison stacks. still a good idea though).
Leotheras: you start dpsing the adds, the boss comes out and one of the hunters generally uses an MD. you then start dps on leotheras, making sure you have a boss-mod with the whirlwind enabled. around 5 seconds prior to his first whirlwind (10 seconds into his popping up) call your pet back and get to a decent range. NOTE: during this fight you can often fd and drink to full if you dont have the potions / mana efficiency. You can also use any of the times your pet dies to whirlwind to res him and FD feed him as generally you have a few seconds tanks are regaining aggro. The first time leotheras appears he will do 2 whirlwind phases. For the next 75% he will only do 1 per "human phase". Basically you pull your pet out nice and early, and you and he keep it safe, after the whirlwind you have another 20 or so seconds of humanoid form, then another minute of demon, and a further 10seconds of human before the next whirlwind forces you to call him back.
vashj: helps to give your pet lots of nature resist. Pull your pet back whenever a melee gets the lightning shield (name escapes me) in phases 1 and 3. for phase 2 pretty simple, almost all hunters are on the elementals, you're given an area to cover and you do just that, killing anything that comes across your path. If a tainted spawns in your area, or near enough to help with, you drop w/e your doing, blow any cooldowns you can and burn it. For phase 3 your pet should take zero damage from the spore bat poison cloud, and your guild will probably ask you to dps spore bats as they come in. Without hawk's eye it requires multiple hunters to coordinate on them, and after a while it wont be worth keeping up.
Borengora's Hunter Guide: Pets
(This guide was created by Borengora, level 60 orc hunter of the Twisted Nether server. All credit is due to him for this wonderful guide.)
4. Your Pet
Your pet is your best friend in WoW. He will be with you always, and will gladly give his life for yours (even though he’ll get pissed with you afterwards). I’d like to cover a few easy tips to maximize your pet’s role in playing your class.
A. Don’t use your mouse to click your pet’s abilities. Hold Ctrl and hit the numbers. It’s much faster and easier.
B. Keep your pet happy. A well-fed pet does 125% damage as well as gains loyalty, which leads to pet training points. Plus they’ll leave after a while if you don’t feed them.
C. When in an instance, KEEP YOUR PET ON PASSIVE! If he’s on defensive, he’ll chase after everything you tell him to attack, even if you change targets mid fight. Once his current target is dead, he’ll chase after the last one until you call him back. A second note is to DISMISS YOUR PET if you are going to take a shortcut that involves jumping or anything else that could disrupt that pathing of your pet. He’ll go the long way around and bring a lot of friends, which will wipe your raid and further cement your group members belief that hunter=newb.
D. Food gets expensive, so take up fishing if your pet will eat fish. It will save you oodles of money in the long run. Arrows are expensive enough.
E. Finally, pick a cool name for your pet or don’t name it. I don’t want to see the pink flamingo named “Barney.” That’s stupid. If you see me in-game, make sure to check out my bats name…
To level your pet, the mobs your are fighting must be green to you. This means tha tis you just have to have The Rake, and you're level 60, you have to kill mobs that are at least green to you for him to get any XP (and you have a hell of a long grind ahead of you). The best mobs for this are casters, such as the skeletons in WPL.
4. Your Pet
Your pet is your best friend in WoW. He will be with you always, and will gladly give his life for yours (even though he’ll get pissed with you afterwards). I’d like to cover a few easy tips to maximize your pet’s role in playing your class.
A. Don’t use your mouse to click your pet’s abilities. Hold Ctrl and hit the numbers. It’s much faster and easier.
B. Keep your pet happy. A well-fed pet does 125% damage as well as gains loyalty, which leads to pet training points. Plus they’ll leave after a while if you don’t feed them.
C. When in an instance, KEEP YOUR PET ON PASSIVE! If he’s on defensive, he’ll chase after everything you tell him to attack, even if you change targets mid fight. Once his current target is dead, he’ll chase after the last one until you call him back. A second note is to DISMISS YOUR PET if you are going to take a shortcut that involves jumping or anything else that could disrupt that pathing of your pet. He’ll go the long way around and bring a lot of friends, which will wipe your raid and further cement your group members belief that hunter=newb.
D. Food gets expensive, so take up fishing if your pet will eat fish. It will save you oodles of money in the long run. Arrows are expensive enough.
E. Finally, pick a cool name for your pet or don’t name it. I don’t want to see the pink flamingo named “Barney.” That’s stupid. If you see me in-game, make sure to check out my bats name…
To level your pet, the mobs your are fighting must be green to you. This means tha tis you just have to have The Rake, and you're level 60, you have to kill mobs that are at least green to you for him to get any XP (and you have a hell of a long grind ahead of you). The best mobs for this are casters, such as the skeletons in WPL.
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC. part 4 (Best pets for different situations)
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC. part 4
Date: 05/07/2007
C. Special note on Claw and Bite: Many pets can learn both claw and bite. However, it is important to note that Claw uses a lot of your pets focus and if both of them are on autocast, your cat, raptor, whatever, will do bite and a claw on its first hit, but may never bite again because bite is on a 10 second timer and claw is only 1 second. The Marksman talent, “Go for the Throat” is important in this regard since it causes an instant regeneration of focus when you get in a critical hit. BM hunters can also use the talent “Bestial Discipline” to help ensure their pet always has enough focus to use his abilities to the max. If you do not have GftT and/or Bestial Discipline, you should expect focus to become an issue if you have a pet with a focus eating ability like claw, lightning breath or gore though.
V. Hey, yeah, I forgot about my talent build, how does it
affect things?
Up until you can acquire Frenzy, the Beastmastery tree serves mainly to enhance your pet’s surviveability in a fight (increased armor & stamina), ease your mana drain (improved revive/mend pet) and improve your ranged and dodge skills (Improved Aspect of the Hawk & Monkey) and give a small boost to your pet’s dps. Frenzy increases your pet’s attack speed and dps, Intimdate grabs agro. and stuns your target and Bestial Wrath ups your pet’s damage significantly. I don’t want to debate various talent builds here, you have to decide how much or little you want to use/rely on your pet as you play. I will say I’m using a 41/20/0 build. I view my pet as another weapon in my arsenal that serves me better if his surviveability and damage possibilities are maxed out. All spec’s, BM, MM and SV are viable currently though and as you choose your pet, you just need to take into account how your spec. and play style will affect your pet and how you plan on using it.
VI. Can I get more info.?
Sure, the 3 main web sites I rely on for pet information are:
1. http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html
2. http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
3. http://www.tkasomething.com/
VII. Ok, thanks, I have a little better understanding, but I still want to know what you think are “uber” pets.
Ok, keeping all of the above in mind, IMO the following are the “best” pets to have and use. I’m basing these recommendations on useage, skills and specs. What looks good is a matter of personal opinion that changes from person to person and what I like based on looks is beside the point. If you use this list to choose a pet from, then get the pet in the family that you like the look of best. Use Petopia to see what they look like. Note also, this is just my opinion for the tops each category. There is plenty of “wiggle room” and justification for other pets in all situations.
PvE: Solo work:
1. Boar: Great all around tank, charge will grab aggro. well and with growl and gore you’ll probably be able to hold it ok. A BM hunter can also use intimidate to help hold aggro and at higher levels, all hunters can use misdirection.
2. Carrion Bird: Screech is a great aggro holder and as a middle-of-the-road pet with decent damage and surviveability carrion birds make great solo pets.
3. Owl/bat: I’d use an owl or bat over a Carrion Bird only if I were a BM hunter since they are technically a dps pet with lower surviveability. A BM hunter can counter this in ways a MM or SV hunter can’t.
PvE: Group work:
1. Wolf: Good surviveability, decent dps and Furious Howl is a nice buff to the group’s damage output.
2. Carrion bird/owl/bat: The screech debuff to the AP of attacking mobs can be very useful in a group setting too making mobs do less damage to party members.
3. Ravager/cat/raptor: Their high dps make these good group pets for use in taking down mobs fast. In large raids, a wind serpent is also useful for the ranged attack he does with Lightning breath.
4. Boar/bear: primarily for use as an off tank for a group.
PvP: BG use:
1. Boar: stop the flag carrier and others with charge.
2. Cat: For Nelf’s only – prowl and Shadowmeld are hard to beat when it comes to getting the jump on someone.
3. Ravager/owl/bat: High dps pets and with a bird or bat, flappy wings in the enemy’s face.
PvP: World use
1. Cat for Nelfs: Surprise Ganking ftw.
2. Ravager/owl/bat for BM hunters – higher dps and surviveability issue is reduced
3. Carrion bird, wolf or boar for non-BM hunters when pet dps isn’t an issue but yours and/or surviving is.
VIII. Misc. Notes
1. Lightning Breath is a great dps pet skill and very useful in raids. However, Wind Serpent AI has a bit of a bug in it that will cause a Wind Serpent to fly to range to cast LB and then fly back to the target to physically attack it. This can be countered with a macro (and should be).
2. Pet special skills can be macro'ed and included in an attack macro. I'm not a macro guru, but if you want to macro a skill you are able to do so and many hunters do. Just play around with various macros to see how to fit in a pet skill/attack with your shot rotation and preferred method of doing things.
3. Quick PvP note: Serpent's & Scorpid's poison DoT attacks will prevent a rogue from stealthing which can be a useful thing in a PvP encounter. Also, Scorp poison stacks and with your viper sting shot it can force a pally in PvP to waste all his mana "cleansing" himself.
Date: 05/07/2007
C. Special note on Claw and Bite: Many pets can learn both claw and bite. However, it is important to note that Claw uses a lot of your pets focus and if both of them are on autocast, your cat, raptor, whatever, will do bite and a claw on its first hit, but may never bite again because bite is on a 10 second timer and claw is only 1 second. The Marksman talent, “Go for the Throat” is important in this regard since it causes an instant regeneration of focus when you get in a critical hit. BM hunters can also use the talent “Bestial Discipline” to help ensure their pet always has enough focus to use his abilities to the max. If you do not have GftT and/or Bestial Discipline, you should expect focus to become an issue if you have a pet with a focus eating ability like claw, lightning breath or gore though.
V. Hey, yeah, I forgot about my talent build, how does it
affect things?
Up until you can acquire Frenzy, the Beastmastery tree serves mainly to enhance your pet’s surviveability in a fight (increased armor & stamina), ease your mana drain (improved revive/mend pet) and improve your ranged and dodge skills (Improved Aspect of the Hawk & Monkey) and give a small boost to your pet’s dps. Frenzy increases your pet’s attack speed and dps, Intimdate grabs agro. and stuns your target and Bestial Wrath ups your pet’s damage significantly. I don’t want to debate various talent builds here, you have to decide how much or little you want to use/rely on your pet as you play. I will say I’m using a 41/20/0 build. I view my pet as another weapon in my arsenal that serves me better if his surviveability and damage possibilities are maxed out. All spec’s, BM, MM and SV are viable currently though and as you choose your pet, you just need to take into account how your spec. and play style will affect your pet and how you plan on using it.
VI. Can I get more info.?
Sure, the 3 main web sites I rely on for pet information are:
1. http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html
2. http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/
3. http://www.tkasomething.com/
VII. Ok, thanks, I have a little better understanding, but I still want to know what you think are “uber” pets.
Ok, keeping all of the above in mind, IMO the following are the “best” pets to have and use. I’m basing these recommendations on useage, skills and specs. What looks good is a matter of personal opinion that changes from person to person and what I like based on looks is beside the point. If you use this list to choose a pet from, then get the pet in the family that you like the look of best. Use Petopia to see what they look like. Note also, this is just my opinion for the tops each category. There is plenty of “wiggle room” and justification for other pets in all situations.
PvE: Solo work:
1. Boar: Great all around tank, charge will grab aggro. well and with growl and gore you’ll probably be able to hold it ok. A BM hunter can also use intimidate to help hold aggro and at higher levels, all hunters can use misdirection.
2. Carrion Bird: Screech is a great aggro holder and as a middle-of-the-road pet with decent damage and surviveability carrion birds make great solo pets.
3. Owl/bat: I’d use an owl or bat over a Carrion Bird only if I were a BM hunter since they are technically a dps pet with lower surviveability. A BM hunter can counter this in ways a MM or SV hunter can’t.
PvE: Group work:
1. Wolf: Good surviveability, decent dps and Furious Howl is a nice buff to the group’s damage output.
2. Carrion bird/owl/bat: The screech debuff to the AP of attacking mobs can be very useful in a group setting too making mobs do less damage to party members.
3. Ravager/cat/raptor: Their high dps make these good group pets for use in taking down mobs fast. In large raids, a wind serpent is also useful for the ranged attack he does with Lightning breath.
4. Boar/bear: primarily for use as an off tank for a group.
PvP: BG use:
1. Boar: stop the flag carrier and others with charge.
2. Cat: For Nelf’s only – prowl and Shadowmeld are hard to beat when it comes to getting the jump on someone.
3. Ravager/owl/bat: High dps pets and with a bird or bat, flappy wings in the enemy’s face.
PvP: World use
1. Cat for Nelfs: Surprise Ganking ftw.
2. Ravager/owl/bat for BM hunters – higher dps and surviveability issue is reduced
3. Carrion bird, wolf or boar for non-BM hunters when pet dps isn’t an issue but yours and/or surviving is.
VIII. Misc. Notes
1. Lightning Breath is a great dps pet skill and very useful in raids. However, Wind Serpent AI has a bit of a bug in it that will cause a Wind Serpent to fly to range to cast LB and then fly back to the target to physically attack it. This can be countered with a macro (and should be).
2. Pet special skills can be macro'ed and included in an attack macro. I'm not a macro guru, but if you want to macro a skill you are able to do so and many hunters do. Just play around with various macros to see how to fit in a pet skill/attack with your shot rotation and preferred method of doing things.
3. Quick PvP note: Serpent's & Scorpid's poison DoT attacks will prevent a rogue from stealthing which can be a useful thing in a PvP encounter. Also, Scorp poison stacks and with your viper sting shot it can force a pally in PvP to waste all his mana "cleansing" himself.
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC. part 3
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC. part 3
Date: 05/07/2007
C. Looks
Don’t overlook the appearance and animations of your pet. If you don’t like the way your pet appears, you are more likely to end up dumping it or failing to use it and keep its level up. I, for example, hate the look of worgs (you know, wolves with the 2 giant fangs) and their idle animations; they just stand there with their mouth half open and their tails maybe wagging a bit. On the other hand, “lean” wolves scratch and sniff like dogs and occasionally sit down and raise their heads and howl. I’ve had several worgs, but I always ditched them in favor of a “real” wolf. Head on over to http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ to view the different pets you can obtain to see which ones you like the look of.
D. Caster Stats
Some Wind Serpents, Warp Stalkers and Dragon Hawks have what are known as “caster stats.” Pets with “caster stats” have less armor and/or health than their non-caster brethren. Using the Petopia site you can determine what pets have “caster stats.” You should avoid them.
E. Attack Speed
Once a major issue in pet choice, this is no longer a significant issue. All pets have a base 2.0 attack speed. Cobra Reflexes, if trained, will drop this to 1.54. If you are a Beast Master Hunter with 5/5 in Serpent Swiftness it will drop further to ~1.3 and when Frenzy procs. it will drop
to ~0.99.
F. Eating Habits
Different pets eat different foods. You may want to take into account how easy/hard it will be to get food for your pet as you decide what you want. Boars & Bears are the easiest to feed since they eat most anything. Bats eat only fungus & fruit and can be a pain to keep fed. Meat and fish eating pets are relatively easy to feed since you just kill or fish and feed what you get.
III. That’s all well and good, but what pets have you chosen as best for you and why?
have three pets currently, A dps pet, Humar the “rare” spawn black lion from the Barrens, a middle-of-the-road pet, a Vilebranch Raiding wolf, the black wolf from the top of the temple of Jin’thalor in the Hinterlands and an Avain Warhawk (technically a dps pet and actually an owl, not a hawk) from Sekketh Halls. I chose these for my pets for the following reasons:
1. Looks: I wanted a wolf as my pet since the first day I rolled my hunter. I didn’t care about anything much more than the fact I liked the way the wolf looked and in my day as a paper based RPG’r playing Dungeons and Dragons, I always played a character with a pet wolf. The first time I saw the black wolf the hunter trainer in Darnasus has I decided that was the kind of wolf I wanted. I had to wait to level 42 though to get one (the rare wolf Snarler). When I hit 50 I traded him for the Vilebranch Raiding wolf I currently have and plan to keep. As for Humar, he is the only black cat in the game and he matched the wolf I planned on getting (I got Humar at level 23) so he was a natural choice for looks. Plus, he just happened to be around when I cruised by the area, I didn’t have to camp for him at all. The owl, on the other hand, is bright red and blue, which is unusual for an owl. All other owls are various shades of brown, gray or white. I felt a bright red & blue owl was unusual and I’ve only ever seen 1 other hunter with the owl I have.
2. Useage: I do a little PvP work in BG’s, not a lot, but some and as a Night Elf a high dps pet with prowl to go with my shadowmeld make a great combo so a cat is a natural choice and Humar fits the bill. I do a fair number of 5 mans and some raiding and group a lot and have found that my play style benefits most from a wolf in those situations and I like furious howl as an ability. I also like to solo a lot and for solo work I have found that the screech debuf from my owl along with a scorpid sting shot from me do a lot to reduce the ability of a mob to damage me or my pet. Plus Screech is a great aggro holder and with the higher than average dps of an owl we can take down mobs pretty quickly when I solo. If I were a Marks or Survival spec’d hunter I’d probably trade the owl for a carrion bird since it has a little better armor/health than an owl. However since I’m a BM spec’d hunter I can make up for the loss in health and armor suffered by the owl a bit better and boost the owl’s dps a fair amount.
IV. Wait a minute, what about special abilities, aren’t they important?
Yes, pet abilities need to be considered. IMO they should be broken down primarily along lines of PvE and PvP usefulness. However, think about how you play and what each ability does to decide which ability works for you in which situation.
A. PvP:
The best abilities for PvP play are probably Screech, Dash, Dive, Charge and for Night Elfs only, Prowl. Screech serves as a AoE debuff of the enemy in BG which is always useful. Charge gets your boar in there really fast and roots the enemy for 1 second. Dash, Dive and Charge can also be used to chase down runners (The guy with the flag will never escape a boar if you do it right). Night Elfs on Defense can prowl a cat and shadowmeld and catch enemy players by surprise very effectively. Thunderstomp (the special skill of Gorillas) also has some use in PvP due to its AoE damage and stun effect. And Lightning breath, (the wind serpent skill) since it is ranged, is an ok ability as well doing a decent amount of damage from range and not mitigated by armor. Warp is also a pretty decent ability for getting your pet on another player fast and Gore is a nice DPS booster.
B. PvE:
The above abilities are good for PvE for the same reason they are good for PvP. However, in PvE Furious Howl (the wolf/worg skill) becomes an important ability too because it will boost the damage of everyone in a group – running 5 mans it is a wonderful addition to that first attack on a mob. Scorpid poison and poison spit are also useful, especially in doing solo work, but remember as a DoT ability they will break a freeze trap. I have yet to find a real use for Cower in anything though I know some hunters who keep their pet trained in it so their pet can effectively dump unwanted agro. In solo work you usually want your pet to hold agro. In a 5 man run, if all is going well, your tank produces more threat than you pet and will hold agro no matter what your pet does so cower doesn’t have much use. Thunderstomp and Screech are probably the best abilities to use if you want your pet to grab and hold agro (growl and Furious Howl and being BM spec’d also work well in this regard, but screech in particular is an agro magnet). Lightning breath is useful since it is ranged like you and you can keep your pet away from being hit by a mob. Shell shield is what makes turtles the hardest pet in the game to kill. They will take a licking and keep on ticking. When it comes to PvE you should consider what it is you will want your pet to do as you decide which pet you should have and what skills you need in a pet. A bird with screech is an excellent choice for solo work since it will grab and hold agro. well and has a decently high dps. The same could be said of a Boar as well, a bit less dps than the bird, but charge will generate a large amount of aggro right off the bat. On the other hand, for raids and 5 mans, a wolf with furious howl is possibly a better choice since it will boost the melee dps of party members and/or your personal dps.
Date: 05/07/2007
C. Looks
Don’t overlook the appearance and animations of your pet. If you don’t like the way your pet appears, you are more likely to end up dumping it or failing to use it and keep its level up. I, for example, hate the look of worgs (you know, wolves with the 2 giant fangs) and their idle animations; they just stand there with their mouth half open and their tails maybe wagging a bit. On the other hand, “lean” wolves scratch and sniff like dogs and occasionally sit down and raise their heads and howl. I’ve had several worgs, but I always ditched them in favor of a “real” wolf. Head on over to http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ to view the different pets you can obtain to see which ones you like the look of.
D. Caster Stats
Some Wind Serpents, Warp Stalkers and Dragon Hawks have what are known as “caster stats.” Pets with “caster stats” have less armor and/or health than their non-caster brethren. Using the Petopia site you can determine what pets have “caster stats.” You should avoid them.
E. Attack Speed
Once a major issue in pet choice, this is no longer a significant issue. All pets have a base 2.0 attack speed. Cobra Reflexes, if trained, will drop this to 1.54. If you are a Beast Master Hunter with 5/5 in Serpent Swiftness it will drop further to ~1.3 and when Frenzy procs. it will drop
to ~0.99.
F. Eating Habits
Different pets eat different foods. You may want to take into account how easy/hard it will be to get food for your pet as you decide what you want. Boars & Bears are the easiest to feed since they eat most anything. Bats eat only fungus & fruit and can be a pain to keep fed. Meat and fish eating pets are relatively easy to feed since you just kill or fish and feed what you get.
III. That’s all well and good, but what pets have you chosen as best for you and why?
have three pets currently, A dps pet, Humar the “rare” spawn black lion from the Barrens, a middle-of-the-road pet, a Vilebranch Raiding wolf, the black wolf from the top of the temple of Jin’thalor in the Hinterlands and an Avain Warhawk (technically a dps pet and actually an owl, not a hawk) from Sekketh Halls. I chose these for my pets for the following reasons:
1. Looks: I wanted a wolf as my pet since the first day I rolled my hunter. I didn’t care about anything much more than the fact I liked the way the wolf looked and in my day as a paper based RPG’r playing Dungeons and Dragons, I always played a character with a pet wolf. The first time I saw the black wolf the hunter trainer in Darnasus has I decided that was the kind of wolf I wanted. I had to wait to level 42 though to get one (the rare wolf Snarler). When I hit 50 I traded him for the Vilebranch Raiding wolf I currently have and plan to keep. As for Humar, he is the only black cat in the game and he matched the wolf I planned on getting (I got Humar at level 23) so he was a natural choice for looks. Plus, he just happened to be around when I cruised by the area, I didn’t have to camp for him at all. The owl, on the other hand, is bright red and blue, which is unusual for an owl. All other owls are various shades of brown, gray or white. I felt a bright red & blue owl was unusual and I’ve only ever seen 1 other hunter with the owl I have.
2. Useage: I do a little PvP work in BG’s, not a lot, but some and as a Night Elf a high dps pet with prowl to go with my shadowmeld make a great combo so a cat is a natural choice and Humar fits the bill. I do a fair number of 5 mans and some raiding and group a lot and have found that my play style benefits most from a wolf in those situations and I like furious howl as an ability. I also like to solo a lot and for solo work I have found that the screech debuf from my owl along with a scorpid sting shot from me do a lot to reduce the ability of a mob to damage me or my pet. Plus Screech is a great aggro holder and with the higher than average dps of an owl we can take down mobs pretty quickly when I solo. If I were a Marks or Survival spec’d hunter I’d probably trade the owl for a carrion bird since it has a little better armor/health than an owl. However since I’m a BM spec’d hunter I can make up for the loss in health and armor suffered by the owl a bit better and boost the owl’s dps a fair amount.
IV. Wait a minute, what about special abilities, aren’t they important?
Yes, pet abilities need to be considered. IMO they should be broken down primarily along lines of PvE and PvP usefulness. However, think about how you play and what each ability does to decide which ability works for you in which situation.
A. PvP:
The best abilities for PvP play are probably Screech, Dash, Dive, Charge and for Night Elfs only, Prowl. Screech serves as a AoE debuff of the enemy in BG which is always useful. Charge gets your boar in there really fast and roots the enemy for 1 second. Dash, Dive and Charge can also be used to chase down runners (The guy with the flag will never escape a boar if you do it right). Night Elfs on Defense can prowl a cat and shadowmeld and catch enemy players by surprise very effectively. Thunderstomp (the special skill of Gorillas) also has some use in PvP due to its AoE damage and stun effect. And Lightning breath, (the wind serpent skill) since it is ranged, is an ok ability as well doing a decent amount of damage from range and not mitigated by armor. Warp is also a pretty decent ability for getting your pet on another player fast and Gore is a nice DPS booster.
B. PvE:
The above abilities are good for PvE for the same reason they are good for PvP. However, in PvE Furious Howl (the wolf/worg skill) becomes an important ability too because it will boost the damage of everyone in a group – running 5 mans it is a wonderful addition to that first attack on a mob. Scorpid poison and poison spit are also useful, especially in doing solo work, but remember as a DoT ability they will break a freeze trap. I have yet to find a real use for Cower in anything though I know some hunters who keep their pet trained in it so their pet can effectively dump unwanted agro. In solo work you usually want your pet to hold agro. In a 5 man run, if all is going well, your tank produces more threat than you pet and will hold agro no matter what your pet does so cower doesn’t have much use. Thunderstomp and Screech are probably the best abilities to use if you want your pet to grab and hold agro (growl and Furious Howl and being BM spec’d also work well in this regard, but screech in particular is an agro magnet). Lightning breath is useful since it is ranged like you and you can keep your pet away from being hit by a mob. Shell shield is what makes turtles the hardest pet in the game to kill. They will take a licking and keep on ticking. When it comes to PvE you should consider what it is you will want your pet to do as you decide which pet you should have and what skills you need in a pet. A bird with screech is an excellent choice for solo work since it will grab and hold agro. well and has a decently high dps. The same could be said of a Boar as well, a bit less dps than the bird, but charge will generate a large amount of aggro right off the bat. On the other hand, for raids and 5 mans, a wolf with furious howl is possibly a better choice since it will boost the melee dps of party members and/or your personal dps.
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC, Part 2
A Guide to Choosing a Pet - Revised for BC, Part 2.
Date: 05/07/2007
a) Group dynamics:
When you are in groups the dynamic of the group and the group’s makeup will be a major factor in the decision as to whether you want a high dps pet or a tank pet or middle of the road pet. Your expected role in the group is probably the biggest consideration; are you to be off tanking or providing the majority of the CC? Then probably a tank or at least middle-of-the-road pet that can grab aggro and take a bit of a beating before he dies is going to be a good choice. Such a pet will be better able to handle his job of keeping a mob occupied and off other party members. On the other hand, is your main job to assist the tank and the group by being a dps dealer and killing things fast with lots of quickly dealt damage? If so, a dps pet is likely a better choice. You’ll have growl and other aggro. generating skills turned off or their use at least manually controlled so your pet is less likely to become the focus of a mob and die and it can deal a steady stream of damage and help take down targets quickly. Is your role kind of mixed; some CC and some damage and assistance to the tank and the groups overall dps? Then possibly a middle of the road pet will be better since it will balance the off tanking ability of a true “tank” pet and the dps ability of a pure “dps” pet.
b) Pet Abilities:
In a group setting the family abilities like charge, screech, etc. can have a major impact on the group’s abilities in an encounter. As you consider your role in the group, you should consider how your pet’s abilities and your talents can help. Some of the most important pet skills for group PvE include:
i. Screech: An AoE aggro grabber and debuff to mobs (-210 AP at max rank). Helps makes mobs less likely to kill the group or your tank. Available on dps pets (owls & bats) and middle-of-the-road carrion birds. Downside is that it can grab aggro. away from the tank and big flappy wings of flying pets don’t always work well in a dungeon setting.
ii Furious Howl: Boosts the dps of the group’s ranged and/or melee attacks; only available on wolf/worg middle-of-the-road pets. Down side is the range is pretty limited and it won’t affect spells, only physical attacks also the cool down of 10 seconds is rather long.
iii. Intimidation: A talent in the Beast Mastery tree that stuns a target for 3 sec. and generates a large amount of aggro. There isn’t much better when it comes to having your pet save the priest than popping intimidate and having the mob hitting your priest stunned for 3 sec. and then focusing his attacks on the pet. Downside is that it is an aggro grabber and can ensure that your pet dies in the encounter since the mob starts to attack it also the cool down is a few minutes so it is usually only useful once in an encounter.
iv. Charge: Immobilizes (but not stuns) a target for 1 sec. Also gets your pet to the target fast and generates some aggro; only available on boars (a tanking pet) Also a good skill for saving clothies from certain death, but has the same downside as intimidate. In a group where the hunter’s pet is expected to be a significant off tank, a BM hunter with a boar should be able to handle the job very effectively.
B. Damage Dealing ability
Pets, as noted in the foregoing, get divided into 3 groups, dps pets with higher base damage, middle-of-the-road pets with “average” damage and tank pets with below “average damage dealing abilities. Which way you need to go with your pet will depend on the factors noted above. But as you evaluate your pet’s damage dealing abilities, you need to consider a few factors that affect a pet’s ability to pump out the damage.
1. Prowl: Prowl is an ability learnable by cats that will increase the base damage they do on their first strike. Since cats are high dps pets, the initial strike out of prowl will be about as big a burst of damage as any pet can give. In PvP where burst damage is king, prowl is very useful as a result. The downside is the significant slowing of your pet's movement speed while prowled.
2. Ferocious Inspiration: A talent deep in the BM tree, FI will boost the damage your pet (and other party members, including caster spells) does. Very useful skill for any pet to up their damage.
3. Cobra Reflexes: Available at the pet trainers at a cost of 15 Training Points and teachable to any pet at level 30; Cobra Reflexes will boost the attack speed of your pet by 30%. The amount of damage per hit by your pet is slightly reduced, but the overall dps of your pet is increased by ~10 – 12%. On the downside, because there is a slight reduction in damage pet hit, the damage from a “Kill Command” is also reduced somewhat (not enough to offset the overall dps gain though).
4. Improved Hunter’s Mark: A talent near the top of the Marksmanship tree, Improved Hunter’s mark will serve to boost the melee damage done to a marked target by your pet (and others) by a decent, though not huge, amount.
5. Gore: A skill learnable by ravagers and boars, gore allows for the occasional “double damage” burst from a pet’s hit on a target. On ravagers in particular it makes for a great dps booster for your pet allowing the ravager to pump out serious dps in an encounter. However, on a boar, it is also exceptionally useful in that it will bump a boar’s dps and make the traditionally low dps boar into a pet approximating a middle-of-the-road pet in his damage dealing abilities.
6. Lightning Breath: Only learned by wind serpents, LB is an important damage dealer because it is ranged (20 yards) and also it is not mitigated by the mob’s armor so in pumps out consistent damage over time making wind serpents a great dps pet. Also, because it is ranged, it can be used in encounters with mobs that have large AoE or Cleave abilities that would otherwise kill a pet.
7. Furious Howl: A nice skill for wolves/worgs that will boost the melee and ranged attack (but not spell) damage of those within 15 yards of the wolf. Very good when the pet is assisting a tank or off tank since the damage done to the targets is upped. Also good in encounters where a pet can’t melee since he can sit by the hunter’s side and cast FH and boost the hunter’s damage from his ranged attacks.
8. Frenzy: Another BM talent, when this procs your pet’s attack speed and dps also go up. When coupled with Cobra Reflexes and the BM hunter talent “Serpent Swiftness” the hunter will have a pet with a 0.99 Attack speed and a major dps boost in the middle of things.
9. AoE & DoT family skills: Scorpid Poison, Poison spit and Flame Breath are other pet damage effects worthy of note due to their potential downside. Their damage dealing ability is decent, however, the two poisons are DoT’s that will break CC on a mob and can be an issue and Flame Breath is has a cone AoE that can also serve to break CC if not paid attention too. These are not bad skills, but because of their CC comprising ability, hunters using scorpids, serpents and dragonhawks need to pay more attention to what their pet is attacking and what the CC targets are.
10. Charge: the Boar skill charge is not only a great PvP ability and aggro grabber, it should be noted that it will also boost the boars AP for his first attack after the charge and that can result in a nice burst of damage or large crit. If BM hunter then that means frenzy procs immediately which is nice.
Date: 05/07/2007
a) Group dynamics:
When you are in groups the dynamic of the group and the group’s makeup will be a major factor in the decision as to whether you want a high dps pet or a tank pet or middle of the road pet. Your expected role in the group is probably the biggest consideration; are you to be off tanking or providing the majority of the CC? Then probably a tank or at least middle-of-the-road pet that can grab aggro and take a bit of a beating before he dies is going to be a good choice. Such a pet will be better able to handle his job of keeping a mob occupied and off other party members. On the other hand, is your main job to assist the tank and the group by being a dps dealer and killing things fast with lots of quickly dealt damage? If so, a dps pet is likely a better choice. You’ll have growl and other aggro. generating skills turned off or their use at least manually controlled so your pet is less likely to become the focus of a mob and die and it can deal a steady stream of damage and help take down targets quickly. Is your role kind of mixed; some CC and some damage and assistance to the tank and the groups overall dps? Then possibly a middle of the road pet will be better since it will balance the off tanking ability of a true “tank” pet and the dps ability of a pure “dps” pet.
b) Pet Abilities:
In a group setting the family abilities like charge, screech, etc. can have a major impact on the group’s abilities in an encounter. As you consider your role in the group, you should consider how your pet’s abilities and your talents can help. Some of the most important pet skills for group PvE include:
i. Screech: An AoE aggro grabber and debuff to mobs (-210 AP at max rank). Helps makes mobs less likely to kill the group or your tank. Available on dps pets (owls & bats) and middle-of-the-road carrion birds. Downside is that it can grab aggro. away from the tank and big flappy wings of flying pets don’t always work well in a dungeon setting.
ii Furious Howl: Boosts the dps of the group’s ranged and/or melee attacks; only available on wolf/worg middle-of-the-road pets. Down side is the range is pretty limited and it won’t affect spells, only physical attacks also the cool down of 10 seconds is rather long.
iii. Intimidation: A talent in the Beast Mastery tree that stuns a target for 3 sec. and generates a large amount of aggro. There isn’t much better when it comes to having your pet save the priest than popping intimidate and having the mob hitting your priest stunned for 3 sec. and then focusing his attacks on the pet. Downside is that it is an aggro grabber and can ensure that your pet dies in the encounter since the mob starts to attack it also the cool down is a few minutes so it is usually only useful once in an encounter.
iv. Charge: Immobilizes (but not stuns) a target for 1 sec. Also gets your pet to the target fast and generates some aggro; only available on boars (a tanking pet) Also a good skill for saving clothies from certain death, but has the same downside as intimidate. In a group where the hunter’s pet is expected to be a significant off tank, a BM hunter with a boar should be able to handle the job very effectively.
B. Damage Dealing ability
Pets, as noted in the foregoing, get divided into 3 groups, dps pets with higher base damage, middle-of-the-road pets with “average” damage and tank pets with below “average damage dealing abilities. Which way you need to go with your pet will depend on the factors noted above. But as you evaluate your pet’s damage dealing abilities, you need to consider a few factors that affect a pet’s ability to pump out the damage.
1. Prowl: Prowl is an ability learnable by cats that will increase the base damage they do on their first strike. Since cats are high dps pets, the initial strike out of prowl will be about as big a burst of damage as any pet can give. In PvP where burst damage is king, prowl is very useful as a result. The downside is the significant slowing of your pet's movement speed while prowled.
2. Ferocious Inspiration: A talent deep in the BM tree, FI will boost the damage your pet (and other party members, including caster spells) does. Very useful skill for any pet to up their damage.
3. Cobra Reflexes: Available at the pet trainers at a cost of 15 Training Points and teachable to any pet at level 30; Cobra Reflexes will boost the attack speed of your pet by 30%. The amount of damage per hit by your pet is slightly reduced, but the overall dps of your pet is increased by ~10 – 12%. On the downside, because there is a slight reduction in damage pet hit, the damage from a “Kill Command” is also reduced somewhat (not enough to offset the overall dps gain though).
4. Improved Hunter’s Mark: A talent near the top of the Marksmanship tree, Improved Hunter’s mark will serve to boost the melee damage done to a marked target by your pet (and others) by a decent, though not huge, amount.
5. Gore: A skill learnable by ravagers and boars, gore allows for the occasional “double damage” burst from a pet’s hit on a target. On ravagers in particular it makes for a great dps booster for your pet allowing the ravager to pump out serious dps in an encounter. However, on a boar, it is also exceptionally useful in that it will bump a boar’s dps and make the traditionally low dps boar into a pet approximating a middle-of-the-road pet in his damage dealing abilities.
6. Lightning Breath: Only learned by wind serpents, LB is an important damage dealer because it is ranged (20 yards) and also it is not mitigated by the mob’s armor so in pumps out consistent damage over time making wind serpents a great dps pet. Also, because it is ranged, it can be used in encounters with mobs that have large AoE or Cleave abilities that would otherwise kill a pet.
7. Furious Howl: A nice skill for wolves/worgs that will boost the melee and ranged attack (but not spell) damage of those within 15 yards of the wolf. Very good when the pet is assisting a tank or off tank since the damage done to the targets is upped. Also good in encounters where a pet can’t melee since he can sit by the hunter’s side and cast FH and boost the hunter’s damage from his ranged attacks.
8. Frenzy: Another BM talent, when this procs your pet’s attack speed and dps also go up. When coupled with Cobra Reflexes and the BM hunter talent “Serpent Swiftness” the hunter will have a pet with a 0.99 Attack speed and a major dps boost in the middle of things.
9. AoE & DoT family skills: Scorpid Poison, Poison spit and Flame Breath are other pet damage effects worthy of note due to their potential downside. Their damage dealing ability is decent, however, the two poisons are DoT’s that will break CC on a mob and can be an issue and Flame Breath is has a cone AoE that can also serve to break CC if not paid attention too. These are not bad skills, but because of their CC comprising ability, hunters using scorpids, serpents and dragonhawks need to pay more attention to what their pet is attacking and what the CC targets are.
10. Charge: the Boar skill charge is not only a great PvP ability and aggro grabber, it should be noted that it will also boost the boars AP for his first attack after the charge and that can result in a nice burst of damage or large crit. If BM hunter then that means frenzy procs immediately which is nice.
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