Typical hunter pets
From AJS.COM
Hunter pets are the most diverse class ability in the game (there are currently 23 families of pet, each with several models and coloration, and 15 family-tied special abilities). No one else gets so many options and so much flexibility. Still, most hunters pick a pet early based on how easy they are to get, and rarely if ever look back until their guild tells them to get something new or they see lots of other people using something else. This article will attempt to clarify the difference between offensive pets (such as the cat and ravager) and tanking pets (such as the nether ray and bear) and those in between (such as the boar). It will also attempt to give you a sense of where to start with your pet and what pets might work out best for what situations.
Executive summary:
- For leveling and grinding, use a boar
- For some advanced styles of leveling and grinding, use an owl
- For instances, choose an offensive pet with passable dps
- For raiding, use an offensive pet like the ravager or cat
- For PvP:
- If you are a Night Elf, go with a cat
- For others, offensive pets are ideal, and ravagers and cats are popular choices
Contents |
Basics
In the simplest view, there are tree kinds of pet: tank, offensive and balanced. There are also two kinds within these categories: normal and caster. Caster pets are those which have lower hit points, and typically are avoided, so we'll just focus on the normal versions.[1]
Tanking pets
Tanking pets do low damage and usually have either high armor, high hit points or both. These pets are ideally suited to acting as stand-ins for a tank when soloing, but will slow a hunter down because of their low damage. Tanking pets are usually used when soloing for their ability to take much more punishment.
Offensive pets
Not as sturdy, but with higher damage to compensate, these pets are capable of tearing into opponents much faster than tanking pets. When your pet will almost never have to tank (e.g. raiding), an offensive pet is almost always the right choice, but they're not terribly useful for leveling or solo grinding because of their fragility. Many people will tell you otherwise, but the simple fact is that your pet will have to tank multiple mobs on a regular basis, and a pet that doesn't have the hitpoints for it will get you killed, even if it has 10% extra damage (remember that that's 10% extra of your pet's damage which will make up 20-30% of a hunter's overall damage).
Balanced pets
And now we come to the trade-off. For leveling and farming balanced or "well rounded" pets are the middle-ground. Some of them are very attractive, and in instancing you might choose a wolf for its ability to off-tank, and give attack buffs to the whole party. Overall, though, balanced pets are just too much of a compromise on both sides.
Specifics
Now that you know the basics, lets go over some of the cases you'll encounter in the real world.
Boars
Boars are the unstoppable force of leveling and grinding. They have above-average HP and armor, but they also have the game-stopper ability: charge. The mechanics of charge are unbelievable and personally, I think they'll nerf it someday. Here's what happens:
- The pet is told to attack
- The pet runs to within charge range
- Charge activates and the target is instantly affected, stopping in its tracks (looks kind of funny, too)
- After the target stops moving, the boar will appear to move to its target very fast
- The target remains immobile for 1 second
- The boar now gains an extra amount of attack power
- While the mob is rooted to the spot, the boar now casts an attack-power enhanced growl
All things considered, this is the most agro in the least time that a pet can generate without the hunter using misdirect. It's a huge amount of agro that most hunters will not be able to break if they try, and that means that you can start cranking out dps the instant you send your pet in. Users of other pets will have to send in their pet, let it hit a couple of times to build agro, and then start attacking. Not boar hunters.
This increase in kill rate is why boars are the king of leveling.
What was that? Agro? Misdirect? Attack power?
Ok, so for those of you who got lost in the technobable above, what charge does is to very quickly lock the target creature's attention on your boar so that you can start shooting right away without having it attack you. This is called "agro," which means that the creature is focused on the opponent that has annoyed it the most. We call this measurement of annoyance in WoW "threat." When you build enough threat, you get agro. That's all you need to know.
Hunters are badly crippled when creatures enter melee range, so you always want your pet to maintain agro by having the most threat. That's why boars are so nice, because they can build more threat at the start of a fight than other pets.
Misdirect? That's just a spell that you get at level 70 that allows you to convince a creature that some of your shots are someone else's fault. When you do this with your pet as the misdirectee, you build lots of threat on your pet with your first three shots, instead of on yourself. Combined with charge this would let you fight for a very long time without getting agro.
Attack power? Subject for a long article, but suffice to say that attack power is used by your pet to increase its damage or the effect of its "growl" ability which is the ability that pets use to increase their threat. The attack power bonus from charge is most often used to augment the pet's opening growl, thus further building its threat and ensuring that agro will be held longer.
Owls
I lied. Boars aren't the best leveling pet, owls are. So why did I lie? Because most hunters won't be able to take advantage of the true level grinding pet: owls. If you're the kind of person who levels as a frost mage in order to AoE kite groups of mobs at once, then you're the kind of player that will use an owl for their screech ability. For the rest of us, the boar is going to be far superior, and won't train us to use a pet that breaks other players' crowd control - a very bad lesson indeed.
Wind serpent
Many wind serpents have caster stats, but you can get wind serpents at many levels which have normal stats, including:
- Deviate Coiler Hatchling (in Wailing Caverns) to train Lightning Breath 1
- Deviate Coiler (in Wailing Caverns) to train Lightning Breath 2
- Venomous Cloud Serpent (in Thousand Needles) to train Lightning Breath 3
- Vale Screecher (in Feralas) to train Lightning Breath 4
- Scalewing Serpent (in Blade's Edge Mountains) to train Lightning Breath 6
These pets take wonderful advantage of extra focus, so if you have Go for the Throat and Bestial Discipline, they will do quite a lot of damage.
Warning: This pet is for advanced users only. By default, this pet will actually hurt your dps. If you want to use this pet, you will need to turn off its Lighting Breath ability, and add the following to the end of your shot macro:[2]
/cast Lightning Breath
Don't have a shot macro? Go with a ravager until you're ready.
Ravager
Ravagers have the fewest hitpoints of any pet, but the highest damage+armor of any pet. They're a very interesting pet to use, and many raiders consider them the only way to go because of the power of gore, a special attack which only boars and ravagers get. There's not much to say, here. They have very little utility other than being a big gun, but if you need a big gun, ravagers are the real deal.
Raptor
Now that raptors are getting dash (which raptors in the wild always had), they're a tempting substitute for ravagers. Sadly, they do slightly less damage and have slightly lower armor, so overall they aren't ideal. Still, if you don't like the ravager model, raptors are a good second choice.
Cat
Cats (including all of the various lion and tiger models) have the highest health of the +10% damage pets. They also get dash and prowl (stealth). Prowl can be particularly useful for Night Elves because of their ability to meld with shadows. For Night Elves, in fact, cats are probably the best offensive pet, especially for PvP and they do well enough for most instancing and raids. Having gore on a ravager might be a win over a cat, but if you don't want to have to swap out for PvP, then go with a cat.
For all other races, cats don't really offer much, sadly.
Crab
The crab is an interesting pet. It combines high armor with poor, but not terrible damage. These can make an ideal tank for physical damage, but when they go up against a caster that -4% health is going to be a big disadvantage. Overall, not ideal, but fun to try out.
TBD
... More to come ...
