EVERY QUESTION ANSWERED HEREFollow

PET-RELATED QUESTIONS


What's the best pet?

This is always the first question out of anyone's mouth. Really, there is no best pet, and there's a lot more to know about pets than just "teh best".

If you're lazy and just want an answer, use a BOAR. This is not standard advice, but boars are good all-around pets, will eat anything, and can use every general skill except Claw.


What's your favorite pet?
What is your pet?

Please don't start another thread on this subject. Honestly, the "favorite pet" threads are getting old and everyone pretty much just the same thing every time. Expect a lot of "cat" answers, a couple "bears", and a few people who try to be original, plus the occasional "I don't like flying pets because they flap in my face," and "I don't like cats because everyone uses a cat."

And I use a cat. A random old generic cat.


How are pets different?

There are three ways pets can differ.

The first is diet. Most beasts eat meat, or meat and fish. Some eat other things. To check a pet's diet, use the Beast Lore ability on it, or if it's already your pet, mouse over the little happiness icon in your pet window.

The second way is abilities. Some pets start with abilities when they are tamed. In fact, this is the only way to learn pet abilities other than growl. Other pets are able to learn skills, but don't start with them. However, not every pet can use every skill. For instance, non-flying pets can't learn to Dive, and flying pets can't learn to Dash. There are now even some family-specific abilities, like Scorpid poison.

The third is their attributes. Pet statistics are only different in three places:
1) Hit points
2) Armor
3) DPS

All beasts will either excel at one of those three, be average in a second, and poor in a third; or they will simply be average all-around. The differences in these categories are not huge, either, but enough to affect your gameplay.

All beasts of a certain type and level will be identical. It doesn't matter if you have a polar bear, I have an elite brown bear, and that guy over there has a rotting bear. If they're all level 50, they are all the same.

See Illyanna's thread at the official boards or Meenachari's Guide to Choosing a Pet for all you could ever want to know about pet families.


All cats/bears/wolves are the same? What about elite pets?

For the mostpart, they are just the same as a non-elite pet. They lose their l33t-ness when they are tamed. There are a few specific pets out there - and not all of them are elite named mobs - that have special qualities to them. Most of the time this affects either their attack speed or their chase speed. Longtooth Runners, wolved from Feralas, run incredibly quickly. Broken Tooth, a particular rare named cat, attacks incredibly fast. A couple other pets, like King Bangalash and swamp cougars are better in both categories.

Yes, in some sense, these special pets defy the "there is no best pet" statement, but they still don't outclass everything at everything, and they are likely to be nerfed with the pending pet customization abilities. (There are more coming, like attack speed alterations.)

For learning which pets have fast attack speeds, use this link.
For a list of "special pets" that break the rules a little, check out Good Intentions, or go to Petopia for a list of popular/superior pet choices.


How do I get my pet?

The first thing you must do is the class quest in your starting area after level 10. Go to Dolanaar/Kharanos/Bloodhoof/Razor Hill and look for your trainer. He will give you a series of lame quests to tame particular creatures in the zone. After you have finished, you will then be able to tame your own pet.

Then go out into the wild, and find a creature that is a "beast", no bigger than a bear, and not above your level, and click "Tame Beast". Your character will stand still while a bar goes by and the beast will run up and start beating you. This represents the creature's resistance to your efforts to tame it.

If you manage to withstand the attacks for 20 seconds without being interrupted, you will tame your target and he will stop attacking you.

You can NOT take any other action while taming or it will fail. Nobody else can interfere by healing you or tanking the beast. You must simply weather the attacks, but there's nothing keeping you from trying to not get hit. To help in taming your pet, make sure nothing else is around that will attack, use Aspect of the Monkey, Freezing Trap if you have it yet, and stand at max distance from your target to buy extra time.


Can I only tame beasts?
Why can't I tame a dragon?

Beasts are the only creatures hunters can tame, and only certain types at that. (See the Allakhazam beast family link under bestiary, or use Beast Lore if you aren't sure.) Dragons are considered to be too intelligent to be tamed as a minion.

OK, I've decided what kind of pet I want. Where do I find a XXX my level?

Go to the side panel here and under Bestiary, click "By Beast Family..." and pick the family type.


What is happiness?
How do I feed my pet?

Happiness is your pet's current disposition. If your pet is happier, he will fight better, and be more inclined to gain loyalty to you. If your pet is unhappy, there is the possibility he might eventually abandon you.

To raise a pet's happiness, you must feed him. After giving the pet a piece of acceptable food, by clicking on the "feed pet" skill and then clicking on the food in your inventory, they will start gaining happiness at a rate of typically 35 per second. This effect lasts for about 10 seconds, and then you will need to feed your pet again. *Do not feed your pet before that, and do not send your pet to attack while he is "digesting" or you will cut short the effect.* (You can also feed your pet by "picking up" the food onto your cursor and clicking on your pet.)

The icon for their happiness will eventually turn from red to yellow, and then to green, with enough feeding. As your pet gains levels, old food will stop being as effective. If you start seeing your pet gain 17 happiness instead of 35, you need to get higher-level food. Unfortunately, this means at high levels you will be nearly forced into using Roasted Quails. At lower levels, vendor costs for food aren't bad, random raw meat works for feeding, and cooking is still meaningful.


What is loyalty?

Loyalty serves two functions. First, each loyalty level provides training points to teach your pet new skills. Second, pets that are more loyal to you become unhappy more slowly, and require less feeding.

Your pet will reach a maximum loyalty level of 6.


Do pets gain experience and level?
What determines a pet's size?

Yes. They gain experience at a slower rate than you, but also take less to level. The pet tab in your character window will show you your pet's experience bar. A pet will not gain experience when it is your level, to keep the pet from outleveling you.

Each level makes your pet an effective level higher, raising stats and increasing their chance to hit and be missed. It also gives the pet a few extra training points and makes them a tiny bit bigger. All pets of a given type and level are the same size. If you tame some huge behemoth, it will shrink as it becomes loyal to you. (Funny and depressing at the same time.)


How do I teach pets abilities?
What are training points? Are they reuseable?
Will a pet leveled from 10 to 60 have more or less training points than one tamed at 60?

To teach pets abilities, first you must know the ability yourself. You learn these skills from a pet trainer or from watching other pets you have had use them. Use Good Intentions' page to find out which pets automatically know skills when you tame them, and that you can learn from.

Once you know a skill, you can teach it to your pet with the "Beast Training" ability in the general tab of your spellbook. Each ability will have a cost in points associated with it if your pet can learn it. If your pet can not, it might be a skill that type of pet can't learn, or he just might not be high enough in level. Make sure the first ability you train on a pet is the highest growl they can learn.

Pets gain training points every time they level or increase in loyalty. Overall this works out to the same amount in the end no matter how it happens. (The exact formula is level * loyalty-1.) Training points are now reclaimable like talent points, by visiting a pet trainer and having them reset the training points, so there is no difference in the number of training points you get, or whether you take a level 10 cat to 60 instead of getting one at 60.


Which skills can pets use?

There are passive and activated abilities.

Passive abilities are just that: passive. They provide a boost to some attribute, like armor, stamina, or fire resist. Rather than listing them all, I will simply point you to the pet training calculator and you can see for yourself.

Activated abilities are trained the same way, but a pet can only learn four of them, and not every pet can learn every skill. They include:
Growl is the most important against NPCs. It raises the pet's hate on a particular creature, which lets it tank something for you even though it does much less damage.
Bite and Claw spend the pet's Focus (which is kinda like rogue energy) to do damage. Claw uses Focus EXTREMELY quickly, so it is advised you turn it off unless that is all you want your pet to do.
Cower is the exact opposite of Growl. It lets your pet reduce its hate, which is really only useful in group situations where a warrior takes over for something the pet was off-tanking.
Dash and Dive are the same ability with different names. Dash lets your pet run very swiftly for a period of time. Dive is the same ability for flying pets.
Prowl lets a CAT go into stealth. Their next attack deals extra damage.
Screech is a flying pet ability that does some damage and lowers defense, AE.
Scorpid Poison is simply a damage over time effect, that stacks up to 5 times. Individual stings don't do much damage at all.
Furious Howl is a wolf skill that affects all nearby allies, giving them bonus damage on their next single physical attack.

Refer to Illyanna's forum thread (linked earlier) for information about which pet types can learn which skills.


Why am I limited to four active abilities?

We have no idea why they are *now* limited to four. You're going to have to pick and choose, and use multiple pets, if that's not to your liking. Oh, and go rant in the Blizz hunter forum with everyone else.


How should I spec my pet?

I'm not going to even try to answer this one, especially since more abilities are coming with the next patch, and because priorities are very different for different pets and playstyles. Just play with the darn calculator.


Why does my pet have negative loyalty points?

Because at loyalty level 1, your pet has 0 training points earned, but if you tamed a beast that comes with an ability, they are considered to have it trained already.


Oh noes! My pet disappeared/died! Is he gone?

Your pet can disappear for a number of reasons. These include running away, dying, going out of range, being dismissed or abandoned, being stabled, or taking a flight somewhere. In other words, if you don't see your pet, don't panic.

If your pet is not visible, use the Call Pet ability. Unless you were neglecting him, and he ran away, he will always be somewhere even if he isn't out. If he DID run away, I'm calling PETA on you. Try feeding next time.

If your pet dies, he is not gone forever. You have an ability to Revive Pet, that costs a ton of mana. Your pet will come back with low health and much lower happiness. (I tend not to be happy about dying either.) Make sure the first thing you do after rezzing your pet is you feed it.


How do I feed my pet?

Use the feed pet ability, and click on a piece of food that your pet will eat. Refer to the diet comments earlier if your pet "doesn't like that type of food." Your pet should then gain the "feed pet" effect and start gaining happiness, which you would see in the combat log. This leads to two important things:
1) Pets gain less happiness if you feed them food much lower in level than they are. A pet gets maximum happiness - 35 per second - only if the food is less than 20 levels below them. It can drop to 17, then 8, and then 0.
2) MAKE FULL USE OF THE GD FEED PET EFFECT! If your pet is already eating, don't feed him again. This serves NO benefit - not for happiness, not for loyalty, not for anything. Also, note that the pet loses the effect if it enters combat, so don't feed it and then send it off to attack something. Indigestion does not make me happy either. Getting to chew my food does.


You mentioned feeding and training pets, but I don't have those skills...

You have to do a follow-up quest to the 3 taming missions that involves finding the hunter trainers in your capital city. Check to see if the hunter trainer that gave you the taming quests has another one for you.


How do I control my pet?

The pet bar that appears when you call your pet has three sets of commands. The three on the left, Attack, Follow, and Stay, are direct orders. Attack sics your pet on your target, follow tells him to come with you, (or back to you rather than attacking,) and stay is for making sure he doesn't move. I recommend you bind the command for pet attack to an easy-to-reach key like the tilde since you'll be hitting it a lot and pressing ctrl-1 sucks.

The three on the right are for putting the pet into different attack modes. On aggressive, your pet will chase after anything non-friendly nearby and initiate combat with it. In defensive, the pet will protect itself or you from attackers, but otherwise do nothing. A passive pet will simply moan as it gets hit and let itself be beaten. You should almost never set your pet to aggressive, and strictly use passive in instances so your pet doesn't run off.

The middle slots start off empty, and are for placing trained abilities. All trained abilities can be set to "autocast" by right-clicking them, which will mean the pet will use them whenever possible. If your pet isn't holding aggro, make sure he's growling. If you don't want your pet to tank, (because you're grouped with a warrior,) turn growl off and bite and claw on. You can also left-click the pet abilities to manually command your pet to use them.


My pet isn't holding aggro...

Turn claw off.


My pet still isn't holding aggro.

Make sure growl is on, cower is off, and stop spamming your own abilities. There's no reason to be using multishot or stings in solo 90% of the time. Use disengage if you do happen to take aggro, like if you start with an Aimed Shot crit.


Can I have more than one pet?

Yes and no. You can have one at a time, but you don't have to get rid of your current pet forever to get a new one.

In each town, usually in front of the inn, is a "stable master" who has two slots you can purchase to store your pets like putting items in a bank. This way, you can board your pet while you go looking for something with Bite 3, or just to have different pets for different situations (like having a DPS pet and a tanking pet.)


What else can I do with my pet?

To put your pet away, Dismiss it. To get rid of it forever, right-click it's portrait and select Abandon. Note the difference in these two! A dismissed pet is simply hidden, an abandoned pet is gone for good.

Also by right-clicking your pet, you can choose to rename it. You can only ever rename it once, so be sure to name it what you want.

There is an ability called Eyes of the Beast that lets you take control of your pet for a minute. During this time you can run your pets wherever. When the duration expires, your pet will try to run back to you, and will despawn if he is now out of range. Eyes of the Beast can be a useful tool for very long-distance pulling, since the aggro transfers to the hunter after the pet is gone.


How do I use my pet in an instance?

Carefully.

Pets can easily cause wipes. Pets do not always take the same exact route you do, and might run past things you don't if you were to jump off an edge and the pet takes the long route. They also will attack things and chase runners places you don't want them to go. Keep a tight leash on your pet in an instance. They don't aggro things as easily as you do, but they still can.

Your pet will mainly be used for support damage, but you can also use it as an off-tank to protect the casters in the back from angry adds that run up to them. Be sure not to attack something that is otherwise under control, however at least now pets will break off an attack from something that becomes controlled.


Why can't I tame a mount?

Because Blizzard says so. Taming a beast for combat training and taming it to be used as a riding animal are two different things. Hunters learn how to hunt, so that's what they teach their pets to do. Unlike warlocks who have 5 different pets and a mount summon, hunter pets are all the same flavor. (Yeah, I know it's not fair. I'm sorry. I can't make it better.)

Edited, Wed May 3 11:47:13 2006 by Azuarc

That was my first one. I think I earned it. ;)

Just edited to reflect 1.7, feedback welcome since some of that info is a little bit unstable still.

If you haven't started playing WoW yet, might want to check out the new player guides on the 'guide list' in the bar on the left.

Lienna, I understand that. But why 53? Rogues are agility-dependent as well and only take 29. I don't know how high rogues can get their agility, but I do know that their crit rates are FAR higher than our's, both because of this and because of their itemization. 40% crit rate on a rogue is not unheard of. 30% on a hunter is.

Now, I understand we get 2 RAP per point of agi and rogues only get 1. They also get 1 from strength, which many people ignore, but even if we consider this and reach an in-between compromise, like 40, it would make a decent difference without being OMG-overpowered. The difference at 400 agility would be a little under 2.5%.


BTW 700 agi unbuffed is ridiculous. Actually, I don't think it's even possible. My hunter has some decent raid-level gear and I don't even break 400. (Yeah, I need to get a pair of BSH's, but that aside...) I don't see how someone could get another 300 unbuffed. All the 700+ screenshots I've seen have been with MotW, potions, BL reward, and Grace of Air totem.

edit: Just used the armor upgrader. Max on slots is 27 head, 19 neck (or 30), 24 shoulders, 34 chest, 20 waist, 33 legs, 23 wrist, 20 hands, 22 and 16 fingers, 0 for trinkets, 22 back, and 32 for double melee slots, for a total of 303. Enchants can add another 44 iirc, and a base of 149 agi for a level 60 Night Elf would total 490. With talents, that's only a maximum of 563.



Attack power is not the same thing as damage. Aimed Shot adds a flat amount of damage. Someone with 2000 RAP would probably have a DPS of around 230, x3.3 for a slow crossbow, is around 700. Add 600 for the Aimed, to 1300, and then x2.3 for a crit with Mortal Shots is crudely 3000.

Edited, Fri Oct 7 12:18:34 2005 by Azuarc

Or an ambush. Or some other abilities with a slow sword. And rogues don't have cast times.



And how frequently do you shoot? Two and a half seconds, maybe? How frequently does a rogue stab? Every 1.9 seconds with their main-hand and 1.5 with their off-hand? In 10 seconds you'll hit 4 times and they'll attack 11. So I'd say if they do half the damage per hit you do, that would be pretty overpowered.



I misread. Apologies.



I don't know why Allakhazam doesn't have the talent skills listed on our class list, but here's the link to thottbot -- http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=20904

"Aimed Shot (Rank 6)
310 Mana 8-35 yd range
3 sec cast 6 sec cooldown
Requires Ranged Weapon
An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 600."
(emphasis mine)

Hardly.

Ambush can still crit for 2k, OR you can get high crits with a sword on SS -- probably not quite 2k, but with much higher frequency.

OK, so normal attacks don't give combo points. So? It still does damage, just like autoshot does. And a low damage dagger is irrelevant if it has good DPS, where basic attack is concerned.

Your energy analysis is interesting and all, but what I get out of it is this:
-You can only Eviscerate after 14 seconds, instead of every 9 for an Aimed Shot. (6 cooldown plus 3 for the actual shot.)
-You get 6 high damage attacks in that time period plus all your normal attacks, instead of 2 plus your normal attacks strictly during the Aimed Shot cooldown.
-The rogue doesn't use Gouge to buy themselves free regen time.

Additionally, we've only considered hunter talents, automatically assuming that we have full marks talents so we have Aimed Shot, Mortal Shots, and the general damage bonuses. With one talent tree, a rogue can guarantee a crit, get a second combo point from SS crits, increase SS crit bonus damage by 30%, and increase energy max by 10 with one talent tree. Let's assume the rogue has 110 energy, and crits just one of their Sinister Strikes for an extra combo point, so they only need 4. (Rogue crit rate, as we've said, is usually well above 25%.) You've just reduced the timer by 5 seconds. I believe that would make it...9 seconds?

There are two counterarguments to this in your favor -- the Aimed Shot comes as the beginning of the progression rather than the end, and if a second series is worth actually going through, the rogue's second set will take about 10 seconds longer since they're working from empty. To the first, I say the rogue will still do probably more damage prior to using the Eviscerate, and to the second, the only time where an opponent would have that many HP, the rogue would be using different tactics.

Good job on the faq/forum. It has enlightened me on a few subjects and answered a coupla questions I had (namely how to teach my pet the skills I had bought). I do have a coupla questions though. 1) Are there any Hunter only quests? My friend had a Pally only quest he got at level 20 and I wonder if there's anything like that for hunters. 2) Do you have any experience with the new bats? Where can I find them and what level are they? 3) I bought the Special Edition WoW when it came out, mostly because I read that you get a panda as a pet. I actually thought I could use this pet until I actually got to play the game. Are there any kind of "panda pets" out there that I can use? ***** PETA, I want a panda to boss around.

Paladins can cleanse it, though. It's a poison. A paladin cleansing it when it hits will run the HUNTER out of mana if he tries to keep reapplying it. Ironic?

Azuarc, got another one for you.

I am BM/MM, on a PVP server, and am at 34. I know I am going for Beastial Wrath, then rest into the MM tree.

I know you know alot about the numbers, so what I was wondering....

Which gives you the more bang for your buck... Spririt Bond, or Improved Pet Focus?

In the PVP setting, I imagine either would come in handy, but I am leaning more towards the Imp Focus... but "by the numbers" which one has the greater benefit?
(In your opinion).

Thank you.

Ok so I am fast approaching level 60 and started to eye a few hunter sets. But when i went to find a formula to figure out which set will yield me the highest ranged damage I was unable to find one that was correct.

Thottbot reports that we still use strength+agility for ranged but this can not be right. Later in the comments i found another formula but it seems off.

What i want is a couple formulas to figure out which set yields what for us hunters.

1.) Formula for calculating Attack Power for a hunter's Range
2.) And how to add in the extra over all damage for crits and +skill to bow.

Also when it says +20 attack power is it talking about both range and melee or just melee? If just melee then it has to say "Ranged Attack power" to apply to range only?

In which case would the Beaststalker set yield more range damage then say shadowcraft set which has like 70 more agility total?

invoke -

I've done some work on that in other threads. I guess somehow none of it ended up here.

1 agi = 2 ranged attack power, and about 1/53 of one percent chance to crit. (Also 2 armor and some chance to dodge.)

Here's the simple version:
14 attack power (and thus 7 agi) is one DPS, pre-crit.
1% crit = 1% of your tooltip DPS, or 1.3% if you have Mortal Shots, so 53 agility counts as this amount as well. (Mouse over your damage in character window for the tooltip DPS.)

That's not *completely* accurate, but it's close enough. If you want absolute perfection, you need to use:
14 RAP = (1 + 1.3*CritChance) DPS -- omit the 1.3 if you lack Mortal Shots, and write the crit chance as a decimal. So if you have a 20% chance to crit, then 14 RAP is more like 1.26 DPS.

A good conversion rule is that 2 AP is worth a little less than 1 agi, and 1% crit is worth around 9 agi. This is just a rule of thumb, and depends on your actual numbers, but it's a quick-check rule.



When an ITEM adds attack power, it adds to both melee and ranged. When a BUFF adds attack power, it is only melee.

can i tame elites like the gigantic t-rex in some place my dad went when he was like 57?