Damnit put your pet on passive.Follow

No this isn't a rant, this is a story of my own stupidity of a lesson I learned the hard way.

My story starts off in AV. I came in late so there was no way for me to get past the oncoming horde so my best bet was to play on D until they got to Vaan because they were at the bottleneck point. So I sat on D at SP graveyard waiting for the impending onslaught. I have my pet stay near the graveyard flag, turn her on aggressive, I run off to the distance, in an obscure yet adventageous spot to hide, shadowmeld and wait.

Fast forward a bit, AV is over, I hope on a gryphon from SW and head to BB. I am running to the boat dock, pass by a lvl 35 Tauren Shaman. Hmm why is the Booty Bay Bruiser red? Oh crap my pet is still on aggresive. Spirit run, don't summon my pet until the boat leaves, change to defensive.

Arrive at ratchet, catch a hippogryph to Gagdetzan. Run in the first gate, a level 70 Horde Hunter and Shaman are there trying to one shot people and run away. The Hunter hits me, takes half my life, some gaurds chase the hunter, 2 gaurds pound on me.. F#%k defensive, when I got hit, my pet used lightning breath before I even had a chance to press the follow button.

So now I know, keep my pet on passive all the damn time, not just in instances, but all the time.

I keep my pet on passive at all times, easier to control since you always know where it's going and no problems with guards or PvP with your pet running off doing something stupid. i will only ever put my pet on Defensive if I go AFK or on Aggressive when running a friend through a lower lvl instance so I don'y have to waste as much ammo.

I've been down BOTH these roads, pet on passive, pet on defensive. In truth, there's advantages and problems to both.

When I was on a PvP server, Pet on defensive netted me instant counter attack to a surprise attack. Players immediately had Morris in their face. This worked well against mages, locks and rogues. Didn't do much to Warrior's, Paladins or other Hunters.
It has PvE benefits and solo'ing benefits, but also drawbacks. Pet tends to 'wander off' if a target I don't want to attack is in focus range and has attacked me. I may have wanted him to go to target Y after we finish off target X but instead goes to target Z. I have to call him off and redirect.

With pet in passive, I am in full control, however, getting surprised by an add or mob I was unaware of means I have to retarget, send pet to engage, and then go back to main target. In defensive I don't have to do this, he goes right to the new target while I'm hammering on something else.

So, IMHO, it's really dependent on the situation.

What I need is some sort of auto-instance detector macro. "If in instance, turn off AUTOGROWL"! I invariably forget and the first encounter is FAR more entertaining than it needs to be... ^_^

in Battlegrounds, i mostly keep my pet on aggressive. I tend to sometimes "tell" to my pet to attack my same target, but mostly... Unmount, and spam with autoshot+multi. Pet's Growl off and i'll let it run free :)

In AB, when i was defing Stables, i've gone in shadowmeld, my pet was on aggressive near the flag and i gone afk for 3 min. When i came back, i saw i made 3 kills :)


But im always carefull to put my pet on passive when entering neutral towns.

I keep my pet on defensive most of the time. If I put it on passive, I sometimes forget that I have to hit a button before it will attack ;)

Only if I want sneak up onto a mod or to lure on towards me, I put it on passive, so it will not attack before I want it to.

Wait till your pet goes after a CC'd mob that attacked you before you re-directed your pet and it got CC'd

No, The Mob has to Attack/Do damage to you, you have to sne dyou pet after another mob, then the mob needs to be CC'd after that, in order for your pet to go and attack it after the Focus target is down.

It really is a very specific way, but I have seen it happen all too often.

So you're referring to a pet going after a ranged attack mob at distance that's shooting at the hunter. A mob which really should be pulled to the party to avoid aggroing a whole bunch more mobs. My response is the same. I watch my pet and pull him back when he heads over that-a-way.

I'll have to put my pet on aggressive in a neutral town sometime and try this out. My memory of the situation is that they don't go after 'yellow' mobs. However they will go after 'red' ones. This is why my pet is almost never on aggressive. I'd hate to be killed by the guards when walking past the Horde battlegrounds representatives in Shatt and my pet went over there to attack them. Hmmm, I wonder if they'll go after 'orange' mobs.

One of the rare occasions where my pet was put on aggressive occurred a couple weeks back. We were doing the etheral escort in Mana Tombs. We had already cleared the instance so there were no mobs to accidentally aggro. I wanted my pet to attack the mobs that spawned during the escort as quickly as they appeared.


Edited, Oct 5th 2007 1:29pm by ItsaGaAs