Cat TankingFollow

70 NE BM hunter, main pet is a ghost saber cat. I respecced but the results are not as good I had hoped, maybe I borked it alot, I know I did a little as I lost Prowl. Anyway, I got Bite, Claw and Dash, with Growl. I think the kitty does not have enough focus to maximize DPS. After skills, I max'ed Stamina then as much armor as I could and put the last 5 points in shadow res. Any thing ring a bell as, that was a dumb thing to do. No worries, been there many times and I am sure many more times to come.

Link your spec, as a BM hunter is it easy to miss important talents that can and will effect your playstyle.

As for your pet. What are you doing with it? Tanking singles, instances as a (laugh, cough, cough) offtank? I would recommend this order for pet talents for a general tank pet:
Cobra reflexes
Avoidance
Growl in the first slot
Bite
Dash/Dive
Claw (could be anything though, prowl, gore if able, screech)
then mix up STA and Armor.

Get more STA. Against spell casters, and aoe's, and such STA does more than armor.

*its late and i am tired. let me know if i missed anythign really important.*

Cat's are great PVP pets with their attack speed causing good spell pushback. That is why cobra reflexes and claw are a must. Claw has no cooldown, Bite does. If I only use Bite on my cat I am 90% of the time sitting on full focus, in other words a huge waste of potential DPS. Of course I have Bestial Discipline and Go For The Throat maxxed.

Avoidance with 50% AOE reduction is a no-brainer. Cobra Reflexes for reasons stated above is also a no-brainer, couple that with Ferocious Inspiration proccing more often it is a MUST for any BM hunter. I have found that all my pets need Nature and Arcane resistance for t5 content so I put zero points in Stamina and Natural armor (reason for this is sometimes I forget to switch my cat for the ravager before going into a Raid and having it die every Boss AOE does not work).

I have zero points in talents for pet hit points and armor. He still tanks level 71 elites no problem.

Also Cat's arguably do the second highest dmg output of any other raid pet, with Ravagers leading. If you are offtanking anything with 5-man content then typically a boar is your best bet.

Really though you need Go For the Throat, everytime you crit your pet can get a bite off, even if Claw is using all your foucs and holding Bite from proccing, one crit and you are golden again and the 10 second cooldown repeats.

I remember not using claw a lot when I was younger and adding it and all the focus talents available did a world of difference. Of course this is all my experience and opinion.




Edited, Jan 25th 2008 3:52pm by ithikul

Edited, Jan 25th 2008 4:02pm by ithikul

WHERE THE %(&$ IS FRENZY?!

You have 44 points in BM but no Frenzy!?

I won't even comment on the other nonsense.. but GET FRENZY!

ok, first things first, I will respec tonight and try things this week end. Never any offense taken, even playing for a year and a half, I am still a n00b at times (look at my build )

If you're having trouble holding aggro, your pets GROWL is not working properly or you have something ahead of it. GROWL should be the priority focus burner for your pet. If its CD is up, growl should be working. Make sure you are on your highest possible growl also. I once forgot to retrain growl to max after retraining Morris. He couldn't hold aggro with a normal shot. I went "OOPS" and trained growl up and put it highest in the pet bar.

With two growls on a target, no crit you can make should be able to pull the target off. If you start getting close, back off your DPS. Once you hit 70, you can misdirect onto your cat. Careful with the heals also, if you are close, they can pull the target before you realize it.

The position on the bar has absolutely no bloody effect at all. It's a matter of one single thing, and that's Focus consumption, cooldown and Focus Regen. Imagine the following skills on a Cat:

Growl, Claw, Bite, Dash

The cat will dash to his target, Growl, Bite and Claw for all he is worth. However, Claw doesn't have a cooldown, and thus will be used all the time. Burning Focus. The AI will automatically delay all other skills for your pet to get a Growl off, but not until the CD has been completed. Growl cd is done, but your pet has to regen focus to use it. It's delayed, and once delivered your pet will go back to burning focus. Next Growl will be similarly delayed and so on, and thus your pet's overall threat will be lower and lower compared to the timetable involved.

Turn off Claw, and you will have Growl going off pretty much as soon as the CD is over, which should increase the overall threat generation over time. Of course, Claw would generate the innate damage threat, so it's a very close thing.

That was my understanding as well ithikul but I don't have proof of it to whap North with. He could be right and the order of importance is built into the software, I don't know.

I didn't solo with claw, never even trained it. I only wanted Morris to use Growl, Bite, Prowl and Dash when I was primary PvE. He never ran out of focus and always was growling. I had someone else tell me the order was important so I always made sure that Growl was far left. If it is, then I was covered, if not, it didn't hurt being there.

Claw may be higher DPS than bite but I never needed it soloing. He held aggro just fine with bite and burned less focus.

I had a feeling there was a focus shortage, but I tried turning Bite off. Will try Claw next, and as other said, I leveled with Growl, Dash and Prowl. 4th one was Cower which I never figured out. So 1. turn off Claw 2. respec and get Prowl back and drop Claw.