Grinding a boar to 70.Follow

Boars have a high threat spike at the beginning of fights wich should help it hold aggro for the rest of the fight.

Just bring him to raids an instances, sure you will have reduced dps but it will level faster.

Not to mention your pet just.wont.level. I made the mistake of taking my ravager into Kara when it was level 68. My raid leader was fine with it, since he and I both thought that it would level really fast (and we had Kara on farm), but after a full clear it gained maybe half a bar of exp... and I went from my normal 1st or close 2nd place on the damage meter down to 4th. It was a nightmare.

Are you giving your pet time to build aggro or are you starting off with strong attacks right from the beginning? Heck I can pull aggro off a good warrior if I start out with my strongest stuff the instant the fight starts. I personally use a ravager (best raid dps pet ftw, plus it changes its skin!) and if I go all out, I pull threat almost instantly (I use omen so I can watch his and my threat). If its a fight I want to dps hard on, I usually give him a few seconds to sit there and build aggro, then I go to town. You gotta remember, the pet taunt is not a true taunt, its a static threat boost onto the mob. No matter what pet you have, if you go as hard as you can at the beginning, you'll pull it off your pet.

I really like my boar. Oink!
That threat spike at the beginning from charge greatly helps me avoid pulling aggro off solo mobs. Its not a panacea but its still much nicer than any other pet on solo mobs.

If I'm fighting multiples, a carrion bird is best IMO. Since birds don't have any threat spike at the beginning, one has to start off slower with just autoshot for a while. This means your pet is going to take a good deal of damage and you'll have to heal it. Screech can prevent pulling aggro off your pet at this point and is worth a lot. The extra armor of a carrion bird over other birds will help put off that heal and minimize the risk of pulling aggro. Sure, carrion birds have a little less attack power but so what? They're for tanking non-elite multiples outdoors. They're not for running instances where you've got a real tank and want a high-end DPS pet.

I've got a cat, the ghost saber, for my instance running DPS pet. Yeah, I know the ravager is currently 'best'. However after leveling that cat all the way up from 19, I ain't getting rid of it for a little bit more damage.

Edited, Mar 18th 2008 10:50am by ItsaGaAs

I gave up my boar for leveling after finding the like for owls. At 70 I'd have another pet for raiding, and possibly another for PvP too. For solo grinding I'd stick to the owl.

It's about play style. While leveling a pet from 60-70 isn't like leveling Humar to 70, it's useless if you don't find boars to your liking. I don't. If you do, consider it.

What about the owl did you prefer over the boar? Was it just looks or something that you found the owl was able to do better than the boar? I do like the looks of owls more than boars but still worry I will end up facing the other direction more than I should do to poor hate generation.


I used to believe that completely and still want to.. The problem with it is pathetic number of stable slots and how ungodly slow they can level at times. I prefer the looks of a cat. I really like owls as well. They get in my damned way a lot but they are probably my second favorite pet. I also like boars. I don't like the look of Ravy but he does put out good damage.

Leveling up, you can pretty much keep two pets. The third you will have to drop every time you want to learn a new ability or rank of one you already know. We have to go through such crap leveling them up and making sure they love us but then we are forced to treat them as disposable when another better one comes along. They had better add more slots when the expansion comes out because we will all need to learn new abilities as we level. Now at 70 you can safely deal with keeping 3 pets because, more than likely, you have everything you can get for them. Once the cap goes up to 80 and there are new ranks of abilities and probably even new abilities, you will have to drop at least one of your pets to learn them.

My two cents worth as a fledgeling Hunter player;

Boars are awesome.

I have used Cats (cos everyone says 'get a tiger'), I've used Owls (cos everyone says 'Screech is imba') and I've used a Wolf (cos everyone says 'Furious Howl is kewl'), and none of them compare to the Boar as an aggro-holder.

The Charge maneuver and subsequent snare guarantee that the mob sticks to the boar even though you might have attacked it first, because for one second the Boar is the only target within attack range (for melee mobs). They can learn the damage spike abilities like Gore and Bite, have decent armour, and are in general a PvE dream.

Now for PvP you obviously want a cat of some description simply for Prowl and Dash if nothing else, but for a companion during the levelling process a Boar is just plain brilliant, especially if you have Hawk Eye as it will reach the mob faster and allow you to engage sooner. Those seconds add up over a good grinding session, and I dont see the wisdom in depriving yourself.

Oh, and the BEST colour boars can be found at the humble Level 3 near the Tauren starting location; they are called Battleboars and they are bright, golden yellow; second best would be the armoured ones from RFK/RFD imo, but whatever takes your fancy.

~sins