Ravager vs CatFollow

I apoliagize becuase I can't recall which thread this was on in the fourm. It was about getting traid ready and one of the commets was "and you pet better be a Ravager" Can someone please explain to me why a ravager is better than another dps like cat? I thought all dps pets were the same in regards of damage output.

I had a hunter last night fighting slaag tell me I was a fool, we had no tank so one of our pets was going to tank, WalkingChair had less armour/health than his pet even though I was BM and he said "get a better pet".

I told him ravager was a dps pet to which he replied "omg cats are best dps pet noob"

They used to be different, now all pets have same base attack speed, 2.0 I believe is what it is. Folks used to bring cats for pvp to interupt casters because of thier higher attack speed. Blizz normalized all pets a while back.

Some people use Windserpents also. It requires some macros and other knowledge of how to do it right, none of which I know.

Yeah, gore is better than claw and makes a ravager better than a cat, but only slightly. If you like cats better, you should have one; the dps difference isn't significant enough.

But get your cat the claw ability. If you're the cookie cutter BM spec, your talents generate a lot of focus for your pet, and claw allows them to constantly dump that threat into DPS. Claw and gore are focus dumps, which is why they're so useful for DPS.

Screech wont help in raids for several reasons:
1. If you are using screech, you are not using claw. Meaning you're doing less damage.
2. The warrior should have 2/5 imp demo shout anyway, at which point the mob is "AP-reduction capped." Unless the mob gets curse of recklessness put on it (and warlocks are likely to use CoS, CoE, CoA, or CoD instead) screech will do NOTHING to lower the mob's damage dealt.
3. Birds, while being great solo pets, sort of take up a lot of space on the screen. In raids, that can be a problem. May not be as bad with an owl, but it's absurd with a bat. I should not bat's the only bird I'd tame.
Thus, for raids, a +10% DPS pet with c/g would be better.

As to ravager vs. cat, the difference is about 13.5 damage per 25 focus (before crit, miss, or talents are factored in). Assuming 15% crit and 5% miss chance, and using c/g on each GCD except when bite is off CD (so c/g 6 times every 10.5 seconds...6-to-1 c/g-bite ratio), and 20% increased damage, gore should do about 10.18 more DPS than claw. While it may not seem like much (just 10 DPS), if you're at the point where you should be doing 1000 DPS, then 10 DPS is 1%, the same as putting a talent point in Lethal Shots. For an MM hunter, the difference would be 7.4 DPS (9% miss and 5% crit). Numbers may be off as I'm not paying too much attention to the attack table, but the point stands.

Wind serpent vs. the c/g pets...the difference is more than just macros and knowledge, it's also gear. A WS can dump focus faster than a c/g pet. So, when using GFtT, if your crit chance is high enough you will build up excess focus on a c/g pet, while a WS can dump it all. I haven't done the math, but elitistjerks ranks it at 43% (varying on spec could be 43-50%) raid buffed crit chance before a WS is better than a c/g pet. By this gear level marks shouldn't be considered if you're going to be this elitist, and survival and BM both have their advantages and disadvantages: SV will get more crits, but BM has the steady focus from BD. Shot rotations should put about the same amount of shots into the mob during the same time (both the 1:1 BM and 1:1.5 SV are about 1 shot per second).
As to the macro and knowledge, all you do is put a "/castrandom lightning breath" (or something to that effect, not sure the exact command) in your shot rotation macro. If you dont do that, the WS can do wierd things such as stopping to cast LB, or flying out of melee range to cast it.



He's wrong. Ravager is the best up until your crit chance makes a WS better. Claw averages 60 damage, gore 73.5, and like I said above for a BM hunter the difference is about 10 DPS. That being said, just because a ravager/WS is the best, does not mean that other pets are NOT DPS pets. Cats, ravagers, owls, etc. are still DPS pets. Just not the best DPS pets.
He also probably had more armor due to having a "tank" pet, speccing his pet for armor, and/or having more armor himself. If you really want a pet that can tank, my recommendation is a bat. Boars lost their edge this patch, and screech is incredible for AoE threat gen. With screech you wont use claw, and as bats can do bite they get that extra little damage while screeching away.

Said above, 10 DPS shouldn't make or break your raid. But if you find ways to squeeze out 10 DPS here and 5 DPS there (and so do the other dozen+ DPS that can) easily add up to 100-200 DPS for the raid.

Edited, Apr 29th 2008 10:44am by skribs

Ah, good catch. Still, that's going to be about 4-6 DPS. My point stands, everywhere you find an extra 5 DPS may not be much, but overall it adds up.

I guess it's a matter of opinion, I personally think they and WS are the coolest pets in the game. I'm one level away from getting my black Rav from Hellfire and i can't wait. I have the rare blue tiger from winterspring, It's going to be tough putting him on the shelf.

Scr still makes your melee want to kill you.

I tend to "forget" to swap out my carrion bird if i group with the ******* rogue in my guild.
(he claims that he always tops the dps meters, while i regularly pass him with worse gear, he also said his lvl 35 alt made 350+ gold skinning lvl ~38-40 turtles in 2 days...... He also called me a noob and a moron at pvp, because i lost a duel with him where i used all my cooldowns and he only used his trinket, i have a few pieces of S1 and the S3 helm, he has full S3 with S2 shoulders and PvE weapons and i got him down to ~10%)

My Ravager is caled Walkingchair