Question on Gorillas w/ SVFollow

I'm having some issues with my new gorilla. I switched to SV from BM at the last patch but kept my cat until last night. I FINALLY broke down and wanted to try out a gorilla with all of the buzz. I find the new guy takes a beating since he doesn't have bloodthirsty from the ferocits tree. I have the throw a mend pet on him where as I almost forgot I had a mend pet button with my cat....I can live with that but it just surprised me as I thought a tanking pet could take more of a beating. Part of it might be because of my pets talent selection so I may revisit that one later.

Also, I tried the AOE/volley trick. My pet would do his thunderstomp and attracts 3 mobs to him, I start to cast volley and the two he isn't directly attacking bolt straight for me. Next time I let him get 2 stomps in and still pulled the mobs almost right away. If anyone who does this AOE grinding can offer any tips, I will love you forever (or at least for 5 minutes).

that is exactly how it went with my cat, just trying to open my eyes to other possibilities. Will take a look at a wasp and a raptor soon.

BM was and still is far more viable for AoE, first you can hit BW and Kill Command for a massive increase to thunderstomp damage. Secondly the cooldown will be lower (if you went longevity).
Also you will be doing less damage with volley which helps your gorilla keep aggro.
A BM BW KC gorilla will be doing massive amount of damage with each thunderstomp.

I also switched to SV but I already had an 80 gorilla. He normally holds aggro for around 5 seconds if I let him get the first hit in. In most cases things are dead by then anyway.

This. Keep smack off and let your focus dump be TS.

In general, when people ask why such and such pet doesn't hold aggro- I would like to ask them this. If you blast the crap out of mobs, is your tank able to hold aggro? The answer to this is NO. I don't care what spec of hunter you are, if you don't mitigate your DPS, you will pull aggro. To these people I remind them of this.

We are hunters, we DPS from range. If you don't let your pet build some type of aggro then you will be in melee, it's that simple. Luckily Blizzard has implemented some mechanics for hunters so that we may stay in range. When I was running survival, this was my normal fight sequence.
1. Send pet in
2. MD your pet and use your high damage spells- Aimed Auto Explosive can generate a lot of aggro. (single target DPS obviously)
3. Dont forget FD, use it when you can. If you are volleytanking, use it after the first volley, you shouldn't regain aggro before all the mobs are dead.
4. Drop a frost trap, when you get multiple mobs attacking you, strafe-kite until either FD or your disengage is off CD.

If you do this you shouldn't have any problems with aggro management.

(If you have multiple mobs aggro'd with low health I also enjoy Explosive and Deterrance)

I use a Gorilla almost exclusively with my SV build and have no problems managing threat. Since you're using a Tenacity pet, you need to keep in mind that threat generation from the pet's DPS is not really going to be there. With Gorilla's, if you have any intention of AoE grinding/farming, you're going to have to dump threat onto your pet using a Misdirect (ie. MD->Multi-Shot->Volley) to offset your pets DPS because of the cooldown on TS.

But using Misdirect will help greatly. I find it faster to just single-target focus fire when farming in a SV spec because the threat generation will be ok, and when you do pull, the mob will be dead before it gets to you using typical ES->SS rotations (throw an Aimed in if you have it in your talent build). But if you're going to attempt AoEing with any build other than BM, you're going to want to use a Misdirect of offset your pets initial TPS on the multiple mobs.

This is getting really annoying.

hmmmmmmm brains.

The poor child.
It'll have to grow up, and when it asks where her/his mommy he/she will hear "Mommy isn't here anymore, she slurped her own brain"

Lady Isyris, Zombie Mom.

In theaters next spring!