What kind of pet is right for you?

Sorry, I've had to re-post this a couple of times to fix a couple of things, So, if you have this on RSS then you are probably thinking I'm a little crazy, and you wouldn't be far from the truth...


This is my first installment of Dave's Hunter guide. The first thing I'm going to talk about is pets. What is a hunter without a pet? Well, really pathetic, that's what we are. So, you get to make a big decision. What pet do you want to have? This really depends on your play style and what you want to do in the game. There is a great article on how to choose a pet on Petopia. This is a wonderful resource, everything you need or want to know in regards to hunter pets is over there. Technically, you could just go over there are stop reading this post if you would like.

Okay, since Wrath has started the way hunter pets work has dramatically changed. We use to have the lamest system where you would have to tame pets you didn't want just to learn their talent so you could teach it to your own pet. Some of us hated this and never got the latest rank of Bite, or Swipe, or whatever. But now, we have talent trees for pets. Yes Dave, if you haven't already noticed, there is a tab on the right of the talent trees that's marked "Pet". If you click that you'll see one of 3 talent trees for pets.

Now there are 3 talent trees and each pet family is assigned to one of them.

Tenacity: This talent tree is for tanking pets. These pets will be your best pets to level with. They will hold aggro the best and they have the best armor. When you are out and about soloing in the world of Azeroth, you best have one of these. These include Gorillas, Bears, Boars, Turtles, Crocolisks, Crabs, Worms (yes Dave, you can have a worm for a pet), Rhinos, Scorpids, and Warp Stalkers.

Ferocity: These are pets meant to do lots of damage. This is the main dps tree for hunter pets. They are especially good for instances and raids, when you don't need to keep the aggro. You see, hopefully you already have a tank to do that for you. These pets include cats, devilsaurs, core hounds, hyenas, moths, raptors, spirit beasts, tallstriders, wasps, and wolves.

Cunning: At first glance you'll be thinking, what are these pets for? Well, I like to think of this as the utility tree. These pets are still really good at dps in their own way, but they have a few other tricks up their sleeves. Some argue that these are good for PvP. I have one, but haven't used him at all. These pets include bats, birds of prey, chimaeras, dragonhawks, nether rays, ravagers, serpents, silithids, spiders, spore bats, and wind serpents.

Now, you may have noticed that you have 4 spots available at the pet stable. That means that you can have 5 pets!!! You can have a pet for leveling, and another for instances/raids, and if you really like PvP you can have one for that. You can keep an old favorite pet for sentimental value and one that looks really cool.

Bear in mind when you are picking a pet that each pet family has a different talent/ability. For instance, Gorillas have a cool Thunderstomp and is an AoE aggro pull. Wolves do this howl thing (Furious Howl) that is a raid wide Attack Power buff.

So, now you are thinking, what talent points do I use for my pets. That is another discussion, one that I don't want to go over because Pike did such a good job at that at Aspect of the Hare. She gives us several different pet talent builds that work for different circumstances. My suggestion is to get your self a good tenacity pet while you are leveling. I personally like the gorilla, but everybody does that so, do what you would like. When you hit level 80 then you probably would go more for a ferocity pet and focus on kicking butt.

Dave if you have any questions, email me or post something on my facebook page or something. If anybody else has questions, comments, suggestions, corrections, or anything else. Let me know, either by commenting on below or by emailing me at aoirselvar@gmail.com.