Introduction

Pets level in a similar way to how the Hunter does, but there are several slight differences. It is well worth having your pets up to your level so they remain their most affective.

General Levelling Infomation

You cannot tame a pet that is a higher level than you. This is because pets cannot level higher than the Hunter. Once your pet reaches your level, it will continue to gain experience right up to the point where it is about to ding, and then it will stop. Once you gain a level, it will ding and continue to gain experience as before as before.

Not only can your pet cannot level higher than you, but it also can’t fall more than five levels below you. If your pet falls more than five levels behind you, it will automatically be brought up so it is exactly five levels below you. Although this does not directly affect stabled pets, as soon as you take them out of the stable they will level automatically.

Levelling Details

Your pet only gains experience from killing mobs. It will not gain experience from quests like you do. However its experience bar is much smaller than yours and it should level much faster than you do.

The best way to level a pet is to have it active at all times. It will gain experience in combat once you have killed your target, even if it hasn’t attacked itself. However, it will not gain experience if it kills its target without you attacking it, before it dies.

Your pet will not gain experience from mobs that appear grey for you, even if they would not be for the pet. Because of this, the best way to level your pet is just to do and kill what you would normally would and let it level as you go, without wasting any time on faring for the sake of it.

If you are desperate to level your pet quickly, so you can run raids and instances with it, the best solution is to find a good area to farm. The mobs should appear yellow to you and should be easy to kill, as well as respawn quickly. This should let you kill mobs quickly within a short period of time, levelling your pet quickly. Pets gain less experience while in groups, just like you do, so being in a large group to level your pet isn’t a great idea. However pairing up with someone, ideally someone who can AoE to down groups of mobs quickly, can be a good idea.

Conclusion

So the best way to level your pet is to just let it level as you go about your every day business. But if you want to level it quickly, then you should pick up a friend and pick a good spot to go and farm.

This post has currently not been started.

Once complete, it will list every talent with each rank of the talent.

Next it will show the usefulness of the talent in solo, group, instance and pvp instances, most likely with a small chart.

Lastly there will be a small comment written by myself for each one.

If the talent grants an ability it will be added. It will be in the same format as the ‘Pet Skills’ post.

This post is currently not being written, due to a large amount of current talents being changed in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Once changes have stoped the post will be started.

Introduction

Your Pet has more abilities than just its family’s skill. It will come with an ability to increase its damage, another to help increase threat and a last to help lose threat. More can be obtained through talents but these are what every pet will come with.

Every time your pet’s global cooldown finishes, it will always cast the lowest cost ability that’s not on cooldown. Focus Dump abilities cost 25 focus, Family Skills cost 20 focus and Threat Control abilities cost no focus.

Focus Dump Abilities

These skills are called ‘Focus Dump Abilities’ because they turn focus into damage. When other abilities aren’t being used and when enough focus is available, this ability will ‘dump’ the focus by turning it into damage.

Bite is one of the three abilities. None of them have a cooldown, letting you exchange your pet’s focus for more damage when you wish.

Claw is the second of the three. All three have a low priority, so other abilities will be used when off cooldown, if the available focus is there. These will only be cast when other active skills are on cooldown.

Smack is the last of the three. Each pet has one of the three abilities available to it, depending on family, but they are all identical. That means you shouldn’t worry over which one you want when choosing a pet.

Threat Control Abilities

These two abilities help your pet to control its threat on its target. They help to make the pet viable for different situations, so you can tank or dps with your pet with just a click of a button.

Cower lowers your pets threat on its target. This means that it’s less likely to draw aggro so it doesn’t try to tank its target. This is great for groups where your pet is DPS, because you don’t want your pet to pull aggro from the tank. It’s also free to cast, so you don’t need to worry about not having it on auto-cast! However, it’s a bad idea to have on while soloing, as you want your pet to tank its target so you don’t pull aggro. This is where you would have Growl active. Another point to watch out for is not having both Cower and Growl on at the same time, as they will cancel each other out and cause all kinds of problems.

Growl increases your pet’s threat on its target, which should help it to hold aggro. This is great skill to have active in any situation where you want your pet to tank. The threat generated does not just increase with the abilities rank; it increases with your pets level and your Ranged Attack Power. This means the more AP you have, the more threat your pet will generate. Unfortunately there is a lower limit where your pet will gain no addition threat. If you AP falls under this limit your pet will generate much less threat. The formula to find this lower limit is as follows:

RAP Threshold = (17.5 x Pet Level) – 140

Conclusion

It is important to have one of each skill active so that your pet can put out its maximum damage output and hold, or avoid gaining, aggro from its target. However, you must remember that you may wish to activate other abilities, and you don’t want all your threat lost before you have the chance to use them.

Introduction

Pets scale from your stats that appear on your character sheet. If a talent or spell does not directly affect these stats, it will not be scale with your pet. Other talents can directly affect the pets stats without or as well as affecting your own.

Scaling

• Pets get about 45% of the hunter’s stamina added to their stamina.
• Pets get about 50% of the hunter’s armour added to their armour.
• Pets get about 22% of the hunter’s ranged attack power added to their melee attack power.
• Pets get about 7.5% of the hunter’s ranged attack power added to their spell damage.
• Pets get about 40% of the hunter’s resistances added to their own resistances.

Hit rating is shared.
Expertise is shared.
Resilience is 40% shared.
Critical Strike Rating is not shared.
Haste is not shared.

Stacking

There are three kinds of ways that your pet’s statistics can be improved. Hunter Talents, Pet Talents and Buffs. Some of these affect your pets base stats; others affect its contributed stats.

Each variety of buff and talent combinations will work differently together. Some will increase a certain stat by the amount stated; some will buff each other to increase the stat even more than stated.

The general tend is that base increases are added together and percentage increases are added together. The total base increase is added onto your pet’s stats, then that grand total is multiplied by the total percentage increase.

For example you have 5 points in Endurance Training and a Priest buffs your pet with Power Word: Fortitude.

In this example lets assume Endurance Training just increases your pets health by 10% and Power Word: Fortitude increases its stamina by 50.

Your pet starts with a base health of 5000.
Power Word: Fortitude increases the pet’s stamina by 50, adding on 500 health.
Your pet now has 5500 health.
Endurance Training increases this new total by 10%. Multiply 5500 by 1.1.
Your pet’s new health value is 6050.

Conclusion

Stats never scale perfectly. They can increase and decrease depending on level and stat values. There can be exceptions to how buffs and talents stack on your pet and how they transfer from you. Luckily it is not something you need to worry about. As long as you know what and what isn’t being transferred to your pet, you know what stats you need to be worried about when concerning your pet

Introduction

There are three groups of pet families, Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity. These three groups each have their own talent trees, but all have the same stat modifiers.

Stats: +5% Health, + 5% Armour, + 5% Damage.

Cunning

Talent Tree

Ferocity

Talent Tree

Tenacity

Talent Tree

There are over ten different families in each of these categories, each with its own unique skill. Once you have decided on one group, it’s time to compare abilities.

It is also worth mentioning that the damage from your pet’s abilities stacks with your Attack Power, meaning they do far more damage than you first might think.

Cunning

Cunning pets tend to suit PvP due to their range of different utility abilities. However, they can make life much easier while playing through solo PvE content.

Bats have the ability to stun their target for 2 seconds. Although other pets can immobilize their target for twice the time, the target would still be able to cast where the Bats stunned target cannot. This makes the Bat good for PvP, as it can stun a player right in the middle of an essential heal, giving you some extra time to finish off your target. The only problem is the abilities long cooldown. Certain species of bat can also come in handy as being a good line of sight obstacle when enemy players are trying to target you.

Birds of Prey can be extremely useful when in PvP against melee users. A 6 second disarm can save you from a stun locking Rogue to a heavy hitting Warrior or Death Knight making them effectively useless for the duration. This tends not to be effective in many other situations though, as NPC’s tend not to deal large amounts of damage with weapons. The cooldown for this ability is also rather long.

Chimaeras cause their target move at 50% speed for a duration of 5 seconds. Although this does not sound like much, compared to a 4 second immobilize by other families, there are two things to keep in mind. Firstly, the cooldown is only 10 seconds. This means your pet will be able to have it’s target stuck at 50% speed for half the duration of a fight, close to three quarters the time with selected talents. The second point to keep in mind is that this ability will also be hitting harder your pets bite ability. This gives you a great form of crowd control as well as damage output. For any Beast Mastery Hunter this is a great choice for a PvP pet! It can also be a handy pet for PvE if you find yourself kiting a lot, slowing down the pace and making your life a bit easier.

Dragonhawks can push out extra damage to its target every 10 seconds with its ability. Half of the damage dealt is the DoT that follows the initial attack, which damages the target over 2 seconds. Although this is not greatly useful, it can be used from range with the use of the pet stay function. This can sometimes help your pet keep out of trouble while in PvP as well as raids but will largely reduce its overall damage.

Nether Rays can be useful against casters in PvP as they have the ability to give them a 2 second silence every 40 seconds. This can help prevent a critical heal or a critical piece of damage that would otherwise cost you the fight. Unfortunately this ability is only good against casters, where as other families, such as the bat, can stun their target completely for the same duration. The only difference is the cooldown. You must also keep in mind that although this ability will work well against classes who largely use one school of magic, like most healers, it won’t work as well against spell casters who use several, warlocks and mages.

Ravagers can stun their enemy for 2 seconds much like Bats. Unfortunately, they can only do so once get within melee range. What makes the ravagers ability better than the bats however is its 40-second cooldown, making it two-thirds the time of the Bats. The damage from the Ravagers attack will also be higher than that of the Bats. The disadvantages compared to the Bat are its small size and its need to be in melee range of its target at the exact the ability is needed.

Serpents can be extremely effective against spell casters with their poison spit ability. Although only useful against spells with a cast time, it will greatly slow those spells down! And with such a low cooldown, you can keep this debuff up almost permanently on your target, seriously weakening their damage output. Its Damage over Time is also very useful against rogues as it can help prevent them disappearing back into stealth. It can be cast at range, which means it can easily be applied to its target, and lastly it is a poison affect. This makes cleansing your stings off your targets that bit harder for them! A really great choice for PvP!

Silithids can web their targets to the ground, immobilizing them for 4 seconds. The target will still be able to use spells and abilities, but will be unable to move. This can be an extremely useful ability used against melee, to keep them from touching you while you attempt to finish them off. The Silithids web also causes a rather large amount of damage on top of its immobilize effect, making it that bit better.

Spiders web works much like the Silithids, the only difference being that it doesn’t cause any damage. However, unlike the Silithid, you are able to tame a Spider without being speced fully Beast Mastery. As mentioned above, the web can be great against melee, but it can also be good against casters by using line of sight. You can quite easily web your target behind a pillar, keeping them out of action while you take care of another target. You can also use web to hold your target still so that a melee friend can engage in combat with ease. The cooldown is 40 seconds, allowing you to cast it once or twice during a PvP fight. It can also be very handy while in PvE, giving you an extra 4 seconds to kill your target if you pull aggro.

Sporebats can reduce their targets armour and deal a small amount of AoE damage. The reduction in armour unfortunately doesn’t stack with other ‘minor armour debuffs’ such as Fairy Fire. This means it may not benefit your raids. The AoE damage affects everyone within 6 yards of the Sporebat at the time of casting. Unfortunately it can quite easily be moved out of, meaning players can avoid taking any damage from it at all. It seems the Sporebat is only of any use while in battlegrounds, where players may not notice the AoE affect and the armour reduction should effect players without another debuff on them already.

Wind Serpents lightning breath damage scales with your Ranged Attack Power. This makes them very high hitting pets once you have started accumulating your gear. The only downside to them is that they fall under the Cunning tree and not the Ferocity tree, meaning a different array of talents. However, Wind Serpents are still a top choice for instances and raids, especially where your pet cannot move into melee without dying, but can safely stay at range and dps.

Conclusion

If you can tame exotic pets, the Chimaera seems the top choice for PvP with its slowing effect and high damage output. If you don’t then the Spider seems a good choice, letting you immobilize your target. The Wind Serpent is also well worth mentioning for raids as a high damage output pet that scales with your Attack Power.

Ferocity

Ferocity pets are mainly used for PvE instances and raids due to their ability to really boost your damage output. However, they can be affective in PvP because of their high burst damage output.

Carrion Birds have the ability to reduce the Melee Attack Power of all targets within range by a rather large amount, as well as dealing damage at the same time. This tends to be a good ability to use while in PvP, as well as solo play, as it helps to keep you and your pet alive for longer. However it’s not a great choice for raids and instances, as the reduction won’t be noticeable to the group.

Cats and Spirit Beasts both have the prowl ability. This grants them the ability to move into stealth. This can be very handy in PvP, hiding your pet until you wish to attack. The extra damage from the first hit can also help with a speedy kill! It can also be handy while in PvE as it helps your pet to avoid pulling mobs by moving into their aggro range.

Cats can stealth with prowl but can also deal a large amount of additional damage through rake. Rake does a large amount of damage with its initial hit, but also does a fair amount of damage over time. This means even while the ability is on cooldown, its still ticking damage away! Cats are a great choice for raids and instances where you want to cause the most damage you can. They can also be a good choice for PvP, dealing large amounts of damage and having the ability to stealth.

Core Hounds can be extremely useful against casters with their ability to slow down their casting speed by 25%. This ability is very similar to the Serpents, but lasts 2 seconds longer and deals damage in a different way. Rather than applying a DoT, it deals a large amount of damage instantly. This makes Core Hounds great for PvP, having the ability to slow down casters attack speed constantly, as well as dealing large amounts of damage every 10 seconds.

Devilsaurs can deal huge amounts of damage and increase their own damage output quite significantly. If the ability is continuously used, your pets overall damage will increase by 9% after the third stack of the buff. This makes the Devilsaur extremely good in instances and raids, where your pet will be in combat with bosses for long periods of time. The additional damage that the bite causes also greatly increases the pets overall damage output.

Hyenas have their very own Wing Clip ability, but on a 20 second cooldown. This makes the Hyena very handy for PvP, allowing you to gain more distance between you and your target. The Hyena will also cause a fair amount of damage while it’s at it.

Moths increase their Attack Power and heal themselves while in combat. This can be extremely helpful while playing solo in PvE. The increase in Attack Power increases your pets damage, and the heal saves you mana from having to heal it yourself. As well as the extra damage you will be able to cause, not having to worry about healing your pet, you will no longer gain aggro from groups by healing your pet. Your pet will gain threat from its heal, helping it to AoE tank and help you avoid pulling aggro from multiple targets focused on your pet.

Raptors deal their damage much like cats. They deal a large initial hit and then cause more damage over time. Raptors do hit for more, but the abilities cooldown is much longer. There is an extra bonus to this ability however, as when this ability critically hits, the Raptors Attack Power will increase for a short duration. Raptors are a great choice for instances and raids due to their high-sustained damage output.

Spirit Beasts have the ability to stealth along with Cats. They also attack in a very similar way. They deal damage with an instant hit, but also deal additional damage 6 seconds later. The damage dealt tends to be higher than that of Cats but you have to have the ability to tame exotic pets to tame the Spirit Beast. If you are Beast Mastery, this is a top choice for raids and instances with its high damage output.

Tallstriders can cause groups of enemies to miss their next attack. This can be useful in raids and instances when pulling trash, as it gives your tank and healer a hand starting off. It can be also be effective against bosses, but it does have a rather long cooldown. It is best kept for fighting groups, but only if think you may have problems. It can also be used in PvP to defend a location, allowing large amounts of damage to be avoided by your group!

Wasps reduce their targets armour just like the Sporebat. Unfortunately for both, the debuff counts as a ‘minor armour debuff’ and will not stack with other effects such as Fairy Fire. This means they may not have much use in raids, but may do within instances. The wasp will also deal some additional damage with its sting, which builds up with its very short cooldown.

Wolves have the ability to boost theirs, and the Hunters Attack Power by twice the Wolfs level for 20 seconds. This stacks with other affects and can be kept up around half the time, with only a 40 second cooldown. This can help to boost both your damage outputs, and gives you an extra bonus to pop when using all your cooldowns. This ability works much like a ‘Use’ affect of a trinket. This makes Wolves great for instances and raids, as well as for increasing your burst damage in PvP.

Conclusion

If you are able to tame exotic pets, the Devilsaur or the Spirit Beast seem to be top choices for pure damage output. If you can’t, a Cat or Raptor seems to a great choice as they can still pack a punch. Moths are an honourable mention for solo play, being able to self heal and increase their Attack Power, while causing large amounts of damage to their target.

Tenacity

Tenacity pets are perfect for solo PvE content, because you effectively gain your own mini tank. However, they can also be great for small groups and instances as they give your party a viable off tank or even main tank!

Bears swipe all mobs within a cone in front of it, letting it gain threat from multiple targets. Unfortunately the downside to this is that many mobs will attempt to attack from behind if another mob is being targeted. This means they will avoid the bear’s swipe. Even with this problem, Bears are a great choice for AoE tanking, being one of only a few pets with the ability able to gain threat from multiple targets with their family ability.

Boars can gore their target for a rather large amount of damage, which can be doubled if used fairly soon after a charge. Although this will not keep up with ferocity pets, it can gain the Boar a huge amount of threat at the start of a pull. This makes Boar a very nice choice for PvE while soloing, as by the time you have built up enough threat to out aggro your pet, your target is dead.

Crabs can pin their target in place, just like a Spider does, for 4 seconds. The Crab will also do a fair amount of damage while doing this. Unlike the Spider, the Crab channels the ability rather than casting it instantly. The Crab will not be interrupted by damage, but will be unable to attack while channelling. This can be a great ability to use if you out aggro your pet, giving you a few seconds to finish off your target before it reaches you. It can also be handy in PvP, to keep melee away from you and let you gain more distance to fire from.

Crocolisks are perfect AoE tanks, biting back against anything that hits them. This really helps the Crocolisk to hold aggro and should let you get off some AoE attacks now and then. The cooldown is rather large at 2 minutes, but the affect will last for 45 seconds. This should let you use the ability almost every pull when fighting larger groups, or every other pull when fighting just one or two mobs. This truly is a perfect AoE tanking ability!

Gorillas can interrupt and prevent their target from casting a spell from that school of spell being cast for 4 seconds. This is effectively the same as the Nether Rays ability, only rather than dealing damage, it increases the silence affect by an additional 2 seconds and has a much shorter cooldown. This makes Gorillas really great in PvP, making life for spell casters extremely difficult.

Rhinos knock back their target and cause a large amount of damage while they are at it. This gives the Hunter a second Disengage like ability, only this time knocking your target back rather than yourself. This makes the Rhino a great choice for PvP, not just knocking its target back, but also off of objects like a pillar or a tower. The target will also take additional damage from bleed effects, which will increase damage done by shots such as Chimera Shot, amongst others, which will help to increase your damage output on that target.

Scorpids deal all their damage over time, unlike most pets that deal their damage largely though instant strikes. This can make the Scorpid a pain for healers in PvP, giving them a poison DoT they will have to cleanse. Much like the Serpent, the DoT will help hide the Hunters stings making them harder to cleanse. In PvE solo content you can try using the ability on several targets over a duration of a fight. This means you have poison ticking on several targets, dealing them damage and granting your pet more threat.

Turtles have the ability to reduce all damage done to them by 50% for 12 seconds. This makes them the toughest tanking pet, being extremely hard to kill. Although other pets may be able to cause more threat, the Turtle should be able to prove its weight and hold aggro well enough. Turtles are by far top choice when tanking elite mobs and when tanking in instances.

Warp Stalkers can instantly appear behind their target, making them the fastest pet to close in on their prey. It also means that they will avoid running into anything in-between them and their target, such as traps, making them very effective in PvP. They also have a chance of dodging the first few attacks aimed towards them, letting them build up aggro against mobs that might otherwise use some kind of stun affect on it. This makes it a good choice for solo PvE content, as it needs less healing and can build threat quickly right from the go. It also makes times between pulls shorten drastically.

Worms reduce their targets armour while spitting out nature damage. The armour reduction falls under the ‘major armour debuff’ category, making it as powerful as abilities such as Sunder Armour. This unfortunately means the effects do not stack, and as Sunder Armour has a much shorter cooldown, in raids you would expect a Warrior to deal with this. However, in raids and instances without Warriors, or where they are not inclined to do it themselves, the Worm can be extremely helpful. The reduction in armour means a huge increase of dps for that target. This can also be helpful in PvP, reducing your targets armour for an easier kill. The only disadvantage again is the cooldown, but it can make long fights turn to your advantage.

Conclusion

Crocolisks are the top choice for AoE tanking and Turtles make a perfect choice for single target tanking, with their damage reduction ability. Boars and Warp Stalkers are great secondary choices for solo PvE content, with their quick threat generation abilities at the beginning of fights. If you have the ability to tame Exotic pets, Worms can be an ok choice for raids without Warriors and Rhinos can make a decent companion for PvP, knocking their target away from you and possible of rather high buildings!

Conclusion

It’s worth keeping in mind that you can tame several pets, so you can pick a few out to suit different situations. Remember too that although different pets may appear to have similar abilities, they will have different talent trees if they fall under different categories. This can make a huge difference at what they will be good at and what their weaknesses will be.

Introduction

Your Pet Menu contains all the information you need to know about your pet. It’s very similar to your character sheet, containing your pet’s stats among other information. It can be accessed by selecting the second tab, the Pet tab, on your character menu.

Contents

Here is a list of the different information your pets menu will give you.

Diet

Your pets diet can be viewed by hovering your cursor over the small, smiley green face at the top left of the menu. This will let you know what types of food you are able to feed your pet. This is best checked early on so you know what food to stack up on to keep your pet happy!

Statistics

Your pet has the same basic statistics you have, Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect and Spirit, listed down the left-hand side of the page. Down the right you can find its attributes, Attack Power, Damage, Spell Damage Bonus and Armour. Hovering over each of these will give you extra details on the particular attribute, such damage per second.

Resistances

Your pet’s resistance values can be found listed down the right hand side of the menu. Hovering over each will tell you how strong each resistance is, in relation to your pets level.

Experience Bar

Right at the bottom of the menu you will find your pets experience bar. You will notice that it will increase much faster than your own, but will only increase when killing mobs. Your pet does not gain xp from completing quests. Once your pet reaches your level, your pet will continue to gain xp, the experience bar filling up, but will then stop once the bar is completely filled. This is due to you pet being unable to level past you.

Conclusion

Your pet’s character sheet acts much like your own, letting you check up on different stats and attributes. It is useful for checking your pet’s armour and resistances, (for tanking pets) and attack power and damage (for dps pets) from time to time to make sure they are keeping up to standard.

Introduction

You will find your Pet Tool-Bar at the bottom left of your screen, normally under your chat menu. This bar gives you a customisable, easy access menu where you can change your pet’s settings.

The First Three

The first button on the toolbar is the command for your pet to attack. First you must select your target, then press this button and your pet will run into battle. This button is rarely used because it is far easier to use a key binding. This is because you will use it so often that you’ll want access it quickly and with ease. The set key binding to use this command is SHIFT + T. Personally, I would change this to something that is easier to reach. Alternatively you can make a macro and set it to your cast-bar avoiding changing your key bindings. A few hours of pressing SHIFT + T a few times a minute and you’ll understand why it is important to change it.

The second button will set your pet on follow. If you have this command selected then your pet will follow you around as you move. Alternatively, if you have the third button selected, your pet will stay where it is, even when you move away. This is the stay command. You will normally have the follow command selected, but there are occasions where you will want your pet to stay in a certain position.

The Middle Four

These four spaces are fully customisable. You can insert any of your pet’s spells into these slots. These spells can be found in your pets spell book, which can be found by opening your spell book and selecting the pet tab.

While in your pet spell book, or on your tool-bar, you can right click on your pets skills causing a shiny border round the outside of skills image to appear. This means the skill is now active. From now on, when your pet is in combat, it will use these abilities as often as it can. Because your pet runs out of focus fairly quickly, it is normally best to choose just two abilities to have active at a time, with a possible third which has a longer cooldown. If you select skills with low focus costs and with different cooldowns, your pet will be able to fit them into a nice little rotation.

You normally want to have your longer cooldown abilities which you don’t keep active on your cast-bar. This lets you view the skills your pet is not using, allowing you to activate them quickly when necessary. Having active skills taking up your tool-bar is not generally helpful, as you have no reason to select them. It can be useful when setting up which abilities to have active however, as you can see how your pet is using them in sequence.

The Last Three

The last three determine how your pet will deal with nearby enemies. The first will put your pet into an aggressive stance. This means it will attack anything within its aggro range. This is rarely used, as you normally want to be in full control of what your pet attacks. The second is the pet’s defensive stance. This means your pet will automatically attack when you enter combat. Although this is a useful stance, it can still be unreliable. Your pet may run off to attack a target at range, instead of attacking the one you wanted. However, during solo play, it is normally the easiest stance to have active. The last button will put your pet into its passive stance. When active, your pet will only attack if you send it in yourself, by the methods discussed earlier. This makes it the safest stance, as you can select it targets or keep it by your side when needed, giving you complete control.

Conclusion

Make sure you get comfortable with your pets bar and really spend some time setting it up so it effectively meets your needs. Once it’s set-up, you will have complete control over your pet, from movements to abilities, all at your fingertips.

Introduction

Feeding your pet helps to maintain its happiness level. The happier your pet is, the more damage it will cause!

About Pet Happiness

Next to your pets portrait you should find a small square face. This represents your pet’s happiness level. This represents your pet’s happiness. There are three levels of happiness:

Happy: Your pet causes 125% damage.

Neutral: Your pet causes 100% damage

Unhappy: Your pet causes 75% damage.

So as you can see, it’s important to keep your pets happiness level up. But how can you do this?

Gaining and Losing Happiness

The main way to increase your pet’s happiness level is to feed it. You simply select the Feed Pet ability and the click on the food you wish to feed it. The higher quality (the closer to your pets level) the food is, the higher your pet’s happiness level will increase. Alternative ways of feeding your pet include dragging the selected food over your pet, or your pet’s portrait. This simply means you can avoid the Feed Pet button.

Your pet’s happiness will increase 10 times over the 20 second period, as long as it is not interrupted. Depending on the quality of the food, your pet will gain 8, 17 or 35 happiness every two seconds, for a total of 80, 170 or 350 per feed.

There are also talent points for your pet that will help to increase its happiness level. These can save you large sums of gold, as well as bag space and time.

There are several ways your pet can lose happiness:

Waiting: Your pet will lose happiness gradually while standing around doing nothing. It will lose around 50 happiness in 6 minutes of inactivity.

Dismiss Pet: This ability will cause your pet to lose 50 happiness.

Dying: When your pet dies it will lose 350 happiness.

Lost: You can gain so much distance between you and your pet, that your pet will disappear. This is effectively the same as dismissing it, however it will only lose 10 happiness.

Tips and Tricks for Maintaining Happiness

Pets can’t eat food while in combat, and will lose the feed effect if they cause or receive damage. This even includes poison and curse effects while out of combat. Check before wasting food on your pet.

Although pets will eat food of high levels than them, they will gain no extra benefit from doing so. They can also refuse to eat food of a much lower level than them.

Most pets can only eat a few different food types. To find what types they can eat, visit your pet menu.

Run away from your pet, by making it stay, rather than dismissing it. This will cause it to lose less happiness.

Your pet will not lose happiness when it disappears as you mount. This can make it worth mounting when you go afk, so your pet won’t lose happiness.

Often the easiest and cheapest way of obtaining your food is by purchasing it from a vendor. However, if you choose a pet that eats fish, you can level up your fishing skill when you run out of food and save a large sum of gold over the long run. Also, feed your pet the scraps you loot, rather than discarding, or vendoring them to save gold.

Conclusion

Although feeding your pet is not mandatory, it is suggested to try and keep its happiness level up at full, to receive the most benefit from it. If you want your pet to stay happy, but you are too lazy or poor to feed it, select the talent points to help boost its happiness value.

Introduction

Pets gain skill points much like you gain talent points. In this post we’ll discuss the basics about your pets talent points and talent trees.

Your Pet and Levelling

Your pet may not level the same time as you, but that doesn’t make your furry (or scaly!) companions dings any less important. Much like when you ding, your pets basic stats will increase. You will be able to upgrade your pets abilities every now and then as well at a pet trainer. But most importantly, every four levels you will gain a talent point for your pet. These points can be spent in any of the three available talent trees, much like the talent points you receive every level. However each pet only has one talent tree, so you will have to tame the right pet if you want to put points in a certain tree.

Spending Skill Points

The three talent trees for pets are:

The Cunning Tree:

This tree has many talents that benefit the Hunter by making life easier. From making your pet move faster to restoring your mana your pet will do it all. Don’t worry though, there are still talents that will help to boost your pets damage output and performance too!

The Ferocity Tree:

This tree is all about boosting your pets damage output, therefore increasing your total damage output. However, there are a few talents that help to keep your pet alive. If your pet is dead, it’s going to do a lot less damage, right?

The Tenacity Tree:

This tree is all about keeping your pet alive and helping it keep aggro. This makes your pet a fine tank for solo and small group purposes. There are also a few extras that help boost your pets damage and to increase its speed.

It’s up to you how you spend your points. Although the end talents may not be a necessity, they are definitely worth considering to work towards and pt your points into. For some you may have to have points spent in previous talents to achieve the last ones, but don’t worry. Much like yourself, you can reset your pets talent points at a pet trainer, if you wish to respec your pet.

Conclusion

So although there are three talent trees for pets, each pet only has one of the three available. This means you will have to decide what pet to tame beforehand, or find a way of working your pets talent tree to your advantage.

Introduction

As a Hunter you can have a number of pets under your control. However, you cannot have them all active at one time.

The Stables

The stables are a Hunters best friend. They allow you to store multiple pets just like a bank. You can buy up to four slots at a Stable Master to store your pets and you can have a fifth pet active. The first slot will cost 5 silver, then 5 gold, then 50 gold and finally 150 gold.

There is a stable master in almost every zone, normally located around a major encampment. You can swap your active pet any time by simple dragging the selected pet into your current pet slot.

While your pet is in the stables nothing at all will happen to it at all. It will keep all its talents and will stay at the same loyalty and experience level. However, when you take your pet out from the stables and it is more than five levels below you, its level will be automatically increased so as to only be five levels below yours.

Having a variety of pets to swap in and out of the stables can be very handy. Generally most players have a tenacity, ferocity and cunning specified pet in their stables, or two in the stables and one active. This gives them a tanking/levelling/grinding pet, a group dps pet and a PvP pet that they can quickly switch between. That leaves them two more spaces.

The last two slots might just be filled with your favourite looking creature, they might be extremely rare or they might have a special skill that’s to your preference. You could even have all four slots in you stables filled with just bears, or even boars! It’s completely up to you. If you can tame it, it can be put into the stables!

Conclusion

So swapping over your pets should now be a piece of cake. Having those spare pets at hand is well worth the small one time fee!