Pet Basics

Subject: Pet Basics Thu Oct 01, 2009 6:10 pm

<table id=postbody21 border=0 cellSpacing=0><tr><td>Pet Basics

Taming a Pet

At level 10, you will be directed to a particular class trainer depending on race. If you are above level 10 and do not yet have a pet, check www.wowhead.com for information on the quest "Taming the Beast" specific to your race and starting area.

At this point you can tame nearly anything with 'Beast' on its tooltip. There are some exceptions such as fish. You must also find a beast at your own level or below.

To tame a beast, simply select it and click 'Tame Beast.' Several things will happen. The beast will attack you, your armor will drop to zero, and you will start a 20 second spell channel. If any other player pulls aggro on the beast, taming will fail.

Taming tips

* Clear the area of any other mobs or hostile players.
* Start at max taming range: 30 yards. Farther if pulling with a Shot.
* Once you have Freezing Trap, lay one down before starting.
* Concussive Shot will slow the beast's approach.
* Scorpid Sting and Aspect of the Monkey reduce damage taken.
* Have some food ready to use right after taming. Otherwise it may run away.

Sometimes taming will still fail for unknown reasons. Run away or Feign Death to reset the mob and try again. Once taming succeeds, you can rename your pet once by right clicking its portrait and selecting 'Rename'.

Happiness

Pets have a special "status" known as Happiness. There are three levels of Happiness shown by the face icon next to the pet's health bar:

* Happy - green smiling face. Pet does 125% of normal damage
* Content - yellow neutral face. Pet does normal damage
* Unhappy - red frowning face. Pet does 75% of normal damage

Increase Happiness by feeding your pet. The Mend Pet minor glyph also grants your pet 20 Happiness per Mend tick- so 100 per cast. Happiness is lost when your pet dies (big amount), when you cast Dismiss Pet (small amount), or just by having it out at all (slow trickle). Tell your pet to stay then run away from it to cause a no-penalty dismissal.

Feeding

Depending on your pet's family (e.g. a Boar or Serpent), it will only eat particular types of food. Usually one to three from the following list: Fish, Meat, Fruit, Fungus, Cheese, Bread. At level 24, you'll learn a new spell 'Beast Lore' which lists the kind of foods the targeted Beast likes. Nearly every kind of pet will either eat Meat or Bread. Food that is within 10 levels of your pet will grant 35 Happiness/tick. After feeding, wait the 20 seconds out before feeding again, or the extra food just goes to waste.

Leveling

If you choose to tame a pet that is much lower level than you, the pet will automatically level up to 5 levels below you. When you kill a monster that would normally grant you experience, your pet gains experience. Just be sure to kill non-gray mobs.

Pets don't benefit from the rest bonus or quest experience. Nor can pets start working on a level you haven't finished gaining yourself. For these reasons, it isn't practical to level multiple pets simultaneously.

Focus

Instead of mana, pets use Focus which is very similar to a Rogue's Energy bar. Focus ticks up by 24 points every four seconds. Normal “white” attacks don't consume any Focus. When a pet uses more focus than it can regenerate, it is referred to as “focus-starved”. This condition is bad for dps, but fortunately there are ways to avoid it.

The hunter talent 'Bestial Discipline' increases pet focus regen by 12 focus / 4 sec per point, to a maximum of 48 focus / 4 seconds. The hunter talent 'Go for the Throat' grants your pet an extra 25 focus per point every time you get a ranged crit.

A common mistake made by MM and SV hunters is to neglect Go for the Throat in favor of other talents. Don’t do this. Even though MM and SV specs depend less on their pets than BM, that pet is still a significant portion of a hunter’s dps, and it is a mistake not to help it along.

Pet Talents

Pets have talent trees similar to the trees that players use. Unlike players, pets can only have points in one tree, and the tree they use is determined by their type. For instance, Cats are dps pets that use the Ferocity tree, while Wind Serpents are utility pets that use the Cunning tree. The pet tanking tree is Tenacity, and is used by pets such as gorillas and bears.

Sample Pet Talent Builds

Ferocity (non-exotic / 51 point BM): http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc#chd00sc00hooo
Call of the Wild should be used during Bloodlust to provide a greater benefit.

Tenacity (non-exotic / 51 point BM): http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc=M0bG0bu0b0o
Cunning (non-exotic / 51 point BM): http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc#MRbo00fh0Mk0o

The 51 BM talent gives an additional 4 pet talent points. These points should go in Wild Hunt, Shark attack and whatever you like for the last point. Personally, I'd drop it in Charge.

Pet Skills

Every pet has access to Growl, Cower, and a damage-dealing “focus dump”. Each pet also has a unique ability based on pet family, as well as other potential abilities gained from pet talents.

Growl costs 15 Focus on a 5 second cooldown. Growling generates extra threat but does not force mobs to attack your pet.

Cower costs no focus and is on a 20 second cooldown. It does the opposite of Growl: lowers your pet's threat against its target.

The focus dumps are Smack, Bite, and Claw (depending on pet). Each costs 25 Focus with no cooldown, and does a small amount of damage, modified by your pet’s attack power.

Pet Control

Any time your pet is out, a new action bar will appear: the Petbar. Keybinds are listed as 'Secondary Action Button' 1-10. Slash commands also work in macros: /petattack, /petfollow, /petstay, /petaggressive, /petdefensive, /petpassive.

Set easy keybinds for /petattack and /petfollow. An important part of keeping your pet alive is pulling it back out of dangerous AoE pulses.

Most of the time -- particularly in PvE -- your pet should be set to Follow and Passive. Take care when jumping down ledges, crossing bridges, or climbing stairs in PvE. Pets sometimes path oddly and can aggro a bunch of mobs.

The middle of the pet bar is reserved for pet skills. Drag skills from the Pet tab of your spellbook and rearrange to your convenience. Right-clicking a skill in either place will toggle automatic mode on and off.

Choosing a Pet

Beast Family

The key to pet performance is beast family. Beast family is now the only distinction between pets. "A Cat is a Cat," as some like to put it. Things which do not affect performance:

* Level at which it was tamed
* Stats revealed by Beast Lore before taming
* Whether it was an Elite, Rare, or named mob
* Model or color

Beast family matters and that's it.

Family Skills

As mentioned in 'Pet Basics', many skills are tied to a certain family or set of families. Skills available to a particular family have a profound impact on that family's total damage and utility, beyond what the multipliers alone might suggest.

Warning: a few specific beasts have so-called "caster stats." Their mana stats are high while physical stats are low. Avoid taming beasts with a mana bar. Happily, all pet families are available in non-caster versions.

Beast Family Reference

Popular Families

Wolves, Cats, Devilsaurs (exotic) and Raptors are all excellent DPS families. They all have excellent damage-dealing special abilities. Wolves currently dish out the most damage of any non-exotic Ferocity pets in PVE, followed closely by Raptors.

Wolves are the new "favorite" pet- they were virtually useless for DPS at the start of WotLK, but patch 3.1 buffed them considerably. Ferocious Howl no longer increases party damage, but it has been changed to stack with a warrior’s Battle Shout or a Pally’s Blessing of Might, at least for the hunter and pet.

Scorpids were a popular dps pet at the release of WotLK due to their stacking poison and scaling with raid buffs, but they were nerfed heavily in patch 3.0.8. Scorpids are not a recommended dps pet any longer.

Wasps were bugged at wotlk release, but have been fixed and are a viable option for 5-mans and possibly raids. Sting special prevents rogues from stealthing and can supply your party or raid with a minor armor debuff similar to the one that a warlock or druid can bring.

Bears are another popular pet. They are great for leveling and solo farming. The AoE threat of Thunderstomp allows you to pull large packs of mobs and defeat them singlehandedly, while Swipe helps hold aggro on packs of monsters.

Further Information

See petopia.brashendeavors.net for more information about specific pets, where to tame them, and what skills they can use.

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race = "Troll"
realm = "Boulderfist"
yon_hero = "Agiri"
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