Pets, Pets & Pets... Do they matter?

Classes Hunter
1

Hello!

I recently created this hunter and so far I enjoy playing it. Being used to playing warrior and other melee classes/specs religiously over the years. I am now dabbling with BM and MM for a change of pace. SV, however, isn’t really my cup of tea due to one ability – The venom short-crossbow-thing. Just doesn’t fit imho! :sweat_smile:

Anyway! The reason Im here is to ask about pets. This topic has surely been bashed into the ground a million times over, but I still have to ask:
Do pets / creature types matter at all?

When I first started playing, pets (creature types; cats, birds, etc) brought different stuff to the table. Unique abilities and I think you had to “train” them around that time. Now running my 2019 hunter It seems most pets have the same standard abilities and you can kit them out with the 3 different “roles” from the pet “talent-tab”, giving them some flavour.

This is why I am confused. Does creature type matter at all, or do you just tame whatever pet you fancy and pick a “role” and thats that? For instance, a bird ferocity pet vs a cat ferocity pet? What about the Devilsaurs from UG?

Then we have this Spirit Beast type. They seem to be the hot-stuff for BM. (They offer some unique appearance flavour, at least!) and I’ve read something about a heal. But is that it? All the SB’s have that heal and nothing else? There are many different SB’s. Surely they could add some different stuff between them.

Anyway, I am looking for insight. What am I looking at here?

/ Horm

2

Creature type or families as they’re usually called matter for 2 things: the “specialisation”, which is fixed per family with BfA if I recall correctly, and the abilities your pet has.

All pets have 3 abilities:

  1. Dash
  2. Growl
  3. Claw/Smack/Bite (this is actually the same just every family get the one which fits best)

Depending on the specialisation you get 1 passive and 1 active ability:

  1. Cunning: 8% movement speed and remove roots & snares
  2. Ferocity: 10% leech and Bloodlust
  3. Tenacity: 5% max health and 20% damage reduction cooldown

Every family then has 1 core ability, which will fall into one of 6 categories:

  1. Reduce damage taken by 50%
  2. Increase dodge chance by 30%
  3. Reduce healing the target is taking
  4. Reduce movement speed by 50%
  5. Remove 1 Enrage and 1 magic effect from target
  6. Reduce damage taken by 60% when falling below 40%

Then some families get an extra ability:

  1. Cats and Spirit Beasts get stealth
  2. Feathermanes can slow their and your fall speed

Exotic beasts (can only be tamed by Beast Master) get an additional ability. I’m not going to list all of them but the more useful ones in my opinion are:

  1. Quilen get a Combat Ress can ress themselves (thanks to Briz below for the correction)
  2. Spirit Beasts get a upfront heal + HoT
  3. Water Striders can give themselfs and you water walking
  4. Worms and Chimaeras get an extra AoE attack

(Bonus: some pet families can perform tricks, these are purely cosmetic)

For the stuff I left out you can get all the info you need at https://www.wow-petopia.com/abilities.php

4 Likes
3

Thanks for clearing that up! Very detailed answer!
Then they do actually matter to some degree.

4

This was changed going into BfA where we instead got this:
Eternal Guardian
When used, your pet will miraculously return to life with full health.

1 Like
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Thanks for the correction, I forgot that change

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What Khisa wrote covers you, check petopia for specific families etc.

What I would advise for BM hunter ensure you have a spirit beast (this is the best pet to have by far for PVE activites imo) and a ferocity pet (such as a bat, these have bloodlust)

Also when questing/doing outworld content have a macro set up to misdirect onto your pet (id give you mine but not currently on my home pc so cant grab it for you. this way you can ensure your pet takes aggro of everything.

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7

There’s a guide on wowhead that covers what pets and abilities to take that generally covers everything.

Here it is;

EDIT: basically, if you plan on doing dungeons and raids, its best to take both a tenacity pet and a ferocity pet that both have a dispel and use the tenacity one unless you do not have a Bloodlust in your group.

You occasionally may needs a pet that inflicts mortal wounds for pve content, but it is rare.

For PvP, I’d personally take a cunning pet with a dispel and a cunning pet with mortal wounds because master’s call is really good and since you’re not playing survival, you don’t really need the slow.

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8

Idd, MD macro as well as a macro for your Spirit Mend(Spirit Beast heal in case you tame a Spirit Beast). Both are very useful.

Personally I use these 2:

For Misdirection
#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists,nodead][@focus,help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

This macro works in the way that if you have your cursor placed on top of an ingame character/player or a unitframe(such as party frame or raid frame), misdirection will be cast on that player.
If your cursor is not placed on any player/frame but you have a friendly player set as Focus, misdirection will be cast on that player.
If neither of the above criteria are met, misdirection will be cast on your pet(if it’s alive and within range. If it’s not, then you will get the regular “who-do-you-want-to-cast-this-on?” effect displayed on your cursor).

For Spirit Mend
#showtooltip Spirit Mend
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists,nodead][@Briz]Spirit Mend

This is similar to the MD macro although more simple in it’s setup.

Basically, like above, if your cursor is placed over another player/friendly unit frame then Spirit Mend will be cast on them(this will also make it so your pet can easily cast Spirit Mend on itself as well, which gives you a second Mend Pet-ability whenever needed). The best part with Spirit Mend if you ask me is the fact that you don’t have to wait for your GCD to pass in order to use it as you’re not the one casting it but your pet is.
The second part to this macro is basically, if my cursor is not placed on another player/friendly unit frame then Spirit Mend will be cast on me. This is very useful for self-healing whenever needed.

Edit: the part in the Spirit Mend macro that says “[@Briz]”, guess I should mention just to be clear. What you want there is [@YourCharactersName].
For me, it says [@Briz] because it’s my hunters name.

3 Likes
11

Wow! Once again, thanks for all replies. A lot of good information here and I really appreciate all of you taking your time! :slight_smile:

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