How To Train Your Dragonhawk: A pet talent guide.

[Cialbi]

This is to be a do-it-yourself guide to picking pet talent points. While pet specs for max DPS are relatively straightforward due to a limited number of pure DPS talents, pet specs for tanking and PvP are not due to the wider range of options available. So, I'll only list cookie-cutter DPS specs; the rest of the guide will consist of analyzing each individual talent in all three pet talent trees.

To start, my recommended specs for pet DPS. 'Filler' talents are taken simply to progress down the talent trees, and can be reassigned at your leisure. These filler talents include Bloodthirsty, Heart of the Phoenix, Great Stamina, Blood of the Rhino, Last Stand, and Boar's Speed. However, I must caution against picking Thunderstomp, since it does less damage per focus than Claw, Bite, or Smack.
Without further ado:

• Ferocity
• BM Ferocity
• BM Ferocity w/ Charge
• Cunning
• BM Cunning
• Tenacity
• BM Tenacity

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Universal talents (occur in all three pet talent trees):
Serpent Swiftness: DPS/threat talent, plain and simple. Given the lack of options in the first tier of pet talent, this would be a good choice for PvP specs, and may even be a good idea for threat-heavy tanking specs.
Great Stamina: All stamina does is increase maximum health. For hunter pets, this talent provides two benefits. First, it allows your pet to absorb more DPS before dying, which buys time for healing to recuperate the lost health. Second, since they scale off of the pet's total health, more stamina means that your pet gets stronger heals from Mend Pet, Gift of the Naaru, Bloodthirsty, Silverback, and Spirit Bond. Overall, a great talent for tanking.
Natural Armor: While Great Stamina increases the health pool and consequently increases pet healing, Natural Armor helps keep your pet alive by reducing the amount of physical damage that your pet takes. Honestly, I haven't given too much thought as to which is a better place to spend those first tier talents, since when it comes to the Tenacity talent tree, each of these is a prerequesite to a more powerful talent.
Spiked Collar: DPS talent. Highly recommended for PvP, due to a lack of other talents that are quite as useful. Do note that this was changed in 4.0.1 to only buff Basic Attacks, so it isn't useful if you want to focus on AoE damage and/or threat (Thunderstomp, Froststorm Breath, or Burrow Attack).
Boar's Speed: Thanks to Dash/Dive and Charge/Swoop, this does not seem to have much use except for nullifying the movement penalty from Prowl and Spirit Walk (same ability, different names).
Culling the Herd: Great DPS/threat talent. While it does increase your damage output (and consequently threat), I consider this to be a great ability for pet threat if your pet is Tenacity, since the bonus will improve Thunderstomp threat generation, which produces a disproportionate amount of threat per damage done.
Lionhearted: Can be useful for PvP, but really is situational. Granted, with the added emphasis of keeping your pet on your target when you're BM (otherwise no Kill Commands), this talent may very well be more valuable than it was before.
Great Resistance: Hunter pets, unlike players, come with some spell resistance, covering every category possible (that is, everything but Holy). This buffs said spell resistances. Spell resistance functions in a way similar to armor. That said, spell resistance hasn't been a too terribly important part of the game for years (with exception to spell resistance inherit in Mark of the Wild, Blessing of Kings, and Embrace of the Shale Spider), and the spell resistance levels on pets have proven to be adequate. The only reason to take this is if you want a tanking pet with max damage mitigation, or a tanking pet tooled specifically for soloing boss fights with a lot of spell damage.
Wild Hunt: This DPS talent is in place to help ensure that hunter pets won't focus cap themselves during a fight, so as to retain the value of Bestial Discipline, Fervor, Go for the Throat, Sic Em!, and Owl's Focus. Consider at least one point in this to be mandatory for PvP, where DPS isn't as important as burst damage. However, I do not recommend this for Tenacity tanking builds, for not only is one of the prerequisite talents (Roar of Sacrifice) a purely PvP talent, but it would hurt Thunderstomp to have such sudden drops in focus.

Shared Talents (found on two talent trees):
Dash/Dive: Occupies the same spot on the Cunning and Ferocity trees. Great gap closer. The focus cost is rather pricey, but the tradeoff in your pet reaching your target sooner is definitely worth it. The only reason to not take this talent that I can see is if you are planning on taking Charge/Swoop instead (see below).
Charge/Swoop: Occupies different spots on the Ferocity and Tenacity trees. For Tenacity, this replaces Dash/Dive completely in the first tier of talents. As Tenacity, you will want to take this for sure for PvP. Charge is also a good idea when it comes to tanking, but not a mandatory one. With Ferocity, this is an option later down in the tree. I strongly advise that all Ferocity pets be either specced into Dash/Dive or Charge/Swoop, but not both. If your pet were to have both abilities, it would autocast Dash/Dive first to get into range, then autocast Charge/Swoop once it's target was within the maximum range of that ability, resulting in your pet having wasted Dash/Dive and the 30 focus needed to activate it.
Grace of the Mantis: Occupies different spots on the Cunning and Tenacity talent trees. This talent is mandatory for pet tanking, but lackluster for PvP. The reason for this being so crucial to tanking is that raid bosses have a certain chance to land a critical hit against a max-level player or pet. Reducing the chance to be critically hit by just 4% is enough to ensure that you never receive a critical hit from any raid boss (assuming you are at level cap). Critical strikes from raid bosses can easily overwhelm healers, so tanks are required to have 'crit immunity' from their talents. This is one such talent.
Roar of Sacrifice (prereq Grace of the Mantis): Occupies different spots on the Cunning and Tenacity talent trees. A purely PvP ability that comes highly recommended. In PvP, crit ratings are inflated by stats on gear, weapons, enchants, & buffs. As a result, depending on the class/spec, critical strikes are an integral part of being viable in PvP. Temporarily making yourself (or a teammate) uncrittable will thus result in greatly increased survivability.

[Cialbi]

Cunning-only Talents:
Mobility (prereq Dash/Dive): Useful ability for PvP, when the pace of combat cannot be controlled. In my opinion, one point in this talent is enough; you won't see many situations where having a second point in Mobility will make a difference.
Owl's Focus: Pure DPS talent that has great synergy with Wild Hunt. Definitely a good choice for PvP, due to more frequent Wild Hunt 'procs' (reaching 50 focus or higher while in combat).
Carrion Feeder: This talent only exists as a convenience. Use it if you wish, but it's largely a waste of a talent point in my opinion.
Cornered: PvP talent. If your pet is tanking, then they will already be crit immune through Grace of the Mantis. With PvP, it serves as a deterrent against players trying to quickly kill your pet in the first place.
Feeding Frenzy (prereq Spiked Collar): Great DPS ability that is almost mandatory for PvP, since it provides burst damage when your enemy is most likely to attempt to save themselves through flash healing and/or defensive abilities. The prerequisite does take three talent points, but Spiked Collar is a useful talent in its own right.
Wolverine Bite: Free attack that serves as a little extra reward for your pet landing a critical strike. The damage can hardly be considered impressive, but it's needed in order to unlock Wild Hunt in the Cunning tree.
Roar of Recovery: Mandatory for PvP, since it will provide you with emergency focus if you are in a tight spot, which isn't all too uncommon when you rely upon casting mobile Steady Shots or Cobra Shots in PvP.
Bullheaded (prereq Cornered): Great ability for PvP and tanking; the 'get out of jail free' component is powerful for PvP, and the massive damage reduction makes for a great panic button in tanking.

Ferocity-only Talents:
Improved Cower: The only use I see is if your pet is running away form an attacker to save itself. Forgive me for seemingly being insensitive (I would be of a different opinion if this weren't merely a game), but isn't your pet supposed to be staying behind and buying you time when such a situation arises? You can resummon or revive your pet later, but it doesn't work the other way around. So, completely useless in my opinion.
Bloodthirsty: Mandatory for pet tanking, and a great choice for PvP. The allure isn't the free happiness, but rather the free healing, that your pet receives just by attacking something.
Heart of the Phoenix (prereq Bloodthirsty): This would be mandatory for PvP if it weren't for the fact that a glitch will cause your pet to be killed in one hit for a second or less after spawning or being rezzed. Thus, all value is lost in PvP when your enemy can kill your pet a second time with one hit if they're quick.
Spider's Bite: Mandatory for PvP, since it is a prerequesite for not one but two important DPS talents. Little reason to not take this for tanking, for that matter.
Rabid: Good DPS talent is a good idea for PvP, especially when it's a powerful cooldown ability. Pretty much mandatory for PvP.
Lick Your Wounds (prereq Bloodthirsty -> Heart of the Phoenix): Situational ability that is immune to pushbacks (changes to the casting or channeling time of an ability that are caused by taking damage), but vulnerable to spell interrupts.
Call of the Wild (prereq Spider's Bite): Great cooldown ability that is mandatory for PvP, since it gives burst damage. Little reason to not take this, seeing as how it is needed to access Wild Hunt.
Shark Attack: Not quite the same as Spiked Collar; it provides the same damage increase per talent point, but the damage increase applies to all damage done by the pet. Good place to put leftover talent points into.

Tenacity-only Talents:
Blood of the Rhino (prereq Great Stamina): Mandatory for tanking; 40% buff to all incoming heals on your pet is that important. Also not a bad idea for PvP, since Tenacity doesn't have much more in the way of good options.
Pet Barding (prereq Natural Armor): Great talent for tanking if you want more damage mitigation on your pet, but not mandatory if you are creating a threat-heavy tanking build. Not much more to say; this is pretty much the same as Natural Armor, except better.
Guard Dog: Mandatory for tanking. I see little reason not to take it. As for PvP, Growl is just a waste of a GCD anyways with or without Guard Dog.
Thunderstomp: Mandatory for tanking, but actually is a bad choice for PvP. This ability does poor damage, but is a decent AoE threat generator. Since it costs focus, it's not worth using if you just want the damage; that focus would be better if it were put towards using the Basic Attack more often. The reason why it is mandatory for tanking is that it's the only reliable AoE threat generator that your pet can have, and your pet needs AoE threat to counter the threat you generate by using Mend Pet.
Last Stand: Great idea for tanking, and not a bad idea for PvP. This ability doesn't merely delay the inevitable, since the temporary increase in total health means more powerful Mend Pets, and the temporary health gain is there to give time for the more powerful Mend Pet to rack up enough healing.
Taunt (prereq Guard Dog): Decent talent for tanking, but useless for PvP for rather obvious reasons. Sure, you can and should use Feign Death if/when you pull aggro from your pet. The convenience of Taunt is that you don't have to blow Feign Death if you only aggro one mob, and it really makes a difference when Feign Death is on CD.
Intervene: Autocast isn't always very timely, and when used this doesn't seem to be effective if the pet then wanders away. Great potential for tanking and PvP, but I honestly cannot say whether or not this is currently worth taking.
Silverback: Decent tanking talent, but I tend to shy away from it for PvP as there are better places to put those points. With tanking, however, it heals your pet, and gives the healing aggro generated to your pet as well. The heal itself may be small, but all that passive healing adds up, especially when your options are otherwise limited to Mend Pet.

[Cialbi]

Now, while a breakdown of each talent is fine & dandy, it doesn't clearly show which talents I consider essential, depending on the purpose of the pet. Also, the above section is admittedly a lot of reading! So, that said, I introduce the next section:

Talent Spec Frameworks
For expediency, I will not list talents if a talent that they are a prerequisite for is listed. Also, the assumption is to take all ranks of a listed talent unless said otherwise.

_ _ _

Cunning is a talent tree that is tooled heavily for PvP, and arguably is the best spec for PvP (the abilities of the pet family you choose is more important than what spec the pet family is). However, don't let that fool you into thinking that this means Cunning is somehow lacking in DPS; it's giving Ferocity a run for its money in that regard. I consider Cunning to be the weakest spec for soloing though, since it lacks Ferocity's self-healing and Tenacity's powerful healing buffs and AoE threat. That said, it has a powerful damage-reduction ability, crit immunity, and is best able to handle CC-heavy fights.

DPS:

1. Serpent Swiftness
2. Dash/Dive
3. Owl's Focus
4. Culling the Herd
5. Feeding Frenzy
6. Roar of Recovery
7. Wild Hunt

PvP: PvP specs are very flexible. The following are just suggested talents to include, but not necessarily essential. Fill the rest of your spec with whatever DPS talents you can get.

• Mobility (rank 1)
• Feeding Frenzy
• Roar of Recovery
• Bullheaded
• Roar of Sacrifice

Tanking:

• Great Stamina
• Natural Armor
• Bullheaded
• Grace of the Mantis

_ _ _

Ferocity is the talent tree that has long been associated with DPS, but it does have some tools of its own for PvP. The instant rez ability is less useful due to a glitch by which pets spawn with very low health initially (returning to full health a second or so later, but not before giving your opponent a golden opportunity to oneshot your pet), but the talent tree still has good burst DPS and access to an instant gap closer that briefly immobilizes its target and buffs your pet's next attack. That said, it isn't as heavily PvP-oriented as the Cunning talent tree. Ferocity can be used for soloing, despite its complete lack of crit immunity and AoE threat. Using a Spirit Beast to heal yourself during a boss fight can be quite useful, and Bloodthirsty will help keep your pet alive.

DPS:

• Serpent Swiftness
• Dash/Dive-OR-Charge/Swoop
• Spiked Collar
• Culling the Herd
• Frenzy
• Wild Hunt
• Shark Attack

PvP: PvP specs are very flexible. The following are just suggested talents to include. Fill the rest of your spec with whatever DPS talents you can get.

• Heart of the Phoenix
• Frenzy
• Call of the Wild

Tanking:

• Great Stamina
• Natural Armor
• Bloodthirsty

_ _ _

Tenacity, unlike Cunning and Ferocity, is definitely the best at what it's designed for; namely, pet tanking. The list of what Tenacity has for tanking, that Cunning and Ferocity lack, is quite lengthy. For PvP, Tenacity does have some useful abilities that are shared with Ferocity or Cunning, but the only thing that Tenacity can do better than Ferocity or Cunning when it comes to PvP is survive; more useful than it sounds if you are a BM hunter, being crippled whenever your pet is quickly killed. The weak point of the Tenacity tree really is DPS; there is a grand total of five DPS talents, and none of them are unique to the talent tree. Only reason for picking a Tenacity pet for DPS is if your group needs the Shale Spider buff, or just because you want to (I'm not judging anybody here).

Tanking:

• Blood of the Rhino
• Guard Dog
• Thunderstomp
• Grace of the Mantis
• Last Stand

PvP: PvP specs are very flexible. The following are just suggested talents to include. Fill the rest of your spec with whatever DPS talents you can get.

• Charge
• Blood of the Rhino
• Roar of Sacrifice
• Intervene

DPS:

• Serpent Swiftness
• Charge
• Spiked Collar
• Wild Hunt

[Cialbi]

Reserved, just in case.

[Araela]

Looks good thus far! I look forward to seeing the rest of it. Thank you for posting this! It's always nice to see how/why other hunter's are speccing a certain way.

[Kalliope]

It's very nice to see an analysis of the abilities here, as opposed to just seeing a cookie cutter spec.

I can confirm that pets WILL cast intervene on their own (meaning autocast), but the reliability of the timing of the cast is dodgy.

[Vephriel]

Very nice breakdown of the individual skills, I've added a link to this thread on the Resource Sticky. =)

[TygerDarkstorm]

I'm glad to see you posting this Cialbi.
There was an older thread a while back that was similar, but I think it quit being maintained or something. Anyway, I think this is a great thing for the community to have access here and many of us use these forums as our trusted ones and don't always go looking to places like WHU.