The cunning pet: still overlooked?

[Seaiayu]

I would like to get opinions about the cunning pet family. Now that wolverine bite procs when pet crits, and avoidence is replaced with dulling the heard for extra 3% damage, is it still not viable? plus is it worth investing in owl's focus. i personally have found carrion feeder amazing in pvp and pve, if your pet goes down you just have it eat something and its back to full health and happiness. it allows you to 'risk' your pet more often, and only a 30 sec CD. please provide any feedback or suggestions you have.

[Ryno]

From what people have been saying, cunning pets aren't so good in PvE situations (like raids). Probably would best be used in PvP and soloing situations. Heck, probably even 5 man dungeons, since DPS output there is hardly ever an issue.

Owl's focus might boost the pet's DPS, but probably not enough to contend with a ferocity pet. I remember on another thread here someone said that wolverine bite was mathematically proven to be one of the lowest DPS skills when tested.

[Ranshiin]

In a long term fight, the feeding frenzy talent does carry a lot of potential for the pet to out DPS the other specs. A good example of a long term fight would be say...Yogg-Saron, where phase three begins with the boss at 35% thus letting feeding frenzy be up the entire phase.

Basically, the higher the boss' health the more damage potential you have with feeding frenzy, however the only spec I could see taking full advantage of all this damage buffing would be a BM spec. Additionally you'd have to take into account how high your group's DPS is.

So there is potential here, but the overall possibility isn't all that viable.

[Maizou]

I've tried cunning pets, I got one up to level 80, and used it, unfortunately, it was doing 100 dps less than any of my ferocity pets ._.

Wolverine Bite isn't quite there yet.

[Kayb]

I've never had an issue with my cunning pet, a spider, so much so that she is my primary pet. Its all about how you spec the pet imo,

[Ryno]

Its all about how you spec the pet imo,

Even spec can't make up for a cunning pet's DPS loss over a ferocity pet. Long boss fights at 35% health and lower (on the boss) the pet might make it up, but the loss before that usually will make it lower overall.

[Carnacki]

Blizzard always has trouble with middle of the road specs/pets/etc. Cunning pets just don't preform well enough to work in a raid environment. You may argue that the mana return is beneficial, but you shouldn't be having mana issues in a raid with viper. Unfortunately some of my favorite pets are cunning (spiders).

They do have some use in pvp, although not having the tenacity abilities to help with survival can be a burden it's not as apparent in BGs.

I hope Blizzard allows pets to be whichever spec we'd like them to be, unfortunately it's going to kill off the cunning tree.

[Jolyroger]

I think that the Carrion Feeder talent should be link with Feeding Frenzy, so you don't have to stand on the corps and tel the pet to feed, it would do it every time. But they would have to make the feeding happen while the pet was attacking. Having it freeze when mod is at 35% would be bad. Or another idea, fix the Carrion Feeder skill so when you hit it, the pet goes to the nearest corpse and feeds, so again the hunter does not have to run over and stand on the corpse. Either way i think the "feeding heal" should be like the other 2 pet talent trees, done automatically. But they would probably have to lessen the amount healed.

[Carnacki]

I think Carrion Feeder should be removed.

[Carnacki]

One of the things holding Cunning back is just how terrible Carrion Feeder is.

[Spiritchan]

Roar of Recovery = <3

Asside from that, cunning pets are rather lacking in both their ability to do damage, and their ability to survive a situation.
That doesn't make them "bad" pets (unless you're in a raid or something), but it does make them less attractive (statistically).

That Roar of Recovery though.. I love it.
Especially if you're more relaiant on your own attacks than your pets (such as a marksman is). +30% mana recovered is pure awesome.

[Adino]

I've always liked cunning pets do to the mana recovery. I hate having to use viper while fighting. However I will say that I don't raid - only 5-mans. My favorite pet is the Sporebat