The age old question.....which pet to choose?

[Arhtemis]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the site. This isn't the first time I've played a hunter, but I've finally decided to stick with it (I can't tell you how many alts I've made and leveled to various stages only to delete and move on). However, I really like the hunter and plan to stick with this one up to 80.

I'm trying to figure out which pet will work best for me and my style of gameplay. I've tried several out in the last 28 lvls and can't really settle on one. Currently I'm using a ravager and like him, but wonder if he's the right choice for me. My husband and I are both leveling hunters. We are mostly questing at the moment, but occasionally do a dungeon, and really enjoy battlegrounds the most. We need something that will work both for leveling quickly and for our other interests. We're not looking to out-DPS anyone. We simply want to be a beneficial part of our team, have some decent survivability, and still get these toons up quickly to play in newer content.

I loved my hawk from Utgarde (actually tamed on my ally hunter) and would go for him on this one, but didn't know how he would perform in BGs. My spider is nice in PVP, but questing was so-so. I like my moth but am concerned that I will get serious grief from teammates that don't like it "getting the way". A bear is fine to level and I used Deathclaw for a bit, but the damage is low for PVP and doesn't make much sense there. I have the white lion because I'm a leo and have always collected lions. I think he looks really cool, but I haven't played much with him. I don't like to kite (screen movement physically makes me ill) and I do it some when needed, but questing with a cat, I think I'll have to do it more than I care to. Unfortunately, it seems like all the pets I'd love to have at my level, aren't the greatest for my needs.....but dang they're so cool.

There aren't enough stable slots for everything I want.....so I was hoping you all could help me decide on a few. Thanks for the help.....and it's nice to meet you all!

[Lotokoth]

so do you want a all around good pet or a diffrent pets for diffrent situations?

[Hawkshadow]

First off welcome Arhtemis!

I have a few suggestions for you, though these are only my opinions on pets i liked while leving up.

Wolf: First off just a simple Wolf would meet all your wants as far as good dps, survivability and they do fair in pvp.

http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/familie ... _wolf.html

my favorite being the older wolf model that is all black, though i did not look at your level so not sure how close you are to being able to tame this guy....but any wolf you like would do!

If your not into the wolves then maybe a windserpent, they do good dps, very nice in pvp, they may not be the best for tanking but should be able to solo with them just fine.

http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/familie ... rpent.html

My favorite windserpent being the blackish blue one from wailing caverns.

But now for my all time favorite leving pet: The Raptor.
http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/familie ... aptor.html

I got a raptor soon as i could and leveled with one for the most part all the way. They do great dps, great in pvp, great in grouping and they are just fun pets to have around. Always liked my scaly friend running by my side and trying to rip someone's head off in pvp

[Sigrah]

First off, keep in mind that there is no universal pet for every single situation, and that you can have up to 5 pets that you can rotate through as needed. There are really 3 basic areas to consider:

General Leveling and Questing - Any of the Tenacity pets will work well, but Bears, Crocolisks, and Warp Stalkers tend to be the best. Bears can hit multiple targets with Swipe (a little extra AOE damage and threat), Crocolisks have a damage shield they can throw up that hurts any mob that strikes them, and Warp Stalkers are extremely useful for the really tough, hard hitting elites (Warp gives them a 4 second buff that can cause up to 3 melee attacks to miss). Some people like Turtles as well for their Shell Shield when fighting hard hitting elites, but I personally prefer Warp Stalkers because a BM with Longevity 3 lets the Warp Stalker use warp every 10.5 seconds. Those misses are invaluable when you're healing your pet through the fight.

Dungeons - Wolves, Devilsaurs, and Spirit Beasts are all pretty popular choices. Wolves tend to be the most favored because Furious Howl raises attack power for both the Wolf and the Hunter. If you're going Beast Mastery, you might also consider bringing a Worm along for their Acid Spit ability. Acid Spit reduces armor by 10% per application, and can stack 2 times for a total of 20% armor reduction.

PVP - I'll be honest, my PVP experience is pretty limited. However, pets that can slow other players movements and interrupt spell casting tend to be the most important abilities PVP Hunters want at their disposal.

Outside of the pets I listed above, the best advice I can give is to tell you to research the pets here and experiment to see which ones are useful to you. Another thing you should take into consideration is your glyphs. Again, what glyphs are good for you will depend on your spec and what you spend the bulk of your time doing. When I was leveling, I chose the Beast Mastery spec and spent the bulk of my time questing. The route I went with glyphs looked like this:

Level 15 (Major): Glyph of Mending. 40% bonus healing to Mend Pet was invaluable to me when I had the group quests involving elites, especially after I maxed out "Blood of the Rhino" on my tenacity pet. Once I hit Level 80 and started doing raids and the dungeon finder regularly, I switched to Glyph of Bestial Wrath in this slot since I wasn't questing as much anymore.

Level 30 (Major): Glyph of Serpent Sting. I glyphed for this at 30 because this is when I started using the dungeon finder from time to time, plus an extra 6 seconds of Serpent Sting was useful in my overall questing.

Level 80 (Major): Glyph of Kill Shot. Faster Kill Shots are wonderful when you're in PUGs and raids.

Level 15 (Minor): Glyph of Mend Pet. This makes it easier to increase pet happiness when I don't feel like carrying food around or didn't have the right food to increase happiness when out in the wilderness.

Level 50 (Minor): Glyph of Feign Death. After Level 50, I started using Feign Death more often when even my Tenacity pet couldn't always hold agro (usually on elite fights). So, having it reset sooner was a life saver.

Level 70 (Minor): Glyph of Revive Pet. Useful to have when you're pet dies and you need to revive it quicker.

[Dragonpuff]

I'm always championing Wind Serpents, so I has to do it here too! I leveled from 11 to 80 with one, and never had too much trouble. Then again, it may depend on your spec. BM is the best leveling spec. Lotsa survivability for you and your pet!
Wolves are good pets to, and I'd say Ravagers and Raptors are decent as well.

[Dulanie]

I have a ravager, worm, cat, devilsaur, and a boar. (I'm going to drop the boar for Loque lol)The one I used most often until I got to Northrend was the ravager. It can take hits well, and pump out decent dps. Also it's ravage ability is a stun so that helps in pvp. But like what was stated above it really comes down to your playstyle and what you want to do.

[Mustafah]

Hmmm.... at lvl32+ (until lvl60 and exotics) i would say a gorrila. best tanking pet for low lvls.

[Epicfail]

Welcome to the forums.

I've played a hunter for a long time now (off and on since beta) and I heartily agree with everyone above. Honest and truly though, whatever pet you choose needs to fit your style. Back right after classic launch I was one of the first to run around with a turtle pet that I named "ninja". He got tons of attention because he was different from all the cats and wolves that everyone around me was taming. Since then, I've loved the rarest and hardest to tame pets as both a challenge to my hunter skills and the coolness factor.

If you are leveling and prefer the stable path (tank and spank, no kiting), I'd roll with beast mastery and two pets, one for pve and one for pvp. Pet levels don't take anywhere near the time anymore to level up, so swapping between the two to level them shouldn't be an issue, if thats your style.

The pve one I'd recommend (non-exotic) the crab or turtle for straight tanking. There are some armoured boars in RFK at your level, which adds to the rarety.

For pvp, I'd stay with birds or maybe just stick with the crab. The "pin" special ability is useful in keeping both players and mobs at distance a little longer than others might. The birds have snatch which can really screw up a melee classes ability to use their abilities and there are few people who counter for it (weapon chains).

Personally, I ran with humar (black lion) for a while alongside the armoured boars in RFK till 60. At 60-70, I rolled with cats and birds (before lich king upgrade), but I rolled with a devilsaur for Pve and a chimaera in Pvp as beast mastery for my ascent from 70 to 80. I grabbed Gondria, the spirit beast, for my PvE exotic at 80 and she's awesome.

If you are just looking to have fun and not care about dps, then stay beast and tame your favorite exotic. For an added challenge, try for one of your favorite spirit beasts. They aren't rare enough that most hunters won't have one at least in the stables.

Happy hunting!

ps. if you want to know about how one particular beast performs, ask here and we'll try to help however we can.

[Saturo]

I'd actually recommend a Bear as your first pet. He holds aggro well, seeing as how he has two spells that deal pure damage.

His Swipe also causes aggro on other mobs, not much, but enough to keep aggro trough a Med Pet, leaving you with some room for failure in the over-aggroing business.

[Mustafah]

Bear does more DPS, holding aggro not good as Gorilla. I leveled from 32-60 most of the time with gorillas. But not everyone are good with gorillas. you should check the pets we all said and see which you like the most.

[Saturo]

Excuse me, but do you have Omen readings to support your claim about Gorillas?

I pitted a gorilla vs. a bear and bear won with about 10%

[Foru21dr]

I also agree with the lists above. Biggest thing is because you have stable slots, you can get the type of pet you like for each style of play you do. Most leveling I do is not going up against elites to much so I find that any pet I have works well in doing the quests. I would say if you wanted to go up against elites, go more for the tenacity pets.

I like the BG's as well, and like to use the movement impairing pets. Ravager, spider, hyena Ravager being my favorite because I like to see my opponent fall flag on his back.

[Rarako]

Personally I would suggest that you give the Hyena a test drive. They hold aggro well when soloing, put out quit a bit of damage for instancing, and their ability, Tendon Rip, reduces the enemy's movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds and only has a 20 second cool down which means it's up and ready most of the time which is great for not only PVP but questing encase you happen to pull off them or they try to run away to pull more adds. Plus you can't beat a hyena's personality, imo.

Crabs are nice and so are Tallstriders if you want something a bit different. All it comes down to is finding a pet that matches your play style, once you do that your set. ^_^

[Ryno]

I like my moth but am concerned that I will get serious grief from teammates that don't like it "getting the way".

Moths won't get in the way like some other pets would. I suggest keeping going with the moth OMG URGE TO TAME MOTH NOW DANGIT.

[Arhtemis]

Thanks so much everyone for all your advice! I'll try using a few of them and see what suits me. I went and got Mazzaranache last night. He's doing well so far. My husband decided to try an owl, and I might give one of those a shot too. Sure wish we had more slots though to keep all of them. Thanks for the warm welcome too!!!

[lazerbyte]

When it comes to picking a pet that's a difficult decision.

I will tell you that you'll have to first decide what spec are going? Then it is easier to answer

If you are going for marksman or survival you want a good tanking pet like a boar.

If you go beastmaster I highly recommend a cat as they do great damage and as you fire off your shots you get the extra bonuses.

I would stick with Cats, Boars, Ravagers.

Stay away from wasps, silithids, warpstalkers and birds as I find they really don't do much in the way of helping you.

I stuck with a cat and lvled him to 80 and he works great!

Buy all your slots in the Stable and get many different pets and TRY them out as it doesn't cost you anything but the time to tame it and if you don't like it abandon it and tame a different kind.

I will tell you beastmaster allows you to tame devilsaurs, corehounds, the rhinos in northrend and the ghost pets like Gondria

[Suzi]

If you're going to mostly solo or be in small groups then I'd recommend getting a Tenacity pet. They're tough and can take damage without needing constant healing, so you can spend your time killing the enemies. Ferocity and Cunning pets can hold their own though so it doesn't really matter either way.

As others have said though it's easier than ever to level a pet so the best thing you can do is look through the WoW Petopia gallery and find a pet with an ability you find interesting or an appearance you like. We can give advice but this might end up being your hunter's best friend so the decision will ultimately be up to you.

As a side note, welcome to the forums!

[Arhtemis]

Well I set out and tamed a few new pets to try out. I kept my Ravager and lion, and went out and got Mazzranache (I never know how to spell that), a blue vulture, and a red crab. I'm working to get them up to level now and I'll give each a try in the BGs. If you happen to play on the Vengeance battlegroup and see me in your BG....make sure to say "hi"!! Thanks again for all of your suggestions. Hopefully I'll find the one that suits me.

[VelkynKarma]

Personally I would suggest that you give the Hyena a test drive. They hold aggro well when soloing, put out quit a bit of damage for instancing, and their ability, Tendon Rip, reduces the enemy's movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds and only has a 20 second cool down which means it's up and ready most of the time which is great for not only PVP but questing encase you happen to pull off them or they try to run away to pull more adds. Plus you can't beat a hyena's personality, imo.

Pretty much this. I used hyenas almost exclusively from level 16-80, though I changed the skin sometimes. I found them incredibly versatile. They generate a lot of extra aggro with Tendon Rip, which means they're great for soloing; my Jia always held one mob perfectly and could even tank 2-3 as long as I was careful. The ferocity build does have options for giving him extra armor if you want, so he can be a dps-tank that holds aggro extremely well.

On top of that, they can do a lot of damage in dungeons (they are still ferocity), and the Tendon Rip skill slows movement speed, which is fantastically useful in pvp (or against runners). It has a low CD time, which makes it almost always available.

In short, Hyenas are extremely versatile--you can jump from pvp to solo to pve in a matter of seconds without losing out

~VelkynKarma