Is this normal?

[Zhele]

Is it normal, when running dungeons, to count out how many people will benefit when picking your pet?

If I have a DK, a paladin tank, and a rogue, I will use my cat
If I have a mixed group, I will use my wolf
If I have a group of casters, I will use my dragonhawk (I play survival)

Is it normal to do that? It always benefits me. But it benefits everyone else. ... I just mean, is it weird to take an interest in my pug groups and try to be a team player like that? x_x I noticed most hunters don't try like that, whenever I play my priest. Or they don't seem to. I rarely see anything but cats.

[Meggers]

A lot of petopians do that, yes.

[CrystalKitten]

I do that most of the time. ESPECIALLY if I'm trying to go for a bear run. Or if the group is having trouble. Examples: I use Suki if buffs aren't essential, as she's specced for pure raw damage, and as heart of the phoenix incase she dies. Vari comes out if I need the crit buff. If we're not doing a bear run, and the healer is having trouble keeping up, I'll bring out whichever of my spirit beasts I've had on hand. When doing "regular" cata heroics, I've also brought out my worm when the healer we pugged from the dungeon finder decided "Oh, we have a 360ilvl hunter, I don't have to heal!"... So Squiggles came out so I could offtank so that our tank (a guildie) didn't keep dying.

If none of that matters though, I'll either bring Suki (as she's my special pet.. named after my cat that was put down), use a random pet (courtesy of my macro), or whatever I feel like, usually in that order of preference.

[Gimlion]

I definitely do this too. In fact, I once had a Random run where the rogue and mage fought over which pet I'd bring out, just b/c of the buffs. They argued the ENTIRE run, so much so, that no one noticed I had switched to my warpstalker and was still slaughtering their DPS...

[Lupis]

Yup. I see it as part of the obligation of having a pet - help the group with it. I pick out a bunch of pets with various useful abilities and then check over the group to see who to use. Typically I come with a devilsaur, cat and raptor - some of my favorite pets - and use one of those, because they have great abilities. (I would have a dragonhawk or a windserpent for casters but I never found a windserpent I liked, and my brother hates dragonhawks.) If they have every skill I can think of I just use my corehound for Ancient Hysteria or my cat.

[Harvoc]

My order goes: Fox, Carrion Bird, Spore Bat, Wolf, Cat, Wind Serpent, Raptor, Ravager, and Hyena if there's more physical DPS than there are magical DPS and Fox, Carrion Bird, Spore Bat, Wolf, Cat, Raptor, Ravager, Wind Serpent, and Hyena if the vice versa is true. Debuffs that mitigate physical damage is first (any tank can provide them but sometimes the tank doesn't spec into them and we don't have any other member that can provide them) with the Fox mitigating more damage than the Carrion Bird. Then goes buffs that mitigate spell damage because spell damage is less common than physical damage. Next are the buffs that affect everyone with the Wolf's actually benefiting everyone and the Cat's only benefiting those that can do physical damage. Then come the debuffs that affect DPS and the order is based on how many physical DPS there are compared to spell DPS with the Raptor's debuff having more of a benefit on physical DPS than that of the Ravager's. Lastly is the Hyena which I rarely bring out because having all of the previous buffs/debuffs covered is rare.

[Tufak]

On Daashi (my raiding character) I always keep a tank pet (just in case), a ravager (physical DPS buff), a dragonhawk (magic DPS buff), a hyena (bleed damage) and then one random pet. At the moment the random pet is a parrot.

This might seem odd, given that most hunters would have at least a wolf or a cat on them, but my raid has those buffs covered, so I got out of the habit of carrying them.

When in a random, I base what pet I used on whether we have more melee or casters. If we have a rogue that doesn't do a Bleed increase, I'll pull out my hyena every time, because I love my Trash.

[Helsinki]

I do this too. I like the group to be as wick as possible that said, DKs don't benefit from cats since they themselves provide the same buff.

[Wassa]

I mostly go in an order of what buffs are missing going from cat -> wolf -> wind serpent -> ravager -> then tallstrider if all of those are covered. Only in raids if two buffs (or more) are missing do I pick which will benefit the group more.

BTW Zhele if you have a DK in the group you shouldn't use a cat. They can cover that buff with Horn of Winter. If they aren't putting that up, which I have had happen may times, tell them to stop being lazy.

[Kalliope]

I definitely min-max like that most of the time. RaidChecklist helps with fine-tuning as well. A melee heavy group with a feral druid will already have the crit buff and bleed debuff, but could benefit from the physical damage taken debuff, depending on who the other dps are.

For your first example, I'm with Swampfox and Wassa. I wouldn't bring a cat because the death knight already brings the buff.

[Lisaara]

Thats pretty much what a hunter is supposed to do, yes. :3

[Worba]

Teamwork? How... odd.

[Rhyela]

At lower levels (for instance, running Deadmines), I don't. Just about everyone has BoA's and spanks everything regardless of buffs, and the DPS hardly ever goes for the tank's target anyway, so it doesn't really seem to matter which pet I use. At higher levels, when I was doing heroics with Rhyela, I did try to cover what was missing.

[Monica Gems]

I mostly go in an order of what buffs are missing going from cat -> wolf -> wind serpent -> ravager -> then tallstrider if all of those are covered. Only in raids if two buffs (or more) are missing do I pick which will benefit the group more.

BTW Zhele if you have a DK in the group you shouldn't use a cat. They can cover that buff with Horn of Winter. If they aren't putting that up, which I have had happen may times, tell them to stop being lazy.

YES. Any time they have no buttons to push, they can HoW and get some free runic power and a buff. Lazy indeed, I hate DKs who don't use it.

[Makoes]

I am 50/50 on if I am going to use a pet that provides a missing buff. I prefer to run with a pet I like best, in most cases my hyena. If the group seems to be struggeling or theres healing issues, I'll pull out a pet to provide the buff or heal to make things a bit easier for everyone. I am a firm believer that a person should be free to play with whatever pet they want, be it a warp stalker, a chimera, a cat...etc. Their account, their choice.

As for the DK hate:
Considering that most other classes buffs/auras last 30-1hr, while a DK's HoW lasts 3min...I'd only consider them lazy if they didnt use it on a boss fight. I think it would be pretty annoying having to rebuff every 3min...Blizz should really fix the duration of it to make it more "fair" with other classes buff durations.
if you dont think that having to recast a buff every 3min is annoying, I'd suggest turning your pets auto-cast buff off and manually casting it whenever its down and see how much fun that is.

And not everyone is fluent in "macro's" or really understand how they work. Hard to understand but there are people who still play just for fun and not worry about being min/max elitest jerks.

[Lisaara]

I am 50/50 on if I am going to use a pet that provides a missing buff. I prefer to run with a pet I like best, in most cases my hyena. If the group seems to be struggeling or theres healing issues, I'll pull out a pet to provide the buff or heal to make things a bit easier for everyone. I am a firm believer that a person should be free to play with whatever pet they want, be it a warp stalker, a chimera, a cat...etc. Their account, their choice.

As for the DK hate:
Considering that most other classes buffs/auras last 30-1hr, while a DK's HoW lasts 3min...I'd only consider them lazy if they didnt use it on a boss fight. I think it would be pretty annoying having to rebuff every 3min...Blizz should really fix the duration of it to make it more "fair" with other classes buff durations.
if you dont think that having to recast a buff every 3min is annoying, I'd suggest turning your pets auto-cast buff off and manually casting it whenever its down and see how much fun that is.

And not everyone is fluent in "macro's" or really understand how they work. Hard to understand but there are people who still play just for fun and not worry about being min/max elitest jerks.

It is really annoying to rebuff every 2 - 3 minutes. It's the last step of the Frost Rotation.

[Worba]

I am 50/50 on if I am going to use a pet that provides a missing buff. I prefer to run with a pet I like best, in most cases my hyena. If the group seems to be struggeling or theres healing issues, I'll pull out a pet to provide the buff or heal to make things a bit easier for everyone. I am a firm believer that a person should be free to play with whatever pet they want, be it a warp stalker, a chimera, a cat...etc. Their account, their choice.

As for the DK hate:
Considering that most other classes buffs/auras last 30-1hr, while a DK's HoW lasts 3min...I'd only consider them lazy if they didnt use it on a boss fight. I think it would be pretty annoying having to rebuff every 3min...Blizz should really fix the duration of it to make it more "fair" with other classes buff durations.
if you dont think that having to recast a buff every 3min is annoying, I'd suggest turning your pets auto-cast buff off and manually casting it whenever its down and see how much fun that is.

And not everyone is fluent in "macro's" or really understand how they work. Hard to understand but there are people who still play just for fun and not worry about being min/max elitest jerks.

It is really annoying to rebuff every 2 - 3 minutes. It's the last step of the Frost Rotation.

Yep. I agree with both Makoes and Jess on this. ^

On my unholy DK I prefer this standalone replacement for pet attack:

/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/use Horn of Winter
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear();UIErrorsFrame:Show();SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
/petattack [@target]

[Lisaara]

If someone had a macro for my frost DK to make it easier, I'd use it.

[Worba]

I could make one easily. What is your rotation?

[Lisaara]

I could make one easily. What is your rotation?

I use the one from here: http://deathknightbuilds.com/deathknightrotations.html

HoW is last regardless if its single target or AoE.