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What is a pet?In World of Warcraft, the Hunter class has access to a wide variety of pets to serve as permanent companions and to aid in combat. This is a quick guide if you're new to the class in general, intended to provide some quick information on what a pet is, what it does and the differences between them.
How many pets can I have?
End-game, you can keep twenty-five pets. To start off with, you have one Starter Pet which is given to your hunter when you start the game, and your Stable stores 20 more pets*. As you level, you will also train skills to allow you to carry five total pets with you, which you can switch between at will--which winds up totalling 25 pets by level 85.
* You'll need level 10 to learn the skill Tame Beast to begin filling the stable slots! At the time of this writing, Goblins and Worgens must leave their phased starter zone before getting access to a Stable Master for pet storage.
How do I swap between my pets?
You have both an Active Stable, which grows as you level, and a storage Stable, which will always hold 20 pets. You can swap between the pets in your Active Stable by using Dismiss Pet, and then the Call Pet 2, 3, 4 or 5 skills, which you will learn as you level (Call Pet 2 becomes available at level 18, meaning that to start with, you can only carry 1 pet in your Active Stable).
To access your 20-slot storage Stable, find a Stable Master--usually located outside of an Inn--and use them to move pets from Active to storage Stable and vice versa. You will need a spare spot in your Active stable in order to tame new beasts, so at low levels, you'll usually need to put your pet away at a Stable Master before going out to tame a new one.
Dismiss Pet dismisses it until you wish to call it again. You don't lose a pet permanently unless you right-click the pet's portrait and choose Abandon Pet; if you don't want a pet anymore, you can use this option to delete it (it will provide an ARE YOU SURE confirmation window!).
Pets level at a rate equal to your own even when stored, so you can tame pets that you like and simply stable them, and when you come back to them later you'll find that they've levelled to keep up with you in your absence. Pets also grow as they level, so a pet that's tiny at level 10 might be downright huge by 60!
What do pets do?
You can use your pets as damage-dealers, as tanks in PvE (holding aggro so you can shoot from afar), or for their utility in Player vs Player (PvP) combat, for example by rooting an enemy in place or interrupting their spellcast. They are basically an extention of your character, and provide you with extra skills of your choice (based on their talent tree and family) and added damage to help you out.
What's the best pet?
WoW pets are nicely balanced in that there's no overall "best" pet. You need to figure out what you want a pet for, and then choose which pet best matches your goal. For example, if you are a PvE player who wants to raid, you can bring five different pets with five different group buffs and swap between them if a buff is already covered by another raider. If you are a PvPer, you can choose a Disarm pet and a Root pet, and change between those. If you play all-around, you can bring a tank pet for soloing, a couple of different PvE buff pets and a couple PvP pets. And remember, you can change between additional stored pets at a Stable Master!
Well, how do I pick which pet is best for a situation?
There are two things you need to look at: Pet Family, and Pet Talent Tree. The Talent Tree dictates the standard "use" of that pet--PvE damage, PvE solo, or PvP--although these are mainly guidelines, and you can decide on a different role once you're familiar with the pet's abilities. Next, look at the pet's Family. All pets in a given family are identical bar appearance; so, for example, all Wolves provide a 5% critical strike chance buff to a party, and all Cats provide a group buff to Agility and Strength. Rare or Elite mobs do not make better pets. They're the same, after taming, as any other pet in their family (although lots of hunters go after these mobs to challenge themselves).
Once you decide what pet ability you want, you just have to choose one that you like the appearance of, then go out and tame it! Petopia's list of Pet Skills is quite useful in picking the best pet skill for the job, as is the Main Page, which lets you browse pets by family!
Tell me more about Pet Talent Trees!
There's three talent trees: Tenacity, Ferocity and Cunning. Every pet family belongs to one of these three. All Wolves are Ferocity, all Turtles are Tenacity, and so forth. The Trees affect a pet's starting stats and also which Talents they have access to. Tenacity pets focus on survivability and creating lots of threat, making them good for tanking elites or even group content. A hunter using a Tenacity pet can play solo through quite a few situations that normally require a group! Ferocity pets are focused more toward pure damage, which usually makes them best to bring along with a PvE group to dungeons. Lastly, Cunning pets are balanced around surviving while dealing damage, and pets in this tree usually have a Utility-type move that's good for PvP.
All this being said, you can easily level with a Ferocity pet, or dungeon with a Cunning pet--the talent trees are merely guidelines, and it's more important to look at the Family ability. For example, if you're Survival, the + Magic Damage Taken debuff that a Dragonhawk applies can be very nice for PvE, even though the pet's talent tree is Cunning. And you don't need to level or quest with a Tenacity pet--a Ferocity pet's damage will help you get through levelling content fast (you only really need Tenacity for difficult elites or group of mobs).
So basically, the Talent Trees are a guideline so you know which pets are best for what, but it's perfectly okay to break that guideline if the pet's Family Skill is useful for the situation!
Tell me more about Pet Families!
Every pet family has a certain skill. Bats have a Stun, Spiders have a Root, and so forth. All pets in any given family are identical, sharing a talent tree, identical stats and the same skill, so once you've picked which Talent Tree and Family Skill is right for you, just pick the appearance you like best. For PvE, try and tame several pets that have group buffs to help your party out. If you're level 85 and can carry 5 pets, for example, you might choose to bring along a Raptor, Ravager, Cat, Wolf and Dragonhawk, and switch between them to provide a buff that is not already covered by a party member. For example, a Feral Druid will already provide the 5% crit buff that a Wolf will give, so you could then swap to your Cat. The addon RaidChecklist is a very good method of quickly seeing which buffs are already being provided by party members, and which are missing, which can be pretty important later in the game.
What are Exotic Pets?
Some pets are marked as Exotic. Only hunters who are specced for Beast Mastery, the level 69 talent in the Beast Mastery talent tree, can tame and control these pets. If you tame an Exotic and then respec to be non-Beast Mastery, you will not be able to call your Exotic pets. You can, however, stable these Exotic Pets, and simply use non-exotics for however long you remain non-BM--you will not lose the pet.
Exotic pets are usually slightly more powerful than their non-exotic counterparts in that they have a second family skill. Many of them are similar to a non-exotic pet but with one extra ability--for example, Devilsaurs have the Wolf family's 5% + crit group buff, but they also have a debuff that reduces the enemy's healing taken. Spirit Beasts have the Cat family's buff to Agility/Strength, but also provide a small heal. Silithids have the Spider family's root, but also provide a +Stamina group buff--and so on.
Basic Tips
Taming If you see a beast you want to tame, use Beast Lore on it. Beast Lore will expose information about the wild mob to you without causing aggro; you can then mouseover the mob to see whether the creature can be tamed as a hunter's pet. Bear in mind that you can only tame beasts that are your level or lower. Pets will instantly level to your own level as soon as they're tamed, so don't worry about taming a low-level pet if you're level 85--it will be level 85 as soon as the tame completes!
Talents Once you choose a pet, try and give it Talent Points (which it gains as it levels alongside you, starting at level 20) that match your goal for the pet. In other words, if you want a PvE group damage pet, talent it for damage, not for stamina, and so forth.
Growl Remember, tank pets are meant to be used for solo play, or groups who have agreed to use a tank pet--do not use the Dungeon Finder and go in intending to tank with your pet, as there will already be a designated Tank player who probably won't be happy to find that you're stealing his job!
It's best to bring a damage pet, and always remember to turn off Growl in dungeons. You can do this by right-clicking Growl on your pet's control bar so that the sparkling line moving around the ability grows still and dull. Growl tries to generate threat on a mob--this is good for solo play, when you want monsters to attack your pet, but for group dungeons and so forth, you want to let the tank keep aggro. Most healers can't afford to heal both a tank and your pet, and will become aggravated if your pet continuously pulls aggro. That said, if your tank suddenly dies, you can dismiss your pet and call a tank pet, which can sometimes tank the remaining mobs or boss and save the day!
Pet Action Bar You can also move pet abilities to and from the pet's control bar, giving you more control over what is set to auto-cast and what is used when. Some pet abilities can ONLY be used manually--for example, a Worm's Burrow, a Tenacity pet's talented Last Stand, talented Heart of the Phoenix in Ferocity, and so forth. You will need to place these abilities onto your pet's bars and click them in order to use them (using them directly from the spellbook is possible, but overly slow and complicated!). You can tell which abilities need to be manually activated by checking them out in the spellbook; if they aren't a Passive ability, and have no sparkling line around them that you can right-click to toggle on and off, you probably need to use it manually.
Pet Health If your pet dies, you can Revive it. Your hunter will have the Revive Pet talent to start off with, which looks sort of like a hand surrounded by greenish glow. This has a longish cast time, but will bring your pet right back to life! Once you're level 16, you will get an ability called Mend Pet--you can use this to heal your pet, keeping it alive in fights that might otherwise kill it. If you get out of combat and your pet is very low on health, you can Feed Pet to instantly heal it up by 1/2 its HP. Beast Lore or the pet biscuit icon in the pet's character sheet (press C, then pick the Pet tab at the bottom) will tell you which foods a given pet family will eat. For example, Bears will eat any pet food--meat, fungus, bread, fruit etcetera--whereas wolves will eat only Meat.
To Summarize
* Choose your pets based on Talent Tree and Family Skill, remembering you can keep 25 pets total at end-game to cover all situations.
* All pets in a given family are identical.
* There is no overall "best pet."
* You can only tame pets that are your level or lower; tamed pets auto-level with you.
* Exotic pets are tameable and useable only by Beast Mastery hunters past level 69.
* Turn Growl off in dungeons.
* Put non-automatic abilities onto the pet bar for manual use.
Further Information
* A more detailed guide on choosing a pet and pet abilities can be found at Petopia's own "Choosing a Pet" Guide! Notice on the left, under Pet Care, that there are also guides for Calling and Feeding pets and using the stable!
* Petopia's main site has a Gallery of Pets where you can look at every single available pet in game, all at once.
* The Resources Thread links to a variety of guides, including how to find rare spawns, tame hard-to-tame mobs and how to get the most out of your Hunter!
