Pet action bar

[PD3]

I'm working on a BM Hunter, new to the game, and don't fully understand the Pet's Action Bar set-up vs. the Pet Abilitys in the Spellbook. The Action Bar has ten slots. First three (Attack, Follow, Stay) and the last three (Aggessive, Defensive, Passive) are self explanitory. The other four have a flashing border.

Looking in the Spellbook I see six items with a flashing border. So I'm thinking that all these with the flashing border can be kept active IN the Spellbook, freeing up four slots. Is this correct?

Also in the Spellbook are six other items, not flashing. Avoidance is noted as passive, so I know it's active. I don't know if the other five items are active since they're not on the Action Bar. These five are; Bloodthirsty, Boar's Speed, Great Stamina, Lionhearted, and Natural Armour. Do they need to be on the Action Bar to function?

Thanks in advance for any light shed on this. I've done a great deal of reading since I started wow, but haven't found this mentioned. LOL, it's a little tough with no gaming background! Hunter pets are very fine and I can't imagine not having one. I'm about ready to go for a second, maybe a Wolf. I have a Ferocious Lion now, and just lvl'ed 55.

Strength and Honor!!!

[Vephriel]

The Pet action bar is definitely in need of a revamp, it's rather clunky.

Basically you have 4 buttons that you can fiddle with. The 6 others that you listed (Follow, Attack, Defensive, etc) are static abilities that will always be there and cannot be removed from the bar (which is a good thing as those 6 are rather important to have handy).

Now, the problem we have with the remaining 4 buttons is that our pets will almost always have more abilities than can fit on those 4 slots.

The flashing border abilities you mentioned are ones that you pet can cast or perform. Now most of the things you'll see in your pet spellbook are passive. They do not need to be cast or used in any way. They just...exist. You don't have to worry about them. This applies to Boar's Speed, Natural Armor, etc. Once your pet 'learns' those from the talent tree that means they gain that specific buff permanently, you do not need to click them or cast them in any way.

When the border is flashing that means it's on auto-cast. Your pet will use its AI to perform that ability whenever it's available or appropriate. If you right click on one of these flashing abilities you will toggle off the auto-cast. Your pet will not use that ability unless you manually click it yourself.

I find that I keep abilities that I want to toggle on/off often on the action bar. Ones like Dash, Bite, etc I can't see ever toggling off, so I don't put those in my pet action bar and instead leave them in the spellbook with the flashing border. That way I know my pet will autocast them.

For the most part if you leave an ability toggled on in the spellbook it should 'remember' and you don't have to worry about it. There were issues in the past with this bugging, but I'm pretty sure it's been resolved. Anyways, as I said I choose the 4 abilities that I'm most likely to want to control myself and keep them on the pet action bar so that I can easily toggle them on and off as needed, as well as have them easily accessible for manually casting.

Some people make macros for the pet abilities that don't fit on the pet action bar and put them on another bar somewhere. I haven't found the need to do this myself, but it's something to keep in mind also.

Hopefully that helps you a bit, let me know if you want clarification on anything though.

[Saturo]

The ones you mentioned as not flashing are also passive, so those are on. The ones with the flashing border, not on the actionbar are also active, you just can't see it.

EDIT: Veph beat me to it.

[Golden]

For the most part if you leave an ability toggled on in the spellbook it should 'remember' and you don't have to worry about it. There were issues in the past with this bugging, but I'm pretty sure it's been resolved.

In my experience Call of the Wild is still bugged - I prefer to have it always off so I can trigger it with Bestial Wrath and such, but every now and then (apparently due to me switching pets around or something) it turns itself back on autocast. :/

Edit: /tar Saturo
/lol
Super ninja'd!

[Foru21dr]

You do want to have the 4 most needed on your action bar. I have found that some things, which shows the AI autocast is on, will not cast at all, or I am just missing it. For example, I like using cower now that they have changed it to reduce damage against your pet. I have seen though that even when I have autocast on, it never casts on it's own. I am having to cast it manually. Another example is heart of the phoenix (ferocity pet) will not cast unless you tell it to. So put on the pet action bar the 4 things you would like to manually control, or ones that just don't cast without your intervention and you want to use.

[Vephriel]

I've found that Cower only autocasts after your pet is at a certain amount of health. I can't remember what it is exactly, but once your pet hits low health it will cast.

[Foru21dr]

I've found that Cower only autocasts after your pet is at a certain amount of health. I can't remember what it is exactly, but once your pet hits low health it will cast.

I will have to let him get low to see if it does cast. That would be an interesting experiment. I have make sure the mobs don't take him down to fast.

[Golden]

Ah, also if you have more than four pet skills you want to control manually, you could put them on your skill bars. That requires them to be macros though, so you should make them like this:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip
/cast Cower

I personally like to make macros out of the ones that can't be set oun autocast like Heart of the Phoenix and Cower, or family skills that are more useful when only cast when you need them (such as Shell Shield or some spell interrupts). That way I can save the space on my pet bar for skills that I just need to toggle on or off autocast often.

[Rhyela]

I've found that Cower only autocasts after your pet is at a certain amount of health. I can't remember what it is exactly, but once your pet hits low health it will cast.

Ooo, I didn't know that. That's one of those things that would be really handy if they told us in the tooltip.

[PD3]

Thanks for the answers everyone. The nickle has dropped, and I'm on my way.

I'm guessing that when fighting in Instances, Dungeons, and Battlegrounds one might want to toggle some things off to manage aggro? I'm just beginning to get into this aspect of the game.

[Rhyela]

The only thing you'd really have to worry about in an instance is Growl. You generally want to leave it off so that your little friend doesn't yank aggro off the tank and get itself killed. Other than that, the pets' skills don't do enough damage to pull threat, so feel free to leave it all on. In battlegrounds, I'm honestly not sure if Growl serves any purpose. I've heard it forces the enemy to switch target to your pet for a split-second, but I haven't tried it out myself.

[Saturo]

The only use there is for growl in BGs is to make the pet "tank" an enemy pet, and that is rendered ineffective if the opponent uses Ctrl+1 to control the pet. Leave Growl off, and use the extra focus for Claw, Bite or Smack.

[Foru21dr]

I've found that Cower only autocasts after your pet is at a certain amount of health. I can't remember what it is exactly, but once your pet hits low health it will cast.

I will have to let him get low to see if it does cast. That would be an interesting experiment. I have make sure the mobs don't take him down to fast.

So I did experiment on the auto cast of cower. thank you crunch for dieing several times. Everytime that he did.... cower never casted. I made sure that he was not swamped with a mob. I did several tries with no luck, cower never casted.

[Rhyela]

Ah, cool, thanks for clearing that up! (You can tell I PvP with my hunter often, right? )

Edit: Post in response to Saturo

[FuzzyDolly]

I don't think I've ever turned cower on. From the description, it seems like it would comflict with another talent. I tend to keep things in the pet bar that have a long cooldown, like the special abilities. That way I can fire them off when I need them instead of having a 2 min cooldown fire when I send my pet after Mr Biggles or a bunny, or a roach, or a ... well you get the point. (lol Gonna have to add this to the hunter tip thread) I also always, always keep growl in my pet bar. Much easier to turn it on and off when needed.