A Guide In The Wild – Word of Warcraft Hunter Pets
Posted on October 31, 2009
Filed Under World of Warcraft |
Hunters and similar characters have the ability to tame a beast found on the server, and have it follow them as their loyal companion. It’s a great ability, and has a lot of tactical applications, ranging from sending the companion in to draw aggro from a mob, and shoot it with the Hunter’s ranged attacks, to more clever uses of it – pulling mobs around corners and into traps and ambushes.
To tame the beast, you have to find one that’s on the tameable list, and that’s your level or lower. You’ll want to lead it through your traps first to minimize the amount of damage you’ll have to take in taming it, but once you’ve got it, the beast will follow your commands.
Beastmasters have some special abilities for taming (and later training) beasts, and having a Mage handy to turn it into a sheep can be a great way to avoid taking damage while going through the taming process. While not essential to getting a wow hunter pet, they can make it a bit less traumatic.
World of Warcraft hunter pets come in three general varieties: Ferocity pets have 5% on their hit points, do 10% per attack, but have armor of 0%. Tenacity pets have 0% to their attack bonuses, 5% to their armor and 10% to their hit points. Cunning pets have 5% in all three categories. If you’re doing a lot of soloing, a Ferocity pet is generally preferred; if you’re in a small group, a Tenacity pet can make up for the lack of a true tanker archetype. The Cunning pet archetypes tend to be less popular, because they’re not specialized towards one style or another.
After picking the type of wow hunter pet you want, and taming it, there comes the matter of upkeep. Your pet will need food; some pets (Wolves) eat only meat. Others eat only bread and fish. Two pets (Bear and Boar) eat anything. The reason you want to keep your pet fed is because the amount of damage they do is a function of how happy they are, and feeding the pet is the best way you have of ensuring their happiness. One reason why bears (a Tenacity pet) are so common is because if you keep them well fed, they get a 25% bonus to their damage, which overcomes their main drawback for pet type.
There are a lot of exotic pet types, and most pets can be trained up in a special attack type or two. These pets and their special abilities are fairly minor; there isn’t a significant drawback to keeping your pet selections limited to ones that are thematic or appropriate to your character. The other route to go for is getting pets that are difficult to get at a particular level.
One brief note – wow hunter pets will tend to have their image sized relative to their level. When you first tame one, you may discover that it shrinks right before your eyes. As you level up, your pet will level up, and get larger. This can be good and bad; for flying pets, wings aren’t clickable areas, and as they get larger they can be harder to manage. On the other hand, for a large landbound pet, they can also block Line of Sight, which can be handy when dealing with mobs.
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