Category Archives: Hunter Pets

Broken Tooth lives! Hunter pets can have different attack speeds once again

Before you read any more, let me TLDR this first: There is no appreciable damage difference between pet attack speeds because damage is normalized. For the most part, it simply adds flavor to different pets.

First, a little history. Back in Vanilla WoW, several pets had different attack speeds (you can see the original list here). The most notorious pet was Broken Tooth, a rare cat in the Badlands, because he was one of only two pets with a 1.0 attack speed (2.0 is the standard). This made him a pretty nice pet to have in PVP because of spell pushback. Mages weren’t getting any casts off with Broken Tooth clawing away at them (in today’s game, pets cannot do this anymore).

Eventually, Blizzard normalized all pet attack speeds to 2.0, and it’s stayed like that all the way from The Burning Crusade… until now.

Continue reading Broken Tooth lives! Hunter pets can have different attack speeds once again

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunters get 10 more stable slots in Battle for Azeroth

You can now tame a total of 65 pets with the addition of a 6th page of stable slots! No, it’s still probably not enough for some of you (an extra 100 might not be enough). But it’s 10 more, so that’s 10 new pets you can tame in 8.0 without worrying about having to send existing pets to pasture.

I’ve been busy working on Wowhead stuff, mainly updating the Beast Mastery guide for 8.0 (and I also put a BfA pet guide up there, which has a little more than the one I posted here). I still plan on making at least one more post here before the pre-patch, something like a survival guide (what talents and legendaries are good for the pre-patch and leveling, etc.).

If you’re curious about my updated thoughts on Beast Mastery: It’s getting better. There’s still a few dead talents and others that are obviously not tuned, but the spec has come a long way. It’s interesting how active talents are often the best (or at least equal) choice compared to passives. For example, Chimaera Shot is now the top talent in its tier (at least as of today). My thoughts on Marksmanship and Survival are not as up to date since I’ve been focusing on BM for the guide writing, but once the pre-patch drops I plan on giving them all some good time.

Until next time.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Guide to Hunter Pets in Battle for Azeroth

Hunter pets are being streamlined in Battle for Azeroth. You can no longer freely choose the specialization for each of your pets because each family has a set specialization. Pets from all three specializations — Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning — will all deal the same DPS and have the same amount of baseline health and armor, but they will be differentiated by new and powerful abilities. Additionally, every pet family now has some a special family ability (even if many of them are duplicates of others). All Exotic pet families (Beast Mastery only) have at least 2 special abilities.

As we are still in beta, none of this is final. This post will be updated whenever new pets are added or changes are made.

Latest Update (June 28): 10 MORE STABLE SLOTS!

Continue reading Guide to Hunter Pets in Battle for Azeroth

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

BfA Alpha: Survival is starting to feel more like Beast Mastery than Beast Mastery

After playing all 3 specs on the Battle for Azeroth alpha, I’ve come to the conclusion that Survival feels like what Beast Mastery should feel like. I’m not talking about melee combat. I’m talking about the pet and the hunter being an actual duo, playing off each other and reliant on each other.

Beast Mastery Hunters may still have a higher percentage of pet damage, but the pets feel more like a damage delivery mechanism than a team-mate. Survival Hunters rely on their pets to help generate Focus through Kill Command and have several talents that cement the pet-hunter relationship that a lot of Beast Mastery players want.

To be fair, everyone (and Blizzard) has different ideas of what each spec should be like. Maybe BM is supposed to be less about the pet and Hunter relationship and more about the Hunter being an “alpha beast” who bends all beasts to their will, using them merely as tools.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Survival being pet-focused like this (I think it’s great actually), but why can’t the original pet specialization have some more mechanics like this?

Continue reading BfA Alpha: Survival is starting to feel more like Beast Mastery than Beast Mastery

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Beast Mastery pet dual wielding to return in Battle for Azeroth

If you were worried about losing Hati, worry no more. In today’s alpha build a new talent has appeared called Animal Companion:

“Your Call Pet additionally summons the first pet from your stable. This pet will obey your Kill Command, but cannot use pet family abilities.”

It replaces Way of the Cobra. It doesn’t seem quite as fully featured as Hati since it doesn’t mention Bestial Wrath or Beast Cleave, but it at least casts Kill Command. I suspect if they added all 3 it would be too powerful for a level 15 talent. As long as it still uses Dash with the main pet and they make a bit of an effort to improve the AI (simply forcing the /petattack command without having to macro it fixes 90% of issues).

This does mean it competes with Dire Beast, though. However, the wording on some talents and abilities has changed to imply Dire Beast is becoming baseline again, but that did not happen in this build. So I’m not sure what’s going on.

This makes the pet spec locking sting a little less since you’ll always be able to have at least 1 pet that’s purely a cosmetic choice. Also in this build, Kill Command’s range has been buffed from 40 to 50 yards which is pretty nice.

I’m still not in the alpha so I can’t test things out for myself. If I find any more details I’ll update the post.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Patch 7.3 for Hunters: New pets, Netherlight Crucible, and more

Patch 7.3 is almost here so it’s time to take a look at what’s going on for Hunters. The answer is… not much. We’ve got some pretty cool new pets available to tame on Argus, but still no new stable slots to make room for them. I don’t know about you, but I’m at the point where every pet I replace isn’t such an easy decision. Either it’s a rare I wouldn’t want to have to hunt for again, or a pet I’ve had for a long time and just don’t want to get rid of. There are a few new pets on Argus that may be worth swapping out for, though.

Continue reading Patch 7.3 for Hunters: New pets, Netherlight Crucible, and more

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Patch 7.2 Pet Bonanza: Gon, Lost Spectral Gryphon, Fenryr, and invading other class halls

Wow, what a week it’s been for Hunter pets! We’ve got a new solo challenge to tame Fenryr, two new spirit beasts, and there was also some shenanigans going on with Hunters invading the Shaman and Druid class halls to tame unique pets not available anywhere else.

I guess I’ll start with the first thing that happened early in the week, Fenryr. All of the hype sort of began when I tweeted this out (and posted it on Petopia):

I was not the original discoverer of this method, I was just the first to push it out to a large audience. Wowhead tweeted my pic soon after and Hunters began running Halls of Valor like their lives depended on it. It turned out that if you cleared HoV on Mythic, then left the dungeon and waited about 30 minutes for a soft reset, a tameable version of Fenryr would spawn in his cave. I mean, who goes back into a dungeon they’ve already cleared? No wonder it took a couple of weeks for anyone to notice. But it sure did seem like an odd way to hide a pet.

Continue reading Patch 7.2 Pet Bonanza: Gon, Lost Spectral Gryphon, Fenryr, and invading other class halls

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Patch 7.2 Hunter Pet Preview: Feathermanes and Falcosaurs

Patch 7.2 is adding some new Hunter pets to tame including a whole new family. Falcosaurs are being added to the Raptor family. Gryphons, hippogryphs, wyvern, owlcats, and wolfhawks are being added to the new Feathermane family.

I know what you’re thinking: How am I supposed to tame new pets when my stable is already full? I’m right there with you. I dislike abandoning pets, especially rare ones, but it might be necessary in this case because having gryphon pets for my dwarf is too good to pass up.

Update June 2017: I have a guide on where to tame all the Feathermanes on Wowhead.

Continue reading Patch 7.2 Hunter Pet Preview: Feathermanes and Falcosaurs

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

How to tame Lightning Paw

There’s a new spirit beast to tame in patch 7.1.5! Lightning Paw is the first spirit beast fox and he has a unique lightning effect not seen on any other beasts. It’s hard to see this in screenshots, so check out the short video clip embedded below. Somehow, we all missed him on the PTR (too busy bickering over class mechanics I think), but someone discovered him by chance and posted in the Wowhead comments earlier today.

Continue reading How to tame Lightning Paw

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

New Hunter pet family teased at BlizzCon (Gryphons and winged beasts)

Right after BlizzCon, Jeremy “Muffinus” Feasel tweeted that there were hints “somewhere on the internet” about a new Hunter pet family revealed at BlizzCon. Many Hunters, including myself, looked for this hint but couldn’t find anything. I was pretty sure I had watched all of the BlizzCon interviews and read most of the articles, but I was wrong.  Cernunnos over at Petopia finally found it. It was buried away in a video interview done by BlizzPro that hasn’t had many views up until now.

Continue reading New Hunter pet family teased at BlizzCon (Gryphons and winged beasts)

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com