The hunter pet is a hunter's constant companion as they travel through Azeroth and Outland. When fighting solo or in small groups, a hunter's pet acts as a tank allowing the hunter to maintain the range that he/she requires in order to do their best in combat. When not tanking, pets can be used to deal damage in addition to the hunter's shots and stings.
Obtaining pets
New hunter characters start the game with a pet at level 1. Read on to learn all about these "starter pets". Each hunter race has a specific starter pet. When you reach level 10, you can visit the hunter trainer to learn a bunch of new pet-related skills, including 
[Control Pet], 
[Tame Beast], 
[Dismiss Pet], 
[Feed Pet], and 
[Beast Lore].
To obtain a new pet, the hunter must use his/her [Tame Beast] skill on a valid beast, from a select family, who is exactly their level or lower. Upon starting the taming process, the hunter's armor is decreased by 100% and they cannot perform any other actions, else the attempt at taming should fail. The taming process takes 10 seconds and does not increase with every hit, but it can be interrupted. If the hunter loses aggro to another player, the tame will fail. With Patch 3.0.2, Beast Mastery hunters gained the ability to tame additional rare pet types.
Taming tips
- Hunter abilities such as
[Concussive Shot], [Wyvern Sting], and [Freezing Trap] can slow or stop a beast, reducing hits to the hunter which allows for easier taming.
- Try this: Lay a trap, and wait for your cooldown. Pull your target across the trap and once it is iced, lay another freezer nearby and back away further before you begin taming. Thanks to the new combat traps, your target will not come close to hurting you!
- Some beasts have a knockback ability. Using the [Freezing Trap] on them is essential, as the knockback will interrupt the taming process, forcing you to start over.
- A good way to tame a pet is to ask a mage for help. It's possible to tame a pet that is sheeped. This also works with the druid spell [Hibernate].
- The [Scare Beast] ability can also be helpful in conjunction with traps and shots.
- Draenei can cast [Gift of the Naaru] on themselves just before beginning a tame. Don't wait until you need it though as you can't cast it after the tame begins.
Feeding
- Main article: Feed Pet
Feed Pet allows hunters to heal their pets for 50% of their health while out of combat.
Challenges
Taming challenges allow hunters to tame beasts, but with more of a challenge, often requiring special tactics not required for normal pets. The following beasts offer these challenges:
Molten Front and Mount Hyjal
- Ankha: Spectral Frostsaber Spirit Beast (white)
- Magria: Spectral Frostsaber Spirit Beast (blue)
- Skarr: Metallic Cat (black)
- Ban'thalos: Spectral Owl Spirit Beast (green)
- Karkin: Metallic Crab (black)
- Kirix: Green Lava Spider
- Solix: Orange Lava Spider
- Skitterflame: Red Lava Spider
- Anthriss: Yellow Lava Spider
- Deth'tilac: Purple Lave Spider
Pandaria
A different type of challenge was introduced in Mists of Pandaria, where the following beasts would be hidden and hard to see tracks had to be followed in order to find the invisible beasts. Only 
[Flare] would reveal the following:
- Glimmer: Water Strider, follow Flooded Tracks in Jade Forest
- Savage: White Tiger, follow Bloody Tracks in Jade Forest
- Patrannache: Crane, follow Barely Visible Tracks in Valley of the Four Winds
- Bloodtooth: Turtle, follow Muddy Tracks in Krasarang Wilds
- Stompy: Goat, follow Heavy Tracks in Kun-Lai Summit
- Bristlespine: Porcupine, follow Puzzling Tracks in Kun-Lai Summit
- Rockhide the Immovable: Basilisk, follow Worn Tracks in Townlong Steppes
- Hexapos: Fen Strider, follow Mysterious Tracks in Dread Wastes
- Portent: Quilen, follow Dusty Tracks in Vale of Eternal Blossoms
- Degu: Red, Valley of the Four Winds
- Gumi: Blue, Kun-Lai Summit
- Hutia: Green, The Jade Forest
Fighting alongside your pet
Generally, a Hunter will send the pet in from a distance and allow it to get aggro on a mob before opening fire. Try to keep the mob on the pet so you can use the full power of your ranged weapon to take it down.
A nice trick is to use your pet to pull mobs that are out of range towards you. Use Attack Attack to send your pet in and as soon as it attracts the attention of the mob, use 
Follow to call the pet back. The pet will start running towards you and the mob will follow. Once the mob is within range, use Attack again. The pet will turn around and attack the mob, and you can use your ranged weapon on it. This pull works over quite a long distance and even around corners, as long as you can get a mob targeted. It also ensures that any additional mobs will have aggro on the pet, rather than you. It does not work as well with mobs who have a ranged attack. Also, be careful that the pet does not pull any extra mobs on the way to the mob and back again.
It is possible to have the pet fight one mob while the Hunter attacks another. Note: the Hunter will not gain loot or experience from a mob that the pet kills solo. This is a deliberate decision by Blizzard, not a bug. If you intend on pulling mutiple mobs and having your pet kill one or more of them while you focus on others, it would be best to try to get at least one shot or hit on each of the mobs and then allow your pet to do its work on them.
Raiding alongside your pet
With all pets being almost on equal grounds, damage wise, it falls upon the special abilities of the pets, the encounter, and what other classes are present which determines which pet a hunter would use. Often times it would be wise to talk amongst the other hunters in the raid to determine which pet each one could use, since their buffs/debuffs will not stack with each others or other player's abilities. It is common for a raid consisting of several hunters to no longer have duplicate pets.
Tameable beasts
There are 39 families of pets for Hunters to tame, with seven of them only available through the Burning Crusade expansion, two exclusive to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, five in Cataclysm, two in patch 5.0.4.
Although each pet family comes with a default talent specialization, you can change your pet's spec at any time so long as you are not in combat. Cunning, Ferocity, and Tenacity. Ferocity pets are good for continuous damage, tenacity pets make good tanks for soloing, and cunning pets have unique abilities which can be very useful in certain situations, such as PvP, as well as being almost as viable as Ferocity in PvE.
(exotic) means the pet can only be tamed by hunters with the passive 
[Exotic Beasts].
means the pet is only available with the Burning Crusade expansion.
means the pet is only available with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
means the pet is only available with the Cataclysm expansion.
means the pet is only available with the Mists of Pandaria expansion.
means the pet is introduced with the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
- 1 This is the default class when first tamed, players will be able to change their pet class afterwards.
Pet skills
- Main article: Pet abilities
Pet skills come in two types — passive enhancement skills, and active skills.
Passive skills change the pet's stats and do not require resources.
Each pet family has one special skill (usually active) and further skills can be learned from the pet's skill tree depending on its class.
Most active skills require Focus — a constantly-recharging point pool that works much like a Rogue's Energy bar. Some active skills are free. Every pet has 100 Focus, and Focus regenerates at a base rate of 5 points per second.
Active skills can be activated in several ways:
- Automatically, through setting them on autocast by right-clicking the skill icon in either the spellbook or pet action bar.
- By clicking the skill icon in either the spellbook or the pet action bar.
- By macros like /cast.
An active skill does not have to be in the pet action bar to be used, even on autocast. It is perfectly okay to leave Growl in the spellbook and have it on autocast. If using a /cast macro, the skill can be addressed as if it were a Hunter skill, so if the pet has the skill "Taunt", /cast Taunt will taunt the current target.
From Patch 1.7 onward, Blizzard started introducing special active pet skills. Each skill can only be used by a specific type of pet and the benefit is quite useful, usually in PvE. This increases the diversity among Hunter's pets and often promotes Hunters possessing several pets at the same time. It is expected that, with time, Blizzard will continue to add special skills to other beasts' types as well.
With Patch 3.0.2, the following aspects of Hunter pet training became obsolete: pet trainers, learning skills from wild beasts and loyalty. Pet trainers can still be talked to to reset a pet's talents, though.
Newly tamed beasts will have their level increased to the hunter's level when tamed.
Training your pet
The pet's available talent points at any given time are determined by its level, with a maximum of 17 reached at level 85. A Beastmaster Hunter can add four more pet talent points with the 31 point talent [Exotic Beasts]. You can assign the pet talent points in the pet tab of the talent window. Hunter pets can unlearn their talents at Hunter pet trainers without cost. A visual pet calculator is available at Wowhead Petcalc.
Pet scaling
Pets receive attribute bonuses at 15% of their master's/mistress' stats:
- 1 ranged attack power gives the pet 0.22 AP and 0.1287 spell damage (0.338 AP and 0.18 spell damage with 2/2 Wild Hunt).
- 1 stamina gives 0.45 stamina untalented (erroneously reported as 0.3 stamina in the Hunter's stamina tooltip), or 0.63 stamina with 2/2 Wild Hunt). Hunter pets do not gain any health from their base stamina, and gain 10.5 health for each additional point of stamina (10 health per additional stamina before the inherent pet health bonus, which was standardized to 5% in Patch 3.1.0).
- 1 resistance gives 0.4 resistance.
- 1 armor gives 0.35 armor.
- 1 point of spell penetration gives 1 point of spell penetration to your pet.[1]
- 1 point of resilience gives 1 point of resilience rating to your pet as of Patch 3.3.0. Previously, it was 0.4 points of resilience per 1 point.[2]
- The scaling formulas for hit are not yet available, however the Patch 3.2.0 notes stat that "If a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.".[1]
Appearance
As WoW is an MMORPG, you may find that you want a pet that looks visually appealing to you, be that it "looks good" or "looks menacing." Be aware that there are a couple of other appearance factors.
Size
The pet's size is directly related to the level of the pet. Many beasts will dramatically shrink right before your eyes the moment they are tamed, though they will enlarge as they level. Pets such as rhinos are large enough to be a sight obstruction in certain areas, which can be to the player's advantage (PVP) or disadvantage (instances and raids). The 
[Glyph of Lesser Proportion] can shrink the size of your pet.
Flying pets
Flying pets maintain a more or less fixed distance above the ground, essentially hovering rather than flying. Flying pets' models, particularly the wings, interfere with mouse clicking, blocking access to select what is beyond them. This can work both for you and against you, but you will probably find it at least a little annoying. Note: As the pet levels, it gets bigger, and the wingspan gets larger, making the effect greater.
Low-slung pets
Low slung pets, like crabs and scorpids, can fit into places taller pets cannot go. This is not a highly significant feature, but it does occasionally come up.
Bragging rights
Face it, this is important. If you want a prestige pet, the obvious choices are:
- Unique skin, like the pink flamingo.
- Hard-to-obtain pets, like a level 19 Horde character with a ravager or a level 19 Alliance character with a dragonhawk.
- Anything that can no longer be tamed - Blizzard grandfathers current owners. You have to either luck out and fall into this, or have an eye for a problematic pet which will become untamable. Death Ravager is an example as well as Grimtotem Spirit Guide.
Matching pets
You can match some Hunter pets and small pets, or even mounts, if theme is your thing.
- Takk the Leaper, a dino-lizard, can be tamed, and his offspring, Leaping Hatchling, can be obtained from Takk's Nest, in the Northern Barrens. They are just south and east of Nozzlepot's Outpost.
Non-tameable beasts
Many types of beasts in the wild cannot be tamed as a Hunter pet. These are:
Not all beasts within the tameable families are tameable. Normal rank and file beasts usually are, individually named beasts may or may not be, and any beast that is notably odd is probably not tameable.
Beast size critters, like gazelles and deer, are never tameable.
Abandoning
To abandon a pet, you should target the pet on its portrait at the top of your screen, right click and select "Abandon Pet." Keep in mind this is permanent, so be careful not to abandon the wrong pet.
Renaming a pet
Initially after you tame a pet, you have the ability to right click on the pet icon after selecting them, and select "Rename". But after the first time you do this, if you want to rename the same pet, you'll need a 
[Certificate of Ownership] (created with Inscription).
Patches and hotfixes
- Hotfix (2014-10-17): Hunter Pets now inherit 60% of the Hunter's Attack Power (up from 33%).
- Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): Hunter pets will no longer have crowd-control abilities and will be replaced with new abilities that will provided buffs and debuffs, including spreading some that were previously restricted to exotic pets.
- Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Pets can now switch between being Cunning, Ferocity, and Tenacity type pets.
- Patch 4.1.0 (2011-04-26):
- Pets will now level with hunters in the same way warlock pets currently do. Also, summoned pets now start with 100 focus, up from 0.
- The Happiness/Pet Loyalty System has been removed. Hunters will no longer have to manage Happiness for their pets, and the previous damage bonus for pets being happy will now be baseline for all tamed pets.
- Now tamed pets match the hunter's level
- Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): Numerous changes. Many pet abilities have been replaced or altered. Hunters now start with pets at level 1. Whenever a hunter is more than 3 levels above a pet, the pet levels to within 3 levels of the hunter.
- Patch 3.3.0 (2009-12-08): Hunter pets now have 100% of their master's resilience; increased from 40%.
- Hotfix (2009-04-16): Hunter pets should now have their talents refunded when a Hunter switches talent specs, even if they are dismissed at the time.
- Patch 3.1.0 (2009-04-14): All Cunning, Ferocity, and Tenacity pets now have identical bonuses - +5% Health,+5% Armor,+5% Damage.
- Patch 3.0.8 (2009-01-20): All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
- Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Major revisions to the pet system, see patch notes for details.
- Patch 1.7.0 (2005-09-13):
- Hunter pets can now be untrained of all their skills from any beast trainer in the major cities.
- Hunter pets can now learn a maximum of four active abilities.
- Hunter pets now gain experience based on the level difference between them and their target rather than the difference between the Hunters and their target.
- Hunters are now able to name their pets while mounted.
- Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Unstabling dead pets no longer puts players into a degenerate state where their pet only partially exists. Unstabled dead pets can now be properly revived, and players can no longer train more pets than their stable can hold.
- Patch 1.4.0 (2005-04-19): When a non-Hunter resurrects a pet, the pet will no longer receive resurrection sickness.
- Patch 1.3.0 (2005-03-07):
- Fixed a bug where Hunter pets were sometimes unattackable by opposing faction players.
- Fixed a bug where creatures were keeping their innate resistances after being tamed. This was unintentional and the fix will affect all existing pets.
- Hunter pets immediately gain training points when they level up.
References
External links
Wowhead Pet comparison table
Petopia A picture guide to Hunter companions
maniasarcania.com Hunter pets in the World of Warcraft blog Random Ravings of Warcraft Hunter pet DPS - Part 1 Petopia Taming challenges Huntsman's Lodge Taming challenges
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