#0 - May 23, 2008, 3:37 p.m.
Part 1
General information about pets:
After finishing the taming quests at lvl 10, you gain the ability Tame Beast. You can now wander off in to the world and find yourself a faithful buddy. (Note that this quest chain must be done in your races starting area, i.e. Orcs in Durotar, Dwarves in Dun Morogh.)
You can only tame mobs classified as Beast (and not even all of them), and only beasts equal to or lower then your own lvl.
When a pet is first tamed, it will have loyalty lvl 1 (Rebellious) and be unhappy. Feed the pet to increase it’s happiness. Your pets happiness is indicated by a little smiley next to it’s portait.
Loyalty and Happiness:
Your pets Happiness is based on Loyalty and food, and affects it’s damage.
Unhappy means it does 75% dmg. (Red sad smiley)
Content means it does 100% dmg. (Yellow indifferent smiley)
Happy means it does 125% dmg. (Green happy smiley)
Happiness also affects Loyalty gain.
Unhappy = Losing loyalty
Content = Gaining Loyalty
Happy = Gaining Loyalty
To keep your pet happy, you must keep it well fed. (more on food later)
As said earlier, your pet starts out at Loyalty rank 1 (Rebellious).
There are six ranks of Loyalty.
Rebellious (Rank 1)
Unruly (Rank 2)
Submissive (Rank 3)
Dependable (Rank 4)
Faithful (Rank 5)
Best Friend (Rank 6)
Gaining loyalty is time and xp based.
Even if your pet is the same lvl as you, it will need to gain xp in order to get to the next Loyalty Rank. The xp required is 5% of hunters xp needed to gain next lvl.
The time required increased with the Loyalty rank.
Rank 2 (Unruly) = 5% of hunter's xp and 0 minutes
Rank 3 (Submissive) = 5% of hunter's xp and 30 minutes
Rank 4 (Dependable) = 5% of hunter's xp and 45 minutes
Rank 5 (Faithful) = 5% of hunter's xp and 60 minutes
Rank 6 (Best Friend) = 5% of hunter's xp at current level and 90 minutes
This means that in order to increase loyalty, you need to grind with your pet. A minimum of 3,5 hours is required to go from Rebellious to Best Friend. However, you can gain the xp needed in less time. Your pet will then ding the next rank after the appropriate time has passed (hence the sudden dings while you’re idling around the AH).
Pet stats:
Pets scale with your hunter in the following manner:
· Pets get 30% of the Hunter's Stamina added to their Stamina.
· Pets get 35% of the Hunter's Armor added to their Armor.
· Pets get 22% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power added to their Melee Attack Power.
· Pets get 12.87% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power added to their Spell Damage.
· Pets get 40% of the Hunter's resistances added to their own resistances.
These stats are the same for all pet families. All pets currently have 2.00 sec Attack speed. (Can be improved by talents and Cobra Reflexes)
Pet Families:
There are currently 23 different pet families, all with various pros and cons.
Pets start out with the same basic Damage, Armor and Health (100%), but this gets adjusted slightly by which family they belong to. (for a full list of pet families and variations, check http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/browse/browse_families.php )
Family_____Damage_____Armor___Health
Bat__________+7%______+0%______+0%
Bear_________-9%______+5%______+8%
Boar_________-10%_____+9%_____+4%
Carrion Bird___+0%______+5%____+0%
Cat__________+10%_____+0%_____-2%
Crab_________-5%______+13%_____ -4%
Crocolisk______+0%_____+10%_____-5%
Dragonhawk ___+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Gorilla________+2%_____+0%_____+4%
Hyena________+0%_____+5%_____+0%
Nether Ray____+3%_____-10%_____+10%
Owl__________+7%_____+0%_____ +0%
Raptor________+10%___+3%_____ -5%
Ravager ______+10%____+5%_____-7%
Scorpid_______-6%_____+10%_____+0%
Serpent_______+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Spider________+7%_____+0%_____+0%
Spore Bat_____+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Tallstrider_____+0%_____+0%_____+5%
Turtle________-10%_____+13%_____+0%
Warp Stalker___-6% _____+5% _____+0%
Wind Serpent __+7%_____+0%______+0%
Wolf__________+0%_____+5%_____+0%
So Cat ends up with 110% Damage, 100% Armor and 98% Health.
As you can see, some pets are better suited for DPS and some for tanking.
However, there’s another factor which comes into play…
Pet Skills:
These are the various skills that you can teach your pet, and they greatly affect how useful it is. There are two basic groups of skills: Those you learn from Pet trainers ( Passive, which all families can learn) and those you have to learn yourself (Active, which are restricted to certain families). Just like player skills, these are all lvl dependant.
To learn a new skill, you have to find the appropriate mob. Some beasts have skills when you tame them and this is where Beast Lore comes in handy. Casting it on a beast type mob, reveals wether or not it is tameable and which skills it will have when tamed.
Let’s say you’re looking for rank 5 of Bite. Find out which mob has it (either by referring to the Petopia chart or checking various mobs ingame.)
Make sure you’ve stabled the pet you want to keep and either have no pet with you (or a disposable one which you abandon).
Once you’ve found the mob with Bite (rank 5), lay down a Freezing Trap, and cast Tame Beast (abandon current pet if necessary). Once the beast is tamed, use Bite (rank 5) a few times. Eventually, you’ll get a message that you just learned Bite (rank 5) and it should show up in your Beast Training list. Now you can abandon the pet, get your stabled one and teach it Bite (rank 5).
As said, skills affect a pets usefulness and performance. But not all families can learn all skills.
While a Spider might look interesting as a damage pet, it can only learn Bite and Cower.
An Owl, on the other hand, can learn Claw, Cower, Dive and Screech, making it more useful.
This is something you should consider if you want the best pet for the best occasion.
If you’re just going for looks, however, go with what you like the most! ^^
The skills trainable from Pet trainer are:
Arcane Resistance, Fire Resistance, Frost resistance, Nature Resistance, Shadow Resistance, Avoidance, Cobra Reflexes, Great Stamina, and Natural Armor.
Those found on various mobs are:
Bite, Charge, Claw, Cower, Dash, Dive, Fire Breath, Furious Howl, Gore, Growl, Lightning Breath, Poison Spit, Prowl, Scorpid Poison, Screech, Shell Shield, Thunderstomp, and Warp.
For a full list of what the various skills do, check http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/skills/skills.php
Growl:
The skill Growl is unique in that it’s the only active skill that can be learned from Pet trainers.
You learn the first two ranks after completing the taming quest chain, and can learn a new rank every 10 lvls after that.
Growl is your pet’s version of Taunt. It doesn’t force the target to focus on your pet, but generates a high amount of threat, giving your pet more aggro. It is arguably the most important pet skill. All pets can learn it (and should) and it costs no Training Points.
It has a cooldown of 4secs and costs 15 Focus to cast.
In solo play (or situations where you want you pet to get aggro), it’s best to leave Growl on auto cast, but when in groups tanks tend to dislike your pet Growling all the time, so you should keep it on manual (and let your pet take a break from being pummelled all the time).
The amount of threat generated by Growl depends on two things: Rank and your AP.
Rank__Threat__Lvl Req
1______+50_____1
2______+65_____10
3______+110____20
4______+170____30
5______+240____40
6______+320____50
7______+415____60
8______+664____70
The exact amount of threat added from hunter AP is uncertain atm (as it was changed from pet AP in 2.4.2). But it is reasonable to assume that it follows the old Growl formula of pet AP, meaning that should your AP rise above a certain threshold, it will contribute to the amount of threat gained. Threshold most likely varies according to pet and hunter lvl.
I’ll add the formulas when (and if) I manage to find them.
Kill Command:
Give the command to kill, causing your pet to instantly attack for an additional 127 damage. Can only be used after the Hunter lands a critical strike on the target.
You can learn this skill from Class trainers after you reach lvl 66.
As of 2.1, it was removed from the global cooldown, essentially making it a bonus attack after any crit from the hunter (melee and ranged). It’s very helpful for helping your pet keep aggro, and scales with AP ( currently, I’m unsure of wether it’s affected by hunter AP or pet AP, so the formula for scaling is uncertain, but I will update when I find out). There have been reports of it criting for as much as 1k, though my highest personal crit with KC is less then 700 dmg, afaik.
