Hunter pet

Hunter Pets

The hunter's pet is his constant companion as he travels through Azeroth. When fighting solo or in small groups, a hunter's pet acts as a tank allowing the hunter to maintain the range hunters require to do their best in battle. When not tanking, pets can be used to do damage in addition to the hunters shots and stings.

Taming

A hunter must use their [Tame Beast] skill on a valid beast family monster exactly their level or lower in order to own it. Upon starting the taming process, the hunter's armor is decreased by 100% and they cannot perform any other actions, or else the taming fails. Most hunters use [Concussive Shot] paired with a [Freezing Trap] and [Aspect of the Monkey] so that they get hit as little as possible when attempting to tame. The taming process takes 20 seconds.

A good way to tame a pet is to ask a mage for help. It's possible to tame a sheeped pet.

Feeding

Pets eat from up to six different types of food: meat, bread, fish, fruit, fungus, and cheese. Some pets, like wolves, will only eat meat, but bears and boars can eat any of the six food types. It is easiest to feed pets that eat meat, bread and fish because mobs often drop meats, fishes can be fished, and bread can be conjured up by mages as pet food.

Feeding pets is very important. The happier a pet is, the more damage it deals. Also, the happier it stays, the more loyalty ranks it gains, and so it gains the ability to learn more skills. If you neglect to feed a pet for too long, the pet may run away!

See Pet Feeding for more info.

Tameable Beasts

There are 18 families of pets for hunters to tame currently, with 5 to be added in the expansion for a total of 23. Each family has its own skills, diet, and statistics.

Type	Meat	Fruit	Fish	Fungus	Cheese	Bread
Bat		x		x
Bear	x	x	x	x	x	x
Boar	x	x	x	x	x	x
Carrion Bird	x
Cat	x		x
Crab		x	x	x		x
Crocolisk	x		x
Dragonhawk (Burning Crusade only)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Gorilla		x		x
Hyena	x	x
Nether Ray (Burning Crusade only)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Owl	x
Raptor	x
Ravager (Burning Crusade only)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Scorpid	x
Serpent	x		x
Spider	x
Sporebat (Burning Crusade only)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Tallstrider		x		x		x
Turtle		x	x	x
Warp Stalker (Burning Crusade only)	?	?	?	?	?	?
Wind Serpent			x		x	x
Wolf	x

Un-Tameable Beasts

Basilisk Chimera Core Hound Devilsaur Diemetradon Frenzy Giraffe

Gryphon Hydra Kodo Pterrordax Ravasaur Shark Stag

Thresher Thunder Lizard Worm Wyvern Zhevra Beast Bosses

Training your pet

By using the " [Beast Training]" ability, pets can be taught a variety of Pet Abilities. Note: The Beast Training ability is found under the General tab in the spellbook, not the Beastmastery tab as one might expect.

Most of these skills, such as [Cower] and Claw, the hunter must first learn from other beasts tamed in the wild before they can be taught to a pet. This is done by taming a beast with the ability and then fighting next to this beast while the ability is being used. The Hunter will be notified when he has learned the skill, usually just a few short battles. Each pet varies in the skills, and their ranks, so many times a hunter will usually need to tame several pets along his career as he grow up in level. As a hunter level increases, he can tame stronger pets which initially have (and can therefore teach the hunter) higher ranks of the same skills.

Once a hunter has learned a skill from a pet, he can teach all his pets the same skill. He can even dismiss the pet who taught him the skill.

In addition, [Growl], as well as several enhancing abilities that were added in patch 1.8 and patch 1.9, can be learned from Pet Trainers in the cities.

Pets below your level gain XP by fighting alongside you (as long as the Hunter receives XP from the kill). When the pet reaches the hunter's level, it stops gaining experience until said hunter levels up. Every level the pet gains 5 training points, up to a maximum of 300 points at level 60. By visiting a Pet Trainer, a hunter can remove his pet current training by paying an ever increasing fee - a process similar to unlearning your talents in your class trainer.

List of pet skills

Pet skills come in two types - passive enhancement skills, taught by Pet Trainers in various cities and camps, and active skills, taught from various rare beasts across the land. Active skills require focus - a constantly-recharging point pool that works exactly like a Rogue Energy bar. Every Pet has 100 focus.

From Patch 1.7 and following, Blizzard has started introducing special, active pet skills. Each skill can only be used by one type of pet and has a specific ability that is quite useful, usually in PVE. This increases diversty among a hunter's pet and usually promotes hunters possessing several pets at the same time. It is expected that with time Blizzard will continue to add special skills to other beast's types, as well.

Template:Tables:PetAbilities Also see: Pet_Abilities

See Also

• Petopia — A picture guide to hunter companions
• Hunter Pet Abilities from the Good Intentions guild.
• Pet in the Pocket A general pet information site.