Hunter pet

The hunter's pet is their constant companion as they travel through Azeroth or Outland. 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 hunter's shots and stings.

Taming

To obtain a pet, the hunter must use his [Tame Beast] skill on a valid beast family monster 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, or else the taming fails. The taming process takes 20 seconds, which does not increase with every hit, but can be interrupted.

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. Then pull your target across the trap. Once it is iced, lay another one nearby, and back off even further. Then begin taming. Thanks to the new combat traps, your target should not even touch you!
- It's best to freeze some beasts, as a few of them have knockback abilities and will interrupt the taming process (forcing you to start over).
Using [Aspect of the Monkey] can reduce hits during taming.
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 as you can't cast it after the tame begins.

Feeding

In order for your pet to maintain happiness and loyalty (a good mood), you must feed it.

Pets eat 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, fish can be fished, and bread can be conjured by a mage 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.

Fighting alongside your pet

Generally, one will send the pet in from a distance and allow it to get aggro on the mob before the hunter starts shooting. 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 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 then it is best to try to get at least one shot or hit on each of the mobs then allow your pet to do his/her work on them.

Tamable Beasts

There are 23 families of pets for hunters to tame, with 5 of them exclusive to the expansion. Each family has its own skills, diet, and statistics.

Type	Meat	Fruit	Fish	Fungus	Cheese	Bread	HP	Armor	Damage	Special Ability
Bat		x		x			+0%	+0%	+7%	None
Bear	x	x	x	x	x	x	+8%	+5%	-9%	None
Boar	x	x	x	x	x	x	+4%	+9%	-10%	Charge
Carrion Bird	x		x				+0%	+5%	+0%	None
Cat	x		x				-2%	+0%	+10%	Prowl
Crab		x	x	x		x	-4%	+13%	-5%	None
Crocolisk	x		x				-5%	+10%	+0%	None
Dragonhawk	x	x	x				+0%	+0%	+0%	[Fire Breath]
Gorilla		x		x			+4%	+0%	+2%	Thunderstomp
Hyena	x	x					+0%	+5%	+0%	None
Nether Ray	x						+10%	-10%	+3%	None
Owl	x						+0%	+0%	+7%	None
Raptor	x						-5%	+3%	+10%	None
Ravager	x						-7%	+5%	+10%	None
Scorpid	x						+0%	+10%	-6%	[Scorpid Poison]
Serpent	x		x				+0%	+0%	+0%	[Poison Spit]
Spider	x						+0%	+0%	+7%	None
Sporebat		x		x	x	x	+0%	+0%	+0%	None
Tallstrider		x		x	x		+5%	+0%	+0%	None
Turtle		x	x	x			+0%	+13%	-10%	[Shell Shield]
Warp Stalker		x	x				+0%	+5%	-6%	[Warp]
Wind Serpent			x		x	x	+0%	+0%	+7%	[Lightning Breath]
Wolf	x						+0%	+5%	+0%	[Furious Howl]

NOTE: Beasts that have a mana bar in the wild have dramatically reduced stats once tamed. For a graph showing the differences between normal and "caster" pets, click here to go to the Petopia article on caster pets, and click on the spreadsheet link.

Non-Tamable Beasts

Many types of beasts in the wild cannot be tamed as a hunter pet. These are:

Training your pet

By using the " [Beast Training]" ability, pets can be taught a variety of Pet Abilities. (The Beast Training ability is found under the General tab in the spellbook, not the Beast Mastery tab as one might expect.) The number of points available to spend on pet abilities is a function of the pet's level (1-70) and its loyalty level.

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 you want to learn and then repeatedly having your pet use that ability near you while it is fully fed and happy. Some talents like Dash can be used and learned outside of combat, but most will require you to send the pet into combat. 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, many times a hunter will usually need to tame several pets during his career. As a hunter's level increases, he can tame stronger pets which initially have these skills 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 any of his eligible pets the same skill. (See the "List of pet skills table" below, "Trainable by" column). 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 experience by fighting alongside you (as long as the hunter receives experience from the kill). When the pet reaches the hunter's level, it stops gaining experience until the hunter levels up. Pets gain approximately the same experience from kills as an unrested character of the same level, and require a much lower amount of experience to level as a character of the same level.

The pet's available training points at any given time is its (Loyalty level-1) multiplied by its base level. By visiting a Pet Trainer, a hunter can remove his pet's current training by paying an ever-increasing fee; a process similar to unlearning your talents in your class trainer.

Also See: Pet builds

In Wrath of the Lich King

The training system is being completely redesigned to use talent points rather than training points. ^[1]

See: Pet talents

Pet scaling

Pets receive attribute bonuses depending on their master's stats. The amount is 15%:

1 ranged attack power gives the pet 0.22 AP and 0.1287 spell damage
1 stamina gives 0.3 stamina
1 resistance gives 0.4 resistance
1 armor gives 0.35 armor

List of pet skills

Main article: Pet abilities

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.

Beginning with Patch 1.7, Blizzard has started introducing special, active pet skills. Each skill can only be used by one type of pet and has a specific benefit that is quite useful, usually in PvE. This increases the diversity among hunters pets 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 beasts' types, as well.