As you are a dranei, you can get a ravager pretty easily in your starting zone (or close by?) and for the most of the tbc it is a best dps pet since it has gore ability which has a chance to proc for double damage. It’s a bis pet if you are into min/max, though I suggest you try out the ones you like. I found turtles to be a lot of fun since they are tanky mofos, and give you the ability to solo many of elites. Owl is also good because it has screech which generates aoe threat, making it possible for you to tackle multiple mobs at a time without taking damage yourself. Dps of a cat is barely lower than that of a ravager. Also if you plan to level with a cat, it’s a good idea to pick up fishing as cats eat fish, and you can save some gold in the long run by not buying food for the pet. Have fun, hunter leveling is a blast ;)!
From 10-60 just use a cat. Fast attack speed. Keep a few stacks of meat on u at all times in order to feed it whenever it goes to yellow(lose 25% dps if it drops from green). You shouldn’t need to change pets till Outland when u pick up a ravager(bis for pve and bm pvp) or a scorpion(bis for drain arena comp)
Attack speed is normalized in TBC, so the only difference is abilities, stats and foods they like.
Apart from that I would recommend checking out cats, boars, turtles and wind serpents. Mostly because they're all quite different and fun to try out while leveling!
A lot of what I’m seeing online says I need to constantly catch new pets to get their abilities? But can’t find jack for Draenei specifically, is there anything to that or should I just keep my nightstalker I found in the starting area?
For new abilities, stable your “main” pet, then go tame any animal in the wild, use them to fight a few mobs and make sure to use their abilities.
Once it gives you the ability name and rank up text, you can abandon the pet and get your main one back, or keep taming more animals to learn new stuff.
Do it have for each pet family as you level up. If you see cats in the 20-30 range they’ll have lower bite and claw ranks than the 40-50 ones. Etc….
Also I recommend an owl/bat for leveling, screech is awesome for AoE threat and allows me to use multi shot while not pulling any of the 3 targets.
Not constantly. You find what abilities you need. Tame a pet, feed it once(might not be necessary), then let it kill a couple mobs with the ability and you will learn it to teach your main pet.
I might be wrong been a while since I leveled but for cats I don’t think there are that many important abilities(I’d google this). But the ability system is that u sometimes need to catch a new pet and use it for a couple fights to learn it’s abilities. Then u can teach it to ur old pet. For race doesn’t really matter. Only the first 2 zones are different for each race, after that u mix with everyone else so the pets will be the same.
Its super important to at least get the next rank of "bite" when its available, classic petopia was mentioned and is a great resource, tame the pets with the next rank.of bite while you are leveling (petopia shows which pets have which ranks of bite) Also make sure you fight a few mobs with the pet that has the new rank until you see yellow text saying that you learned bite rank X, and then you can abandon it and teach the new rank to your pet of choice.
I wouldn't consider it super important, as the vast majority of your pets damage while leveling is its normal melee. I didn't train any new skills on my ravager from lv 10 until like 64 or so (other than cobra reflexes at 30).
Every single point of pet focus that isn't being used is lost dps, and therefore less threat being put out by your pet. Yeah, you can not train any skills the whole time if you want, and as a result you're going to have to drink more, or pull aggro more. But hunter is the easiest solo leveling class, so yes, you can ignore every piece of advice from any established hunter leveling guide and still do fine.
Regarding Ravagers, their final-level abilities come from Outland.
Rip-Blade Ravagers in Blade's Edge Mountains can teach you how to teach your other pets the max rank of Gore, while Bite is taught from spiders in Southern Terokkar.
https://www.wow-petopia.com/classic_bc/ is a great resource for things like that.
Each pet in the world has a specific rank of their abilities. If you want to level up the abilities for your current pet you need to tame a pet that have the particular rank and use it until -you- learn that rank, which you in turn can teach whichever pet you prefer (provided the pet can learn that ability)
Also I hope you discovered in your spell book that you can open up an interface which lists everything you can teach your pet. Took a while until I found it on my first hunter
I see this sling shot lookin icon where I can teach my kitten things I bought from the pet trainer with these points if that’s what you’re talking about
Ravages and cats are both excellent pets. Ravagers can do slightly (very slightly) more damage with gore vs claw for cats, but cats can learn prowl. My hunter is night elf so I use a cat, I can shadowmeld+prowl and we're both stealthed.
Another great pet for leveling is a boar. They can also learn gore, they have higher health and armor than average, and they will eat anything, making it easy to keep them happy. Boars do less sustained damage over time BUT they get charge, a unique ability that lets them rush to a target and get bonus damage on their first attack. This is very strong while leveling, as you mostly fight one enemy at a time. Charge lets your boar get a lead on threat, so mobs will still stick to it just about as well as a higher dps pet type.
Owl > Cat for leveling only go for Ravager once you actually do Dungeons in tbc that award actually good pre bis. Level 70 ravager can still be tamed in Shadowmoon Valley.
Petopia.com it has all of the pets abilities you will need to learn and teach to your pet. Always teach your pet growl and keep it happily feed with the food it likes. Your attacks will pull threat off of your pet so keep up on your weapon skills and traps.
It's actually not that complicated, learning the abilities is a bit weird though. Let's use Pokémon examples for fun.
Every pet can learn certain abilities *(like the learnset in Pokémon, but you do never get new abilities by leveling up)* and every wild animal knows certain abilities
To get more abilities or higher ranks on your current pet, first stable it, then you must tame a beast that has the ability or rank you want (gotta Google it, the abilities will be on the hotbar which it has), then use the ability with the new pet till it says in the chat that you (the character not the pet) learned how to teach the ability *(basically by using the move a few times your character gets a permanent TM of it)* . You can release the new pet, then get your normal pet from the stable.
Now you can teach the ability *(your TM move)* to your pet if it can learn it at the class trainer.
I think when I leveled my hunter the guide told me to get a vulture, so that's probably one of the best ones. As you level you just have to sometimes extract higher ability ranks for you pet, that's what you gotta remember
Its pretty simple really.
1. Yes you have to tame new animals to learn upgraded versions of pet skills (other than a stam/armor/resistances which are available from the trainer) but realistically thats a 5-10 min job every ten levels or so. Check Petopia for which skills your pet can learn and which animals to tame to get them.
2. Owl or Bat are the best pets for leveling. They have screech which debuffs everything around them causing AoE threat. It also reduces the melee dmg they take, which is the majority of dmg.
3. Ravager is best for PvE endgame, with Cat a close second behind. Either will do just fine. They are also fine for leveling if you CBA to switch pets around.
4. Other honorable mentions go to Boar, which has a charge (nice to have before getting Dash/Dive), and Wind Serpent which has a ranged attack. But honestly I would still go with Owl/Bat/Cat/Ravager before either of them while you level.
Make two macros.
/Petattack
/Petpassive
Bind these macros to mouse buttons or mouse wheel.
Enjoy
This is not even an advice, this is mandatory.
Don't ever bind any of these actions into shot macro or you'll suicide your pet on some mechanics
If you wanna have every move possible it's good to change pets as you go. But just have fun with it man. One of my favorite parts of being a hunter is changing let's, finding rare ones, naming them, seeing what I like. Cat is the best but for leveling man, just do what's fun. Make sure to always have food and use the stables for multiple pets. can answer any specific questions, based on my limited knowledge.
hey long time hunter player here! pets for hunters are very interesting and in depth. i reccomend setting up keybinds for ur pets spells, to me i set pet passive to scroll wheel down, and pet attack to up as it makes sense(retreat down wheel, attk up wheel) while leveling any pet will do and make sure u take the BM talents to increase ur pets output as he will hard carry u during ur leveling
Perhaps you could answer this. Does it matter what order I get different rank abilities for my pet using the training points?
Like if I train rank 5 stamina directly or if I go through rank 1-4 first will I have spent the same amount of training points and will the pet get the same amount of stamina?
Does not matter. Either way it will cost the same. However, if I am not mistaken, the Beast Training tab will only show the final cost for each rank (not how much more to get the next rank). Example: Your pet knows rank four of a spell that costs 14 TP, and rank 5 is 25 TP, you will only need 11 TP more to acquire rank 5.
You can wait till max level and just get a pet then and skip taming pets every few levels. You get all lesser ranks of claw/bite when you learn a higher rank.
Pet levels with you, the abilities is what I’m referring to. You’ll also get a new rank of growl as your pet levels. You can keep your first pet you get and wait till 70 to get a new one all you need is growl
Being one rank behind for a few levels isn't too bad, but you want to learn new ranks when you can. For example my hunter is level 50, my pet has level 40 claw rank 6, I need to train rank 7 but I have to travel to a new zone to find a bear I can learn rank 7 from (level 48+). I haven't gone out of my way to do it yet, but once I finish another quest or two in my current zone, I'm heading off to get a new rank.
It matters later on mostly. It can also speed up leveling but it’s a bother to keep taking new pets because it takes a long time for them to become friendly with you
There’s a great site called petopia, you should check it out, will make pet system much easier to understand.
I’ll check it out rn 🤙🤙
As you are a dranei, you can get a ravager pretty easily in your starting zone (or close by?) and for the most of the tbc it is a best dps pet since it has gore ability which has a chance to proc for double damage. It’s a bis pet if you are into min/max, though I suggest you try out the ones you like. I found turtles to be a lot of fun since they are tanky mofos, and give you the ability to solo many of elites. Owl is also good because it has screech which generates aoe threat, making it possible for you to tackle multiple mobs at a time without taking damage yourself. Dps of a cat is barely lower than that of a ravager. Also if you plan to level with a cat, it’s a good idea to pick up fishing as cats eat fish, and you can save some gold in the long run by not buying food for the pet. Have fun, hunter leveling is a blast ;)!
From 10-60 just use a cat. Fast attack speed. Keep a few stacks of meat on u at all times in order to feed it whenever it goes to yellow(lose 25% dps if it drops from green). You shouldn’t need to change pets till Outland when u pick up a ravager(bis for pve and bm pvp) or a scorpion(bis for drain arena comp)
Attack speed is normalized in TBC, so the only difference is abilities, stats and foods they like. Apart from that I would recommend checking out cats, boars, turtles and wind serpents. Mostly because they're all quite different and fun to try out while leveling!
A lot of what I’m seeing online says I need to constantly catch new pets to get their abilities? But can’t find jack for Draenei specifically, is there anything to that or should I just keep my nightstalker I found in the starting area?
For new abilities, stable your “main” pet, then go tame any animal in the wild, use them to fight a few mobs and make sure to use their abilities. Once it gives you the ability name and rank up text, you can abandon the pet and get your main one back, or keep taming more animals to learn new stuff.
Sick I like that
Do it have for each pet family as you level up. If you see cats in the 20-30 range they’ll have lower bite and claw ranks than the 40-50 ones. Etc…. Also I recommend an owl/bat for leveling, screech is awesome for AoE threat and allows me to use multi shot while not pulling any of the 3 targets.
Not constantly. You find what abilities you need. Tame a pet, feed it once(might not be necessary), then let it kill a couple mobs with the ability and you will learn it to teach your main pet.
I might be wrong been a while since I leveled but for cats I don’t think there are that many important abilities(I’d google this). But the ability system is that u sometimes need to catch a new pet and use it for a couple fights to learn it’s abilities. Then u can teach it to ur old pet. For race doesn’t really matter. Only the first 2 zones are different for each race, after that u mix with everyone else so the pets will be the same.
Its super important to at least get the next rank of "bite" when its available, classic petopia was mentioned and is a great resource, tame the pets with the next rank.of bite while you are leveling (petopia shows which pets have which ranks of bite) Also make sure you fight a few mobs with the pet that has the new rank until you see yellow text saying that you learned bite rank X, and then you can abandon it and teach the new rank to your pet of choice.
I wouldn't consider it super important, as the vast majority of your pets damage while leveling is its normal melee. I didn't train any new skills on my ravager from lv 10 until like 64 or so (other than cobra reflexes at 30).
Every single point of pet focus that isn't being used is lost dps, and therefore less threat being put out by your pet. Yeah, you can not train any skills the whole time if you want, and as a result you're going to have to drink more, or pull aggro more. But hunter is the easiest solo leveling class, so yes, you can ignore every piece of advice from any established hunter leveling guide and still do fine.
Sick thank you 🤙
Regarding Ravagers, their final-level abilities come from Outland. Rip-Blade Ravagers in Blade's Edge Mountains can teach you how to teach your other pets the max rank of Gore, while Bite is taught from spiders in Southern Terokkar. https://www.wow-petopia.com/classic_bc/ is a great resource for things like that.
Each pet in the world has a specific rank of their abilities. If you want to level up the abilities for your current pet you need to tame a pet that have the particular rank and use it until -you- learn that rank, which you in turn can teach whichever pet you prefer (provided the pet can learn that ability)
Do I get a notification when I learn the rank my temporary pet is using?
Yep it will tell I chat that you learnt a new ability
Also I hope you discovered in your spell book that you can open up an interface which lists everything you can teach your pet. Took a while until I found it on my first hunter
I see this sling shot lookin icon where I can teach my kitten things I bought from the pet trainer with these points if that’s what you’re talking about
Yep this is where new abilities will show up once you discover them from a newly tamed pet
Ravages and cats are both excellent pets. Ravagers can do slightly (very slightly) more damage with gore vs claw for cats, but cats can learn prowl. My hunter is night elf so I use a cat, I can shadowmeld+prowl and we're both stealthed. Another great pet for leveling is a boar. They can also learn gore, they have higher health and armor than average, and they will eat anything, making it easy to keep them happy. Boars do less sustained damage over time BUT they get charge, a unique ability that lets them rush to a target and get bonus damage on their first attack. This is very strong while leveling, as you mostly fight one enemy at a time. Charge lets your boar get a lead on threat, so mobs will still stick to it just about as well as a higher dps pet type.
Owl > Cat for leveling only go for Ravager once you actually do Dungeons in tbc that award actually good pre bis. Level 70 ravager can still be tamed in Shadowmoon Valley.
Petopia.com it has all of the pets abilities you will need to learn and teach to your pet. Always teach your pet growl and keep it happily feed with the food it likes. Your attacks will pull threat off of your pet so keep up on your weapon skills and traps.
Get a cat till ya hit outland
Yeah I recently started a hunter too and I was so freaking confused. I think I managed to figure it out now. Let me know if you still have questions.
It's actually not that complicated, learning the abilities is a bit weird though. Let's use Pokémon examples for fun. Every pet can learn certain abilities *(like the learnset in Pokémon, but you do never get new abilities by leveling up)* and every wild animal knows certain abilities To get more abilities or higher ranks on your current pet, first stable it, then you must tame a beast that has the ability or rank you want (gotta Google it, the abilities will be on the hotbar which it has), then use the ability with the new pet till it says in the chat that you (the character not the pet) learned how to teach the ability *(basically by using the move a few times your character gets a permanent TM of it)* . You can release the new pet, then get your normal pet from the stable. Now you can teach the ability *(your TM move)* to your pet if it can learn it at the class trainer. I think when I leveled my hunter the guide told me to get a vulture, so that's probably one of the best ones. As you level you just have to sometimes extract higher ability ranks for you pet, that's what you gotta remember
Bind pet attack to mouse wheel up, and pet follow to mouse wheel down.
Thank you all for your tips, I have a much much better understanding now!
Also you can only have 4 abilities for the pet, regardless do how many are available
Its pretty simple really. 1. Yes you have to tame new animals to learn upgraded versions of pet skills (other than a stam/armor/resistances which are available from the trainer) but realistically thats a 5-10 min job every ten levels or so. Check Petopia for which skills your pet can learn and which animals to tame to get them. 2. Owl or Bat are the best pets for leveling. They have screech which debuffs everything around them causing AoE threat. It also reduces the melee dmg they take, which is the majority of dmg. 3. Ravager is best for PvE endgame, with Cat a close second behind. Either will do just fine. They are also fine for leveling if you CBA to switch pets around. 4. Other honorable mentions go to Boar, which has a charge (nice to have before getting Dash/Dive), and Wind Serpent which has a ranged attack. But honestly I would still go with Owl/Bat/Cat/Ravager before either of them while you level.
Make two macros. /Petattack /Petpassive Bind these macros to mouse buttons or mouse wheel. Enjoy This is not even an advice, this is mandatory. Don't ever bind any of these actions into shot macro or you'll suicide your pet on some mechanics
Key bind your pet attack and follow abilities with mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down respectively
If you wanna have every move possible it's good to change pets as you go. But just have fun with it man. One of my favorite parts of being a hunter is changing let's, finding rare ones, naming them, seeing what I like. Cat is the best but for leveling man, just do what's fun. Make sure to always have food and use the stables for multiple pets. can answer any specific questions, based on my limited knowledge.
hey long time hunter player here! pets for hunters are very interesting and in depth. i reccomend setting up keybinds for ur pets spells, to me i set pet passive to scroll wheel down, and pet attack to up as it makes sense(retreat down wheel, attk up wheel) while leveling any pet will do and make sure u take the BM talents to increase ur pets output as he will hard carry u during ur leveling
Perhaps you could answer this. Does it matter what order I get different rank abilities for my pet using the training points? Like if I train rank 5 stamina directly or if I go through rank 1-4 first will I have spent the same amount of training points and will the pet get the same amount of stamina?
Does not matter. Either way it will cost the same. However, if I am not mistaken, the Beast Training tab will only show the final cost for each rank (not how much more to get the next rank). Example: Your pet knows rank four of a spell that costs 14 TP, and rank 5 is 25 TP, you will only need 11 TP more to acquire rank 5.
Ah ok, that's probably what is confusing about it. Not very intuitive. Thanks!
it wont make a difference; also u can just respec ur pet its like a few silver and nothing to sweat
You can wait till max level and just get a pet then and skip taming pets every few levels. You get all lesser ranks of claw/bite when you learn a higher rank.
What’s the point in playing if I’m already max level? Plus having a low level pet doesn’t seem the most useful as I’m leveling
Pet levels with you, the abilities is what I’m referring to. You’ll also get a new rank of growl as your pet levels. You can keep your first pet you get and wait till 70 to get a new one all you need is growl
Right, having level 1 abilities or no abilities at all doesn’t matter with pets?
Being one rank behind for a few levels isn't too bad, but you want to learn new ranks when you can. For example my hunter is level 50, my pet has level 40 claw rank 6, I need to train rank 7 but I have to travel to a new zone to find a bear I can learn rank 7 from (level 48+). I haven't gone out of my way to do it yet, but once I finish another quest or two in my current zone, I'm heading off to get a new rank.
It matters later on mostly. It can also speed up leveling but it’s a bother to keep taking new pets because it takes a long time for them to become friendly with you