And really all of this comes down to a tank type pet. As was posted before, if you have a high dps pet for raids and groups, you’ll want to pump avoidance and resistances to stay away from the aoe spells.

when i was around level 63 i tried a caster pet , the nether ray apart from being a little weaker than other pets the same level did its job i did not die and neither did my pet except when we were farming the naga and getting mobbed by several at once , those dam guards i soon learned needed to be killed fast and as most hunters will have found out there are some boss type elites that would kill any pet in a few hits anyway ,

the real choice in pets is just on looks or if you are doing pvp then the choices in some pets like boars does make sense ,

the way the pet stats have been done means all pets can be made just about equal except for the damage they do , but as far as i can tell it makes so little difference the damage the pet does still works out the same as it just takes a little longer for some to help kill the mob , i think to many hunters look at the pet families stats and think wow that one has good health or armour or damage , the real truth is the pet holds aggro off the hunter and we do the real damage , for me until a hunter can get the dash talent at 30+ the boar is the fastest pet out there at low level and i like that speed as to watch a pet slowly run to the mob is soul destroying , but then again i have seen a 70 hunter with her ? pet on prowl and that did seem so surreal to me , a little like watching paint drying and just as exciting , i can understand it in pvp or in an instance or perhaps picking out just 1 mob from in a group but not in normal play

This usually gives my pets a lot more “resistance” (pun intended!) to a broad range of magic schools. This not only stops some of the caster damage, it also has the advantage that some effects such as sheep, sleep, fear, frost nova and other ways of CC have a very good chance of being resisted thus preventing the pet from being useless until a proper Mend Pet kicks in and “heals” the effect over. It also allows to farm dragons and other mobs a LOT better! Every time I think about the experience with Someone farming some orange elite dragons and a nearby hunter trying to do the same and failing miserably! There’s no money that can pay that! :)

I too have used the 2.3.2 faster pet level speed! In just 2 night’s play (under 2 hours each), I managed to bring my 53 cat to 60! For a while, I thought of replacing (read: help Gato through his first molt!) for a Wintersaber the same color of the Wintersaber mount, but, even with the extended XP, that’s still 160+ turnins to get to Exalted so I’ll leave that to when I’m REALLY bored! I’ll probably try some early TBC instance (aka: Hellfire Ramparts!) when both me and cat get to 63 and see how it goes!

BTW: I leveled around 1/2 level or less while grinding my cat from 53 to 60! So that’s 7 levels for Gato and 0.5 for me! Not bad. Means that most likely one can be with a same level pet in the early 10% or less after dinging, instead of having the pet ding half-way through!