RFC: Pet Resistances
RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on which resistances are useful for pets, and when.
It used to be that I ignored resistances on my pets entirely. I trained Natural Armor all the way up, plus whatever ranks I could afford of Great Stamina, but I skipped all the resistances. There wasn’t a good reason; that was just how I did things.
Now lately I’ve been doing some playing around with pet resistances, but it’s difficult for me to tell exactly how well they stack up — especially since I only solo quest and nothing else. So today I want to pick your brains!
As with the other FRC topics, I’m going to start with a list of questions. But feel free to comment freeform, especially if I seem to have missed the point with my questions.
- Is training your pet with resistance skills a good idea for solo questing or grinding? If so, what resistances are most valuable for solo play and why?
- Are resistance skills useful for grouping? If so, which ones are best?
- And how about PvP? Do resistances really matter? Which ones?
- Is there a base level that you train all your resistances at no matter what? (For example, do you always get at least Rank 2 in the resistance skills?)
- If so, does this base level change depending on what you are doing (solo, raiding, PvP, etc.)?
- How often do you respec your pet to change resistances?
- Outside of the pet resistance skills, how important is the resistance that the pet gets from the hunter? (Remember that pets inherit 40% of the hunter’s resistances.)
As always, thanks for all your help!
Table of Contents for Series: Requests For Comments
- RFC: Raiding Pets
- RFC: Arena Pets
- RFC: Battleground Pets
- RFC: Pet Resistances
23 Comments
For PVP you might need full out nature and frost resistance to avoid your pet getting CC’ed
Thanks for posting this I have been posting on all the WOW websites and I have not got a conclusive answer to the questions. I await the info, keep up your great work. Thanks
Mize
Great question. This is one that I have researched myself, but not been able to find a good answer. I haven’t done a lot of instances, but I have found that in BG’s and soloing, my pet tends to die more specced with resistances than stamina and armor.
I guess I understand the Nature and Frost resistances for CC purposes, but when I am in AV, and my pet gets stomped on and dies, I don’t see this outweighing more stamina and armor.
Any advice on this topic would be very appreciated.
BTW, I tamed Uhk’loc last night! Woohoo! This was my 3rd time camping out for him, and just as I had told myself to give it 30 more minutes, he appeared!
Resistance skills are very helpful in ANY situation, because it is always better if the pet is not stuck with those nasty spell effects like freeze, shadow dots, burns, poisons, etc. It just slows her down, hurts her, or sometimes puts her out of the fight completely. And it just gives a nice feeling when seeing a frost mage or mob cast her manabar dry and all the “resist” messages floating across the screen.
I always train Rank 3 on all Resists, but you could skip Nature a bit IF you always put up Aspect of Nature when fighting mobs that use nature based attacks. This gets extremely tedious, so I just take Rank 3 and keep up AotH. It’s always rank 3, because with lower ranks a lot still gets through, and higher ranks are too expensive for the extra protection to be worth it IMHO. With Rank 3 you will have enough points left to use for those 4 active skills, and Cobra reflexes and Avoidance 2 (which as a combo is sometimes more effective than just a resist).
I know some people have pets with different resistances maxxed for certain Instances/Raids, and this works very well for single resist areas like Molten Core (Fire) or Zul’Gurub (Nature), and duo-resist areas like Black Wing Lair (fire/shadow), Naxx (frost/shadow). But in BC you often find one mob using shadow a lot, and the mob in the next room living it up with poisons, and a third mob using frost, fire and arcane at random. This happens in both raids and normal instances.
Another method is respeccing resistances when needed, but not many raiders/pugs will look kindly on a hunter that runs out after every boss fight to respec his pet for the next fight. It will get tedious real quickly and expensive if you start doing it more than once a day, even for solo players.
The resistance bonus your pet gets from you is a nice bonus, but with Rank 3 as a base she will often start out with a higher resistance than you in your resist gear. And most hunters don’t wear resist gear unless it is for a special fight or a single area.
One thing to keep in mind is to always have your pet buffed when grouping. Most people I group with do this automatically (I have trained them well ;) ), and the Group Buffs automatically hit the pets. Gift of the Wild is a special case, because your pets will have resist coming out of her ears with that spell: her own innate resists, her own bonus from GotW, and the bonus from your resists with the addition of GotW. One spell, two targets and 140% effect on the pet… now that’s value for mana.
I have a pet Owl, Wind Serpent and Cat. I keep resistances at Rank 3 for all of them and I don’t think I’ve ever respecced my pet. As mentioned above, Rank 3 provides a reasonable amount of resistance without being so costly as to cause me to skimp on other skills like Cobra, Avoidance and a relevant focus dump. The other training points I distribute between Armor and Stamina.
And, casters really don’t dig those resist messages!
I spend most of my WoW time doing BG PVP, where I like the resistances so I don’t have to pay too much attention to my pet and can let them chew which ever face seems tastiest (though I draw the line at Undead - no eating the reanimated flesh!). For example: leave my pet at the bottom of an AV bunker, run to the top and shoot would-be cappers or anything passing by, while my Wind Serpent (Ruin) toasts anything trying to enter (which is incidentally why I like Lightning Breath - the sound easily alerts me to enemies which may have snuck in under my tracking radar).
Assuming that resistances for pets work in exactly the same way as resistances for PC characters, and assuming 1-on-1 battles, damage mitigation will always be better served by Stamina than by resistances. In fact Stamina is usually a better choice than Armor as well. This is because resistances and armor essentially act as Damage Reduction when applied to damage effects such as direct damage spells or a sword attack. Damage Reduction can be viewed as +HP because it is HP that you otherwise wouldn’t have if you didn’t get the Damage Reduction in place. The amount of +HP gained from Stamina is pretty well always more than the amount of effective +HP you get as a result of Damage Reduction from resistances or Armor. If memory serves, it takes roughly 200 points of armor to match the +HP effectiveness of 1 point of Stamina (on average… Damage Reduction due to Armor changes based on your level, with higher levels rendering Armor less effective than it is at lower levels). On top of this, +HP from Stamina is usable against all damage types, whereas armor is only vs. physical and resistances are only vs. their specific damage type, such as shadow.
The differences come in when you’re up against multiple simultaneous targets. If you add a second target, then the effectiveness of Armor doubles, and resistances would do so as well.
The other thing to consider is CC effects. If your pet is placed out of combat in some way, then not only does your DPS drop drastically as a Hunter, but you’re also more likely to take personal damage yourself rather than your pet tanking for you. This is more difficult to heal, because unless you’re a Draenei, you don’t have a personal self-heal ability that you can use in combat.
Now you said that you do almost nothing except solo questing, which means that you should usually be able to avoid adds and keep your fights limited to 1-2 enemies at a time. If you’re effectively using your own CC abilities such as freezing trap, then your pet shouldn’t be tanking more than 1 enemy at a time. This being the case, Stamina would be your better choice.
If you want to check the math itself for Damage Reduction from armor or resistances, look up the formulas on wowwiki.com. As to resisting CC effects, you’ll have to decide for yourself if your pet falls victim to them often enough to justify spending the training points for resistances to avoid them. But you also have to keep in mind that the higher level your enemy is, the more resistance you need to be able to successfully resist effects, so low resistances are going to be much less effective than maxed ones. If you find you suffer because of CC effects, then you need to try and find out the minimum resistance your pet would need to effectively avoid them. If you find that you can’t reach that level of resistance, then training your pet’s resistances might be a waste anyway, unless you can supplement them by enhancing your own resistances as well (remember that your pet gains roughly 40% of your resistances added to their own).
That’s my 2cp anyway.
I have been looking around for an answer too, without much luck - thank you Mania! I find, from personal experience, that shadow resist is key - there’s nothing worse than having your pet run off and draw aggro, no matter where you are! In an instance, that is one of the main causes of wipes, and in BG I’d rather have my pet frozen in place for a short while than running off and catching the attention of another player. Other than that, though, I’m really not sure what to spec in terms of resist. I have a beautiful carrion bird (Trachera, named her Gemini :o) for pvp - screech, dive, bite, and claw, as well as cobra and avoidance, and then stam = great pvp pet. I chose stam over armor because stam will make it live longer no matter what hits it, while armor just helps against non-magical hits… I think? I just can’t figure out the resistances. Frost, nature, shadow?
I have my solo pet (boar) trained without any resistances, and max armor I think. (and then a few points in stamina)
My raid pets (ravager/wind serpent) have rank 3 of all resistances.
I never bother to respec. My pets seem to do fine with that spec. If you want to go through the hassle (nearest pet trainer is WHERE you said???), respeccing with rank 5 resists for specific instances is worth it.
Playing as a PVE Beastmaster, I generally just give the pets rank 2 of all the resists. Anything more and there aren’t many points left for the other skills, anything less and the magic types start doing noticeably more damage. Crowd control effects haven’t been a noticeable problem either, the pet has agro anyhow, and improved mend pet removes some of the effects if needed.
As far as armor vs stamina, my man Kresh takes full Natural Armor where ever he goes. Even with a modest armor bonus from unimpressive green gear, he’s mitigating 55% of all physical damage. If things really get dicey Shell Shield goes up to mitigate 50% of the remainder. With a low stamina bonus, mend pet has him back in shape in no time.
I’ve been playing Marksman Hunters lately and intentionally pulling aggro off my pets. So, I’ve been ignoring armor in favor of stamina and resists. So far, I’ve found Nature Resist the most useful since most DoTs I run into this early have been poisons.
I think all of my pet have resists, most have 3 in all areas, some have 4-5 in a specific area, and I tend to mix that amongst pets, so if I know I face ice magic I take pet #1 but if there’s a lot of fire, I take pet #2.
I’m not sure if much thought went into this, other than that fire/ice seem most common on mobs, followed by nature and shadow and hardly any arcane (yes, there’s always exceptions ;).
Like you Mania, I am a solo hunter obsessed with pets. I find that when I am farming or questing, I don’t miss the resists at all, as the enemy dies before it can truly cast a great deal on my pet. As a marksman, I can also silence it if necessary. I have tried using stamina over armor and generally the armor boost works better for me. I don’t know the numbers and haven’t done a lot experimentation on it, but I find that my owl with maxed natural armor and the rest in stamina (minus the active skills and cobra obviously) lasts much longer against an elite enemy than my wolf who is specced for raiding with resists and stamina. No I don’t raid but I always think, hey what the heck I might try it sometime. I am a level 70 mm/bm specced more for pve than pvp with no elite gear (only blue), and I am basing my opinion on my experiences soloing elites for quests in Outland.
Please don’t bite the newb, guys.
Alrighty, fun ’splainin’ time!
1.) Resistances aren’t useful for solo play, unless you know you will be fighting alot of mobs that do a particular type of magic damage.
For example: When grinding for motes of fire and air on the Elemental Plateau it would be a good idea to give your pet up to Rank 3 of both Nature and Fire resistance.
2.) In groups resistances are only useful if they will help your pet survive better as an off-tank for the party or keep it from dying to area effect damage in certain boss fights. However, there are very few instances where this is the case, so you’re better off just going with stamina, armor, and Avoidance Rank 2 most of the time.
3.) Resistances can mean the difference between life and death for your pet in PvP, especially in the Arenas. They are mostly useful for avoiding certain crowd controll abilities, especially Frost, Nature, and Shadow. You want to have up to Rank 3 of each of the following, in order of importance:
Shadow: Necessary for resisting Fear effects and most Warlock and Shadow specced Priest damage.
Nature: Keeps your pet out of Cyclone, Hibernate, and Entangling Roots greatly frustrating most Druids. Also lessens the damage of Elemental specced Shaman.
Frost: Used to avoid slowing and freezing effects commonly used by Mages, Shaman, and other Hunters.
Arcane: This one isn’t necessary. It helps keep your pet from being Polymorphed by Mages.
Fire: Worthless unless you fight alot of fire mages.
4.) There is no minimum level I like to keep my pet’s resistances at, but they tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of stat. Having Rank 1 of all resistances is barely noticable, whereas having one of them at the highest rank will make your pet almost unkillable by mobs that mainly use that type of damage. That being said, going above Rank 3 in a resistance starts to be very expensive pointwise and is generally not a good idea.
5.) I don’t usually respecc my pets for resistances very often. My soloing pet doesn’t need them, so it doesn’t have them. My PvP pet has Rank 3 each of Frost, Nature, and Shadow and doesn’t really need anything else. If I ever start raiding, my raiding/pure damage pet will probably only respecc for resistance specific fights, like Hydross.
6.) Resistances a pet gets from the Hunter aren’t particularly important from what I’ve seen, except possibly on resistance fights in raiding where you and your pet need some of a certain kind of resistance or you’ll die from the boss’s area effect attacks. Even then, I expect giving your pet Avoidance Rank 2 is usually enough to keep it alive.
Hope this helps! :)
Only my Obsidian Raptor has resistances and it works well. He has max stamina, cobra reflexes, avoidance, claw rank 9, dash rank 3, natural armor rank 4 and all resistances rank 1. After all, only two points left.
My Ghost Wolf and my Ghost Saber have no resistances, but i use them only for grinding and sometimes for pvp.
Sorry for my horrible english…^^
Greetz Alvar
The following applies for 10-25 man raids ONLY, but it seems everyone else has covered the solo/pvp aspects nicely.
On an average raid, I go in having nothing trained in great stam, nat. armor, or resists. Yes, this does mean respeccing my pet before every raid if necessary, but I just see it as one of my unavoidable raiding costs. On the bright side though, I’ve never had to pay more than 1g for it, as the cost resets pretty fast.
The only times I train anything for my pet are fights where I know that either:
a) My pet will be taking a lot of magic damage that absolutely cannot or cannot easily be avoided (hex lord, void reaver)
b) There is a good potential that my pet could take a large amount of random burst damage (solarian, eagle boss)
c) The fight has a potential of catching my pet in an area of AoE damage that could take a couple seconds to get out of, in which case I opt for stam instead of resists (gruul, rage winterchill)
Since this is only about resists, I will just list the bosses that I train resists in, not stam.
Bosses I ALWAYS train max resists for:
Hex Lord Malacrass (shadow)
Void Reaver (arcane)
Mother Shahraz (shadow)
Bosses I SOMETIMES train max resists for:
Al’ar (fire)
Eagle Boss (nature)
Dragonhawk Boss (fire)
Rage Winterloot (frost)
That’s all I can think of for now.
IMHO - No resistances for soloing, only for PvP and Raiding. Health and Armor are a far better grab than some minimal resistance to elements you will not fight on a regular basis. Besides, most elementals and element-using mobs do more damage with melee than with their respective powers of their element.
“Is training your pet with resistance skills a good idea for solo questing or grinding? If so, what resistances are most valuable for solo play and why?”
Depends where you intend to farm or grind and how high a lvl your targets are. Take for example you are killing fire elementals while in black rock depths then yes you will probably want fire resistance since a lot of the elementals will rely on fire attacks. As for what level of protection, I base my resistance choice on what lvl the enemies will be the compare it to the lvl requirement your pet must be for a particular resistance lvl. If the enemies are lvl 60 then i need rank 5 fire resistance. That way my pet’s resistance lvl is high enough that all fire attacks at that lvl or below it will be resisted. If on the other hand im going to a place like kara and im gonna see a lot of shadow damage than probably I want not only give my pet the max shadow resistance but also stock up on shadow resistance myself which will in turn filter down to pet.
Are resistance skills useful for grouping? If so, which ones are best?
Usually nature, arcane, and shadow work well together at low range if you are facing a diverse amount of spell caster types but fire and frost often do not need to be together unless you intend to be doing pvp battles with mages.
And how about PvP? Do resistances really matter? Which ones?
Usually the unholy trinity of nature, shadow, and arcane is pretty good against priests, hunters, paly, lock, druids, and shaman but if you encounter a mage then its critical to have good fire and ice resistance should a mage decide to try to use a combination method to determine which works the best against your pet. If both are resisted than a mage is more likely to make a run for it if they realize your pet will resist everything they throw at em.
Is there a base level that you train all your resistances at no matter what? (For example, do you always get at least Rank 2 in the resistance skills?)
If so, does this base level change depending on what you are doing (solo, raiding, PvP, etc.)?
I try to base my resistance choices on what I know I will likely encounter but mostly also on what I know will probably be the most likely thing to kill my pet. If going to blackrock then I want good fire resistance cause fire elementals will probably cause considerable damage. If Im going to stratholm then I want good shadow protection cause scourge will use plenty of that. If Im going to dire maul then I probably want good arcane and nature protection. As for the lvl, its as I explained before. Match the lvl to the enemy compared to the lvl your pet must be for a particular resistance lvl. That way resistance is guarenteed to work without fail.
How often do you respec your pet to change resistances? Depends on if I intend on going to a place alot. If its a one time visit than a respec is not required but if Im soloing it or grinding on a long term basis than a resistance respec is definately on the menu.
Outside of the pet resistance skills, how important is the resistance that the pet gets from the hunter? (Remember that pets inherit 40% of the hunter’s resistances.)
This is actually blizzard’s way of making up for one massive fubar that they made when deciding the new abilities that hunters will get after 60. There is no more ranks after 5 which means after 60 it is your job to respec yourself in resistance so your pet also gets extra resistance. If you are gonna goto kara and face illidan than you sure as hell better have a ton of resistance and if you want your pet to survive more than just a few seconds than you sure as hell want your pet to have a very high amount of resistance otherwise it will last as long as a toad in a microwave. Splat! One less target for Illidan to kill.
I am mainly concerned with pvp issues. I find that my pets die less in pvp bg and arena with resistance.
I am following the advice of having resistance in shadow, nature, and frost for lessening cc of pet as that is where cc mainly comes from and cc is the biggest issue after death.
However, I really do not know if more than level 3 does not constitute wasting points because of diminishing returns. I wish there was time and a way to prove it to myself and others so as not to have to rely on the personal opinions and experiences of myself and others.
Right now I stop at level 3 and put the rest in stamina and the left over in armor. Of course, avoidance, cobra reflexes, dive or dash, and damage skills are first maxed out.
I am a Marksman PvP Spec but I have found mine and my pet’s spec to be equaly if not considerably applicable to PvE also.
I use a Cat (Hummar, Coru) for the highest possible in DPS. My first focus is on Stamina as the cat initialy is down by 2%, training in the highest rank. My second focus is on Armor. First, applied to PvE, my pet usualy holds aggro 96% of the time (depends on how you play) so armor is of importance. Second, applied to PvP, being a Marksman I keep my enemies at bay, frustrated they turn on my pet and this is where armor in PvP is important but second to Stamina as initialy the enemy’s focus is on me. I train in whatever rank of armor is available after training in the highest rank of stamina and the following pet spells below (as my pet already recieves a huge increase in armor from myself).
Aside from Stamina and Armor, Corbra Reflexes and Avoidance are a must IMO. Cobra Reflexes ultimately increases DPS, this applies to both PvE and PvP. Avoidance is more centered toward those in PvP and those running Instances but again ultimately you will run into many instances where Avoidance comes into play (reducing another aspect of damage done to your pet). I also train my pet in Bite (for additional damage), Dash (the sooner my pet reaches the enemy/starts to generate aggro, the better IMO) and Prowl (Which I find mostly to be applicable to PvP. If I were more focused on PvE I would probably go with a wolf with the previous spells swapping Prowl for Furious Howl).
As far as resistances, I do not recommend them unless you find yourself up against special circumstances*. So far I have increased my pets longevity (Stamina), Reduced Melee Damage (Armor), Reduced AoE Damage (Avoidance), Increased Damage Output (Cobra Reflexes, Bite) and added an Edge (Dash, Prowl/Furious Howl). I have found that unless you max out certain resistances you do not reduce magic damage (Not including AoE reduced by Avoidance) enough to make it worth skimping on your other avenues. To delve deeper though, lets say you are up against a caster or 2. Being a PvP Marksman there are several avenues you have to control your caster, Silencing Shot is always nice and Improved Concusive Shot’s daze is also a nice help. Ultimately though for any Hunter IMO, between you and your pet’s DPS output, if you keep Mend Pet applied and Viper Sting on the Caster, you should have No problem taking those casters down in no time at all**. IMO when you focus on resistances you are dragging out the battle and not taking advantage of the amount of damage your pet can output and avoiding some very useful Hunter spells.
*Special circumstances applies to Magic focused instances based on specific magic classes.
**If you think about it, while you and your pet are doing a considerable amount of DPS, your Viper Sting and the caster’s casted spells are quickly draining his/her mana. Soon you will be dealing with a caster with no mana (if he/she isn’t dead yet), forcing him to use melee (which because of your pets spec will do almost no damage, as we all know casters are no good at melee). Casters are already vulnerable to Melee (including ranged melee), so why would you not opt for more damage/longevity as that ultimately will end your battles quicker, well IMO of course.
P.S. At Lvl49 My pet and I do a combined 190 DPS, 110 of that DPS being my own, so if my pet does find himself stuck for a few seconds it realy isn’t a big deal and this is another instance where Dash comes in handy.
Really when going for Pet survivability, little will do better than more Stamina, this works especially nicely with Endurance training and Spirit Bond, as it’s firstly a buffer and very effective regen. Resistances tend to be the last on my lists of ‘useful’ pet skills, unless they are just for farming specific caster mobs, in which case I max them out. i.e. Fire for farming Black Dragons.
PvP has too many options to max out all the resistances you might need. Bestial Wrath is usually enough anti-cc for my pets, and you can keep Improved mend pet up to remove DoT’s and CC if BW is on CD.
Pet resistances… hmmm… good question.
Traditionally when levelling aa pet i went with rank 2 for all resistances except shadow, which i put on rank 3, with the remaining points going into great stamina. Rarely any points in armour, as the pets i use are either boars or ravagers - both heavily armoured.
Now that ive got L70 pets ive changed it slightly to Rank2 resistances accross the board. that combined with careful selection of other skills leaves points available for rank 10 stamina.
(eg choosing dash3, growl8, gore9 but not bite9 for a ravager)
And stamina is what keeps the pet alive. Im BM, so it stacks nicely with 5 points in the BM tree stamina tallent.
For a while i was doing lots of sunwell isle dailies, and the mobs did so much fire damage i respecced 1 ravager with rank5 fire resist. that helped a little.
I dont pvp, and generally rank2 resistance accross the board works well in instances and raids.
(This is paraphrased from something I’d previously posted on the Blizzard forums and my guild’s hunter class forums)
If we look at it from the point of view of “how much magical damage does it take to kill my pet?” point of view, Great Stamina (the main point sink for surviving non-physical damage if you aren’t going to get resistances) is 215 training points for +64 stamina (640-704 health depending on whether or not you have Endurance Training). If your pet has 5k health, this is about a 13% increase in the amount of damage needed to kill that pet. The more health your pet has (regardless of the source), the less the percentage increase in survivability from the extra stamina.
90 resist across the board (arcane/fire/frost/nature/shadow), on the other hand, will set you back 225 training points - pretty close to the same cost as the maximum rank of Great Stamina. Against a level 70 caster without any spell penetration gear, 90 resist will give you (90 / 350) * 75 = 19.3% reduction in damage taken*. Against a raid boss, the reduction will be (90 / 365) * 75 = 18.5%.
Even if we take the raid boss case, the amount of spell damage needed to kill a pet with 5k health is now somewhere around 6.1k (and with avoidance, that will actually be around 12.2k worth of AoE spell damage).
However, because it is a reduction in damage taken rather than a straight increase in health like Great Stamina, the spell resistance also multiplies the effectiveness of everything that increases the current health of your pet. Mend Pet ticks for 475 health - that becomes 582 more spell damage your pet can handle. A priest buffs you and your pet with +79 stamina - that’s 1357 to 1492 extra spell damage your pet can absorb (exact amount again depending on Endurance Training). A warrior Commanding Shouts for 1080 health - that’s like 1325 health for the pet if it is solely taking spell damage.
Finally, the resistances also increase the chance that all-or-nothing spells such as Frost Nova or Fear will fail completely.
Even without training Natural Armor or getting the Thick Hide talent, pets already have quite a bit of physical damage reduction (my old cat had 46% or so with 1 talent point in Thick Hide and 1 training point in Natural Armor and gear that wasn’t quite as good as what I have now - my current ravager and owl have around 49% and 48% respectively). If we assume a pet had 9000 armor from the combination of their base armor and scaling with the hunter’s gear, then the additional 1600 armor from max rank Natural Armor only increases the amount of physical damage they can handle by 8% or so**, and they’re still left fairly defenseless against non-physical damage.
So I think there’s a pretty strong case for taking resistances over the max ranks of Great Stamina or Natural Armor (and my personal preference is to take the resistances).
* Resistance formula taken from: http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Magical_resistance
** Based on Armor formula taken from: http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Armor
Missed the list of questions…
* Is training your pet with resistance skills a good idea for solo questing or grinding? If so, what resistances are most valuable for solo play and why?
I think so - without them, taking on caster mobs or demons and the like with lots of non-physical attacks can tear your pet apart in pretty quick order. However, because you meet a huge variety of mobs, I don’t recommend favouring any one resistance over the others.
* Are resistance skills useful for grouping? If so, which ones are best?
Very useful in groups. Firstly, most of the damage your pet will be taking is boss AoE damage, and most of that will be magical. The resistances (along with Avoidance) make the pet much easier to keep alive. Secondly, a resistance-specced pet can be a viable form of crowd-control for caster mobs, particularly AoE happy ones like the Darkcasters in Shattered Halls.
* And how about PvP? Do resistances really matter? Which ones?
Hunters in PvP are pretty brutal against the cloth wearing casters, and adding resistances to your pet not only reduces the damage they take, but also increases their chances to resist crowd control. Fire, frost and arcane are obviously useful against mages, fire and shadow against warlocks, shadow against priests and nature against druids and shaman. I believe nature resist can also help with rogue poisons.
* Is there a base level that you train all your resistances at no matter what? (For example, do you always get at least Rank 2 in the resistance skills?)
I get the other pet skills I want first (i.e. the pet’s active abilities like Dive, Claw and Screech on my new owl as well as Cobra Reflexes and Avoidance), then start working on the resistances (usually Rank 1 of everything, then Rank 2, then Rank 3 as the training points become available).
* If so, does this base level change depending on what you are doing (solo, raiding, PvP, etc.)?
I used to spec my soloing pet differently from my raiding pet (by skipping Avoidance on the soloing pet), but eventually decided there wasn’t any point - there are plenty of mobs you will encounter while soloing with hard-hitting frontal cone attacks that Avoidance will help your pet to survive.
* How often do you respec your pet to change resistances?
Never (unless I made a mistake in training it the first time). There’s sufficient variety in the fights I encounter that it has never seemed worthwhile to bother going back to a trainer and respeccing my pet for a specific fight.
* Outside of the pet resistance skills, how important is the resistance that the pet gets from the hunter? (Remember that pets inherit 40% of the hunter’s resistances.)
I imagine it could be significant in later raid fights involving full resist sets for most of the raid members. It’s also handy when your pet gets to double dip on resist buffs like Gift of the Wild and Aspect of the Wild. However, most of the time my pet’s resistances are significantly higher than my own (as a dwarf, my pet has 90 for most and 94 for Frost, I have 0 for most and 10 for Frost)
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