* 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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Greetz Alvar