Yes, Demoralizing Screech is a nice little debuff to keep guys on my bird, coupled with Misdirection/Multi-Shot (though I turn it on when I’m fighting multiple mobs), and being a Ferocity pet now with Lick Your Wounds helps to keep aggression on my little bird when its near dead, he’s just so lovable.

Though, why are the black hawk/crow birds Carrion Birds, and the brown hawk/crow birds Birds of Prey? That doesn’t make any lick of sense to me… Sorta bums me that I’m probably the only hunter, who actually uses a black-feathered, non-BC/WotLK vulture. Ah well. PEACE!

However screech was definitely gimped in 3.0 – even with a 10 sec duration, changing it from a focus dump to a cooldown attack means that in a fight with multiple mobs there will be frequent gaps in debuff coverage, thanks to the drain of their new focus dump, and so your mend pet will pull aggro as often as not.

But as with wind serpents, dragonhawks and etc the desire to force all pets into a standardized cookie cutter mold has driven Blizzard to shoot down another perfectly good pet. I had some small hope that Ghostcrawlers team might be outgrowing that mentality when they gave cats a special exception, but it seems that was as far as they were willing to stray from Prime Directive 3.0.

So this is one more former carrion bird user recommending new or curious hunters just go with a gorilla.

In the past, the owl was my second pet (my solo/grinding pet, whereas i used a cat for instance/raiding.) Screech was the main reason, along with it being third on the dps charts (at 7% dmg; with claw instaed of bite, it proved more powerful over bats after the pet speed equality came in). Screech was a great aggro controller, being able to hold aggro on multiple mobs; not a great amount of aggro, but enough to stop them comming to me immediately after i click pet heal.

Nowadays, my owl has long sbeen abandoned. Im sure that dis-arm has a use, albeit limited with its cahnce of sucess and cooldown, but without screech it just wasnt the same. Everytime i use a pet ability: beastial wrath, intimidation or kill command, all surrounding mobs make a run for me, which i just dont want. Tanking multiple mobs is essential to efficent grinding and we all end up with adds sooner or later. To make matters worse, they reclass owls as cunning pets, taking damage down from 7% to 5%.

While the “carrion” birds of prey are now a dps pet and with screech, they seem a strong choice for the best all round pet.

Talents depend on whether your using the pet for solo or instances (carrions can do both now particulary well). So far, my experience comes with levlling, grinding and solo work. For this i highly recommend.

Bloodthirsty: having a 50% chance to restore 5% health per attack is unbelievable. With 2 second attacks: a 5% heal every 4 seconds. Also, the heal creates no threat at all for the hunter. Giving happiness to the pet also, that just means a whole loota more inventory space to not be taken up by food.

Charge and dash or dive: Having both means that almost always one of them will be usable everytime you approach a new mob. Vastly improveing kill efficiency.

Lick your wounds and heart of the phoenix: having both can almost make a pet invunerable, when they are with along with pet heal and bloodthirsty. Ive never met an elite outside an instance that i have not soloed.

Even with mobs hitting at 750-1000 a hit, using pet heal and bloodthirtsy will keep the pet alive a good 30 secs; use lick your wounds when they’re close to dead. Repeat the precedure with pet heal and the pet can die this time. Use heart of pheonix, then FD to wipe your aggro table, before continueing to pummel away.

If you are levelling BM spec (as every hunter should). Then longevity stands out as a key talent; reducing the cooldown of all pet abilities. Having growl and bite down to just 3.5 secs is an aggro magnet, while having lick your wounds down to just 2 minutes is awesome:

With constructive use of a freeze trap, or a bit of skilful kiting, the above technique with pet combat can be extended further by reusing lick wounds a second time. Thus giving your bog standard superpet the equivalent to 4X his own health.

What a shock, when I pulled DruidSlave out, set his talents, and found tat while his damage was dueiously increased, his ability to hold aggro (not, I may add, to *gain* it; he could get the initial aggro beautofully) was severely lacking. Since then, I have had to release him.

Even back then, however, tanks were very much against the Screech. One of my best friends even forbade I ever, *EVER* go into an instance with him with the bird for that reason. Please note: I never minded the sound; I actually rather liked it. But I can tell you that other people who get hold of one of these birds will find that others won’t like it nearly as much.

I do miss Corax, even though I have a love/hate relationship with the model (love the crow, hate the ears). The Northrend vulture model is pretty nice looking too (not the outland’s 2-headed space mutant), but they’re afflicted with “black wing” for me, so I doubt I’ll get one either.

When wrath hit i took full advantage of the new groups of pets in Northrend. Picked up some new cats, got to Dragon Blight were i ran into the carrions, figured what they hey and tamed one. He leveled with to 80 and “Spike” just hit 80 3 days ago. I love him, his screech works like a a taunt a tank uses, he holds agro just as good as the cats and hits like a truck. Plus I love watching him knock his target on there hineys!!

Unfortunately, I haven’t had enough experience in Wrath to judge the “new” Screech, and review it. But I love Tempest (my carrion bird), and she’s with me for good.

As an AOE threat generator, the Carrion Bird’s demoralizing screech is just as annoying but not quite as useful as the pre 3 screech. That is, it still aggros nearby neutral MOBs, but does not hold threat against heals as well. My pre-patch owl almost never lost agro to a heal. The dire raven loses agro more frequently. I am not sure why this is, but I suspect it is because it doesn’t go off as often. Prior to patch 3, screech was essentially a focus dump skill. When I would turn off claw, my owl would spam screech almost continually whereas even with 3 points in longevity, demoralizing screech only goes off every 7 seconds. It does generate AOE threat, you just have to be more careful in the timing of a heal (and don’t even think about volley).

Otherwise, demoralizing screech is a decent skill. It does some direct damage to the primary target and the AOE debuff aids survivability against multiple MOBS. The carrion bird is a good ferocity pet for solo leveling.

I concur with those who wish the “Birds of Prey” were the ferocity/screech pets. Although the raven is not a bad looking pet, I miss my beautiful snowy owl which now spends most of it’s time in the stable since I don’t PVP.

That said, using a gorilla becomes addicting. It’s ability to hold aggro on a whole pack of MOBs while you volley them down is hard to pass up.