RFC: What’s the Weakest Leveling Pet?
RFC stands for ‘Request for Comments’. Basically, this is a post in which I ask you for your comments about a pet. I did some RFC’s in the past about the pros and cons of each pet family (although I stopped that series when the pace of pet changes made them obsolete). But the RFC I want to do today is rather different.
I want your opinion on which pet family is the weakest for leveling a new hunter. That is, if you were going to suggest a pet for a new hunter, something that would be a good choice for solo questing … which pet would you suggest last?
Now I should clarify that I firmly believe that all pet families are perfectly viable for leveling (and indeed for all other purposes!). So right off the bat I recognize that this question is fairly … nuanced: Any pet will work, but some pets will work slightly better than others. So which pets work slightly less well?
Also keep in mind that some pets aren’t available until relatively late — like nether rays, wasps, the exotics, etc. For this post, I am mostly interested in leveling and questing before level 40 (although I would love to hear your thoughts on higher levels as well). That’s pre-exotics, and also pre-Thunderstomp for the Tenacity pets.
Finally, I am asking specifically in terms of a pet for a new hunter, because I’d like you to assume that the hunter is not a particularly skillful player. Some pets can really shine when used well, but not so much when you just leave them to their own devices. Alternatively, you can assume that this question applies to a lackadaisical hunter like myself instead of a new hunter — the effect is the same.
So there is your assignment, should you choose to accept it: Tell me which pet you would recommend last for a new solo hunter under level 40!
Feel free to e-mail me or answer in the comments. And as always, thanks for all your help!
159 Comments
Should we not be finding out the strongest? :O
And hate to be a noob but woot, first ^^
Btw, imo, spider, it’s a long time since I had one (about a year or 2 xD) but it always died and did awful damage.
Actually, come to think of it, are they even tameable anymore? Havn’t seen a hunter with one in ages.
I would like to believe that there advantageous pets from each tree, so depending on the situation, having one from each family is preferable while leveling.
Cunning: A spider is a good choice. They’re easy to find, good at rudimentary CC for kill quests, and their Mobility as a cunning pet makes them ideal for bumrushing prey.
Ferocity: Go cat (ghostsabre if you’re interested in aesthetics). Bleed effect, stealth, nuff said.
Tenacity: Turtle is the way to go. If you want a pet that can stand up to a firefight, turtle is the tank of all tanks.
All three of these pet families, one from each tree, were chosen because of two factors for the new hunter, or in this case, the “lackadaisical” one.
1 – They’re all extremely common.
2 – They’re easy to find (pretty much everywhere).
3 – They all posses skill sets beneficial to basic quest requirements at the 40th level questing areas for both Alliance and Horde.
-Harana, Frostwolf US
L80 Night Elf Hunter (MM/BM Dualspec)
Executive Officer
Sorry for the double post…I just got the part no more than a few seconds ago about “working less well”… I don’t know that I can do that lol…when I was leveling Harana, I had Petopia to research from, thus I could make informed choices and learn what I needed to know for what I would need going into each area.
Triple post (god, please merge these or delete my first two lol…)
I would say the weakest pet for leveling would be a Tallstrider…they’ve got an ability geared to keeping them alive but not you…and it’s got a devastatingly long cooldown to boot… Strictly vanity I’m afraid at low levels.
On my alt I have, but not actively using, a wind serpent.
The lvl19 blue wind serpent from Wailing Caverns. Looks great, totally blows at holding aggro.
One or two shots and the mob is on me.
I have, and still do, loved wolves for leveling. From early level on.
At the moment I am using the rare sabertooth from Winterspring.
First cat I actively use to level, and really liking it.
In the end I want all spirit beasts :-)
I’d go with Turtle, or any Tenacity with an ability that you like. Once you can give them Guard Dog it’s even better since their growl will help keep them happy. Get Glyph of Mend Pet along with Improved Mend Pet, and give the pet Blood of the Rhino and you should be able to keep them up in almost any fight.
If you can tame exotics, I’d grab a worm. Their Acid Spit ranged attack is great for helping them generate threat while still approaching their target. Saves one talent point from ending up in Charge since they don’t have to get to their target to damage it.
…I have to agree. Tallstriders. Which made me very sad once I realized it, because I did that low lvl run to tame Mazzanarache. T^T I loved his color, but really, that gankfest was so not worth it. I stabled him until I was 40-ish, then mourned and let him go.
I wish boars were a better choice, cause I love me some armored boar. =)
I have gotten kicked out of 2 parties because I had my tallstrider “KittyPryde”.
Goodness knows I love Mazz to death… People just can’t respect a Belf with a floofy pink birdy lol
Lol, lucky Belf. I was alliance when I tamed her.
Tallstriders. And the worgen with no abilities. XD
Wind serpents rock, my warp stalker is killer, crocs are aggro machines of survivabiliy, wolves are just…epic.
I’d have to go with bird of prey, snatch seems very situational and would really just be useless against anything without a weapon. Additionally being in the cunning tree may also limit it when you close in on level 40.
For levelling you want a pet that will (a) survive, and (b) hold threat. Tenacity pets have both covered through superior health/armour, thunderstomp and improved growl, ferocity pets have both covered through their self-heal talents and improved damnage (although admittedly at level 40 not sure how far up the talent tree you’ll be). Cunning pets don’t have either really going for them, plus many of them have long cooldown special abilities geared for pvp. I’d agree the bird of prey was probably the worst, but spiders (alas), bats and ravagers have similar issues – even if their ability is occasionally useful, it’s probably not as good as ferocious howl or rake. It’s a shame and cunning pets need a boost, I believe. It’s worth noting that, when I came to choose cunning pets to tame, I ended up with a sporebat (AoE armour debuff) and a nether ray (spell interrupt) as perhaps the best of the bunch, neither of which are around at level 40.
But yeah, tallstriders are junk. The joke is, during development they looked like they would be the one and only raiding pet, because their ability was better and looked like it would make raid bosses miss all the time. Ah, how we laughed…
I would caution against Dragonhawks. with early hunters threat is going to end up on you and a Dhawks fire breath needs a stable target to lay all its damage on. but a few shots and you end up with only a couple ticks of fire on a mob it’s chasing. If you are Horde and leveling in Eversong, then the lynxes are much better pets as their Rake attack only needs to land once for the bleed to do it’s work.
I agree about tallstriders and birds of prey. Really any pet that is meant to perform a specific task at late levels is usually not reccomended for early ones. You want pets with a fairly low cooldown ability that they (focus permitting) can use frequently. not so much on the same enemy, but at least every twenty seconds as you move from mob to mob.
It really depends on your spec… If you’re leveling as a marksman, I’d suggest you simply don’t – but if you do, you’ll almsot need a tenacity pet of any kind to keep agro (get guard dog and thunderstomp asap).
But.. in general, reguardless of spec – I would NOT reccomend…
Dragonhawks – They fail at keeping agro, do minimal damage compared to ferocity pets, and have a nearly useless cast-attack. You want something with utility, not “minimal fire damage that just looks cool”.
Wind Serpents – These pets, for the exact same reasons as the Dragonhawks, I would not suggest for leveling.
Serpent – Though poison (and reduced cast speed) is infinately better than the breathing of fire and lightning, I still would not suggest serpents for leveling purposes.
Crab – Pot. Kettle. Black. (I leveled one of my characters using a crab). However, as far as the “special ability” of the crab goes, you might as well turn it off, it’s a waste of time, focus, and… oh yeah.. it’s a channeled ability. As such, a pet with no special ability turned on is much more useless than the other pets you could level with. However, because it’s a tenacity pet, it can at least keep agro (if pinch is turned off) – so it’s teh best choice of teh “not suggested”, but still, not suggested.
Now.. I could go on to say so much for which pet I DO suggest… But that’s not the point of this thread here, is it?
An interesting note: Although many hunters were made post-WotLK, you have to keep in mind that there were also many of us who were around pre-WotLK. Which means pre-pet talent tree. Remember when you had to actually level a pet from the level you tamed it? When you had to go to the pet trainer to teach your pet everything you needed to know? When you had to first learn new levels of claw and bite by taming some random mob in some godforsaken forest in the middle of nowhere? Ah, those were the days. And there are those who are even pre-BC, who were around when there were many pets that were ‘unique’, with fast pursuit speeds and such.
I belong to the middle category, so I’m not sure if I’m totally slated to answer this question, but I’ll give my two cents anyways and you can do with it as you see fit :)
In my opinion, birds (whether carrion birds or birds of prey) are the weakest for leveling, simply for their sheer inconvenience. Also, they seem to die quicker then most pets, but that could just be my bias speaking. But the animation of birds make it such that targeting can be a pain, and in a tight situation that can be fatal. One scenario: You are backed in to a cave somewhere, and are being attacked by three goons at once. Your camera angle is going to be right over your head, unless you have the presence of mind to flip it (and, if anyone is like me and panicking is your first reaction to such a situation, then flipping the camera is the last thing on your mind). Now, if you have a cat or a wolf, they are going to be at a lower position then you, allowing you to see your attackers, target them, and hopefully regain control over the situation. However, if you have a bird, chances are it will be flapping in your face and making a mess of the whole occurrence. (True story). I can’t really go in to the logistics of why a bird might be weakest in terms of stats, but just their animation puts them in that category in my mind. I love them for PvP (Nothing better then watching some poor hapless sap try to aim around your raging, flapping owl) but for leveling, their PvP boon is their downfall.
- Aeira & Gezzarak, 80 Blood Elf Hunter & co. Arygos
Personally, birds, bats, spiders, and dragonhawks would be last in my list of choices.
My apologies for double posting, but after reading some of the comments above, I guess I could also add dragonhawks (though they are pretty to watch) and wind serpents to my post. Both because of the flapping. I guess, anything with wings (bats included) would be a no-go for me.
I’ve found Spiders to actually be quite helpful for low levels, due to their CC. For worst, I would have to go with Tallstriders, and anything with a ranged attack that has a casting time.
I believe that the worst lowest leveling pet is the moth family. Their family skill doesn’t do damage or keep agro or decrease strenth or speed or anything like that, but instead heals itself. If your pet needs to be healed, then just pop a quick mend pet. Now back in the days when mend pet was a channeling spell, this pet would have been quite useful, but now it is not so. I truely do not believe that the moth is the best leveling pet, however my hunter had one for a little bit just to run around with because I like how they look.
Also, I do like spiders. again, if his health gets low, then pop a mend pet. I liekthem though, because normally when you fight humanoids then they run in fear near death. I just use the web to stop them from running. It works quite well actually, and then that way your pet doesn’t pull other mobs from chasing it.
sorry for double post, but i think that the tallstriders are pretty good. Having one on my horde twink when he was leveling up, It could take on more then one opponent because its family trait is AoE, so it causes all the mobs around it to miss, not just the one. Umless they changed that in a patch XD I haven’t played him in a while…
In my opinion the worst would have to be Rhinos, Devilsaurs, Worms, Spirit Beasts, Core Hounds, Silithids and Chimerae because all of them stomp on you easily and you can’t tame them under lvl 40.
Ok, in seriousness-
It gets hard to say absolutely worst. My hunter has a Bear, and it’s great. There are a few pets I hate though. Crocs and Raptors have skills which damage, but have far too long a cooldown to be of any real use. Tallstriders have a very weak special attack. It would be better if it dropped hit rate rather than causing them to miss the next attack. Gorillas’ new skill makes it useful in only a few situations, most of which are not a huge issue in PvE. Bat’s skill is also on too long a cooldown. Birds of Prey have the same issue as Gorillas, just inverted.
I would have to say, then, Crocs, Raptors, Gorillas, Bats, Birds of Prey and Tallstriders.
Ok, why- Moths and Turtles have strong survivability thanks to a heal and a bubble. Dragonhawks, Scorpids, Serpents, Cats and Crabs all have damage over time components to them, which is nice. Bears have the ability to hold more than one mob at a time. The root ability of both the Hyena and the Spider are useful in holding mobs down from running out of range at the beginning of combat, or from having runners if used manually.
If I had to give a bottom line worst- Crocolisks. They sound like Darth Vader trying to breathe with a head cold on top of having a very long cooldown ability that you have to use manually to be of maximum effect.
I have levbeled two hunters now ( one 80, and just dinged 72) with spiders as pets. I think spiders do just fine for agro and crowd control. The worst i would have to say is Winsderpent, bats, and owls. Sure, basts Sonic Blast doesa a 2 second stun, but most other pets in the other trees can have a one second stun for one talent point, plus they still get their special ability. So,i would have to say that bats may be the weakest. I have also had good luck leveling with a tallstrider. i just manually click dust cloud if I pull aggro. save it for me and not the pet. lol So, yeah, most cunnig pets are not worth using to level.
By the way, can anybody tell me why tallstriders are ferocity pets? Dust Cloud is a cunning ability all the way. They should be cunning and Dragonhawks and Windserpents should be Ferocity. But i guess that is a discussion for a future RFC.
Actually, I like the Moth for its very survivability – and their family skill does increase their own attack power. And the Spider CC comes in very handy at times. Crocs don’t really become useful until they can get the Thunderstomp ability, but after that they’re nice for AoE.
I’d agree with those who are saying the Birds of Prey are the least helpful with leveling; I tried one out for a while, but it seemed to get me into more trouble than it got me out of somehow.
I would have to say that my pet possum is the worst. Everytime I send him in, he just collapses and plays dead.
There are two categories of pets that I consider useless in both solo and group play.
1. I agree with Aeira that a pet that blocks my view is a poor choice. Bats and chimaeras are the worst of the flying pets for obstruction. Once you’re high enough level to choose the exotic pet talent, Devilsaurs and Rhinos are large enough to cause the same problem without leaving the ground.
2. Any pet that has a ranged family ability will take longer to close distance to a target and start establishing meaningful threat (unless it is specced for Charge / Swoop).
3. (subjective) Noisy, ugly, or just irritating pets may be useful, but I won’t use them. Carrion bird and crocolisk are noisy. Serenity Dust doesn’t autofire, making moths require additional micromanagement.
I honestly have not had a problem with any pet for leveling. I have used pretty much the worst pets, including moths, dragonhawk, tallstrider, etc. and had no problem leveling with any of them. I like my tallstrider a lot, in fact and I find it much better in comparison to the owl I had before it. I also have had good success with it for PvP although it’s not really a popular PvP pet. One of my hunters has a spider, although I haven’t leveled with it, really. It’s used for PvP, so I can’t really evaluate it for leveling yet.
For me, the worst ones have probably been the moth and the owl. The special ability of the moth just didn’t quite work well enough to keep it alive for me. And with both moth and owl, I found they couldn’t hold aggro and their abilities weren’t helpful enough to make up for that. Dragonhawks are rather weak and can’t hold aggro at all, but their firepower makes up for it. I kept my dragonhawk to switch out with the spider, but got rid of the moth and owl and replaced them with vanity pet versions of themselves (I hate completely getting rid of pets, even though they aren’t real).
If you remove the level restriction, I’d say the Worgen.
Well, I never had a problem with any pet just like you said, KT. I just stated which I though was the least helpful to level. I would be glad to level with any pet. It actually helps me out because then I can choose a pet for it’s looks rather then its skill. Such as this, I said that moth would be the least useful, but I like it. However, I have pretty much no difference usign a moth or a cat, I kill the things and get the quests done either way. So I kill the thing a little quicker with the cat, it doesn’t make me like it more. I am not too big a fan of cats, I never really was apart from the mained lions or the tigers in SB. I would rather use a moth then those cats because I like the way they look better, not becaue I like their skill better.
I honestly do not think there is a “worst pet” across the board when leveling. It all just comes down to the hunter’s personal playstyle and what they feel suits them best. I’ve ran with tallstriders, wind serpents, and other common pet suggestions of being bad leveling pets and did just fine with them. For myself, however, I have a hard time using dragonhawks, bats, and crabs for leveling. For dragonhawks, I just don’t much care for the pet type, so that’s my basic gripe with it. Bats, as much as I love them, I always had trouble keeping mine alive. Plus the ginormous wingspan gets rather irksome for me at times (same applies to the Dragonhawk). For the crab (which is another pet I love), my gripe with it as a leveling pet is, as stated earlier by other posters, is the channeled Pin ability. Amazing in PvP and, if I was on a PvP/RP-PvP server, I’d probably have one just for that. But in leveling PvE situations, I’ve had trouble with it at low levels.
@Kettu
I found the same things with crabs, but as the spider’s web, it is goos for those mobs who like to run away in fear near death. when the crab pins then, then it doesn’t chase them around and aggro more mobs, which I don’t know if anyone els ehad a problem with this but I used to have a big problem with it. With my crab, I use him in bgs and leveling. Same with my spider, and my hyena. (the hyena doesn;t stun or immobilize, but it slows the targets speed which helps a lot with that, too.)
as I said, i don’t really care for what pet is the better, I actually go for the weaker pets because nobody has them. I mainly like the pets for what their models are, and the skills are just a bonus. I would much rather use a moth or owl as a leveling pet then a cat, just because it’s different then a lot of hunters.
It realy depends on your race and talanets. But, I’ve always had trouble with spiders, winged serpents, and tall striders.
I definitely disagree with those that consider crabs a bad leveling pet – just turn off the autocast on pin (I macro’d it to my wing clip to save bar space). Holding aggro is irrelevant if you can keep the mob from touching you, just lock em down and blast away! 40s is still short enough that you can use it or FD (or SS/intimidation/etc)on nearly every mob, and being tenacity has its obvious advantages.
As for worst, I’d have to go with tallstriders again, or bats – if you macro their stun, they never have enough energy for it, and if you leave it on autocast, they fly in without any energy for anything else!
I use a tallstrider for every instance since I got her at lvl 20 (Strider clutchmother – she matches my hair ^.^) and she actually does really well, especially since in low level instances, finding a tank that is actually specced so is really hard. It makes things a bit easier on the healer when there’s 5 mobs on the tank and they all miss an attack. However, I would never use her for solo content. She doesnt hold aggro well at all and dust cloud does very little threat. I would say any pet without an aoe threat giver off the bat is not ideal for leveling. Bear is the best leveling pet in my humble opinion, since it can hold multiple mobs at a time without you forcing him to change targets.
Birds of Prey and Moths. I felt especially bad about letting my moth go, because I loved the irony of attacking moths, but in the end she wasn’t worth it.
im with Verace on this bird of prey are defenetly near the bottom at least and moths only use there ability when there about to die not exsactly useful for lvling when you just wana kill the stuff and go. dissarm isnt that all great in the same sence as “it makes it weaker but dosnt help ya kill it faster” kinda thing.
“I honestly do not think there is a “worst pet” across the board when leveling. It all just comes down to the hunter’s personal playstyle and what they feel suits them best.”
I think this is the best way to put it. I think the comments here give a good idea of what are going to be the most difficult pets for leveling, but if you happen to like the idea of a pet, I would still stay give it a shot.
Sometimes your personal style will work well with an unpopular pet and make it worth your while to have (like me and my strider <3 <3) and sometimes you'll find you can't make the relationship work and it's better to move on to something that works better for you.
But I do like seeing the consistent responses. It gives people ideas of what they're in for, and maybe we can make this into a suggestion for blizzard to maybe revisit the talents of these pets to make them a bit more useful in at least one area.
CROCOLISK IS THE GOD TANKPET!!!
DEVILSAUR IS THE GOD DPS PET!!!
CHIMERA IS THE GOD CUNNING PET!!!
One aspect I’d definitely include pet diet as a strong aspect for recommendations. With talents that generate happiness and glyph of mend pet, high level hunters almost never have to worry about food anymore, but for low levels this can be a major hassle.
I’d recommend any leveling hunter to get pets that eat meat or fish, ideally both. Which puts Moths and Tallstriders at the bottom of the list. Tallstriders win the award for worst pet because their special seems less useful, although moths aren’t far behind.
Like Mania said, all pets have been changed, and patched over the course of the
game’s history that all of them can do a good job of pve.
Tenacity = Tailor-made for pve. Great aggro-holding and survival abilities. Less
useful in groups. Bears & Boars are the best. Turtles are a good second, but fall
short to the top due to their specialized diet.
Ferocity = Tailor-made for parties and raids to up dps. Decent soloing, but less
reliable than Tenacity pets. Cats, Wolves, and Raptors are the best.
Cunning = Tailor-made for pvp. Decent soloing, but less reliable than Tenacity.
More useful in groups and raids. Spiders are the best, with Wind Serpents a good
second despite their specialized diet.
Can we have an RFC on which pet family abilities are most out of place? (Birds of Prey vs Carrion Birds being the wrong way around is something I’ve been griping about since the Wrath alpha…)
As far as the weakest leveling pet goes…
Bears and carrion birds have innate short cooldown AoE threat
Spiders have a 4 second non-channeled root
Crabs have a 4 second channeled root
Ravagers have a 2 second melee range stun on a 40 second CD
Bats have a 2 second 20 yard range stun on a 1 minute CD
Hyenas have a reasonably short CD snare
The other pet families either aren’t available before level 40 or don’t have skills that are particularly useful for leveling (since they either have long cooldowns or are largely related to dealing increased damage or both).
Overall my vote for “worst leveling pet” would go to Serpents. Why?:
1. Family skill isn’t helpful with leveling
2. Only eat meat (unlike, e.g. bears, which will eat anything)
3. Cunning pet means they have the worst of the 3 talent trees for leveling (no Bloodthirsty or Blood of the Rhino or Improved Growl)
4. Can’t be tamed until level 18 at the earliest, so not helpful for first 8 levels with a pet
5. Only available below level 40 in Wailing Caverns, thus hard to tame
(Bears would be my recommended leveling pet due to Swipe)
I would say that the Bird of Prey (Owl) is now the weakest solo leveling pet. Ironically, I would have recommended the Owl as the best leveling pet prior to patch 3. I leveled my first hunter all the way from 10 to 70 with an Owl. Most pets improved with the new pet system but sadly the Owl (Bird of Prey) got worse.
Note that I am only considering pets that are available at fairly low levels and would last a new hunter up to level 40.
Up to level 20 when pets start earning talent points, the only differences among pets are their unique family abilities. Otherwise every pet is identical in damage, health and armor and they all have equivalent focus dump damage skills In fact the first tier of the Tenacity, Cunning and Ferocity trees are almost the same so you won’t really see a big difference until level 32, when you start assigning talent points to the second tier of the tree.
So before level 32, I would not recommend a The Bird of Prey’s because its family ability “snatch” is one of the least useful in a general purpose leveling pet. After level 32, the talents in the Cunning tree are less useful than Tenacity and Ferocity talents for a leveling pet.
That is not to say that a Bird of Prey is a bad pet, but there are many low level pets that are just a little bit better (Bear, Boar, Crocolisk, Raptor, Wolf, Cat).
I think its not on which pet more then whats the most useless pet racial ability?
i think the most useless lving pet is the a talstrider, kicking up a cloud or dust? long cool down…I’d say the plucked chicken would have to be it!!
~srry about double post, hit wrong button XP
Like others here, I used Petopia while leveling to make informed choices asto which pets would work the best for me, and I usually steered clear of those that weren’t pretty or powerful-looking (crabs, lookin’ at you). That said, I still found some less-than-stellar pets.
I loved my owl, but the more I really looked into her performance, the more I made a case to release her back into the wild blue yonder. Snatch, as mentioned above, is very situational. For leveling, I would prefer a pet that has a pure damage or threat (or combo)ability. Keep mobs off you. Keep your face from being squished into the ground.
Snakes. I didn’t tame a snake until about level 70, but I’m assuming that lower level serpents are no different. Their poison spit ability is kind of lack-luster. They use it at range, so if you aren’t careful, they spit first and then slither in to attack, and if you fire during that time, you pull aggro.
I snagged a dragonhawk on a since-deleted blood elf alt and found it to be underpowered as well. I likely grabbed one of the caster ones, though, without realizing it. They just seemed to die far too fast.
I’m going to go with Serpents and Wind Serpents. I’m just not fond of critters with a long range attack for soloing. Mobs start running around all over the place and while I do encounter this bug on all my pets, I’ve personally noticed they tend to take their mob “for a walk” across the map more often. It doesn’t help for me that they’re in the Cunning tree which could use a bit of love.
I don’t know for a special beast, but i had a very big problem levelling with a Chimaera, and all in all, Cunning pets. These are just a No-No for leveling for me. Constantly dead. 2 mobs can take it down.
I would actually go against the general public, I’d consider Tallstrider one of the BEST. Their racial skill may have a long CD, but if it hits at the right time, potentially making an elite miss a hit that would do 80%+ damage to you/the pet, then that’s good.
I’d have to say Wind Serpents, Scorpids, and Serpents.
Hm… Can’t choose really :S Lol
But I think I’ll say spiders…
Owls, Wind Serpents, Serpents, Dragonhawks, Tall Striders, Moths – without a doubt they went from something you can actually mop up the mobs with to something a little risky, one chanced shot and your face gets eaten by the very thing you pets were supposed to grab aggro from. Happened to me a few times, even with aspect of the viper on full time… and all it took was one lucky shot with them having NO available focus (especially at earlier levels) then the mobs change targets and run full tilt at you. It’s worse when your pet manages to actually lose aggro of a 3-5 mob pull.
Gorillas… while I know some of you actually “hate” having a monkey on your “back”.. that was one GOOD tank pet until it got downsized to a situational pvp pet due to its caster interrupt. In fact, that pet IS the closest one can get to a humanoid pet aside from the infamous pet Worgen debacle…. I even had one named Machop until TS got nerfed to one talent point across the tank tree.
Chimeras…. those were awesome… until blizzard decided to make them “un”-awesome….. aside from Devilsaur’s monstrous bite, the Chimeras’s froststorm breath was a great damage dealer back in the day. Heck, I remember the time a LOT of us spent just trying to tame Nuramoc like we are now trying for Loque and Gond.
Silithid… this one is debatable. I almost wish they were Tenacity… AQ even have them named as “Battle Tanks” for crying out loud, and they indeed look it. Heck, if cunning pets were good for pvp, I’ve never seen one in them…. no thanks to the BM burnout nerf. The one good thing abt a large pet in pvp is the enemy would have the same problem you would in trying to lock on to you as you to them.
To be honest, in regards to pets, I think Blizzard let the ball drop no matter what they said. If every pet is supposedly a viable choice regardless of skin/skill/spec in pve, then why (even if situational per pet) do we keep coming down to the most obvious choices (currently) of Bear, Turtle (for the chosen few), Wolf, Cat, Croc, and Raptor? In my case, I pick bears, wolves, cats, raptor as best pet choices and the rest fall by the wayside…. they’re all good for leveling, etc… everything else don’t even come close.
It comes down to damage and survivability, people… some pets have either one or the other, sometimes the ones above have both depending on talent points. Back in vanilla wow, Turtles were the equivalent of the VW’s pew pew damage…. I never ran with one, but I believe that didn’t change…. in leveling, you would need pets that can dish it out as well as take them, or the grind will be real slow.
as my double post… with what blizzard did to pets currently, they’ve been dumbed(?) down to a base stat per category before being talented (on either hunter bm talents and/or pet talents alone)… they are no longer unique as a whole regardless of abilities/specials other than looks…. remember they’re now 5/5/5 across the board…. regardless of talents, it now comes down to how well you play your hunter and how well you manage your pets… and balance them your way…. of course some will shine through, some won’t.
An E-bayer hunter once approached me when I had my non combat pet out and said “Wow where did you get your pet from” (Jubling)
“Darkmoon fair I said”
“Was it hard to tame”
“Yeah you need a prequest in BRD and lots of beer”
“What BRD”
“Blackrock depths”
“It eats beer lols”
“Err yeah”
“Does it do a lot of damage?”
“No but you cant kill it :P”
“Oh great Im going to get one I bets i level it to 60 b4 yours”
Jokes aside I think the worst begginer pets are Birds of Prey because of the situational special and they flap which gets in the way of lazy targeting. I disagree with the windserpents as the ranged dps is nice for instant agro to the pet making them an ok choice and they have smaller wings.
Alot of people responding seem to be forgetting about the
“I am asking specifically in terms of a pet for a new hunter, because I’d like you to assume that the hunter is not a particularly skillful player.”
part of Mania’s original post. This means that having to “manually click” a pet’s skill is most definately out. If you have to do so, its a pretty poor starter pet. In that vain, my list of the top 5 worst prelevel 40 pets are…
1) Tallstrider – This pet goes directly into the manually click the special to be worthwild catagory. Its funny to look at the pink bird, but it just isn’t a good leveling pet.
2) Bird of Prey – Back in the days of Owl’s having Screech, these were awesome (yet annoying) leveling pets. Without screech these tend to be situational PvP pets only.
3) Crocodile – A reflective damage ability on a extraordinary long cooldown, just is not worth it. If you are fighting a single mob for the entire duration of the 45 second buff, you are doing something wrong. If you are attempting to AoE kill at these levels you are just asking for trouble.
4) Ravager – Once the premium Raid pet in TBC, the changes to pet specials have all but made this pet worthless. Not only is it ugly, but a 2 second stun on a long CD it just is not worth picking one.
5) Bats – See above. Ugly, 2 second stun … While the stun can be useful in situations, it just is not worth giving up a threat/damage producer 98% of the time, especially at lower levels.
—
Best Pets of course are still Cats, Bears and even with the theft of Thunderstomp, a gorilla is still a threat producing machine after Thunderstomp.
Personally I would say it mattered if you were questing or instancing. Spiders in instances would be pretty annoying to the tank, as it roots them away from the group, making it not aggro on the tank. They are however, good for solo play. On the other hand, I would agree that birds of prey, tallstriders, and crocolisks are pretty lame to level with. Not to mention the Crocolisk is really annoying. I bet their bad sounds are the reason for why the ghost hydra is so annoying too. I found that my favorite pets to level with was the gorilla, snake, and ravager(knockdowns were great). I never got into wolves or cats.
I personally loved leveling with a hyena, I tamed Snort the Heckler in the barrens at 17 and kept him for a long time as a Belf hunter. I also ran my happy butt to Darkshore for a ghost saber.
When I rerolled Ally I went with a Ghost saber again as they are one of the coolest looking pets there is plus they do nice damage and prowl is awesome.
Hyenas have a nice skill that hamstrings your targets movement allowing you to get far enough away to do more ranged damage. They withstand being smacked pretty well at lower levels as well.
I’ve noticed though that cats are on top with most things. They have always been an all around good pet for leveling and even at cap.
If I had to pick a ‘last’ pet, I’d probably have to go with owls/birds of prey.
Pretty much any ferocity pet is okay to level with. MOST people don’t habitually run around trying to AoE things down, and a feroc pet is tough enough to stand the 1-3 mobs you run into ordinarily while leveling. Feroc does enough damage, by and large, to keep aggro as long as you aren’t stupid about things. If I had to pick a least from the ferocity family, it wouldn’t be tallstriders. Their dust cloud, while ‘enh’ compared to some other things, -does- function as an AoE aggro grab of sorts, so it actually makes them better to level with than some. Worst of the Feroc family I’d have to call as ‘hyena’… their tendon rip may be nice for BGs but it’s really pretty worthless in leveling when if a mob runs, you can just con-shot ‘em. They also tend to use it when it isn’t needed if you leave it on autocast.
Tenacity… same thing. They’re MADE for leveling. Crocs aren’t as annoying as they used to be, since they only snork rarely now instead of constant Vader-breathing. Bears, great, gorillas… I hate ‘em, but not because they suck… I’d steer people personally away from both crabs and turtles; crabs’ pin is channeled, and thus of limited use, and turtles have, in my experience, had a lot of trouble keeping aggro (and their shell shield doesn’t do you a lick of good if the mobs are beating on YOU instead).
Cunning… this is where all the hit and miss is. Spore bats? Great. (SURPRISINGLY great, if you want my opinion). Wasps? Pretty handy. Nether rays? Birds of Prey? Not so great. Most of the cunning pets, while kind of lackluster and squishy, are still at least ‘okay’… I put dragonhawks, windserpents, regular serpents, and such things in the ‘not bad’ list, since while they might not do as much ow as a ferocity, they are, at least, still viable in some regard, and while leveling, ‘good enough’ is often plenty.
LEAST, however, I put those pets who’s abilities are, frankly, overly specific. Nether Rays and Birds of Prey end up at the bottom of my list because a) they’re Cunning, so they’re squishy and not wonderful at holding aggro as a default. And b) their specials apply effectively to ONLY a very narrow selection of the mobs you’re likely to face during leveling. Using a pet who will only debuff one class of mob (nether rays:casters, BoP: weapon-using humanoids) is ineffectual for leveling since one quest might have you fighting naga and the next beating up bears. If you don’t want to have to run to the stablemaster between every single quest… better to go with anything at all else.
This topic got me thinking about which pet talents are good for a new hunter say which maintain threat and which could cause problems ie; could thunderstomp draw extra unwanted adds in, could a bloodthirsty heal dump agro on the hunter (i am sure it does)? I would not recomend AOE pet family skills to sombody very new to the class wich brings the question are the aoe or healing skills more of a liability than the lame situational ones to a very new player?
It’s not as much a single pet that I would avoid as a pre-40 hunter, but an entire tree: Cunning is not made for starting hunters. Many of the cunning pets seem to be made more for PvP or hunters who already are familiar with the limits of pets and their skills.
For a MM hunter you need a pet that can survive a few hits AND keep aggro, so they might be better off avoiding most Ferocity pets as well. It can work, but you’d better have a lot of extra food and bandages with you ’cause that pet WILL either die or get out-aggro’d by you.
The one thing that was good about the old system of pet talents was that it made you go out and tame pretty much every pet family available before L40. So aside from the “avoid Cunning like the plague” I’d recommend a pre-L40 hunter to take an hour to do some hands-on research. Bring a list of pet families, the 3×9 one in a grid is perfect (Exotics are out of your reach for a while yet so no need to include them). Go to the lowbie zones and tame every family once. Use your newly tamed pet to fight mobs for a few minutes and scratch it’s family off the list if ANYTHING about it annoys you. Use all of the family skills, but don’t bother with the talent trees for now. Many pets are hated by some for their sounds or size, but others love em to bits. Having the top dog in pets is not going to make you like playing your hunter if you have to stuff cotton in your ears to stop you from going insane behind the keyboard (Crocolisks anyone?). After 5 minutes or so, move on to find the next family, release the old pet and tame a new one, and try it out for a few minutes. Rinse and repeat until you have gotten all pet families available to your level. In the end you should have a two and maybe three categories: The hate-list, the ok-list, and possibly an OMG-LOVEIT!!-list.
No matter what pet anyone recommends or tells you to avoid, in the end you are the one who has to walk around and fight with it. Please avoid the “good” old days when even avid cat haters tamed Broken Tooth (a cougar) because it was the best dps pet in the game. I know a few hunters who ended up hating the hunter class because they ran around with a pet they absolutely loathed, but they “needed” it because of min/maxing or because their guild demanded it in groups/raids.
Back in October last year I wrote a review of every pet family available to low level hunters. Blizzard have made several changes to pets since I last updated my post but it is still broadly relevant now.
The reviews are at: http://wowdecrypted.blogspot.com/2008/10/hunter-pet-reviews-pre-wrath-patch.html
The main changes since then have been the change to +5/+5/+5 to family stats, adding thunderstomp as a talent for all tenacity pets and tweaks to furious howl and rake.
Mania specifically asked – “For this post, I am mostly interested in leveling and questing before level 40 (although I would love to hear your thoughts on higher levels as well). That’s pre-exotics, and also pre-Thunderstomp for the Tenacity pets.”
Pets get their first talent point at level 20. The first few points make little difference to pet usability, its only when a bunch of talents stack up that it is really noticeable – usually around level 40. The biggest factor then in the lower levels is the pet’s family skill.
Diet can be removed as a factor in pet choice by use of the minor Glyph of Mend Pet. Spam mend pet a few times out of combat and your pet is happy again.
So, what factors make a good family skill for use by a low level “noob” hunter?
– aids in threat management.
– has a short cool-down or longer uptime.
– ease of use.
So, in the 3.1 environment:-
Poor: (5 families)
Bats – Sonic Blast
Birds of Prey – Snatch
Moths – Serenity Dust
Tallstriders – Dust Cloud
Crabs – Pin
OK: (6 Families)
Dragonhawks – Fire Breath
Ravagers – Ravage
Spiders – Web
Wind Serpents – Lightning Breath
Boars – Gore
Turtles – Shell Shield
Good: (9 Families)
Serpents – Poison Spit
Carrion Birds – Demoralizing Screech
Cats – Rake
Hyenas – Tendon Rip
Raptors – Savage Rend
Wolves – Furious Howl
Bears – Swipe
Crocolisks – Bad Attitude
Scorpids – Scorpid Poison
Not available to low levels: (12 Families)
Chimaeras – Froststorm Breath
Nether Rays – Nether Shock
Silithids – Venom Web Spray
Sporebats – Spore Cloud
Core Hounds – Lava Breath
Devilsaurs – Monstrous Bite
Spirit Beasts – Spirit Strike
Wasps – Sting
Gorillas – Pummel *lowest level gorilla is level 32.
Rhinos – Stampede
Warp Stalkers – Warp
Worms – Acid Spit
@ Cryptography
Nice list–Very concise and easy to read. I do agree with your list, as a whole, for hunters who are still wet behind the ears. However, I personally found moths to be very handy at low level. True, Serenity Dust doesn’t auto-fire until the pet is at 20% health and the only way to activate it is to macro it or manually click it on. But thanks to that ability, my moth made it out of some mighty tight scrapes whenever I overpulled and I did not yet know Feign Death. Just my two cents on that matter.
my hunter (lvl 66) has always lvled with a wolf :) i LOVE wolves an i think they make great hunter pets an awsome for lvling, an they hold agro farely well. Iv only recently got me a warp stalker also, i have to say i really like it to, along with my wolves :D so i defently recommend those two.
As for as worst, iv never had a chance to lvl with a ton of pets, but iv alwayys been told crabs an striders suck
Off the top of my head, I’d have to agree that bird of prey is probably the last species you’d want to tame at low levels – their move is better suited to pvp than pve, and also the low level models (iirc) are all owls, meaning they make that ridiculous trilling/burbling sound in combat… the battle cry of the other flyers are pretty fierce sounding (if perhaps a bit hard on the ear drums), but the owl’s cry just sounds more like it’s asking for a pat on the head… so yeah, all around a pretty good nominee for worst.
To all who are saying Wind Serpents, Serpents and Birds of Prey.. I’ve had GREAT success lvling with them:
Lvl 24 to lvl 45 with a serpent (but my wolf and kitty joined me while questing too of course, coudln’t leave ‘em out XD) on my Belf Huntress.
Lvl 48 to 65 with a owl (other pets did of course quest with me sometimes.. but my owl was my fave) and lvl 75 to lvl 77 with a wind serpent (not as much time as others, but this pet I keep with me almost all the time) both of those are on my Nelf Huntress.
So, yeah, I’d say, if you want a bit of a challenge, go with one of these pets… Its odd that people mention these pets a lot.. they’re awesome, I guess most people who mention these pets as bad for lvling are either SV or MM, or complain the second a pet loses aggro once >.>
Anywho, I’m not really sure on “Worst lvling pet” seeing as I can work with any pet, as long as I can get attached to it, even it if doesn’t hold aggro as well as other pets XD
Hmm Tallstriders and bats… I find that bats bug alot when u use them, and tallstiders ability is not so good, so those 2 i would say was the weakest.
Moth i wouldt use as a low lvl either… nor at high lvl in fact :D
@60-
Mania asked for 1) pets prior to 40 and 2) for a hunter with not so much skill
If we’re still talking about a low level pet that is good for a *casual* hunter, then I don’t get why people are listing tallstriders – as another poster has mentioned, their AOE debuff will grab aggro and hold it through a mend pet, meaning you send it into a cluster of say 3 mobs and can then mend pet at will as you single-target DPS your pet’s mob until all are dead – no muss no fuss. Sure the debuff itself isn’t making you a killing machine or anything but again the AOE aggro grab is still nice.
Now that same hunter trying to use almost any other ferocity pet, is going to find himself under a mob dogpile as soon as he uses mend pet or even gets a nice crit… while his wolf is still over yonder faithfully chewing on the first mob.
“But any hunter who knows what he’s doing would simply tag all 3 mobs with his wolf before settling in to DPS and mend!” you say, to which I respond “but we’re specifically talking about hunters who are unskilled or
lazycasual”.63 should have read “don’t get why people are listing tallstriders as a bad choice”
Need more coffee.
I have a few hunters. On my Nelf lvl 80 I leveled the whole way with my red cat. She rocked! My hubby also leveled with a cat.
I tried warp stalkers but I am an impatient hunter and start shooting before my pet get to the mob. I would shoot and the WS would run then warp behind the mob then was trying to catch up to it while the mob pounded away on me.
I love my ghost wolf. It used to be a little tougher and less dps than my cat but still held argo. Now it is the same as a cat in a way.
I have a pet slime (croc) and I have soloed BC instances and trash in AQ40 with it. I havent had a problem with argo or health.
My hubby now has a Belf hunter and has leveled with a turtle from 10-65 and had it die only a handful of times. Great tank and hold argo a lot better than they did pre wotlk. For pvp he uses a spider and it works really well.
With my troll hunter (48) I have leveled with a hyena, wolf, and since lvl 35 a bear. I love my bear as a tank. His swipe is great for dealing with multiple mobs. Once I start pvping with her I will be using a hyena again.
Crabs and hyenas are pretty strong contenders for worst early/casual leveling pet – they can make *excellent* pets for a hunter who knows how to use them (esp MM/SV), but otherwise have to agree these would be bad choices for a casual leveler.
Still think owls are worse though – with hyenas/crabs, you still might get lucky and accidentally proc a root/slow at the right time, whereas for owls their weapon grab is just kind of fluff in the PVE environment even when you’re up against mobs it can be used on.
Gotta disagree on moths being a bad leveling pet – I’ve played them at low lvl as MM spec and in my experience they were a “poor man’s BM pet”; for normal/casual solo combat they’re just another ferocity pet however when things get tough they auto-proc a +AP/HoT self buff that can be a big help with multiples or tough singles.
Despite my love for my tallstrider (still have and actively use Mazz) a bear or turtle will probably be the best bets. Relatively easy to find and simple food requirements. I’ll disagree with a tallstrider being the worst for pre 40 however. I never experienced a slowdown when I was leveling my hunter with mine. A windserpent would be the worst given that to really reap the benefits of one you have to gear differently than you would for leveling and make good use of macros. Not friendly for a beginner.
While not as bad as owls, I’ll agree with some other posters that ranged pet attacks are not good for a casual hunter – you end up with the mob being a lot closer and giving you that much less “runway” space for gunning it down if it breaks aggro; by the same token these pets can make awesome SV pets if you like using trap and disengage, but that’s not something a casual hunter would bother with. So, I’d also consider wind serpents, serpents and bats poor choices for a low/casual PVE hunter.
“with hyenas/crabs, you still might get lucky and accidentally proc a root/slow at the right time”
I feel like I’ve gotta stand up for my pet crab ‘Trinketout’ – just make this 3 line macro
#showtooltip Pin
/cast Pin
/cast Wing Clip
Put it where you previously had wing clip, and voila. If a pet had a 4 second taunt as a family skill I’m sure you guys would eat it up; that’s basically how this works, just mash it as soon as the mob turns around to run to you (or hit FD if it’s not up). Spiders are good for the same reason, although they don’t have charge or BotR.
I think that it is interesting that no one can seem to agree on what is the worst/weakest.
I still think that anything that has a long cooldown skill or a situational skill is less useful for leveling. Think about it.
Crocolisks- Bad Attitude would be great, if it wasn’t a two minute long down and autocasts for every mob.
Birds of Prey- Not all mobs are effected by disarm. Most caster mobs won’t be effected at all. Snatch just won’t help with all mobs.
Gorillas- Most mobs are not casters. Having an interupt is nice, but let us face it, it won’t be used a lot. Pummel is fairly useless for leveling.
Bats- Sonic Blast is nice, but on a long cooldown.
Raptors- Savage Rend is on a long cooldown for a damage skill and rarely ever crits.
Tallstriders- First of all, most mobs are attacked at 30 yards, and having a ten yard skill that autocasts at the start of a fight isn’t a big help. Dust Cloud also only affects one attack.
Ranking (worst to less worse) I would have to go-
Crocolisk
Tallstrider
Bat
Bird of Rrey
Gorilla
Raptor
Skew – remember we’re just talking about pets that would be bad for a casual/unskilled hunter at low levels; of course crabs rock with the right timing and macros – my SV hunter swears by his.
Same deal with spiders – great if you know how to use them but for someone who never clicks on any pet button besides “attack”, not so much.
Hyenas are a little more casual-friendly with their 20 sec CD but still a bit more skill-based IMO.
I would go with a cat because they do a good job keeping the mobs away, good health armor and stats, but what you really want is something that will keep you alive. Like a Gorilla at level 30-35 or a Raptor(non-exotic. And if you don’t like those just go around taming beasts try them out for a level or 2 and if you don’t like it then try a different pet.
Mytroll
Nordrassil Level 55 Hunter
Hyenas are not for hunters that are trying to level. Their special ability reduces the movement speed. A hyena is perfect if you want to PvP. Some people are also complaining about Birds of Prey…People; Birds of Prey are for PvP too. Well, if you using an Owl for PvE, it’s kinda silly. Again people, crabs are mostly used for PvP…
I completely disagree about the raptor. Raptors are good pets if you want to level. They deal good damage and have good armor, so I don’t see the need of putting this pet in the “worse pets list”.
I do think that the Devilsaur is a good pet, but you got to be BM. It’s the samething for the Spirit Beats and all the exotic pets! But, again, when I PvP, I switch to BM/MM, so there’s no problem with that. The only problem is when you PvE. A BM/MM hunter will never outDPS a Surv Hunter.
I can tell you one thing, when I lvld my Hunter, I always had a cat. They really are the best pets if you want to lvl. They deal good DPS and have “good” armor. Of course, it’s nothing compared to the bear’s armor, but it does more DPS than the bear and the turtle.
Top5 best pets:
1.Cats
2.Wolves
3.Raptors
4.Ravagers
5.Bears
Top5 worse pets:
1.Bats
2.Wind Serpents
3.Tallstrider
4.Spiders (for lvling only, because it is a good PvP pet)
5.Crocolisk
The worst pets for leveling a new hunter, or one that doesnt really work to time things together..
1. Spider. A 4 second immobilize? Well, thats easy to miss if you dont pay attention. New hunter probably has it on autocast. So its not gonna get immobilized at a useful time. Heck, it may be aggroed on YOU, and you may stand and melee it while its immobilized. xD
2. Bird of Prey- Snatch on autocast will likely go off against the pet, not when it’d be more helpful when the mob is on you. Tons of leveling mobs dont even HAVE weapons, making it useless.
Wind Serpent with Dragon Hawks a close second. They both have damage abilities on par with bite/claw as special abilities. Both abilities are range abilities that will cause them to stutter step when attacking. Both are cunning pets which makes them less useful for leveling. The Wind Serpent being the better of the two only because I don’t believe the DOT portion of Fire Breath can crit.
Some other nominations I don’t agree with (considering that we are discussing the worst possible leveling pet, and not just all poor choices):
Tallstriders: Using a special ability at the right time is basic raid awareness. A new hunter having access to this ability will be a better hunter if he learns to time this ability in low level instances. If the hunter turns on Growl on auto and turns Dust Cloud off of auto he is no worse off then most other pets. Let us not forget that Tallstriders are ferocity pets and get access to the +dmg talents along with Bloodthirsty.
Crab: As a tenacity pet it is a good leveling pet. As others have stated using Pin when the mob turns to attack you is also a very helpful skill.
Moth: Ferocity + small damage boost ability + small self heal, make this a middle of the pack pet in my mind.
In my experience, tallstriders never seemed to do the trick for me. I had one, once upon a time, and it seemed to take the hits alright, but couldn’t hold aggro worth a damn, and I had a hell of a time finding food for it.
IMO, boars make excellent tank pets, or at least they did, since they could learn dash, had a decent balance of HP/armour, and they’d eat just about anything. Since they took dash away from them (at least, that’s what I understood — it’s been a while since I had one), charge just doesn’t seem as useful to me, but then again, nothing seems as useful to me as my beloved ghost wolf, Menchi!
I go with Owls, Wind Serpents, Serpents, Dragonhawks, Tall Striders, Moths as bad choices for a beginner.
I must add that spiders are the pet of choice for lower to mid level PvP and Battlegrounds.
I actually found Carrion Birds to be fun to use for leveling…love that -attack power debuff they have.
I will never, EVER use a cat. I just dont like them and I mourn the people who have one as a pet….I also dont like Spirit Beasts.
I haven’t had good experiences with cats and aggro – but that may be because I stubbornly insist on using prowl/dash over plain old charge…
Back in BC, before I found Petopia, I had a crab pet from level 20-40. I was excited that 3.0 would make All families useful, and I could get a crab again. Unfortunately, it is now a tenacity pet that can’t hold aggro, because its special is a channeled spell. Yes, by turning off auto-cast you can make it more useful, but definitely not recommended for a beginning hunter.
My recommendations would be Bear for tenacity and Cat for ferocity.
I know you want worst but I’ll still answer best :-) Like others have said there are only two things we should worry about early on in leveling: threat and survival (and maybe diet).
Early on in your hunter career you wont have a lot of talent points for the pet so threat generation for tenacity pets can be questionable. I would go with a ferocity pet to start with (you can’t get improved growl until lvl 44). When looking at the ferocity pets, consider the ones that have family abilities that buff their threat/survivability. This leaves wolves out in the cold… you don’t want to pull more agro! I would also avoid Tallstriders. Other “unsuitable” pets like wasps are not available at the levels we’re talking about anyway.
The final concern is diet. Cats and Carrion Birds have both fish and meat which means any fishing and questing hunter will probably have a good supply. Raptors and Hyenas only eat meat which makes them a bit less versatile. Moths eat fruits and bread which (usually) means you need to get food from a vendor or hope for some lucky drops (or a friendly mage nearby).
Ok, there have been lots of answers and some have been pretty good.
Going back to the question, and considering the target audience, a new hunter:
First of all, no pet has any move or quality that would necessarily *hinder* a new player. So the worst pet for a new player is the pet that they dislike the most or might cause the player to lose interest in the hunter, whatever that may be. Remember that newer hunters might not know about petopia/wowhead, and if they get stuck with a pet they dont like they wont know what else is out there, and just stop playing their hunter. Ive seen this happen especially in younger players. My advice to a new player on what pet to avoid? Simple, the one you think is the lamest.
Now for some more ‘concrete’ thoughts
Moves that you have to click automatically have a disadvantage, however I would further clarify. Moves that you have to click, have a long cooldown, AND are not clear to a young hunter when to use.
Some people have said birds of prey, quoting PVP focused talents. The question is for pre 40 leveling, so you can only grab the first two tiers of any tree, which is pretty much the same across the board, so it really comes down to the special ability. Also the disarm wont ever get you into trouble, it just wont always be useful. The wings and targeting are only a problem for some players, if this is a problem for the player in question than I guess it could be an issue. (I only guess because my first pet was an owl and I loved it to death well past 40)
Some people have said crabs. Pin might not be great but running mobs that aggro other mobs can be a real problem for newer players, a source of a ton of frustration. If that player can figure out saving pin for the end of the fight, this may save their skin ALOT.
Some people have said spiders, see crab logic
Some have said windserpents, but I find that LB is good damage and excellent quick aggro
Some have said moths, but the perfect mix of attack boost and a small heal is perfect for making the pet fire and forget. Sure you can use mend pet, but the extra heal will just make the pet one less thing to think about. I see this as a perfect pet for a new hunter, and Im not surprised to see it in a start zone, clearly intended for newer hunters. The move is especially valuable when compared at lower ranks to mend pet.
Some people have said tallstriders and here I might have to agree. I can see the multiple aggro move coming in handy, but its on a longer cooldown so it would only really keep agro that got onto your pet, and isnt likely to accidentally grab aggro thats headed to the hunter. So I would have to agree that this pet is probably the weakest. That said, if any new hunter falls in love with one of these, well that makes it the best choice that new hunter could make.
… one more thing…
I do like tenacity pets for levelling, but they’re agro holding is weaker at lower levels. If you do want a tenacity pet early on, consider a bear or a boar since both have family abilities that help build agro (especially boars once you can spec into charge at lvl 20). They have the added bonus of eating everything.
I’ll hop on the “best pet” bandwagon as well, again bearing mind this just talking about simplest possible pet for a lvl 10-40…
Tenacity (resilient, and gets charge right off while ferocity has to make do with dash at those levels) -
Bears – eats anything, and they have a fast CD AOE for grabbing aggro from nearby mobs (so you can safely mend)
Boars – eats anything, and they have a nice aggro spike for the tougher single mob fights
Ferocity (better DPS = mob dead sooner and also better sustained aggro holding)
Carrion bird – eats fish and meat iirc making it maintainable via fishing if desired, and the AOE debuff grabs aggro from nearby mobs (so you can safely mend)
Cunning – as another poster mentioned, if you’re going to try early pvp then spider is probably a good choice otherwise this tree isn’t really the best choice for the casual/low lvl hunter.
The majority of completely green hunters should really avoid the cunning AND ferocity trees for soloing/leveling. Why the distinction? More likely than not, said hunter is going to get him or herself into hairy situations involving overpulling. Assume that said hunter doesn’t have the knowledge of/access to the best of hunter survival skills (traps, real kiting – aka not just backpedaling away from a mob trying to get to you, etc.). You’re going to want a pet that can pick up the hunter’s slack, which leads to the tenacity tree. Yes, the hunter should learn how pets of other trees work, but assuming that the hunter isn’t ready for that up front, that’d be my advice.
On a slightly different note, I just have to chuckle at the previous comments regarding pets and visibility, as I’ve run with a bat/chimera/devilsaur/corehound before. The bat and chimera drove me up the wall, but my devilsaur and corehound were more of an annoyance to melee in raids, I would imagine. :)
funny in a sad way the pets I used most before WotLK are the pets who became useless with the expansion.
practically all cunning pets are bad for leveling but lets look at the tragic ones:
dragonhawk- leveled to 70 with me from 7- came WotLK it turned to cunning and became useless.
ravager- went sightseeing with me in all the end game raids of BC and was reluctantly released from service came the expansion, retired to tapdancing in a bar somewhere.
tallstriders have got to be the most useless ever. in BC they were useless because I never wanted my pets to learn cower and this one came with i built in. in WotLk they stayed useless, not holding aggro and not doing much in general.
the pet family I was sorry to let go is the wind serpents- they look so cool and killed me so many times – holding aggro like a paper boat in a river.
crabs I only just started trying, and not impressed. will try spiders next and hope for better performance.
Kaina,
I disagree about the Hyena since Tendon Rip does do damage, it has a short cool down, and it prevents runners used at the end of combat, or stops the mobs from running all over the place at the beginning. It can also be used in every fight, and sometimes twice in one fight.
The Raptor special ability Savage Rend is down for too long. It ends up being used every third fight or so depending on how fast combat is going. The component which allows it to really shine is set to a crit rate which is really low. If Savage Rend had its cool down dropped even by half, it would make a much more effective pet than it does not. Right now, it’s just not as useful as others.
If you accept that all Ferocity and Tenacity pets are better then Cunning pets for leveling another way of looking at this is by diet. Restrictive diets require annoying food, and until level 15 you can’t get Glyph of Mend Pet
A list of Cunning pets available between level 8 and 10 and their diets:
Bat – Meat, Fungus, Fruit
Bird of Prey – Meat, Fish
Dragonhawks – Meat, Fish, Fruit
Ravengers – Meat
Spider – Meat
Based on this list I nominate Spider as the worst leveling pet for level 10-15!
You know, if your rolling a hunter for the first time, by all means, get a terrible leveling pet! Teach yourself how to kite, jumpshot, manage multiple targets, and manage crowd control. Roll with a carrion bird and watch as she miraculously pulls more mobs to attack you right from the start! Go on an adventure into Howling Fjord at level 10 and get yourself a crow! Or sneak into Azuremyst as a horde and capture a ravager if you’re into that thing. Or into Wailing Caverns and get a beautiful blue serpent (or windserpent.) I spent many many levels round Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands grinding madly with a serpent. It’s great fun learning to move and fight and watch out for adds. This was also pre-5% scaling to all pet familes. Honestly these days, I don’t think there are many pets you could really go wrong with leveling- it’s whether you play your hunter wrong.
(howwwwweverrrrr, hint hint, a Moth isn’t a half bad choice solo leveling. Serenity dust scales really really great in low levels.)
Unless playing and leveling in wow to you means watching television shows on dvd and looking at stocks or something, using wow as a useless multitask. Then by all means, roll as a beast master.
For PVE leveling, I’d have to go with the Bird of Prey family. I don’t see how snatch could help hold aggro, take down a mob faster, or anything useful like that. It’s too situational and better for PVP, I think.
I thought about this, what does a new hunter want and not want.
Needs: a damaging pet with a fast unmanaged ability that is not going to die quickly.
Doesn’t Need: a slow pet with a situational ability, one with a slow cool down or one that needs to be micromanaged.
That being said; bears, boars, scorps and carrion birds seem like good candidates.
I was always a fan of the carrion bird, a ferocity pet with survivability ability.
Nearly everyone agreed boar was best for a new Hunter Pre-BC for many reasons.
Prob still is today.
Iffy pets; cats, wolves, moths, tallstriders, and crabs.
These are due to slow cooldowns or odd abilities that may or may not help.
Cats only on the list due to having to work prowl.
Bad pets; ANY cunning pet, raptors, moths, turtles and crocs.
Due to very situational abilities or abilities with very long cooldowns.
Cunning pets seem more like pets for advanced usage.
A few pet families I did not mention due to getting them later in the game.
To be honest I found ravager still a viable pet up to around 50 before I had to worry about swapping over – and then it was to the rare gold worm in silithus :D..
I’ve tried probably every viable pet in game and found corehounds to be the most annoying sound wise, devilsaurs the most annoying movement wise and tallstriders to be the worst all around pets :D..
I have to say, this discussion has raised a lot more interesting points than I had considered! Thank you, everyone! And keep the comments coming. :>
I was so psyched when I finally hit 60 and got to tame my first exotic pet. I tamed a silthid…and I was disappointed. It’s CC lasts really short for its cool down, deals a paltry amount of damage, and the guy couldn’t seem to hold threat at all. I still have him for when I get to 80, but for now, he’s just relaxing.
Seidouyumi,
I know, it does do damage. But nothing compared to a cat or even a wolf. Notice that I didn’t put the hyena as one of the worse pet. I’m just saying that I haven’t seen a lot of Hunters lvling with a hyena. I’m actually lvling another hunter and tried a hyena, and didn’t fall in love with it. But for that, You gotta know WHEN to use the ability. A “noob” hunter wouldn’t know about that…here is the problem. That kind of ability is only “useful” for “experienced” hunters that know wat they are doing.
So I think the Raptor is still better than the Hyena.
Kaïna, Uldaman.
PVE leveling, any of Tenacity family pets will work.
crabs will be my personal choice, since not so many hunter using them. Also, crabs’ animation are kind of fun.
Ya tanacity pets arnt very good for lvling but they have there purcks. they dont die as easy and somtimes let you live longer. and there even great at keeping agro. but i dotn like the fact that theres no flying tanacity pets.
Some clarifications here:
Up to level 31, the only differences between the pet families now are that Ferocity and Cunning pets can get Dash, while Tenacity pets can get Charge instead. The family modifiers were normalised to +5% across the board in 3.1 and the first 3 talent points (20, 24, 28) are forced to go into the essentially identical first tier.
So in the context of a “before level 40″ pet, the only differences are in aesthetics, the family skills, the ease of taming and in the second 3 talent points (at 32, 36 and 40).
The second tier of Cunning offers no real benefits for leveling (Owl’s might marginally assist with threat, since you probably won’t have Go for the Throat or Bestial Discipline fueling things).
The second tier of Tenacity offers the beautiful “Blood of the Rhino” and it’s 40% boost to Mend Pet. However, getting this at level 32 requires putting 3 points into Great Stamina at the cost of missing out on the threat increase from Cobra Strikes.
The second tier of Ferocity offers Bloodthirsty, probably one of the best pet talents going around (particularly since the threat for this goes to the pet rather than the hunter).
At these kinds of levels, the pet talent tree really just doesn’t make that much difference – better to focus on aesthetics, ease of taming and the leveling utility of the family skill (with Bears winning the last contest hands down).
@77: Boars had Charge and Gore in Burning Crusade and all pets could learn Dash. However, having both Charge and Dash was pointless because they shared a CD. Charge was awesome due to the 1 second root and the AP boost on the first attack, which really helped with the boar’s initial aggro on a single target. (this was back when Growl’s threat was calculated based on the *pet’s* AP rather than the hunter’s RAP so the Charge AP boost meant the first Growl typically gave around 3-4 times the normal amount of threat).
The initial pet talent trees in the Wrath alpha/beta had a shared first tier for all pets: Cobra Strikes, Dash, Great Stamina, Natural Armour. At this point, Charge only existed as a 3rd tier talent for Ferocity pets. A lot of people (including me) objected to this arrangement because it meant that Boars, the original Charge pet family, were not going to be able to get Charge in Wrath. The developers weren’t particularly happy with the situation either, so the Tenacity tree was changed to have Charge in the first tier instead of Dash.
The thing that actually made boars the run-of-the-mill pet that they are now was the change to eliminate Growl’s insane scaling with direct AP boosts on the pet. Without that massive aggro burst they used to get from the buffed Growl, boars became just another tenacity pet with a fairly unimpressive family ability.
Spiders. While the web is nice, it’s a waste of focus at low levels til about 30, when the mobs actually become hard.
Honestly the worst pets of each family to me are as follows and i’ve tried ALOT of families
ferocity: tallstrider ability is almost useless at later lvls only good for stopping something big.
tenacity: i would say crabs cause they have to channel so they lose aggro followed by rhino they waste of time now as only mm hunts get a bleed.
cunning: dragonhawk reason is they have to stay cloes to get full damage which is why for cunning elemental damage i use wind serpent i even lvl’d 1-80 with one so like others say its your play style, and yes ohm runs with me in lvl 80 10 mans got good dps and cant beat extra mana regen (agro dont seem to be a prob for mine so must be something wrong “shrug”)
im not sure but a long time ago the hyenas were bad i sent one against another hyena (mine was even a level higher) and some how the wild hyena still killed mine even with heals (not the wild one was not elite)
I think it depends greatly on the individual. No one plays the same and how you play and spec your pets greatly influences how it performs. Personally, I think Tallstriders aren’t so bad, and I’ll enver ever give my Spider away
as a side note, vote 1 for being able to pick the talent tree for you pet rather than have them alotted one :P
Everybody’s saying how the Tenacity pets are the way to go for leveling, but I would say that Ferocity are better BECAUSE they’re not too shabby at holding aggro (leveled as a Marksman with a wolf since 2005. I actually rarely die – perhaps once every few levels. Same goes for my wolf), AND they do so much better dps than a Tenacity. For fun, I have a baby Beast Master and Survival. The Beast Master hunter has a boar (I’ve always wanted to try a boar, and I’m loving it!), and my Survival snagged the rare spawn the Rake (maned lion – I’m not a fan of any cat models except the maned lions). While I love the boar’s animations, sometimes it irks me how slowly I kill things with it as compared to my wolf and cat.
Sure, the Ferocity pets doesn’t hold aggro as well as the Tenacity does, and is more squishy, but hey, I say let the new hunters err! How otherwise would they learn how to get out of tight spots? One of my favorite WoW-related stories took place way back in 2005, when my hunter was level 17. I had to log out, but my hearthstone was on cooldown, and I was in the Barrens, near the Sludge Fen. I climbed up this little hill and sat down, ready to log out… but a raptor attacked me.
I killed it, but it’s one of those raptors that screech for help. Regardless to say, another raptor came running. And again. And again. And again… after ten minutes of a seriously exciting and frightening fight, my wolf had died three times, and I rezzed him in combat (Tauren = War Stomp. How I love that stuff, and luckily for me, I’ve just learned Freezing Trap). At the end of the fight, my wolf was dead again, but I had – I kid you not – EIGHT dead raptors, all either my level or one below. That was seriously awesome, and I learned a lot about CC and kiting from that one! Ha!
Oh, to those naysayers about moths? What’s with the hate? I have a baby Ally hunter that I occasionally play, and she has a moth for a pet (not to mention my main hunter also have one, though the wolf’ve always been her main pet) – I think they’re one of the best pets! (Especially if named Flutter.)
See, I miss the good old days when Windserpents’ Lightning Breath didn’t have a cooldown. I had a windserpent practically as soon as I could tame one from Wailing Caverns. I saw a lot of people mention how windserpent has fallen down the list in terms of usefulness, and I have to say it’s a damn shame.
Now, for a “new” solo hunter below 40, just about anything is good, though some have abilities that are less helpful than others, but looking beyond all that and looking only at the criteria, over what I would recommend least to a new solo hunter below 40, I have only this to say:
If you’re Alliance, DON’T BOTHER with Dragonhawks
If you’re Horde, DON’T BOTHER with Ravagers.
My 1st Pet was a Durotar Tiger, I love Tigers in RL so decided at level 10 to Risk the run from Darnassus to Durotar (without even bothing to get a Trash Pet).
I had that same Pet up to level 80, tho when Blizzard changed it to allow Pets to keep an ELITE Tag, tho there stats are the same as non-elite, I went and tamed a ZG Tiger just to have the Elite Tag coz it looks cool lol.
I also have an Elite Tagged White Bear for Tanking, Both Spirit Beasts and the Ghostsaber from Darkshore.
I have tried other pets but always come back to Cats (Spiritbeasts included as they are basically Cats with a special Attack).
Spiders as mentioned seem to Die too easy, Rhino’s tho a Nice Tank Pet are way to Big. Wolves are again a Nice pet, but I find they just Look Scruffy, Cats spend all the time Cleaning and Preaning when not fighting whereas wolves just go around sniffing other dogs Backsides lol.
I used gorilla as tanking pet because it had thunderclap its great for aggroing several mobs but now all pets from tenacity family have thunderclap so it doesnt rly matter which u will chose
I’ve revised and expanded upon my earlier comment here, over on my blog.
http://wowdecrypted.blogspot.com/2009/07/pet-choice-for-levelling-hunter.html
The experience of a lowbie hunter in the post 3.0 world is vastly different to anything back in vanilla or TBC. Even a crappy pet can do well enough.
I leveled with a tallstrider and then a bird of prey so I guess I’m biased… they both served me as well as the cats and wolves I’d tried, at least I felt they did o_O; Also “snatch” /does/ do damage! Even to non weapon users! :) The only pet I’ve ever had trouble with was a windserpent. Mine always seemed very squishy and not great at holding aggro.
@106-
I hear ya re: windserpents. 50 focus LB/0 CD = <3. Had to abandon mine post 3.0 and haven't yet found a convincing reason to tame one since, on any of my hunters – was toying with the idea of getting one for one of my SV hunters and see how it worked as a "pulling pet" e.g. let pet pull the mob onto a trap, disengage and cut loose on DPS, but… seems like overkill, so dropped the idea (plus serpents would work better for that with 30 yard range vs 20 and slowing of casting speeds…)
Another pet that got hosed by 3.0 was the dragonhawk – I'm sure many were pleased to be able to start taking them on raids and so forth but for hunters who had found out how to use their AOE effect for maximum benefit (i.e. knew how to use the pet as a unique and interesting item rather than as just another generic DPS pet), it was a bit of a downer.
And then there was scorpids… oh I could go on and on. For most pets 3.0 was a really good thing, but certainly not all.
As it happens I have a tallstrider on one of my lowbie hunters (lvl 24 I think); tamed it and stabled it so can’t really say much about it right now but in light of all the tallstrider “hate” I think I’ll go back and give it a try…
I wouldnt reccomend a wind serpent. theya re a more skilled hunter pet. they dont jsut run in attack then run away. hey LOS kind chase it a bit, then hit it.( same goes for serpents and chimera)
Tallstriders are very nice for aoe aggro, that dust lind thing they do pulls the threat on alot of mobs. so i think its very useful ( i had one on a temp hunter RAFing 10-59 it was wonderful) I’m not sure why folks are having issues with them
Scott and others – if you get a chance, test a lowbie tallstrider and a lowbie bear and carrion bird on the same hunter.
Evaluate its single target and small group aoe target aggro capabilities.
Gut feel says bear holds best by a long way, with tallstrider a very distant last of these three. Perhaps its not wrothy of the hate its getting here though!
Tested lvl 20 tallstrider on lvl 23 BM hunter on Wrathtails near Zoram’Gar – result: not a very good pick for low lvl/lazy hunter. As others have noted, the 40 sec CD means that more often than not, by the time you actually have all desired mobs within 10 yards… dust cloud is on CD.
Yes I know the solution is to take it off autocast and manually trigger it at the right time, and that’s how I’m going to be using it myself (I’m certainly not abandoning it) … but that’s not something our hypothetical lazy lowbie is going to bother with, especially not when he could take a carrion bird who could accomplish the same thing with no special timing on the hunter’s part.
The one thing I can say in the tallstrider’s favor is that it seemed pretty tough, but that may be due more to players/pets in general simply being OP even at low levels, these days. Still, if you just focus on the single mob fights, the tallstrider will always be at least adequate for your needs.
I am going to try to make the case for Bears as the worst pet for unskilled low-level hunters (does not apply to lackadaisical hunters).
Bears have great survivability, will happily aggro up to three mobs, have skills that work fine on autocast (no need for macros or situational awareness), tenacity tree is probably best for leveling if one is not concerned with leveling speed.
But, what exactly is most needed by a low-level unskilled hunter. Not pet survivability, not pet aggro, no what is needed most is _Skill_. Taking one’s time and learning how to be a good hunter with a poor pet, will serve one much better in the long run, than a pet that let’s you auto-shoot through the first 40 levels. So try out those weak pets, try everything, learn how to use those skills (pet as well as having to kite, make macros, evaluate situations), _then_ get a bear.
Corwyn – interesting take, and I think you make a good point; sort of like learning fencing by initially practicing with a lead bar, or learning boxing while wearing wrist weights, etc… but it also depends on the person’s end goals, e.g. does he really *want* to be a very-skilled hunter, or is he just kind of roaming around enjoying the sights and atmosphere of the game?
For someone who wants to make a serious go of pvp or raiding I’d say yours is probably the best path to take… but for a casual/solo/PVE’er all that skill is probably unneeded, and may in fact drive him away from the game – it saddens me to say it but after spending most of my time playing solo and trying to develop good strategy and such, I find easily 95% of the solo content can simply be facerolled. It’s like getting really really good at FORTRAN and discovering the rest of the world no longer even remembers what that is (no I’m not that old I just use it as an example)…
Just last night for example I was doing the Drakuru boss stage on a new hunter (having only done it once before) and thinking “wow! this is a really tough solo challenge – nice!”, but after a few tries suddenly I found Drakuru at 20% from another player, and so what was a solo challenge became EZ mode (and we both got credit as the other guy was smart enough to FD and let me finish up). Yeah I could have let Drakuru reset but… I guess I’m just not that good at resisting temptation… I’d love to see a “solo hard mode”.
A note for those of you commenting today: It looks like my spam filter went crazy yesterday and today and ate several legit comments. I’ve updated the plugin and rescued everything I saw, but please let me know if you run into any trouble commenting. (And thanks to Volcan for e-mailing me about this!)
An unused or badly used pet is by far the weakest of all. I see too many hunters who do not use their pet in combat at all and simply leave it standing beside them or attack a mob before letting their pet grab it first.
If you must however get a pet class out of me I’ll simply agree with the previous dragonhawk comments and add that I find flying pets to be obtrusive.
The main reason that Dragonhawks and Wind Serpents have such terrible aggro is for the same reason: they are attacking the enemy with breath weapons before they get close, and many hunters are taking that as a sign to attack. However, the pet’s attack doesn’t garner a lot of aggro. Instead, it’s the growl that does. A growl which, even if they get close, they may not have the focus to use because they have used their ranged weapon.
To that end, the worst leveling pets are all those who have a ranged attack. In that line, I would warn against Wind Serpents (Lightning Breath), Dragonhawks (Fire Breath), Chimeras (Froststorm), Serpents (Poison Spit), and Worms (Acid Spit).
If you are planning to take one of them as a leveling pet, I suggest turning off their ranged attack, or only putting it on ‘manual’ rather than ‘auto-attack’. Either that, or give your pet a short bit to gain some threat from their growl before jumping in to the attack. Impatience will get people killed.
The pets I would pick last pre-40 and why:
- Scorpids: Scorpid Poison does little damage and can be resisted by nature immune mobs to boot. It just doesn’t measure up like it used to.
- Hyenas: Tendon Rip is redundant when you have Wing Clip and Concussive Shot.
- Birds of Prey: Snatch doesn’t really do much for you unless you’re on a PvP server.
All depends on spec and playstyle, most likely…and of course, personal preference. I see a lot of opinions above and that’s what they are based on, right?
I’ve seen hunters in guild chat talking up tenacity pets for leveling, but to me, I want something that does max damage so it’s NOT getting a beat down. I have MEND PET, so even if it needs a boost, I can give it a shot of health, so I disagree with them.
Although I am by no means an expert, nor am I a Mini-Mania ;), I have tamed every pet family at multiple levels on multiple hunters (anyone have the number to Alt-A-Holics Anonymous??) and, ultimately, I think the cat and wolf are the best leveling pets out there. But…guess what? My opinion based on my experiences and my specs and my playstyles, as are all of yours :)
To answer the question, I would have to say that I found the moth, for me, to be the weakest leveling pet for all the reasons the moth haters listed above, followed by tallstriders, which never did much for me, either, but gotta respect those who run around with a oversized ugly chicken following them, right (and no, I’m not talking about a boomkin…but would it be great to tame a drood?!?! Oh well, that’s another thread).
Diet is not a major concern anymore because after you get the Mend Pet glyph at level 15, you never have to feed your pet again. Traditionally, the hardest pets to find food for at low levels were those that ate only fungus and/or fruit because they were less common drops than meat, fish, cheese or bread.
The difference in dps between the worst and best pets seems like it would be fairly small if you turn off crappy skills, like Tallstrider Dust Cloud, and use that focus for Bite/Claw/Smack. In overall dps, how much difference is there between a cat with Claw/Rake on autocast and a cat with just Claw on autocast?
I don’t understand all the Wind Serpent hate. I leveled a hunter with one and levels went extremely fast. I love their animations, best animation in water imo, but in all seriousness; I love ‘em. As far as worst; Tallstriders, birds of prey, spiders, boars(regrettably).
People hate wind serpents for several reasons – for people like me it’s because they used to be awesome pre-3.0 and are now very average.
Other people hate them because of pathing problems caused by their LB – personally I think I only witnessed this maybe twice (ever), but YMMV.
Wind serpent ranged attack = A) most mobs will be much closer to you meaning less margin for error and B) you have to remember to hold back a little longer than with other pets who enter combat with a growl/charge, else the mob is going to simply ignore your pet entirely.
I still love their look, and as with any pet they will always be at least “good enough”, but skillwise I don’t think wind serpents compare well against practically anything post 3.0.
While I wouldn’t rate them as highly as boars, bears and carrion birds (for a low skill lvl 10-40 hunter), I would add hyenas as still being a good choice in that scenario – 20 sec CD on 50% slow (plus small amount of dmg) is fast enough to be available for most if not all combats and gives you a safety net.
Equating tendon rip with wing clip is a mistake – the tendon rip’s job is to buy you more time to use ranged DPS; if the mob is still alive by the time it gets to you, that’s when you use wing clip/disengage and burn it down the rest of the way (and for the hypothetical low skill hunter we’re basing this all on, it’s questionable whether he would actually know enough to do a wing clip at all let alone a clip/jump combo, simple as that seems).
That’s just talking about the ways a hyena can be helpful for someone who just wants to point and shoot – there’s plenty of room for skill scaling once the hunter gets good enough to know how to synch his shots with rip, or use the hyena with kiting, etc etc.
124- to be fair, tendon rip is functionally identical to concussive shot so you’re right about that, but the cooldown factor remains – e.g. being able to hold back on conc shot until tendon rip ends gives you that much more shooting time, plus there’s the fact that conc shot costs you mana while tendon rip comes out of your pet’s focus (and normally you won’t need to fall back on conc shot anyway, at least not for casual/solo leveling).
*Yawns and stretches* Gimme a bit to get back into the swing, and I’ll post.
People never kick me from groups because of my mazzaranche tallstrider; Noodle. But I’m not a poofda BE either I’m a Tauren. As for the weakest leveling pet that might by whichever pet you find that still has caster stats if their are any. Most pets are just fine for leveling these days thanks to the talent trees.
Caster stats have been removed.
My take on “easy leveling pets for lvl 10-40″, in summary:
Best-
Carrion bird
Bear
Boar
Hyena
Worst-
Anything in cunning tree
Spiders are the worst leveling pet overall. Web is at best a weak skill, at worst never used. The only saving grace is ferocity, and that’ll only get you so far.
It felt like all the pets that I leveled with did fine, as the leveling went so quick. I still think that hunter pets should be just like warlock and dk pets…where they stay the same level as you. I hate taming a lvl 20 pet, it going to 75, and I have to spend hours in crummy heroics that nobody wants to do in order to be able to use my pet in a raid. Would be pretty sweet if you could tame pets that are higher level than you, and they would down-level to you.
Good news and bad news I’m finding.
On the down side, my only two pets, my pink tallstrider (betch) and my dragonhawk (dragonkawk) are seemingly useless. My tallstrider absolutely fails with aggro, as does my dragonhawk. I have to constantly spam intimidate or neither of them can hold aggro, although I do find my tallstrider to be significantly better than my dragonhawk.
On the bright side, nobody is saying sporebats suck! In fact a few of you have said they’re the best cunning pets. :0 I’m pretty much leveling a hunter specifically cause I want a sporebat so we’ll see how that goes.
In my opinion,
yea. Dragonhawks fail at life and tallstriders at a close second. However, tallstriders can be used nicely if you know when to use dust cloud. If you’re loosing a fight, using dust cloud to avoid getting hit when you have aspect of the cheetah on and are running away can help you survive a lot. Nothing that spider web couldn’t do 15 times better though. :C
A great many opinions here. Of course, the ones that happen to agree with me are right ;)
I’ve suggested several choices that are somewhat controversial.
Serpents with their poison spit are the best of the ranged attackers. In most cases, their ranged attack goes off at the same time and range as the hunter’s attack (30 yards). It is a DoT attack that gets almost 100% uptime, so will be providing continual threat throughout the fight. It also acts as a 25% slow on spellcasting. This appears to work on more than just humanoid casters and is a very handy bonus. One of my hunters has a serpent as a permanent pet.
Hyenas are by far the easiest to use of the snare/stun creatures. The attack has a reasonable cooldown and a longish duration which can combine to mean it goes off at the right time fairly often. Fleeing mobs are much less a danger with a hyena as a pet. Hyenas are ferocity pets as well, so tend to burn down opponents that little bit faster.
Bats have been mentioned as a poor choice by a few people. I’d say they are one of the worst of all. Bats are cunning pets to start with. Sonic blast is a 20 yard ranged attack that only lasts 2 seconds. Often, the bat will stutter towards the pet to get in range of the blast, then will have only just closed to melee when the attack wears off. It does some damage as well but its pretty limited. The one minute cooldown means its not going to be available for use any time soon, probably not for a couple of fights. The spider’s web attack is somewhat better being melee ranged, shorter 40sec cooldown and 4 second duration.
Dragonhawks are only average pets, neither really poor nor great. Their fire breath does ok damage and its on a fast 10 second cooldown. However, the DoT component only lasts 2 seconds and the 20-yard range can make it tricky to use initially, being prone to the stutter effect as the pet tries to close range.
Scott @ #69 “Crabs and hyenas are pretty strong contenders for worst early/casual leveling pet”
Scott @ #129 (and 133) “While I wouldn’t rate them as highly as boars, bears and carrion birds (for a low skill lvl 10-40 hunter), I would add hyenas as still being a good choice…”
Why the change? I rate hyenas in the “good” bunch, ahead of boars.
What pets would I recommend? Probably Bear and Carrion Bird for most playstyles. Both are AOE, but only in melee range. Serpents are awesome if you are regularly going against humanoids.
My short list of pets I haven’t liked that are for low level Hunters are… Bats and spiders and tallstriders. Nether one of them held up well during battle, they didn’t hold agro too well and in tight in closed areas the bat would get in the way and I couldn’t see.
The ones I have liked are Bears, cats and turtles and boars. The turtle doesn’t do much damage but holds agro really well.
Crypto -
You’re right, I was too quick to write off tendon rip in my earlier post; I have 2 on different hunters but am so used to all the macros and strategerizing that I’d kind of forgotten that my hyenas probably rely on all that the least of all (as compared to my spiders, silithids, crabs and etc), and sure enough when I went back and tried noobing around with hyena and steady-shot spam, lo and behold my hyena still did a pretty good job of keeping mobs away long enough for me to burn them down… so I decided that opinion needed revising.
Re: spiders, I do like them quite a lot (that 4 sec root is awesome-sauce when it’s timed to coincide with burst DPS), but a 40 sec CD is too slow for someone who is just going to leave it on auto-cast and hope for the best.
Re: boars vs hyenas… I use a boar on my MM spec hunter and have found that his charge/gore/growl ties enemies up pretty well even when I’m using burst DPS (i.e. long enough for me to ensure the mob won’t make it the full distance back to me before keeling over, so I think the two are pretty evenly matched for the role of “auto-pet”, but I can see how you could make a case for a small edge either way.
As an aside from the RFC, it doesn’t really matter what you use if you know what your doing. The RFC is mainly for people who are new to WoW, or new to hunters and want or need some advice. These aren’t people who are nessecarily going to know what pets are good ‘auto-pets’ and what are good pets to personally cast their abilities. This is meant to be just a general way for people to scan our comments and see the general consensus on what pet they need to avoid for leveling.
Yes
anything you like the look of except a crab. i love crabs, and used them before they were nerfed in 3.0. now, they are utterly useless except for pvp (where they are fairly handy).
Cats and ravs are tops for me…I’ll go miles out of my way to have a ravager chittering at my side.
Weakest? Eh…I wasn’t crazy about the raptor I’ve tried, Mazz was mostly only useful as a goad to the player I named him after in PVP, and I still have to find excuses to take the wolf out.
I understand about the pathing screwing up on Windserpents. But using a macro that binds Steady shots or another shot that sees an abundant use with Lightning Breath and disabling it in the pet window you’ll be able to increase both your pets dps and threat. I still use a Windserpent. I love it. Though my typical pet that I almost always have out is the Barking wolf. I just can’t get enough of my blue eyed friend.
Tallstriders or Dragonhawks.
Tallstriders: because (at least the last time I checked) their ability will go off without having a target nearby- thus wasting their long-cooldown ability!
Dragonhawks: because they require an absolute non-mobile target to properly do damage, and their Fire-based attack will still go off on Fire-immune mobs, wasting their Focus!
Ok, first of all tallstriders are pretty good pets, and I will never abandon Gahiji. I’ve even raided with him. Personally, though, I hate spiders, they’re more pvp useful. Dragonhawks not all that great, and Wind Serpent requires too much micro management for my liking. Poor little spore bats don’t have much use either, even with the new ability.
Currently levelling up my 4th hunter – so not quite inexperienced – at level 28 I finally have enough points for 2/2 Bestial Discipline (and no GftT yet) … I simply turned Pin off on the crab and let him autocast Growl. Even with BoA weapons and twinked armor, I rarely if ever pull aggro. (I’ve been rotating between crab, wolf, and wind serpent.)
I agree, though, that carrion birds/owls aren’t a choice I’d recommend at this time. their abilities aren’t as great as they used to be, and the wings get in the way of looting.
I’ve found that most tenacity pets are quite useless pre-30 for leveling; I’m leveling my 3rd hunter and the only pets that can seem to keep aggro are ferocity pets.
On another note, pets with single target or buff abilities are quite weak for leveling.
Well when I leveled My hunter along time ago I tamed every beast i could for the skills of course so i tamed all that wqas possible too!! Well I was disapointed with the tallstriders even back then so my vote is Tallstriders but have never tamed or wanted a moth..Well i have started another hunter and have him hooked up with a boar and the boars is doing a great job holding aggro I domiss the old charge tho that ac
tually stunn the target for a couple sec with my 80 when i leveled the last 10levels I had a rhino and had a blast with him until blizz ruined his stampede. It was funnier then hell to see the target/targets fly and he did excellent to keep the aggro!!! but now they ruined the rhino cause people comeplain about stampede but let the shamans and druids keep thier similar talent for AoEbut rhino tojust one target!! Any way sorry for the rant so I say for low levels tallstriders worst and Boar best they eat anything LOL
Grrrr sorry working on my laptop typing and typos lol
Personally, I feel that any pet that has a situational move (disarm, cast interrupt) on a long cooldown is pretty useless.
I know bears are probably fantastic, I just can’t get past their standing “animation”. The bottom jaw just looks too freaking weird and it irks the crap out of me. Pretty silly reason to not get a bear, I’m sure, but I just can’t help it.
I have always always always loved boars. One, I love pigs irl; secondly, I think for tenacity pets, they do a good deal of damage and I have never had a problem with my little boars holding aggro. Even at low levels, I think they make awesome pets. Plus, they eat anything, and have tons of different colors to choose from even at low levels. I’ve used boars for as long as I can remember, back in the day when we had to tame weird critters in the middle of nowhere just to learn the next level of bite, and back when I farmed Mist Howler for several hours because of his quick attack speed. :P
I also love my carrion bird. He does great damage which helps him keep aggro, and the AoE shriek is nice for picking up initial threat. The wings don’t really get in my way except for the other night when I was trying to pick up a quest item from the floor, but after a slight turn of the camera I got it. Just a tiny little annoyance in an otherwise fantastic pet.
So my personal top two picks are boars and carrion birds. I don’t even mess with the cunning tree.
Oh your missing out. Not quite so much in lower levels, but cunning pets can be a ton of fun. Wolverine bite and owls focus are two of the best pet talents anywhere. On the negative side though, carrion eater isn’t passive like the other two tree’s happiness restoration, and their up front damage can’t match ferocity, obviously.
Below 40, I’d have to say cunning and tenacity would lose, because you can stop feeding ferocity pets sooner. With all families having a focus dump and no regen talents dps output is pretty much the same since you only have a few talent points. In lower level instances flappy things would also lose, due to targeting issues and a lack of experience with tab and the assorted fun that comes with it.
I must say, as a Marksman spec’d hunter, I pull aggro off just about EVERY pet I’ve had lately. I still love my hydra/croc though I’m trying to level a boar as an alt tanking pet. Cannot STAND gorillas and spiders scare the crap outta me. I may drop my cat though cause it’s still far too common…even with so many people swapping for wolves as raiding pets. I like to try to be different, and I can level with just about any pet I chose to get. I will say most cunning pets seem to have more use in pvp than in soloing/questing. I don’t mind some of the abilities that use more focus because i have decent enough crit with Go for the Throat to regen it right back fairly quickly.
I have no good suggestions, as I played back before they overhauled the pet system.
I leveled with a caster dragonhawk, but then switched to Washte Pawne when I could. I loved using a Wind Serpent, because having a ranged attack meant my pet wasn’t likely to run around pulling everything in creation.
I remember when Wind Serpents were up there on the best raiding pets in BC. They were very comparale to raptors and cats. :)
I don’t like spiders, but that’s because I don’t like spiders… I guess I’d have to say to stay away from tallstriders at low levels, their ability probably isn’t the greatest. But it really does depend on preference in the end.
My choice of a pet is, brace yourself, a moth. I rarely see anyone use them though.
Off course they are ferocity, and with my favorite family skill other then thunder stomp. They got a HoT and att power buff ability, and I noticed that I don’t need to heal him as much as I did a cat or some other pet, which really adds up to the pets and my own survivability.
Second would be tallstriders, I just love them :3
Of the ferocity pets (only pet tree I do) I have to say tallstrider. But for new ppl I suggest u get a cat or a wolf I love my wolf the rare named Snarler i’m ganna get a new cat soon then Skoll Loqu’nahak then in patch 3.3 get the spirit bear. The new spirit beast :)
I know alot of you guys find these pets horible but I like dragonhwaks, birds of preys and moths alot. I also like wolves while I lvled (I’m lvl 80) The pet I hate the most is spider for there horrible sound they make. I also hate them in real life so that doesn’t help either.
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