The simplest way to feed your pet is just to drag the food item out of your inventory and drop it on the pet. It will gain a 'Feed Pet Effect' buff that will last 20 seconds. Notice how your Combat window shows Happiness gains.
Cooking tends to raise food level. Wait the 20 seconds out before feeding again, food just goes to waste. Alternatively, designate a particular bag slot. See the macro links at the end of this guide for details. Pets don't benefit from the rest bonus or quest experience. Nor can pets start working on a level you haven't finished gaining yourself.
For these reasons, it isn't practical to level multiple pets simultaneously. Leveling a pet below your own level is a challenge.
Small groups not raids and soloing caster mobs is the best way to go at first. Remember, kill mobs that are green or higher to yourself. It is safe to take lowbie pets to instances. Pet aggro radius is based on your level, not the pet's level. Physical pet size scales to pet level. When you tame a pet it will automatically scale down sometimes up to the same size as any other Hunter's pet with the same beast model.
As it levels up, it will slowly grow. It doesn't matter how big it was in the wild or at which level you tamed it. For example, any tarantula model Spider you tame will end up the same size at level Instead of mana, pets use Focus which is very similar to a Rogue's Energy bar.
Focus ticks up by 24 points every four seconds. Normal attacks don't consume any Focus. It may be worthwhile to make a chart of automatic pet skills, e. The talent 'Bestial Discipline' bumps up regen to 36 or 48 per tick. And 'Go for the Throat' grants your pet an extra 25 or 50 Focus every time you get a ranged crit.
But consider these:. Such pet skills are called "Focus dumps" meaning any amount of extra Focus will be turned into damage. There is further synergy for Beast Mastery Hunters who can have Frenzy or Ferocious Inspiration proc from the extra attacks. Growl costs 15 Focus on a 5 second cooldown. Growling generates extra threat but does not force mobs to attack your pet.
Each rank of Growl generates a base amount of threat. If your pet's Attack Power is beyond a certain threshold based on its level, bonus threat is applied. A level 70 pet with top rank Growl goes by:.
This means once your pet's Attack Power reaches , every point of pet AP beyond that adds 5. Cower costs 15 Focus on a 20 second cooldown. It does the opposite of Growl: lowers your pet's threat against its target. Rarely useful since turning off Growl is enough to keep your pet from pulling aggro off player tanks.
Focus dumps are Claw , Bite and Smack. Any time your pet is out, a new action bar will appear: the Petbar. Keybinds are listed as 'Secondary Action Button' An important part of keeping your pet alive is pulling it back out of dangerous AoE pulses.
Most of the time -- particularly in PvE -- your pet should be set to Follow and Passive. Passive pets only attack when you order them to attack. Defensive pets will attack anything that strikes either of you. Aggressive pets will automatically attack hostile targets in range. Aggressive pets can be useful in PvP for spotting and smacking stealthed enemies. Twisting around while stopped will even result in your pet watching behind your back.
Take care when jumping down ledges, crossing bridges, or climbing stairs in PvE. Pets sometimes path oddly and can aggro a bunch of mobs. Keep in mind your pet will prefer to follow on your left side. When trying to skirt mobs, running sideways or walking backwards can keep your pet on the side away from danger. The middle of the pet bar is reserved for pet skills. Drag skills from the Pet tab of your spellbook and rearrange to your convenience.
Right-clicking a skill in either place will toggle automatic mode on and off. Be careful not to leave a low Focus skill on Automatic if you want a high Focus skill used as often as possible.
Order on the pet bar makes no difference. There are many like it but this one is mine. Pet choice has two factors: performance and aesthetics. This section will focus on performance. As mentioned in the last section, physical size scales by pet level. Not a bad idea to check out another Hunter's level 70 pet with the same model -- meaning same shape, not necessarily coloring -- to preview proportion. The key to pet performance is beast family.
Beast family is now the only distinction between pets. Things which do not affect performance:. Each family can have a positive or negative multiplier for pet Damage, Health, and Armor. Certain families like Spore Bats have no multipliers at all. As mentioned in 'Pet Basics', many skills are tied to a certain family or set of families.
Skills available to a particular family have a profound impact on that family's total damage and utility, beyond what the multipliers alone might suggest. Warning: a few specific beasts have so-called "caster stats. Avoid taming beasts with a mana bar. Happily, all pet families are available in non-caster versions. Families listed below are ordered by Damage modifier from highest to lowest and alphabetically for matches.
Thanks to Petopia for specific multipliers. Spot checks matched up very well. Bite - 35 Focus - Instant - 10 sec Cooldown "Bite the enemy, causing to damage. Claw - 25 Focus - Instant - no Cooldown "Claw the enemy, causing 54 to 76 damage. Lasts until canceled. The reason for Ravager popularity among raiders. Screech - 20 Focus - Instant - No Cooldown - 5 yards "Blasts a single enemy for 33 to 61 damage and lowers the attack power of all enemies in melee range by Effect lasts 4 sec.
Makes a noticeable impact on your pet's ability to hold aggro. This move stacks with different ranks. A nearby stealth unit will be broken out of stealth if they are in the AOE range of this spell. It does not break any CC. Lightning Breath - 50 Focus - Channeled 'Instant' - No Cooldown - 20 yards "Breathes lightning, instantly dealing 99 to Nature damage to a single target.
Thunderstomp - 60 Focus - Instant - 1 Minute Cooldown - 8 yards "Shakes the ground with thundering force, doing Nature damage to all enemies within 8 yards. This ability causes a moderate amount of extra threat. Fire Breath - 50 Focus - Channeled - 10 Second Cooldown - 10 yards "Targets in a cone in front of the caster take Fire damage over 2 sec. Careful around crowd control. Furious Howl - 60 Focus - Instant - 10 sec cooldown - 15 yards "Party members within 15 yards of the wolf receive an extra 45 to 57 damage to their next Physical attack.
Lasts 10 sec. The 15 yard range forces Hunters to stand close to targets for full benefit of pet damage and the buff. Effect can stack up to 5 times on a single target. The top rank is less effective despite higher base damage because it only lasts 8 seconds.
Rank 4 allows your pet to miss once and not break the stacking. Use Bestial Wrath and other temporary buffs right before applying the first stack and the whole thing will stay high-damage until the entire debuff falls off. Lasts 4 sec. Charge - 35 Focus - Instant - 25 Second Cooldown - yards "Charges an enemy, immobilizes it for 1 sec, and adds melee attack power to the boar's next attack.
Also makes for powerful burst threat for soloing when used in combination with Gore. Lasts 12 sec. Gore is slightly more Focus efficient than Claw, meaning Ravagers nose ahead of other two in the long run. Raptors lack Dash, which cuts their PvP appeal. Dash is usually skipped anyway for raid spec'd pets. Wind Serpents and Scorpids have lower multipliers, but dish out potent magical damage.
How this compares to physical attacks like Claw and Gore depends on target armor. Wind Serpents can be used to attack from a distance, though this is less of an advantage than it used to be thanks to Avoidance. Currently, Scorpid Poison stacks in a particularly strong way. See that skill's description for details. Owls and other Screeching families along with Wolves score lower on actual damage, but bring extra group utility.
Screech reduces damage done to tanks while Howl increases group damage, at least for those in range. Boars are fantastic for leveling and solo farming. Hit, Haste, Critical Strike, and Resilience are represented in both rating and percentage form.
The higher your level, the more rating you need to achieve the same percent. Under this scheme, low level items can provide substantial percent bonuses to low level characters without tempting high level characters.
Ranged attacks can either crit, hit, or miss. The decision among these three outcomes is decided with a single random roll. Imagine a numbered list. Each line has "Crit," "Hit," or "Miss" penciled in. Here's where it gets interesting. Line 21's "Hit" gets erased and "Crit" written in its place. Line 96's "Miss" is erased and "Hit" written in its place.
This is called table-based combat. When there are thousands and thousands of swings, shots, and spell casts happening on the server every few seconds this is more efficient than generating a series of random rolls for each one.
In PvE, missing is more of an annoyance than a disaster. But while increasing your Crit is better for overall damage than increasing Hit by the same percent, Hit stat is 'cheaper' in gear design so you shouldn't have trouble finding a bunch of it. That's why Hit is very worthwhile until you stop missing and further Hit becomes useless.
Chance to miss your target depends on relative level. At level 70, you max at the following amounts of Hit Rating:. Even with a full measure of hit rating, shots can very occasionally miss, if you get a De-buff from a boss - for example Attumen the Huntsman. Otherwise once you are hit capped you will never miss a shot, thereby increasing your DPS in boss fights! Attack Power increases the damage of your hits and your crits. Crit chance increases frequency of crits.
Both stats become more valuable as the other stat improves. Many Hunters have trouble seeing both directions at first. This misunderstanding can make those with really high Attack Power continue to favor Attack Power, or those with really high Crit continue to favor Crit.
Best results come from favoring the lacking stat. It can be hard to tell which combination of Attack Power and Crit is best, given your current stats and talents. I recommend a tool like the Gear Choice Calculator linked at the end of this guide.
Attack Power is the stat that makes individual hits and crits show big numbers. The exact contribution of Attack Power for any particular attack varies by that attack's formula. See the 'Shots and Stings' section of this guide for details.
You may have different Attack Power values for your ranged and melee attacks. When 'melee' or 'ranged' is not specified, an item or buff adds to both equally.
Crit stat increases frequency of crits, not damage done by individual crits. The Crit percent shown on your character sheet is valid for even-level targets.
Dramatically higher or lower level targets are either harder or easier to crit based on Defense stat. In PvP, Resilience stat will both work against your Crit rate and reduce damage done by crits. This is a convenient time to explain the damage bonus of crits themselves, just remember Crit stat has no effect on the damage bonus. Untalented, crits deal double damage compared to normal hits.
With Mortal Shots, they deal 2. If either of the two Slaying talents are active, things become more complicated. Crit damage formulas and examples follow:. Great for ranged damage because it adds to both Attack Power and Crit simultaneously, taking advantage of the synergy between those stats. Observant Hunters may notice 61 of their base Agility is not turned into Crit chance. Haste reduces the time between Auto Shots and the cast time of non-instants like Steady and Aimed Shot.
Divide current time by Haste to find the new time. For example, a 3. Multiple Haste effects are multiplied together. Haste does not change damage done by individual Shots. When a Shot's formula calls for ranged weapon speed, it's asking for the unchanging speed listed on that weapon's tooltip. This is a very good thing because hitting faster for the same damage means DPS goes up. One snag: Haste can make it hard or impossible to fit an instant after Steady without delaying the next Auto Shot.
Over their full durations, Serpent Sting and Wyvern Sting receive a damage bonus equal to total spell power. Volley by contrast has a So if you have spell power, your Volley will only do 14 more damage spread among the ticks. Arcane Shot and Traps operate as magical attacks, but spell power does not enhance them.
Same with Mend Pet. A few family-specific pet skills benefit from your pet's spell power, not your own. Stamina is the primary survivability stat for all situations.
Each point of Stamina adds 10 Health aka hitpoints. The major advantage to Health is the fact it handles all damage types: physical, environmental, and all schools of magic. Stamina is not the only source of Health.
Depending on level, you'll have a certain amount of base Health. Level 70 Hunters of all races have base Health. So in general:. Armor reduces physical damage received by a certain percent. Hunters are allowed to wear Cloth, Leather, and at level 40 Mail equipment.
Mail provides the most Armor stat, but many Hunters wear Leather items when other stats are higher. Particularly in PvE, it just doesn't make much of a difference. For level Resistances reduce damage from a school of magic by a certain percent. Useful when the whole party or raid is taking large amounts of unavoidable magical damage. In most encounters, resistances can be ignored entirely. For some, stacking the proper type is essential. Your raid leaders should let you know about any resistance expectations.
For those interested in mechanics details, two separate rolls are involved when a spell is cast at a target. Level-difference roll The first roll is based on relative level between caster and target. There is small chance of lower level targets resisting on this roll; a high chance of higher level targets resisting.
The attacking caster can wear Spellhit gear to reduce her chance of being resisted on this roll. Any resist on the level-based roll will result in total spell failure. Resistance stats are not involved in the first roll. Resistance-stat roll The second roll is based on the attacking caster's level and the target's resistance stat in the appropriate school of magic.
This requires 5x[attacker's level] resistance. Each point of Intellect adds 15 to mana capacity. Not too interesting until Aspect of the Viper is active. You will gain 2. Plus, Marks Hunters with Careful Aim gain 4. Seen on gear as "restores X mana per 5 sec", MP5 is a steady source of mana regeneration. It doesn't matter if you are casting lots of spells or no spells at all.
MP5 gives the same benefit. Almost entirely useless for Hunters. Spirit-based regeneration turns off for five seconds every time you spend mana, including every Shot and Sting.
Some classes receive a portion of spirit regeneration even inside this "Five Second Rule. To keep pets in pace with Hunter gear upgrades, pets receive a bonus for some stats equal to a certain percent of their master's stats:. These are beyond any skill or buff bonuses your pet already has. Buffs which affect you and your pet at the same time have a 'double dipping' effect.
Aspect of the Wild grants both of you 70 Nature Resistance. Steady Shot 2. Steady Shot Dazed 2. Arcane Shot 0. Substitute 'BowMin' for 'BowMax' to find lower bounds. Multi, Aimed, Arcane, and Distracting Shots have a rank based bonus. Formulas given above reflect top rank bonuses. Multipliers can be applied in any order. The min damage, max damage, speed, and DPS listed on a ranged weapon's tooltip are all used in Shot formulas.
These are fixed values not to be confused with actual damage and speed. ScopeBoost and AmmoBoost represent how much each is raising damage per shot. Sniper Scopes, for example, have a ScopeBoost of 7.
Crit and Hit scopes have a ScopeBoost of 0. Shells and Arrows also boost per-shot damage like a Sniper Scope, but their boost scales to BowSpeed. Warden's Arrows state, "Adds 37 damage per second. So for a 2. Notice how Steady Shot and Arcane Shot ignore both of these damage boosts. As if you needed another reason to prefer a Crit scope. Four ranged attacks apply a Poison debuff to targets. These are known as Stings and are subject to stacking limitations.
You cannot personally apply two different Stings to a single target at the same time. If you try, the first Sting will be replaced by the new one. Stings do not benefit from crit, attack power, or Ranged Weapon Specialization.
They do benefit from Improved Stings. A 15 second DoT for damage at level Any spell power gear is added to this total, e. Many level cap Hunters avoid Serpent Sting most of the time.
Other attacks tend to cause more damage and for less mana. However, Serpent Sting can be shot on the run when other instants have already been used and it does impede stealthing. Multiple Hunters may DoT the same target.
This includes most special attacks. If a tank is doing fine with threat and healing isn't trivial, keep Scorpid Sting up. Use a timer mod to know when to reapply.
Multiple Hunters cannot stack Scorpid Sting on the same target. Improved Stings has no effect. As the only non-damaging Sting, use it to replace any other Sting to prepare a target for crowd control. An 8 second mana drain on a 15 second cooldown at level Improved Stings takes it to total drained. This can require a lot of tramping about the game world, especially if you're in search of pets with unique looks.
These are the different pet species available to every hunter: basilisk, bat, bear, beetle, bird of prey, boar, carrion bird, cat, crab, crane, crocolisk, dire horn, dog, dragon hawk, fox, goat, gorilla, hyena, monkey, moth, nether ray, porcupine, raptor, ravager, scarped, serpent, spider, spore bat, tallstrider, turtle, warp stalker, wasp, wind serpent, and wolf.
In addition, beast mastery hunters can tame special, "exotic" pets, which have extra abilities. These pets include: chimaera, core hound, devilsaur, quilen, rhino, shale spider, silithid, spirit beast, water strider, and worm. In short, many creatures you see in the game world can be tamed as a hunter pet. If you can't settle on just one, that's fine, because you can tame many pets -- up to However, you can only have one out at a time: any extra pets must be stabled while not with you stable masters in towns will look after your pet for you while you're out adventuring.
A certain number of pets can be stabled as "active" pets, which means you can call them and swap them for the pet you currently have no matter where in the game world you are. Who should and shouldn't play a hunter? We think there are a lot of great reasons to play a hunter: The class is very easy for new players to pick up -- but there's also a lot of depth to the class if you want to really get into the game.
Hunters have great survivability. Between mail armor, traps and tricks, and fiercely loyal pets, it's awfully hard to take a hunter down. This makes them a very good choice for players who are mostly interested in soloing.
Though hunters aren't as flexible as a hybrid class, with pets that can do double-duty as a tank, they have more flexibility than other pure DPS classes. But a hunter might not be for you if: You really want to tank or heal. Sorry, hunters just aren't it. You're interested in a melee character or a caster: hunters still aren't it.
You don't want to spend time hunting all over the game world to collect the perfect pet or the micromanagement of controlling a pet or collecting pets just doesn't interest you. Comment by yougonogo So i see the thing of survival not having true shot.
I found with mine aim shot and hawk eye where not so useful. Comment by Straffan Distracting Shot isn't a taunt, right?
Comment by sigmer Quote " Dwarves lack any racial abilities for PvE Hunters " And just below that, you write that one of the racicals from Dwarves are " Guns skill increased by 5. Also for the Troll hunter you mention that they have Bow Specialization, one of the skills that makes them the best PvE hunter in the game.
Comment by FilsonTheRat So many mistakes in this guide, it is painful to read. Please keep the following in mind when posting a comment: Your comment must be in English or it will be removed. Unsure how to post?
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