Hunter Pets Guide for WoW Classic

Taming and managing your pet is one of the most important parts of being a Hunter in WoW Classic. Choosing the right pet for what you are doing is crucial, as the pet you might rely on for leveling may differ from the best choice when it comes to end game content.

Unlocking Your First Pet Abilities

When you reach level 10 for the first time, your trainer will offer you the first part of the pet quest chain, depending on your race:

• Tauren: Taming the Beast
• Orc/Troll: Taming the Beast
• Dwarf: Taming the Beast
• Night Elf: Taming the Beast

This is the first of three taming quests, which send you across the zone to tame specific beasts. After completing your three quests, you will unlock Tame Beast, and your trainer will give you the last quest of the chain:

• Tauren: Training the Beast
• Orc/Troll: Training the Beast
• Dwarf: Training the Beast
• Night Elf: Training the Beast

Once you deliver the final part of the chain, you will unlock the rest of your pet management abilities:

• Beast Training
• Feed Pet
• Revive Pet

Taming Your First Pet

Before you go out into the world to tame your first companion, there are some rules that you need to be aware of.

• You can only tame a beast that is the same level as you or lower; higher-level beasts cannot be tamed.
• You cannot tame a beast if you currently have an active pet, even if your pet is dismissed.
• If you have a dead pet in your stables, you cannot tame another until it is revived.

When taming a beast, your armor is reduced by 100% during the channeling of Tame Beast. To minimize damage, use Aspect of the Monkey as well as placing a Freezing Trap. Then, use Concussive Shot to slow the beast before you start taming.

Make sure that you do not have another player heal you while you tame the pet, if you lose aggro then the taming process will fail!

Leveling Your Pet

Just like their owners, your pet has an experience bar and gains XP to level up. However, pets don’t benefit from rested experience or quest XP; instead, their experience comes directly from mob kills. Your pet gains 25% of the XP you earn from each mob you kill, assuming the mob level is green or above. 

Once your pet reaches your level, it will stop gaining XP until you level up again.

Keeping Your Pet Happy

As you level with your pet, it’s important to feed it regularly to maintain its happiness. A pet’s happiness directly impacts its damage output:

• Happy: 125% damage
• Content: 100% damage
• Unhappy: 75% damage

Happiness is tied to a specific value that gradually decreases over time, meaning you’ll need to feed your pet periodically to keep it happy. Certain events can cause an immediate drop in happiness:

• If your pet dies, it will lose a significant amount of happiness and will need to be resurrected with Revive Pet.
• Using Dismiss Pet will reduce its happiness by 50.

Keep in mind that feeding your pet isn’t always possible. For example, you cannot feed your pet while you are in combat.

Below is a table of food that each pet family will eat.

Pet Loyalty and Training Points

Loyalty is another important aspect to consider for your pet. Whenever you tame a new pet, it will have Loyalty Rank 1. To increase its loyalty, you’ll need to consistently feed it and kill mobs with it. As your pet gains loyalty levels, it becomes easier to maintain its happiness as you will need to feed it less often. Pets can reach a maximum of Loyalty Rank 6.

Loyalty directly impacts the number of training points your pet can have, which are used to learn or improve abilities. At level 60, a pet with Loyalty Rank 6 will have 300 training points. These points are used for training your pet’s abilities.

You can view your pet’s available training points in the pet tab of your character interface. When you tame a pet at the higher levels, they tend to start with negative training points. This means the pet’s loyalty is still low, and you’ll need to continue feeding and killing mobs with it until its loyalty improves to gain back these training points.

To train your pet abilities, use Beast Training which will display all available abilities, ranks, and required training points. You can expand your pet’s training options by taming new beasts to learn their skills or visiting a pet trainer in major cities.

Skills You Can Learn from Other Pets

Taming other pets allows you to learn new active abilities that can be taught to your current pet. Here’s the step-by-step process to follow when you want to teach your pet a new ability:

1. Store your current pet at a Stable Master so you can tame another pet without needing to abandon your existing one.
2. Once you tame a new pet, check the pet tab in your character interface to see what abilities it has.
3. Take the newly tamed pet into combat and use its abilities until you see a chat message confirming you’ve learned the new spell.
4. Open the Beast Training ability to verify that the new spell has been added to your list.
5. Abandon (or stable) the temporary pet, and retrieve your original pet.

You can now train it with the new ability using Beast Training, assuming it has enough Training Points

This method is particularly useful for unlocking popular abilities like Bite and Claw, which are frequently used during leveling and endgame. Keep in mind that your pet can only have four active abilities at a time. If you want to reset its abilities, visit a Pet Trainer and pay a small fee to unlearn all trained abilities and regain its training points.

Not all abilities can be taught to every pet. If an ability isn’t compatible, you will see an error message stating, “This ability is not available to your pet” or you’ll notice that no training point cost is listed when attempting to train it.

Here is a list of all the active abilities that you can learn through taming:

Skills You Can Learn from a Trainer

In addition to active abilities learned from taming other pets, you can train your pet with passive abilities directly from a Pet Trainer. These abilities become available as you level up but can only be taught to your pet once it has reached the appropriate level and has enough training points.

Below is a list of all passive pet abilities that you can train from a Pet Trainer, their max ranks, and their respective level requirements.

• Growl R7 – Level 60
• Great Stamina R10 – Level 60
• Natural Armor R10 – Level 60
• Arcane Resistance R4 – Level 50
• Fire Resistance R4 – Level 50
• Frost Resistance R4 – Level 50
• Nature Resistance R4 – Level 50
• Shadow Resistance R4 – Level 50

For leveling, Growl is a particularly useful ability. It is available every 10 levels starting from level 10 and helps your pet maintain aggro during combat. Notably, Growl is the only active ability available to all pets that can be trained directly from a pet trainer.

The next time you visit a city after leveling up, make sure you visit your Pet Trainer to see if you can teach your pet a new ability!

Stables

Stable Masters allow you to purchase additional stable slots, enabling you to own and store multiple pets. This is particularly useful when you’re taming new pets to learn abilities or want to save a specific pet for later use without abandoning it.

In total, you can own up to three pets:

• One active pet – this is the companion you take with you in the world.
• Two stabled pets – these are stored and can be swapped in or out when needed at any friendly Stable Master.

Recommended Pets

Pets in Classic fall into three classifications:

• Offensive: High DPS and low tanking capability.
• Balanced: Medium DPS and medium tanking capability.
• Defensive: Low DPS and high tanking capability.

The pet we recommend you choose depends on what you plan to do in the game.

Leveling

Cat

• Cats are excellent for leveling due to their high attack speeds, which allow them to deal more damage and hold threat effectively.
• They are a bit squishy, especially against higher-level mobs, but their ability to learn both Claw and Bite makes them the best pet for leveling.

Raiding and Dungeons

Cat

• Cats are the top choice for PvE, as they hold the highest damage modifier (1.10) of any pet family, making them the best DPS pet for raids.
• Since pet family damage in PvE is normalized, cats with higher attack speeds deal less damage per hit, but their overall damage remains the same with other slower attacking pets in their family.

Owl

• Owls bring utility to the raid with Screech, an ability that stacks with other attack power debuffs to reduce the physical damage mobs deal.
• This is especially valuable in high-damage fights like Patchwerk in Naxxramas.

Wolf

• Wolves have Furious Howl, which buffs melee players by adding bonus damage to their next physical attack.
• However, Furious Howl counts as a buff, and this can risk overwriting world buffs on melee classes, particularly Warriors and Rogues, making it less desirable in raids.

PvP

Cat (Broken Tooth)

• Broken Tooth shares the fastest base attack speed (1.0) of any pet in the game, making it ideal for PvP, particularly against casters, as its fast attacks cause pushback on spells.
• As a rare spawn in the Badlands (3-hour respawn timer), Broken Tooth can be highly contested on high population servers – prepare to sit back, relax and keep an eye out every now and again for him to spawn!

Wind Serpent

• Wind Serpents are strong in PvP due to Lightning Breath, which ignores armor and is especially effective against classes such as Warriors and Paladins.
• Lightning Breath can also be cast from range, making it useful for keeping players in combat even if the Hunter is far away.

Endgame Solo Gameplay

Wolf

• Wolves are the best pets for soloing endgame content like Dire Maul: North or Maraudon. Their Furious Howl ability generates threat by buffing the wolf and the Hunter.
• This ability allows the wolf to hold aggro on mobs while the hunter can run around freely.
• A common example is using Feign Death and a wolf to manage tricky encounters, such as kiting King Gordok in Dire Maul: North.