Cataclysm Classic Beast Mastery Hunter Pets System (2024)

Last updated on May 19, 2024 at 00:00by Impakt

On this page, you will learn about the Pets system for Hunters in Cataclysm Classic.You will also find out how to get the best pets and use them efficienty.

Pets are separated into different families based on their types, such as cats,boars, or spiders. Each of the different pet families also falls intoone of three categories: offensive, defensive, or general. As the names wouldsuggest, offensive pets deal more damage while taking more damage, defensivepets take less damage while dealing less damage, and general pets are morebalanced. Along these lines, pets have pet-specific talent trees.Pets will have one of three talent trees based on if they are Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity.

When deciding on a pet, there are only two important things to consider. First,what category does it fall into? In almost every possible situation in PvE, you will wanta Ferocity pet. The Ferocity pets not only do the most damage, but they have an exceptionalcooldown as a talent that is too good to pass up. Second, you will also notice that somepets have unique abilities, such as a Wolf's Furious Howl. These can be very usefulabilities to have and it is worth having one such pet for whenever you might want that ability.Again, for most Hunters you will just use a Wolf the majority of the time.

For leveling, basically any pet will do just fine. For solo-levelers, your best bet willprobably be a Tenacity pet such as a Bear because of the durability and ability to tankmultiple enemies at once. For anyone in a group or if you are more sure of yourselfwhile leveling, Ferocity pets such as Wolves will be the best.

It is also worth noting that you do not need to worry about what level of pet youchoose to tame. Pets will now always be at minimum 5 levels below you. If you tame a Level10 wolf at Level 80, it will immediately jump to 75. Even then it will quickly catch up toyour level as you kill enemies.

At Level 60 as a Beast Mastery Hunter, you also will get access to Exotic pets. This meansyou can finally tame some of the cool looking animals that were previously unable to betamed, such as the Devilsaurs in Un'goro Crater. For the most part, these just look cooland do not provide substantial combat benefits over normal pets.

The trademark of pets in Cataclysm is that a large number of them bring either a raid buffor a debuff that is going to benefit your entire raid. However, none of the buffs and debuffs broughtare strictly unique to the pets themselves. In a normal 25 man raid, you should expect all of thebuffs and debuffs to be covered by the raid members, which means your pet buff is going to berelatively useless. However, Hunters are the only class that effectively get to pick and choose a missingraid buff to bring by selecting what pet they use. For most Hunters, this is the best way to choosethe pet you want to use in raids or dungeons.

Wolves are the best default pet for all PvE content as a Hunter assuming youdo not have any other raid buffs. Thisis entirely due to their ability, Furious Howl, which gives everyone in your raidgroups 5% crit chance as a raid buff. However, this does not stack with the other 5% crit chanceraid buffs brought by specs such as Fury Warriors.

Unlike in TBC and original Classic, you no longer have to micro-manage yourpet's training. Regardless of what type of pet you tame, it will start with the correctabilities, and it will automatically learn all of its ability upgrades as it levels with you.No need to tame new pets just to learn new abilities.

Pet training points are completely gone. Instead, pets now have talent trees. Theyearn 1 talent point every 4 levels starting at Level 20, which they can spend in theirtalent tree. The tree they have is determined by the class of pet. As a Hunter in PvEcontent, you should use a Ferocity pet, so we will cover the Ferocity tree below. Theexact ordering of points that you should always use is below. The tree does not changeever for PvE.

1. 2/2 in Serpent Swiftness;
2. 1/1 in Dash;
3. 3/3 in Spiked Collar;
4. 3/3 in Culling the Herd;
5. 3/3 in Spider's Bite;
6. 1/1 in Call of the Wild;
7. 1/1 in Rabid;
8. 1/2 in Bloodthirsty, or 1/2 in Boar's Speed;
9. 2/2 in Wild Hunt.

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you also will gain 4 additional talent points. Finish off 2/2 in Wild Hunt,2/2 in Shark Attack, and finally 2/2 in Bloodthirsty.

The single most important point is Call of the Wild. It is the primaryreason that we use Ferocity pets, as it gives Hunters another powerful cooldown.

For more information on specific pets or abilities and where to find them,you should check out Petopia.