Classic Hunter DPS Pets Guide (2024)

Pets are perhaps the most iconic part of the Hunter's toolkit. At Level 10,you will be able to pick up a quest from any Hunter trainer that will allow youto learn how to tame a beast. After completing the quest, you will be able to goout and tame whatever pet you would like, allowing the pet to fight by your sidein combat.

Taming pets can be quite dangerous. The cast is long, and you are leftcompletely vulnerable during it. It is recommended to either have a friend helpearly on by tanking the animal while you tame it, to slow it using Concussive Shot before starting the cast, or most preferably to have a Freezing Trap set up ahead of time to freeze it while you cast Tame Beast.

Pets are separated into different families based on their type, 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. Each pet family has different modifiers to their health, armor, anddamage based on their category. All the different possible pet families andtheir modifiers are listed below.

You will also notice that some pets have unique abilities, such as a wolf'sFurious Howl. These can be very useful abilities to have and it is worth havingone such pet for whenever you might want that ability.

For leveling, the most important thing is to have a pet that can use twoabilities to spend its focus on. If your pet only has one ability, such as acrab only having Claw, you are missing out on potential damage and threat fromyour pet. Cats (Bite and Claw), owls (Claw and Screech), raptors (Bite andClaw), and bears (Bite and Claw) are all great choices that you can pick upearly on, depending on your starting zone.

At Level 60, you will have more choices to work with. Remember that you arenot limited to one pet because you can use the stable to hold your pets andthen choose a specific pet for a given situation. For PvE, you should have awolf, a cat, and a wind serpent.

Unlike in later versions of WoW, pets in vanilla will die to dungeon andraid mechanics quite easily. This means that sometimes you will have to leaveyour pet on passive standing next to you, so that it will not die. Wolfs areexcellent pets to have on passive, since they can still cast Furious Roar tobuff you and your party members, which is still a nice damage increase byitself.

Lupos is a rare wolf found in Duskwood, and in Vanilla WoW was the best petfor damage done because his auto attacks dealt Shadow damage instead ofPhysical damage. This meant that all of his attacks ignored armor, since theywere magic damage. However, Lupos was changed in Patch 1.9 to no longer dealShadow damage, and thus is not useful to obtain for WoW Classic, since it willbe on Patch 1.12.

Cats are one of the highest damage pets while also having the highest attackspeeds. These are great choices for leveling, PvE, and PvP content. However, becareful using these in raids and dungeons because they must attack from meleerange, making them prone to dying to mechanics. Cats are one of the best pets forleveling due to their fast attack speed, high damage modifier, and two focusspending attacks.

Brokentooth is a rare cat found in Badlands, and one of the most soughtafter pets in WoW Classic for Hunters. This is mainly because Brokentooth is theonly pet in the game with a 1.0 attack speed. Every other pet, cat or otherwise,have 1.2 attack speeds or higher. This makes Brokentooth the best pet for PvP againstcasters.

Wind Serpents have Lightning Breath, making them the only pet in the gamewith a ranged attack. They are a great option if you need your pet to attacksomething, but you do not want it to get too close. Specifically, you will want totame the Son of Hakkar found in Zul'Gurub, as they are theonly serpents in the game that have rank 6 of Lightning Breath, which is the highestrank possible.

Pet attack speed is also quite important. Their attack speeds vary, evenamongst families, so it is worth finding specific pets that you want to tame ifyou are wanting a specific attack speed. In general, a faster attack speed isbetter. The overall damage is not affected by attack speed, but if your pet onlyhas a 2.5 second attack speed and misses its first attack, you are likely topull threat and it will take longer for your pet to get threat back. Fasterattack speeds are also very useful against casters because each hit will causetheir casts to be pushed back. For PvP, you almost always want a pet with thefastest possible attack speed, which is usually cats.

Just like Hunters, pets can also learn skills as they level. These skillsfall into two categories, active and passive abilities. Most passive abilitiesyou will learn from a pet trainer, usually found next to a Hunter trainer. Activeabilities, however, are for the most part learned by taming animals that alreadyhave that ability. This applies to new ranks of abilities as well. For instance,if you are leveling in Durotar, you might want to tame an Encrusted Surf Crawleralong the western shoreline to learn Claw Rank 2. Once you have tamed an animalthat has the new skill or ability rank that you want, you need to have the petuse that ability before it can be taught to your other pets. Sometimes this cantake a bit of time, and it is recommended that you let the pet fight enemieswhile only using that new skill to quicken the process. After your new pethas used the ability enough, the ability should appear in your training menu foryour original pet to learn. There are some restrictions however, such as Crabsnot being able to use Bite, so it is important to figure out ahead of time whattype of pet you want and what abilities you want it to use.

Once you have tamed a pet with an ability that you want your current pet tobe able to learn, you can use the Beast Training ability in your spellbook toopen the training menu. This will show you a list of available spells, whichshould include your new ability. To teach it to your current pet, you will haveto spend some of its available training points (TP). Training points are liketalent points in that your pet gains more of them as it levels up. Trainingpoints are also affected by your pet's loyalty. Your total amount of trainingpoints is calculated by taking (pet level) * (loyalty level – 1).

Training points are not permanent. You can pick different passives orabilities and retrain your pet quite easily. Especially for raid content, youshould think ahead of time about what type of damage you will be taking and whatyou will mainly be doing. Some of the more important pet passives are resistances,which lower the amount of damage your pet will take against certain types. Forinstance, in Molten Core, you should always max out Fire Resistance and ShadowResistance for your pet.

Pets have three distinct moods that they can be in: happy, content, orunhappy. You always want your pet to be happy, as their mood affects the damagethey deal. Happy pets deal +25% damage, Content pets deal normal damage, and unhappypets deal -25% damage. Unhappy pets are also in danger of running away if theyremain unhappy for too long.

You must keep your pet well fed to keep it happy. The face icon next to yourpet's health bar shows its current mood, with a green smile being happy, ayellow face being content, and a red frown being unhappy. You should always feedyour pet as soon as you see it stop being happy. Pets eat food such as meats,bread, and fruit based on their type. To feed them, use the feed pet ability onsome food in your inventory, such as feeding boar meat to your cat. Pets likespecific types of food based on their type, and you can use the Beast Loreability in game to help determine what type of food your pet will eat.

Pet happiness is also important because it increases your pet's loyalty.There are 6 possible loyalty levels, which starts at loyalty level 1 when youfirst tame a pet. To increase your pet's loyalty, you must have the pet summonedwhile killing enemies. If you use the pet for long enough, eventually you willprogress its loyalty level up to 6. The higher its loyalty level, the easier itwill be to keep your pet well fed and happy, while also increasing your itstotal training points.

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