| Name | Pew Pew. The Everyday Hunter's Guide Part 7 |
| Category | Class |
Hyacintha here, and today I am interviewing the beautiful Night Elven Hunter Ohanraela. Although the Hunter class is one of the simplest to pick up and is a very popular choice when it comes to pure firepower, it has its share of complexities that not everyone understands. This guide is designed to show you over several parts what the class has to offer, how each ability is used, and how to improve yourself as a Hunter. Ohanraela will be my aid in doing so.
Today, we will be specifically going over Hunter pets and Hunter pet abilities. We will touch upon everything that you could possibly ever imagine, from Pet care, to taming, to loyalty and more. Ohanraela is a master of pets. She knows how to break down everything for us and she will be sure to do so with the most intense accuracy. So, let us begin.
Hyacintha: Ohanraela, thank you for coming back to be interviewed, yet again and again. Today, we are going to be focusing on the Hunter’s pets, this time which ones to pick, and how to use them, yet again. Last time we looked at talents and how to pick those, but today it is a totally new ball park. Pets offer an entirely different swing to World of Warcraft, and soon we are going to see even more improvement with Wrath of the Lich King. However, as we do not have finalized information at this point, it is key that we simply attempt to understand what is already present in the game today.
Ohanraela: Well said, Miss Hyacintha! Today, I will break down the entire topic of pets for you and show you the pros and cons, just like I did with all of my other topics. Then afterwards, we can tie up some loose ends and move onward, just as before.
Pets are extremely important to a Hunter, and I would certainly know. They serve as your personal companion in battle, and are a key factor in a Hunter’s utility. This chapter will teach you the mechanics of pet care, and will cover the different species that are available in the game, as well as abilities that you can teach your pets. It is very key to have a pet as a Hunter, because in most situations, a Hunter cannot pull off many feats alone. The pet companion acts as a tank, extra DPS, or a pure distraction; to help you survive situations you never imagined were possible.
Hyacintha: So, I understand there is more to picking a pet and telling it what to do. Can you explain some of that for us Hunter newbies?
Ohanraela: Of course you know I will. There is so much more to just picking a pet, like you said. You really need to be prepared to care for the pet – and to tame it first.
At the beginning of the game, you are on your own as you know. Your quest to earning your pet abilities begins at level 10, at which your local Hunter Trainer will tell you to go tame a few beasts with an item. Once you have completed the quest chain, you will gain a lineup of pet-based abilities, including Tame Beast, which you will use to obtain your very own first pet! This is an exciting phase! Picking your first pet is surely not as important as picking a high level pet, but gaining an understanding early on is certainly a good idea. But wait! Do not run off yet and tame one because you do not know how to feed it or train it yet! Make sure you run along and do ALL of your Hunter Quests for the pet chain before you tame anything! These usually consist of a simple run and drop quest to a major city.
Hyacintha: Okay, so how – do – you tame it?
Ohanraela: Easy, you just do the following!
# - - - The Taming Process - - >
Once you have your abilities, it is now time to look for a suitable pet. When you use Tame Beast, make sure that you are at full health and have plenty of food for your new pet. For 20 seconds, your armor will drop to 0, and you will have to take hits until the spell finishes channeling. If successful, the beast will go from hostile to friendly, and you will notice that your newfound pet will have its own health meter and action bar. Congratulations! Sometimes it will not work however. Make sure you are at full health before you try again, and if grouped, make sure your friends know you are taming so that they do not attack your furry / scaly / fuzzy beast!
One of the simple perks and joys of being a Hunter is that you can name your pet. Simply right - click on its portrait and the option will show itself. You may also abandon it if you prefer something else but remember that you can have up to three pets, two of which can stay with the local Stable Master. Getting multiple stable slots can cost a little money at times.
Hyacintha: So why is it so important to feed your pets? And how do you do it?
Ohanraela: Again, it is really quite simple. There is a button for everything when you are a hunter!
# - - - The Feeding Process - - >
Once you have your pet, you may notice a tiny red square next to its health meter, which typically looks like a mouth with teeth, indicating that it is unhappy with you. The happiness of a pet affects its damage output, which is why it is very important, and in fact key, to keep your pet happy at all times. Happiness goes through three different states:
Happy (Green): Pet inflicts 125% damage and gains loyalty with you.
Content (Yellow): Pet inflicts 100% damage and gains loyalty with you.
Unhappy (Red): Pet inflicts 75% damage and loses loyalty with you.
To cheer up your pet, use the Feed Pet ability on the food in your inventory. Your pet will gain a buff, which will raise its Happiness over time. Do not give it a second serving until it is done with the first one. Keep feeding it until the Happiness indicator is green. If you try to feed it while it is still eating, which an icon will indicate, you will simply be wasting food and it will not help you in the slightest.
If you look in your Combat Log, you will notice Feed Pet taking effect. Any foods that are near your pet’s level will grant 35 Happiness per tick. Anything lower will give smaller amounts. As your pet grows, it will need higher level foods. The best thing to do is to keep a stack of food in your bag just for your pet. I make sure to do this at all times. It does not need to be anything fancy. For this reason, some Hunters choose to take up cooking to make obtaining suitable food a little easier. If you have a pet that will eat fish, then Fishing is also a great profession to take up.
For one final note, which should be very obvious, pets, just like people, have a very picky diet. If you look at your particular pet’s profile, mouse over the Happiness indicator. It will tell you exactly what kinds of foods your pet will eat. Most predators eat meat and fish, while the more docile creatures eat fruit, bread, fungus, and cheese. Bears are very lenient when it comes to eating. They will eat just about anything you have in your inventory.
Hyacintha: A lot of people seem confused by what sort of food they should feed and all that. Can you get a little specific about what does what and what type of food people should be looking for?
Ohanraela: It is really quite easy. It is really kind of funny to have a whole section on food, but here you go.
# - - - Food - - >
First, there are six types of food – well, basic types of food. You have; Bread, Cheese, Fish, Fruit, Fungus, and Meat. Some pets will also eat Raw Fish, or Raw Meat. The game itself will hardly ever tell you what the food type is, but typically speaking it is really really easy to figure out. If it looks like a mushroom, it is likely a fungus. If it has ‘fish’ in the name, its probably a fish, and so on. If you cannot figure out what type of food you are trying to feed, you can always experiment and – try -. There is no harm in attempting to feed food to your pet. It will just tell you it does not like that food, and you can move right on.
Despite the fact that you may have the right food, sometimes your pet will not eat it if it is too low level. The level of the food itself affects how much happiness your pet gains. It can be hard to tell what level the food is, as sometimes it only has a level requirement, and others nothing at all. If you want to be SURE what level the food is, you can always check out a site with a database, such as Thottbot, Wowhead, or so on, or you can just download an addon.
At any rate, when you feed your pet, it gains the Feed Pet Effect. This effect lasts for 20 seconds, and ticks every 2 seconds, for 10 ticks total. Each tick will give your pet happiness. Here is how it breaks down.
If the food required level is 19 or less below your pet’s level, your pet will get 35 happiness per tick.
If the food required level is 20 – 29 below your pet’s level, it will get 17 happiness per tick.
If the food required level is 30 – 39 below your pet’s level, it will get 8 happiness per tick.
If the food required level is 40 + below your pet’s level, it will just not eat the food.
If you want to do a personal check on how much happiness is gained by eating a particular food, you can check the combat log to see just how many Happiness are gained in each tick. Remember to wait until your pet finishes eating before you feed him again.
Hyacintha: Okay, so the big thing I always hear about is Loyalty. Can you tell us a little about the ‘basics’ of loyalty?
Ohanraela: Loyalty is probably the single most significant thing you need to be aware about when you are a hunter with a pet.
Hyacintha: Sounds pretty big.
Ohanraela: Yea, it goes like this.
# - - - Loyalty Level - - >
You may also notice that on your pet tab, your pet has a loyalty level. At lower loyalty levels, it may lose Happiness more quickly, which means more feeding. As your pet gains loyalty with you, it will increase in loyalty level, which reduces the amount of Happiness that depletes over time. Loyalty goes through six stages:
Level 1: Rebellious
Level 2: Unruly
Level 3: Submissive
Level 4: Dependable
Level 5: Faithful
Level 6: Best Friend
At level 6, your pet requires the least amount of food to stay happy. As an added bonus, with each jump in loyalty level, your pet gains a few training points. To gain loyalty, you simply have to keep your pet well fed and fight with your pet by your side, day by day.
When you first tame a pet, its loyalty level is 1: Rebellious, as I am sure you can imagine. At this point your pet does not much like you and you cannot teach it very many skills. As you and your pet adventure together, the pet's loyalty will increase until it eventually reaches a loyalty of 6: Best Friend. This is where you want to get.
So why does it matter if your pet runs away? Why does it matter if their loyalty is low or high? Well, this is pretty easy. First of all, Loyalty level, along with pet level, determines how many total training points a pet has. Then, if your pet runs away, you have to go through the process of training a new one all over again. But we will break this down even more later.
Thus, let us get into the thick of things with all of this. At loyalty level 6, Best Friend, a pet has a total pool of 5 training points per level. So a level 70, loyalty 6 pet has a total pool of 350 training points.
* It is important to note that it does not matter at what level you tame your pet. Training points are determined strictly based on the pet's current level, not how many levels it has gained since you tamed it. So it does not matter whether you tame a pet at level 10 or at level 70 -- by the time it is level 70 and your Best Friend, it will still have 350 training points to spend either way.
So, essentially, getting your pet’s loyalty level up is very important. The higher the loyalty level, the more points you have, the better pet you have, the more damage you do and the more you can take. If you continue a never - ending cycle of having pets run away, you will never get to the point where you can have a powerful pet.
Hyacintha: So how does a pet get to the point of running away?
Ohanraela: Well, it is pretty simple.
# - - - Running Away - - >
Most hunters know that if your pet gets unhappy enough, it can run away. In fact, it is not actually happiness but loyalty that causes a pet to run away.
This is important to understand, because a pet that runs away is gone for good. You can never get your pet back after it has run away, which means you have lost every bit of work you have put in to them.
Pets run away when they reach a loyalty level 0. Since a recently tamed pet starts at loyalty level 1, it will run away if it loses just one loyalty level. A pet with a higher loyalty level, however, has a larger security zone because it will lose one loyalty level at a time. For an example of case in point, a pet that is loyalty level 6, Best Friend, will first drop to 5 (Faithful) then 4 (Dependable) and so forth, and will not run away until it finally hits loyalty level 0. So, it is the difference of being able to notice it early on.
Of course, this is only a problem if your pet is losing loyalty. As hunters, part of our responsibility to our pets is to keep them happy and loyal to us.
Hyacintha: So, how do you manage to keep your pet’s loyalty high? I know that you said you feed it and you fight in battles along side it, but does it break down more than that?
Ohanraela: In fact, it does. There are numbers that go along with all of this.
# - - - Gaining and Loosing Loyalty in the Long Run - - >
First of all, it is very proper that you should be aware, there is actually no way for a hunter to directly change their pet's loyalty. We can only indirectly affect loyalty, primarily through happiness and then other things like fighting.
Happy (Green): When happy, your pet gains +20 loyalty points per 5 seconds.
Content (Yellow): When content, your pet gains +5 loyalty points, per 5 seconds.
Unhappy (Red): When unhappy, your pet looses –10 points per 5 seconds.
Thus, you really, really do not want a pet to be unhappy.
Then, you can observe the actual number of points in the pet’s loyalty levels.
Level 1: Rebellious has 3600 points.
Level 2: Unruly has 7200 points.
Level 3: Submissive has 10,800 points.
Level 4: Dependable has 14,400 points.
Level 5: Faithful has 21,600 points.
Level 6: Best Friend has 28,800 points.
So, if you for some reason get all the way up to Level 6: Best Friend, and then neglect your pet, here is a break down of how long it will take in Unhappy time to loose your pet.
To drop from Level 6: Best Friend to Level 5: Faithful it takes 4 hours.
To drop from Level 5: Faithful to Level 4: Dependable it takes 3 hours.
To drop from Level 4: Dependable to Level 3: Submissive it takes 2 hours.
To drop from Level 3: Submissive to Level 2: Unruly it takes 1 hour and 30 minutes.
To drop from Level 2: Unruly to Level 1: Rebellious it takes 1 hour.
To drop from Level 1: Rebellious to Level 0: Running Away it takes 30 minutes.
The model for this is represented by loosing 10 loyalty points every five seconds.
So you can see, it really should not be that hard to keep a pet happy and loyal. You simply need to feed them as SOON as you notice that their mood status has changed in the slightest.
The reverse of this is of course gaining loyalty, and that has an entirely different model.
To go from Level 1: Rebellious to Level 2: Unruly, you need 60 minutes at Content, or 15 minutes at Happy.
To go from Level 2: Unruly to Level 3: Submissive, you need 2 hours of Content time, or 30 minutes of Happy.
To go from Level 3: Submissive to Level 4: Dependable, you need 3 hours at Content, or 45 minutes at Happy.
To go from Level 4: Dependable to Level 5: Faithful, you need 4 hours at Content, or 1 hour of Happy time.
To go from Level 5: Faithful to Level 6: Best friend, you need 6 hours of Content time, or an Hour and 30 minutes of Happy time.
HOWEVER!!! There is a catch! (Of course there is, it is a Blizzard game for the love of Pete.) You ALSO have to meet an experience requirement before you can actually advance in loyalty level. So even if you have met the content / happy time requirement for the next loyalty level, you ALSO need to have done some battle and gained some experience with your particular pet.
Your pet must gain enough experience to match or equal 5% of your NEXT level experience before it’s loyalty level will increase. If you are level 70 and so is your pet, you simple need to kill mobs or monsters that – would – give you experience if you – could – gain it.
So, the key things here are:
Your enemy MUST be at least green in level color to you. Grey enemies will never earn you experience, and they will not earn experience for your pets either. So, do not even bother to kill them if looking for loyalty.
Second, you have to fight with your pet. If the pet attacks an enemy and you do not even shoot it once, the pet will not get credit, and neither will you. You will not be able to loot the corpse, gain loyalty, or experience. So forget about being lazy.
Honor, from battle grounds and PvP, does not actually count towards the loyalty experience requirement. Only EXPERIENCE counts towards the EXPERIENCE requirement. Makes senese, right? So, if you are actively trying to get your loyalty level up, forget about farming PvP honor at the same time.
Lastly, your pet still gets FULL experience when you are in groups – so even if you do not get as much, your pet certainly will. Instance runs therefore are a fantastic way to try and meet your experience requirement for the next rank of loyalty.
Please note! When your pet looses a loyalty level, they also loose the ‘experience requirement’ that was already met, and you will have to gain ANOTHER 5% and essentially start all over again to get it back.
In conclusion, it is just * really * important to keep your pet happy!
Hyacintha: Man, I had – no – idea it was that complicated! But, really it does not have to be, right?
Ohanraela: Nope! In fact, if you just feed your pet every time they drop to content and fight with them against mobs your level or right around it, you never ever have to worry about another thing!
Hyacintha: See, now that is so much more simple. So, can we talk a little about Caster pets before we wrap this up?
Ohanraela: Yea, this is a term that seems to really throw some people off!
# - - - The Elusive Caster Pet - - >
So, these guys are the rejects of World of Warcraft. While they may be some of the most beautiful pets in the game, unfortunately they are the weakest link. Caster Pet refers to an animal that previously had a mana bar before it was tamed. Such pets have noticeably more Intellect and Spirit but less armor, Health, and damage, so they are not nearly as good for the purposes of having a pet. Since Intellect and Spirit are useless to pets, the end result is a pet that is weaker than it should be, compared with non-caster pets. At lower levels, the stats between a normal pet and a caster pet are close, but that gap grows wider with levels. Fortunately, beasts with mana bars are not that common in the game, so you do not have to worry too much about ‘needing’ them to get by. If you want a caster pet, by all means, tame the beast, but know that you are not going to get as much out of them as you would another pet. Hopefully someday we will see a fix with this, but, it is highly unlikely.
To give you some numbers, Caster pets have about 80 to 95% of the base health versus a normal pet, about 80 to 83% of the base armor, and only do about 80% of the DPS. So, it is a pretty big drop. Sorry Cast Pets!
Hyacintha: Poor little guys. That is a pretty bad design flaw right there. So, I think the last thing I want to go over this time is what kinds of benefits your pet gain from your stats.
Ohanraela: Yea, this makes pets even better because your stats can bolster their stats. This makes you a mean combo team.
# - - - Your Stats Can Benefit Your Pet Too! - - >
Your pets gain stat bonuses from your own stats. After doing some math (which was hardly fun), I found some rough estimates as to what your pet benefits from. These are the percentages that I found from examining my own gear versus my pet. These numbers could vary, depending on level and other possible factors. This is called “Pet Scaling”, and it was placed in the game after Patch 2.0. This really means now that your pet’s power scales with yours, so your pet is not nearly as weak as it started off.
Pets get about 30% of the hunter's stamina added to their stamina.
Pets get about 35% of the hunter's armor added to their armor.
Pets get about 22% of the hunter's ranged attack power added to their melee attack power.
Pets get about 12.5% of the hunter's ranged attack power added to their spell damage.
Pets get about 40% of the hunter's resistances added to their own resistances.
Hyacintha: Sounds like you really can have quite a mean team then! Well, thanks so much for going over the started stuff about pets with us. Next time, I suppose we will break down all of the Hunter Pets available and really get into the thick of things.
Until next time, thank you for reading my wonderful interviews, and I hope to see you in Outland (soon, Northrend!!!)
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