TBC Classic Beast Mastery Hunter 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.

In TBC, pets are now significantly more important to a Hunter's damage than in Classic.Pets in TBC now gain a portion of a Hunter's ranged attack power as their melee attack power,allowing pets to scale their damage with our gear. This enables pets to be a significant portion of ourdamage, especially as Beast Mastery, for the entire expansion. Additionally, your pets gain aportion of your Stamina, armor, and resistances to make them significantly more durable thanin Classic. Your pets can and should live for raid encounters now with proper pet management.Your pet choice in TBC is more important than ever before.

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 usingConcussive Shot before starting the cast, or most preferably to have aFreezing Trap set up ahead of time to freeze it while you castTame Beast.

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. 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 several new pet typesbelow that are new to TBC.

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 having Claw, you are missing out on potential damage and threat fromyour pet. Cats (Bite and Claw), Owls (Claw and Screech), and Raptors (Bite andClaw) are all great choices that you can pick up early on, depending on your starting zone.

The above recommendations specifically only apply to Hunters while levelingfrom 10-61. At level 61, all Hunters will have access to the Ravagers in Outlands, specificallythe level 62-63 Quillfang Skitterers in Hellfire Peninsula. Ravagers are the best PvE pets forboth leveling and damage output early on in TBC. They have strong DPS stats, but most importantlyhave the unique ability Gore, which is an incredibly strong focus dump.

At Level 70, you will still use your Ravager to start. Ravagers continue to be the best petfor quite some time until you eventually get enough gear that Wind Serpents become better.

Ravagers are the strongest pet for Hunters while leveling and early on at level 70. Thisis thanks to Ravagers having all of the standard high-damage tools including a 10% damage modifier,Dash, and two focus dump abilities. The most important reason that Ravagers are so strong thoughis their unique ability, Gore. This is the highest DPS pet ability thanks to itschance to deal double damage, making Ravager an obvious pick. Their armor modifier of +5% isalso quite nice while leveling, especially for a damage-type pet.

Wind Serpents are normally quite bad for Hunters. Caster pets only deal 80% of the damagethat pets normally do, and Wind Serpents will only attack from range by spamming their focusdump ability Lightning Breath. Normally this is a bad thing because pets do notgain that much focus, and Wind Serpents will be left with nothing to do some of the time. However,at higher gear levels, pets actually reach a point where they gain so much focus from the talentGo for the Throat that non-caster pets will be focused capped all of the time.Once you have a crit chance of roughly 30% while unbuffed, you can swap to a Wind Serpent, andit will do more damage than a Ravager thanks to its ability to spend focus faster.

While this was an important factor for choosing your pet in Classic, it is no longera factor in TBC. In TBC, pet attack speed is normalized to 2.0 seconds per attack, which meansall pets have the same attack speed.

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.

That being said, there are some pet passives that are essential for general use andwill always be worth taking. Below are the most important pet passives to train your pet with.

1. Avoidance - 50% damage reduction against AoE attacks
2. Cobra Reflexes - 30% attack speed
3. Focus Dump - Always train up whatever damaging abilities your pets use. You want them to alwaysbe spending their focus to deal damage whenever possible.
4. Stamina - Increases your pet's health pool

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, depending 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, starting 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 itstotal training points.

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