Controlling Your Pet

Controlling your pet is vital and without proper management you can easily ruin an instance run or lower the chance of survival in PVP. A hunter`s pet has 3 stances; defensive, aggressive and passive.

Stances

Defensive: Any enemy that attacks you or your pet will cause your pet to attack that target. This stance is useful for new hunters and destroying shaman`s totems, but could cause problems as your pet may agro more enemies, especially in group situations.

Aggressive: The pet will attack anything that comes into range and it`s use is limited. When using this stance, it`s usually a good idea to set your pet to “stay” so that once an enemy is killed, it will return to it`s original place. A pet on aggressive mode is handy for unmasking a nearby stealthed enemy and should never be used in an instance or raid.

Passive: This is the recommended default stance as your pet will take no action unless commanded otherwise, giving you complete control. Ensure this stance is selected while running all instances and raids.

Group Situations

Depending on the situation, the role of a hunter`s pet changes. Under normal conditions, that is the tank is maintaining agro on the target (or targets), your pet should focus on dealing damage. Certain types of enemies, namely bosses have special moves so be aware that you may have to call upon pet to retreat temporarily during a fight.

Note: Turn auto growl off as it will steal agro from your tank. No questions asked, it`s annoying!

In this situation, only use growl to temporarily divert your target`s attention if your tank`s health is low. If the growl is successful, instantly use “mend pet” to heal as you should never expect a healer to heal your pet for any reason.

Should a member of the party agro the target (especially a priest, warlock or mage), immediately use growl and “intimidation” if you have it. Known as “squishies”, these caster classes, which are limited to wearing cloth armor don`t responded well to damage and often die in instances and raids within 1 or 2 hits. If you pull agro, feign death as this will reduce your agro to zero. Should feign death resist, run towards the tank so he can regain agro - don`t run in the opposite direction.

When pulling, set your pet to “stay” and leave it with the group. Alternatively, in some situations you may wish to use your pet to pull. If the target you wish to pull is far away or around a corner, use the skill “Eyes of the beast” to directly take control over your pet. Something useful to note is that pets can reach places where players can`t when told to attack something. If the target is on top of a mountain, your pet will run vertically up allowing you to pull it to back your group easily.

Ledges

Often in instances you will come across ledges and are required to jump off. Not always but quite often your pet won`t follow you over the ledge but run around instead, agroing mobs and usually resulting in a wipe. To avoid this happening always dismiss your pet before jumping over a ledge. For any non-hunter, this is an extremely irritating way for an instance run to be completely ruined.

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