I'm going Orc so I'll start off with a boar. If I find myself ahead of the pack I'll stick with the boar as it is easy/cheap to feed and I like the charge. I'll use my head start to camp Brokentooth and get it early.

If I lose my headstart and find myself in the middle of the pack. PvP will be an issue and I wont be getting Brokentooth until after I hit 60 because I have fallen behind, at which point I'll be grabbing any other cat to level me to 60.

Of course at 60 I'll be picking up my obligatory Blood Axe Worg for max rank furious howl and bite. With Lupos shadow damage likely being out, this will be the required entry level raiding pet for hunts (a wolf with howl) in most guilds.

As a general leveling pet on a pvp server I would recommend cat. The combination of attack speed for spell pushback, the balanced stats, prowl and dash make this a generally good choice.

As a general leveling pet for pve or if you are ahead of the pack on a pvp server, I would simply stick with an owl or boar to get you to Brokentooth. The wait time for Brokentooth will be brutal... It is worth sacrificing your lead and waiting early if you can. "Yay I hit 60 first on my server... Now to go wait for Brokentooth for 3-4 days..." VS "Yay there are only two other horde players in the Barrens, I think I made it here early, I'll camp Brokentooth for 4-6 hours and grab him."

After leveling a few hunters to 60 on private and one in retail vanilla, this is my general take away. Just my 2 cents.

Carrion bird is top dog with Screech

There is only one brokentooth.

Gonna go with a cat!

Getting a cat in teldrassil and then getting a 1.2 atk cat in Hillsbrad Hills.

There is a secret, super elite hunter pet combo. https://classic.wowhead.com/npc=5828/hu ... -pridelord plus a https://classic.wowhead.com/item=8485/c ... ier-bombay! If you're horde, you're going to have to get lucky finding your bombay cat. Got mine in the booty bay AH. I was the only hunter I ever saw running around with two black kitties. And thus, the most awesome hunter everyone else saw. ;)

A boar, the four-legged garbage disposal.

Herrington wrote: ↑

5 years ago

A boar, the four-legged garbage disposal.

I'm probably going for a boar. The Charge is really powerful in a lot of situations.

Earthworm, make those bastards squirm WEEEHEHEHEHE

Bok wrote: ↑

5 years ago

@hcteKs the farm for BT is going to be insane... I can’t wait

Me and my gorilla are going to be going on adventures 24/7, and I have no idea if he'll be good or not. Might also grab a crab.

For PvP I went for Brokentooth or ZG Bat, both had 1.0 Attackspeed which was really annoying for casters.

@Stfuppercut - mentioning you I saw you wrote you'd get the Wolf for raids and that's what prompted me to write this. (You were in guest though, so I did not quote because it wouldn't notify.)

Since the dustruction of many old websites that were in my favorites the last couple years, a lot of the old math and info about hunter raid pets has disappeared. I thought I had links to some before, but if there was info in their old guides regarding it, they've all disappeared.

This is all very rough math as there are many things I don't know, can't know, or can't recall (crit chance of group members, crit modifiers for pets, focus formula), but I have tried to err on the side of caution for that. It's also very late where I am, but I wanted to simply demonstrate the possibility at this point. If there's mistakes, please point them out. I want to get to the bottom of this. The math certainly isn't perfect, and if someone has a guide with awesome math please let me know.

Wolf Pet

Re-examining it now (https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=24597/furious-howl) something is odd. 30 yard range, but it says only 15 yards within the description?

As for its DPS - (((45+57)/2)/10) = 5.1 dps per person before accounting for crit or other factors. Depending on the range that could cause problems, but I'm going to go ahead and assume all 5 people in the group get the buff and therefore it adds roughly 25.5 dps total before that other stuff.

Going to throw in that a hunter with a parked Wolf that is purely PvE will likely have https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=24295/monster-slaying , but I do not like this talent as it is a waste in PvP for the most part unless I am hitting a Druid or another Hunter's pet. Personally, I won't have it so it is irrelevant to my goals, but may not be to others'.

Wind Serpent

A quick look at Wind Serpent shows https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=25011 ... ing-breath before ZG and https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=25012 ... ing-breath after ZG (84 and 106 averages respectively).

Using the info from here it seems that it would be a 17.5% overall dps loss on bosses.



Lightning Breath has a 20 yard range, so depending on what Furious Howl's actual range is, it could be either better or worse. The Focus cost is lower however, as is the non-existent CD so even without a focus calculator I can assume it can be cast more often. How often? Remains to be seen.

84 and 106 with the 27% +damage added from https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=19620/unleashed-fury and the Innate bonuse of being a Wind Serpent (Wolf's buff isn't a damage spell so I don't think he gets bonused for it) will become 106.68 and 134.62 before losing 17.5% from boss resistance and becoming 88.011 and 111.0615. If the wind serpent regenerates enough focus to cast three Lightning Breaths in ten seconds then the gap is closed at 3 casts for Rank 5 and already surpassed for Rank 6.


Assuming 3 casts per 10 seconds (a complete guess, but it is the threshold):

88 x 3 = 264 / 10 = 26.4 dps (Rank 5)

111 x 3 = 333 / 10 = 33.3 dps (Rank 6)

I made the buffs additive for the damage multipliers in my math above as a form of rounding down because I didn't want to get artificially too high if they were the opposite method.

I do not know how pet happiness interacts with Lightning Breath, but if it gets a 25% bonus for that too that would be pretty awesome and definitely a game changer.

As a reminder, this is all before adding in 15% crit from https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=19602/ferocity or adding in the Crit chance of the players receiving Furious Howl (or armor reduction, but boss armor is thought to be possible to lower to zero so it probably won't even matter).

Additionally, on fights where the pet can melee without dying the Wind Serpent's higher innate damage modifier will also allow it to achieve higher DPS than the Wolf.

I intend to test this on Classic when I hit 60, as well as retest the cat pet, but right now it feels like the Wolf pet is looking dubious. I normally would not care to promote the idea of one pet over the other except the amount of pressure Rogues and Warriors often apply in their attempts to raise the meters for themselves just a tiny bit at the expense of overall raid dps. If Wolf is the wrong pet (as preliminary tests on Kronos showed it to be, at least for MC/BWL), we should not be pressured by urban myth to hinder ourselves and take a Wolf to raids. I won't stop anyone else that wants to take a wolf, but I want some good numbers backing me up as to why I am not.

The cat pet is a lot trickier to test as its strength relies on how many buffs you can get for it as well as what boss you're currently fighting (length, mechanics, etc.) or even what raid you're currently in (overall efficiency of fights).


EDIT: Other unknowns I just thought of are Hit chance of players and hit chance of Serpent

Great post @Linguine, as far as hunters are concerned, I am a private server baby for the most part. So almost all of my knowledge is from private. Due to the way private works with Lupos doing shadow damage early on, the value of Lupos combined with the howl is the clear choice for raiding hunters. The range of the howl never really bothered me because I typically set my pet anchor point before the fight and could juggle his positioning to ensure I howled with the maximum effect for both me and my melee members. I met a few lazy or incompetent hunts that simply had there pet on passive with howl but I didnt do this because I tried to compete for top DPS. I will say that a wolfs survivability, or ANY pet that is not a wind serpent, is significantly lower due to the requirement of going in and out of melee/aoe range. Classic probably wont have Lupos shadow damage so wind serpent will likely be the way to go for raids.

Cat would be really hard to calculate because you also have to consider Juju buffs like:
https://vanilla-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?item=12451
https://vanilla-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?item=12450
A cat will also be more or less useful depending on the engagement.

Depending on your spec and proper use of Juju's a cat might be close if the hunter could keep it alive and producing throughput consistently.

As a hunter I typically ran a boar(horde) / owl(alliance) for as long as I remained ahead of the pack. I kept this til 60 unless I found myself back in the main leveling pack, at which time I swapped to cat for PvP. I ran cat til LBRS when I picked up a blood-axe worg for bite rank 8 and furious howl rank 4. I would hit 60 and then would turn around and camp brokentooth. I was now competent for both PvE and PvP. At which point I would go for Lupos. I would run Lupos in raids until nerf and swap to wind serpent. I honestly did not spend a ton of time theorycrafting this myself because the value of Lupos was so incredibly clear that the choice was obvious. Classic will be a bit different. I am very interested in you running some more tests, and I also agree that there are very few credible sources out there to get detailed info from. As unhelpful as this is, I simply ran Lupos because he was Lupos. When ZG wind serpents were available, they were typically the next clear choice.

@Stfuppercut Lupos won’t have shadow damage in Classic since it was removed in 1.9(?) so it’s definitely not here in 1.12.

Tec wrote: ↑

4 years ago

@Stfuppercut Lupos won’t have shadow damage in Classic since it was removed in 1.9(?) so it’s definitely not here in 1.12.

@Stfuppercut I agree, Lupos is Lupos. He solo'd other plays on Nost, and there was no reason to overthink his mechanic. Stranglely, on Kronos there was never a time when Lupos had Shadow Damage, yet I kept seeing hunters in raid guilds running around with that darned Bloodaxe Worg.

As for the cat, I can't recall all fights but in MC he had great survivability (except rag) and for one of the drakes (Ebonroc I believe) he allowed me to either come in 1st or 2nd and embarrass all the Rogues. Nefarion was a bit of a disaster for the poor thing and likely would be out-dps'd by Wind Serpent. It could be I just didn't understand the positioning as it was quite a while ago, and that better positioning would allow better longevity.

With my raid spec and Trueshot Aura applied he had around 110~ dps before any type of other raid buffs, Jujus, bites, or claws, so if he can stay alive and actually dps'ing somewhere around 1/4th or possibly 1/5th of the fight per boss he will likely out dps the Wolf and probably the Wind Serpent too.

This is going to be a different value for Alliance because although I am not familiar with Horde raid buffs as much, I am pretty sure pets don't get a Windfury bonus. For myself I will be able to guarantee Juju buffs, Battle Shout (since the warrior isn't targeting), and BoM (have a friend) for every fight. A BoK is a small step away, but MotW and Fortitude are less likely due to mana cost and not being as easy to hand out after I rez the pet.

It is certainly trickier to handle a cat, but the DPS possibilities are far and away the highest if it works out.

As kill times decrease on each boss fight, the value of a cat just running in goes up over a wolf or wind serpent's slow and steady ticks due to the time available ratio.

Cats because they use eat meat and fish. Both of which I will be cooking en masse to level my cooking while leveling