Best hunter pets in WoW Forever: families, taming and abilities

The short answer

For damage while leveling, tame a fast cat. The Rake (Mulgore, level 10) attacks every 1.2 seconds and is the best early pet. Broken Tooth in the Badlands, at level 37, is the fastest cat in the game. The attack speed of the pet matters more than almost anything else.

For safety, take a bear or a boar. The bear hits several enemies with Swipe and the boar charges and holds a target. In groups, a wolf brings Furious Howl, which raises the melee attack power of the whole party, and a cat is the other safe choice. For hard solo content, a turtle or a crab survives longer. For PvP, a crocolisk or a spider.

• Cat
• Bear
• Wolf
• Turtle
• Crocolisk

How to get your first pet and how taming works

Your first pet comes at level 10 with a class quest from the hunter trainer in your starting area. You get a Taming Rod and tame three local beasts with it: boar, wolf and bear in Elwynn Forest for Alliance races, or the local beasts of Zephras Isle for High Order Skyborne. After the quest chain you learn Beast Training and can tame any beast.

Tame Beast is a channel of about 20 seconds, costs a large part of your base mana and removes all of your armor while you channel. If the beast stops paying attention to you, the taming fails. You can only tame a beast of your level or lower, and you cannot tame while you already have a pet out, not even a dismissed one: put it in the stable first.

A safe routine: use Aspect of the Monkey, place a Freezing Trap at your feet, hit the beast with Concussive Shot from far away and start taming as it runs in. Clear your target after the shot so Auto Shot does not kill it. You can keep two pets in the stable and one active, and a good habit is to keep one slot free for "teacher" beasts.

• Tame Beast
• Feed Pet
• Mend Pet
• Revive Pet

What is new compared to Classic

There are now 18 families. The owl is called Bird of Prey, and the fox is new: Skyborne hunters get one from their level 10 quest. Every family has its own unique ability that no other family can learn, including the six families that had none in Classic (bear, crab, crocolisk, hyena, spider and tallstrider).

Pets now scale with your gear: they take a share of your stats, such as attack power, armor, stamina and critical strike. Buffs cast by other players, like Blessing of Kings, no longer work on them. There is no separate pet talent tree: pet bonuses come from Hunter talents, mostly in Beast Mastery.

These numbers come from beta testing and may be adjusted by Blizzard, so check the tooltip in game.

The 18 families and what each is good at

Cat and raptor deal the most damage (around 10% above the average). The cat is the default damage pet and gets Prowl; the raptor adds the bleed Savage Rend. Wolf: Furious Howl for the group. Bear: Swipe hits three enemies, good for pulling. Boar: Charge, takes much less damage than it deals. Gorilla: Thunderstomp damages everything around it.

Crab: Pinch slows the target, and crabs have the most armor. Turtle: Shell Shield cuts the damage the pet takes by half for a while, the best pet when things get dangerous. Crocolisk: Dismember reduces healing received, strong in PvP. Spider: Web roots the target from range. Hyena: Tendon Rip slows. Scorpid: Scorpid Poison stacks up to five times.

Bat: Sonic Blast makes the target's spells take longer to cast, good against casters. Wind serpent: Lightning Breath is a ranged Nature attack. Carrion bird: Demoralizing Screech lowers the attack power of nearby enemies. Bird of Prey: Mine! disarms the target for a few seconds. Tallstrider: Dust Cloud makes enemies miss more. Fox: Trickster's Dance boosts the pet's dodge and attack speed.

• Thunderstomp
• Shell Shield
• Savage Rend
• Pinch
• Dismember
• Demoralizing Screech

Rare beasts worth taming

The Rake (cat, level 10, Mulgore) is the classic first choice: fast attacks and strong damage from level 10. Humar the Pridelord (cat, level 23, The Barrens) has a striking black skin and is always camped. Broken Tooth (cat, level 37, Badlands) attacks once a second. Slavering Worg (wolf, Shadowfang Keep) and Mist Howler (wolf, level 22, Ashenvale) are fast wolves, and the Mist Howler already knows Furious Howl.

Some new rares reported by players during the beta: Shal'ma (cat, level 9, Durotar), Matriarch Bristlefur (bear, level 10, Elwynn Forest) and Mystmane (bear, level 13, Zephras Isle), which already knows Swipe. We are still confirming their exact spawns, so check in game before making a trip. Rares respawn on a timer and are often camped, so go early.

Learning abilities, feeding and happiness

A pet does not learn its family ability by leveling up. You tame a teacher, a wild beast that already knows it (for example the Prairie Wolf Alpha in Mulgore for Furious Howl), let it use the ability until the game tells you it was learned, release it and teach your real pet at Beast Training. Learned abilities stay available for any future pet of that family. A pet can have at most four active abilities.

A happy pet deals 125% damage, a content one 100% and an unhappy one only 75%. Use Feed Pet outside combat with food close to the pet's level, and check each family's diet: cats, wolves, raptors, foxes and scorpids eat meat only, while bears and boars accept almost anything. Happiness also drops when the pet dies or is dismissed. Loyalty grows while you fight together and gives your pet training points, and Mend Pet and Revive Pet keep it alive.

• Feed Pet
• Mend Pet
• Revive Pet

Which pet for which situation

Solo leveling: a fast cat for damage, or a bear, boar or carrion bird if you pull groups. Keep Growl on so the pet holds the enemies. Dungeons and raids: a fast cat, or a wolf for groups with many melee players, and turn Growl off so the pet does not steal threat from the tank. For armored bosses, a tallstrider with Dust Cloud helps the party.

Hard solo content and elites: a turtle or a crab. PvP: a crocolisk or spider for control, a bat or wind serpent against casters, and a bird of prey to disarm. Marksmanship: a tallstrider, or no pet at all if you take the Lone Wolf talent. For the best leveling build and race, see our leveling guide and best solo class.