Winners
Bats Sonic Blast. What makes this two-second stun better than everything other pets’ is the uber-short cooldown. If you’re mana-draining hunter in a 5v5 team and your primary target is the paladin, it’ll be hard to choose a better pet than a Bat to interupt that paladin’s heals.
Bird of Prey Snatch. Can you leave your bird on a warrior and just let the Snatch spell proc every minute? Nope; that warrior will destroy your pet. Don’t use autocast for this spell all the time, but save it for when your team focus-fires on the warrior. When you switch to the warrior, turn the autocast back on with a macro:
/petautocaston Snatch
Carrion Bird Demoralizing Screech. What’s so nice about this spell is it’s useful in both PvP and raiding. Reducing the enemy’s AP is always nice, regardless of your situation, and ever better when it’s an AoE-debuff.
Crocolisk Bad Attitude. For PvE-grinding, this is looking sweet. It’s not the same as a mage or paladin AoE-grinding, but if your pet aggro’s additional mobs, at least your Mend Pet spell won’t aggro the adds.
Devilsaur Monstrous Bite. This could be the top-DPS pet in the game with this spell. If it’s not number one, it’s in the top three to be sure. Raiders will be sporting Devilsaurs in great numbers.
Gorilla Thunderstomp. The closest thing to a paladin’s Consecrate we have. Most hunters never get to experiment with a Gorilla, but now that we can get a gorilla to 65 in a blink of an eye, we’re certain a few people will choose a Gorilla to level and grind. It’ll be quite fun to see!
Hyena Tendon Rip. What was once a big-time loser pet is becoming one of the two best anti-melee-DPS pets we’ll have. It has a nice, short cooldown and reasonable Focus-cost. You’ll want to turn off your Focus-dump Bite spell to ensure Tendon Rip has sufficient Focus to do its job.
Moth Serenity Dust. The extra AP is great, the bonus healing is wonderful. A hunter’s major limiting factor in doing MQoSRDPS is keeping the mob at range, which means our pet has to stay alive. We’ve been thrilled with the performance of our Moths, we highly recommend them.
Raptor Savage Rend. They were good before, as good as cats. But they couldn’t beat a Windserpent or Ravager in end-game DPS. But now, this puts the Raptor in the race for top DPS-pet in the game.
Spider Web. The cooldown is long, but the ensnare is long as well. Spiders are not exotic, so all you non-BM PvP hunters might want to consider a one, depending on your playstyle. If you’re a healer-protector, Web will allow your healers to run out of melee-range and escape their attackers. They’ll love you for it.
Sporebat Spore Cloud. The Most Improved Pet in WotLK is the Sporebat. They are basically worthless in BC, but the armor-reduction of Spore Cloud will make them get lots of raiding invitations.
Turtle Shell Shield. Who hasn’t wanted a Turtle-tank? The problem in BC is that the Shell Shield spell is great, but the rest of the Turtle stinks. Now that Turtles get the same benefits of other Tenacity-pets, we hope lots of non-BM hunters start using Turtles to level and grind.
Wasp Sting. The BRK Pet Testing and Waffle Theorycrafting Center has confirmed that this spell prevents rogues from Vanishing, (thank you Pandaba!) Rogues can Cloak of Shadow out of a Sting, but if CoS is on cooldown, Sting will really piss off some rogues.
Losers
Boar Gore. What was once the best leveling-pet and a strong raiding-pet is now nerfed to obscurity. No stun, no Growl-modifier, no chance for double-damage except when under the Dash effect. Goodbye, Boars. We’ll miss you.
Cat Prowl. Prowl stinks. Always has, probably always will. Worthless in raiding, almost worthless in PvP. With so many better choices for Ferocity pets, the cat is going into the history books. /BAWL!!!
Crab Pin. No stun, no DoT? It says, “in place”. That’s a stun, no? Maybe they forgot that part? Until it’s fixed, the Crab is a no-go.
Dragonhawk Fire Breath. It breaks crowd-control more than any other pet out there. No stun, nothing else special. Just say No to Dragonhawk, perhaps The Most Worthless Pet in WotLK.
Ravager Ravage. The one-time DPS-champ for non-Marksman hunters, it gets a new Stun effect. But is two-seconds every minute going to make hunters keep bringing this pet to PvP? With Hyenas around, we don’t think so.
Serpent Poison Spit. Too much Focus, too little damage. If Dragonhawks aren’t The Most Worthless Pet in WotLK, then Serpents sure are. /flush
Silithid Venom Web Spray As an exotic pet, only 51-point BM hunters get to chose to bring a Silithid to PvP. If this is your spec, are you going to go with a crowd-control pet, or a DPS-pet to arena or battlegrounds? SV hunters are the CC-specialist, we BM hunters are the DPS epeeners. We think BM hunters are going to look at the two-minute cooldown and go with something other than a Silithid. If there were a contest for Best SV Pet SV’s Can’t Have, this wins, hands-down.
Toss Up
Bears Swipe. Is this better than a Gorilla than can AoE-aggro? Both Gorillas and Bears are Tenacity-pets, so there’s no stat-bonus for Bears we’d advocate. Bears have easier diets, that’s true… We wanted to put Bears in the Loser section, but Swipe is a definite improvement. We just think Gorilla’s could be a better choice for AoE-tanking.
Chimaera Froststorm Breath. This is still borked, the slowing effect hasn’t materialized. We’ll give Blizz more time to work this one out before we label it.
Nether Ray Nether Shock. It’s an anti-warlock pet. OK, how often do we need an anti-warlock pet? BM hunters crush all but SL/SL warlocks in a matter of seconds. Perhaps this pet will have a usefulness in WotLK that we don’t know about…
Rhino. It doesn’t have a special spell yet, and we can’t judge the Rhino on size alone.
Scorpid Scorpid Poison. Always a strong choice for PvP for its rapid application of a DoT, but there are so many other strong choices for PvP now. Will we continue to see Scorpids when the methods for countering them so well-known?
Tallstrider Dust Cloud. Will it work against raid-bosses, that’s the big question. If the answer is yes, then move the Tallstrider into the Win column.
Warp Stalker Warp. If you want a Tenacity pet at level 70, this is one of the few you’ll be able to match you at level 70 right off the bat. It is the only pet that can follow bridge-jumpers and Blinking-mages in PvP. But it’s a tanking pet, not DPS. In PvP, it’ll follow that mage, but unless you’re a BM hunter, it won’t put a great-big hurt on him. This is probably the most-Toss Up pet we’ve got.
Windserpent Lightning Breath. The previous king of high-RAP hunters’ affection, we’re not certain it’ll stay there. We need more information as to just how well it’ll scale with RAP in the expansion before we declare this a raiding-pet again.
Wolf Furious Howl. Just like in BC, the buff from Furious Howl only affects melee. If you’re in a group with two rogues and an enhancement shaman, a wolf is a great choice. How often do hunter get put with a party like this, though?
Worm Acid Spit. Just how much armor reduction? We gotta know some numbers, foshizzle.
