World of Warcraft Hunter Exotic Pets Guide

This post has been updated for Patch 3.2 as of 7/11/09

I am currently in the process of UPDATING and fixing this old post as I know a lot of hunters have come here looking for answers. I will try to be as fast as possible in getting it up to snuff. (7/1/09)

A lot if not all the allure of the Hunter class for me is the pet, in Wrath and with the progression of new patches 3.1 and 3.2 etc; it seems that pets have gotten a lot of love. So here is a quick little guide to all the new exotic pets for Hunters who go 51 points into the Beast Mastery tree and I’ll slide in some new pet models for old favorites at the end!

So what are the exotic pet families anyway?

Right now, we got 7 different types of exotic pets. You can access all right now as of this update. Rhinos and Spirit Beasts are only found in Northrend, while Chimaeras, Core Hounds, Devilsaurs, Silithids, and Worms are all over the place.

I’ll hit the two that aren’t available until Northrend first.

Rhinos: Not much I can say here other than this being one of the ugliest pets in the game. Rhinos are exotic Tenacity pets so he’s going to be a tank plain and simple. His special attack is a bleed gore effect that causes physical damage over time. Longevity can help the 1min cooldown a little bit but not enough for me to want to tame this pet for anything other than the size factor. The bleed damage plays well with group synergy if you have a druid or warrior but ultimately, this is a flavor pet it’s not really very good. The first place you can encounter and tame this pet is the Borean Tundra.

Spirit Beasts: This is the best pet hands down and the ultimate goal of all BM hunters for damage and flare. There are three spirit beasts and the one pictured above is my love. You can tame a panther model SB in the sholazar Basin (Loque’nahak), a tiger model in Zul’drak (Gondria), and in patch 3.2 the wolf model SB (Skoll) in the Stormpeaks. They are ferocity type pets (so you know that DPS is going to be nice) with Claw or Bite and Prowl for utility and focus dumping. The unique spell of this pet is Spirit Strike which deals arcane damage and has a 6 second dot after the initial burst, the cooldown is 10 seconds and with the longevity talent it’s pretty much endlessly spammed damage. Very very good stuff, get one of these.

Chimaeras: This pet is solid for PVP. He has Froststorm Breath, which does a frost and nature damage and slows down your enemy by 50% for 5 seconds. It runs a 10 second cooldown but with the Beast Mastery talent Longevity, you can shorten this to 7 seconds. This means simply that a hunter can kite like a BEAST (lol) with this pet. Add in the factor that giant flapping wings usually make for cluttered PVP screens, and your target is going to have a hard time snagging you. It’s a Cunning pet, which mean it’s pretty balanced around PVP to begin with. Though, they’re pretty butt ugly.

Core Hounds: This is one of my favorites because I’ve been around long enough to know the horrors of early MC and Magmadar’s trash. This bad boy is also an anti-caster. I mean THE anti-caster for exotic pets. His Lava Breath ability slows down the enemy’s casting speed by 50% for 10 seconds. The attack is only bringing a 10 second cooldown so provided you have the focus power, you can keep that pesky healer or nuker only sitting at 50% cast speed ALL THE TIME. Great for PVP! It’s a Ferocity pet so it’s not meant to take loads of damage and stands out in raiding! So with this one pet you’ve got two different options, also his Ferocity talents give him lots of self-healing options as well. All around can’t fail.

Devilsaurs: Who doesn’t want their very own T-Rex as a faithful companion? Its Monstrous Bite attack, builds up over to 3 stacks giving an additional 9% damage on all the devilsaur’s attacks making it prime for boss battles and instances. Now if you’re fighting easy trash or players in PVP that don’t really have the HP pool to last long, you won’t be getting the full bang for your hunter buck with the Devilsaur. In the end he’s a Ferocity pet still and thus provides the boons of DPS and self healing. This pet has more of a cool factor though than anything else.

Silithids: The only good bug, is a dead bug. Unless you’re a BM Hunter. I personally don’t think that the Silithid is that great a pet for his abilities alone. It’s a cunning pet so it’s good for PVP but doesn’t tank well and doesn’t bring anything super sexy to raid DPS. He has a ranged Venom Web Spray ability which does nature damage and roots the target in place for 4 seconds. It has a nasty 40 second cooldown though and roots can be removed by many classes in PVP. This ability reminds me way too much of all the other pet abilities that do the same thing. Unless it’s nature damage is substantial, you’re better off with a Chimaera or Hyena or even the Crab pets since crabs can pin for a root+damage, very nice.

It’d be nice if instead Blizzard gave this pet a burrow ability (like zerg lol) so you can spring traps with it. Most people would think you had a cat prwoling in stealth until the last second when this little bastard jumps out of the ground and locks you down. Now that would be badass!

Worms: This is a straight up tanking pet. The worm is a Tenacity pet, so he has improved growl, Taunt, Intervene, tons of tanking talents. He’s amazing at single-target tanking and as far as debuffs, Acid Spit is pro. If you’re running a group with melee or physical DPS (rogues, yourself and other hunters, warriors, etc.) then this pet is going to give them some serious help. All you need to do is keep misdirecting on the pet and pray your DPS isn’t crazy overpowered. The armor killing ability can also be nice for PVP when taking out plate users.