Real Life Hits Blog for >9000 (8000 Overkill)

Despite the length of time between this post and the last, I have actually been playing WoW fairly consistently the entire time.

I just don't have anywhere near the amount of time I used to have to write a blog post (or, in fact, the inclination - considering there are now many places to get the small tips I used to post, in a more efficient way and in a central location).

To that end, I've updated my go-to hunter links on the right hand side of the page for anyone who happens to come across this blog (who on earth are you people?!), so you will hopefully find what you are looking for.

If you happen to be here to see what the hell I've been up to all this time, well... a lot! I've changed guilds (again), tamed a stupid number of pets (anyone else's favourite part of the expansion the 200-slot stables?) and signed up with a bunch of vampires... and that's not counting the fact that I skipped posting anything to this blog for almost the entire of Legion (has it really been three and a half years?!).

I can't promise to post more frequently or keep anything on this page updated, but if you're looking to chat or learn2hunter, I'm happy to answer in-game mail (Phyllixia-Khaz'goroth). Otherwise, you never know.... I may pop up here again at some point if I feel the need to be creative!

Hunter Tools in WoD

Zeherah of http://www.femaledwarf.com/ fame has unfortunately stopped updating the absolutely brilliant tool that was the Hunter DPS Analyzer. Having used a version of this spreadsheet since the time when it was actually a spreadsheet at Elitist Jerks, I am very sorry to see it go, although I wish Zeherah well and thank her for all the effort it took to keep it up to date.

Happily, there is a new tool updated by Esoth:
http://www.wowhuntertools.com/hunter/

...although considering the gear choices in raiding are currently extremely straightforward, it probably isn't going to get much use from me in the near future.

More useful is http://www.noxxic.com/wow

...which I found extremely helpful for spelling out situational shot priority for Survival (there are guides for MM and BM as well). Definitely useful when DPS is a limiting factor for boss kills; my guild managed to kill Mythic Twin Ogron this week and the last wipe before the kill we were a few % short before someone reminded everybody about Augment Runes.

I'm still a bit shaky on SV DPS compared to BM DPS, but improving as I get more comfortable with it.

Carry Me Away

Well, my freak out about doing heroic Paragons for the first time was completely unnecessary. The merge guild's team were totally in control the whole time and since everybody except me knew what to do, it was easy.

I would have to say my heroic Blackfuse freak out was probably warranted, but I didn't do too badly at all - died on the first go (after someone else on the floor did, so they couldn't rez me), wiped on the second (slow getting up on the pipe and couldn't DPS wave #6 in time) and killed it the third, although I died right at the end when we were DPSing the boss instead of being on the belt (I had no idea what was going on on the floor, since up until this point I'd been pretty much permanently on the belt).

I'm pretty happy overall with my performance - the other hunter died once in the third Blackfuse attempt, so I felt better about falling off the pipe once in that fight. Plus, I managed to scrape top DPS on Thok (I realise that fight is totally built for hunters, but considering their strat involves 1 tank, 2 heal and burst DPS to get Thok down as the third door opens, I feel like I made a significant contribution...).

Unfortunately I didn't get to do Garrosh - they were taking another newbie through and didn't want a second - but at least I had fun raiding with them. Plus, there was the added bonus of having the entire rest of the week off from raiding - so efficient!

An Apology...

Yes, I'm still alive.

I've been incredibly busy this year and haven't prioritised time for blog posts... sorry about that! Anyway, I've finally decided to stop putting off a catch-up post, since my hunter exploits have certainly not been neglected in that time. Plus, we're on a raiding break so there's a few extra hours this week :P

Here's the recap:

1. Raiding. My last post made reference to downing heroic Iron Juggernaut. Well... we've gone a little further than that now - Dark Shaman, Nazgrim, Malkorok, Spoils and Thok have all fallen, making our guild 11/14 heroic in Siege. Exciting? Hell yes! Haven't ever been in a position to potentially clear any final heroic raid boss at level, let alone the final boss of an expansion.

2. Challenge Mode dungeons. I managed to get a regular group going for CMs. They're almost as bad as heroic raids in terms of difficulty (and sometimes even more so depending on the dungeon), so it was extremely satisfying to get those Golds done.

3. Proving Grounds. The DPS challenge naturally didn't give me too much trouble, although I haven't managed to get the Endless version done yet; mainly because the AoE phase annoys me (I might have to actually use a flask to get it done; it's terrible! Also, I refuse to switch to Surv to make the AoE easier...). Because I am who I am, I of course had to get You're Doing it Wrong (seriously, it's like Blizzard made that achievement for me... I'd wear it as a title if I could; it sums me up in a nutshell :)).

I tried both tank and healer, and just found tank a lot easier. The tank in the healer challenge tends to taunt a lot more than my pet can keep up with... but if I have time I'm definitely going to try and get at least Bronze healer on hunter. My achievement pane says Gold healer only because I did it on my druid (yeah, the rare occurrence where I actually did something on an alt and not my hunter! I can only think of a handful of things where that's the case and I think this is the only non-horde specific achievement where it would be).

4. Old Achievements and Random Stuff

a) I managed to solo Halion 25 on heroic, which was a bit of a pain to get through. Can't think of any particular tips apart from drop traps and wait to DPS until he gets pushed into your phase, then blow your cooldowns.

b) I also got my last achievement (Stay Chill) for Glory of the Cataclysm Raider, which means the only non-MoP dungeon/raid achievements I have left are Ragnar'Os, heroic Spine and heroic Madness - all of which I expect to knock off in this raiding break. I expect I'll have to bite the bullet at some point and start working on some of the other "farming" (hi2u, fishing and archaeology) and PvP achievements that I've been neglecting.

c) Last but not least, I have a shiny new heroic warforged bow - once again, first time I've ever had the absolute best bow you can get in an expansion. Rhok on! :)

Phew, epic wall-o-text. I'm going to try and post here regularly again so that I don't get so far behind in updates - there will be plenty of LOL-worthy moments in pipe-jumping for heroic Siegecrafter that I'll want to post about, I'm sure. Plus, I've probably missed posting about so many things, just because I can't remember what happened between now and February. Half a year is way too long!

Hit Me with your Longbow Stick

After getting the heroic crossbow a couple of weeks ago and ending up way over the hit cap, I am extremely happy to replace it with something that has no +hit at all - Dagryn's Discarded Longbow.

...Yeah, I'm still over the hit cap. But hey, at least it's only 8.7% now instead of 10.9%! It was nice of the other hunter, Ane, to immediately pass on the roll for me as well since his gear wasn't as terribly itemised as mine was.

As an added bonus for tonight's raid, the guild managed to kill heroic Iron Juggernaut and get some extremely decent attempts in on heroic Dark Shaman, so I'm looking forward to trying them again next week.

Or perhaps I should say that the bow was the bonus - I always feel better about raid progression rather than getting loot. Hopefully my DPS will get a bit of a boost from the stat shuffle to help with the Shaman - we're down a DPS to use a 3-tank strat for the fight, after all... every little bit counts!

And as a final note, speaking of DPS - going BM on Iron Juggernaut and keeping my pet DPSing in the tar phase (including Kill Command on cooldown) while the raid is turtling out of range of the boss seems to have paid off. Usually, Surv beats BM on single target fights with my gear level, but this time I managed to do more DPS than Ane (who generally stays in Surv for every fight). Good to know the hunter spec balancing is working out reasonably well!

I Was Not Prepared

...to start heroic modes this week, since I still haven't killed Garrosh on 10m and was expecting at least another week of normal, but no such luck.

Heroic Immerseus actually seems like a fun fight and I was actually enjoying the challenge by the end of the raid; it was just that I started behind the 8 ball by a) not having read up on heroic abilities; b) starting half an hour of attempts behind everyone else (I was expecting to be late, so they had a replacement in for me until I got there); and c) being informed by the other hunter that since our planned placement was quite far back from the boss, I should go Survival because our pets would likely despawn - a spec I hadn't played for awhile.

As it turned out, I realised after a few attempts that Blink Strikes was the pet problem - we had switched talents due to A Murder of Crows apparently being buggy and giving too many stacks of Corruption, but Blink Strikes was then automatically putting our pets too far behind the boss and into despawn range. Switching out for Lynx Rush seemed much better.

Unfortunately by the time I was comfortable with the fight, a lot of others were probably getting tired. I can see him going down possibly next week if we can pull it together - it doesn't look like a difficult fight as long as we all stay alive!

Solo 10m TotC Achievements

If you haven't managed to finish the Trial of the Crusader 10man Achievements yet, they're a lot easier than I thought they would be.

The only one I didn't manage to do myself was The Traitor King... and even then, I managed to last through 2 submerges before succumbing to the stacking DoT. If I were more careful about kiting, I probably could have done it (I recruited some guildies to help out instead!).

Upper Back Pain was easy, since the snobolds just jump off Gormok's back and stayed on the floor until the end; all you have to do is avoid the fires for the rest of the fight. I managed to kill Acidmaw and Dreadscale within 10 seconds of each other as well.

360 Pain Spike is all about timing - you don't need to leave the Mistresses up for ages, just time your kill just as a second Mistress emerges from the portal.

I already had Salt and Pepper, but the one thing that surprised me the most was how easy Resilience Will Fix It is.

Even with both the druid and the priest healer, I didn't have too much trouble - just equip a PvP trinket, drop traps, send your pet in and blow your cooldowns at the start... and by the time the mobs get through your snakes and you're out of interrupts (Scatter, Silence, Intimidation or Wyvern do well here), you will probably have both healers down. Killing the rest of them takes less than a minute if you have decent DPS.

I also found it helpful to run a timer (which you can pull out of the in-game clock and place anywhere on your screen like I've done in the screenshot below) to keep track of time so that you can wipe it if you're having trouble.

And to think my PvE-oriented guild had so much trouble with that fight! :P

Oondisaster

Oondasta is the most ridiculously hilarious world boss fight I have ever seen.

Because of Faction tags - in that your entire Faction shares a mob tag whether you're in the raid that started hitting the mob first or not - what should be a heroic NPC fight only to be attempted by the server's most progressive guilds turns into a case of fire ants devouring an elephant while it's still alive.

I can only be glad that the rez timer only goes to 2min, because I'm sure mine would have gone up to half an hour as the last arrow hit Oondasta, who by that time was buffed with 30 stacks of Growing Fury.

What made it extra difficult was that no-one could tank from halfway through the fight - there were just too many buff stacks for anyone to last more than 1 hit and Oondasta was spinning around to hit whoever was closest. Even if you weren't in melee range, you would rez, be hit by either Piercing Roar or Frill Blast and be stuck as a ghost for another 2min.

In the end, I figured that the best time to rez was straight after a Roar, Deterrence the Frill Blast and get the most out of your DPS time before the next Roar.

The 26g reward really wasn't worth the repair bill, but the screenshots of the skeleton carpet sure was! :)

Know Your Role - Solo Cheng Bo

I know most people would be well into the new Thunder Isle quest hub, but I figured this might be useful anyway. Better late than never! :)

Know Your Role can be a difficult Achievement, particularly Cheng Bo.

Most people would suggest taking the easy way out and getting someone else to do the killing for you, but hey, we're hunters! Why not solo it instead?

The easiest way I've found to do this is to stand on the hill that overlooks Cheng Bo's hut:

From here, you can clear out the mobs around the hut from a distance without having to worry about anyone sneaking up on you. Always send your pet in first before you start DPSing except when there is an Earthtalker present.

For the Gai-Cho Earthtalkers, I would recommend hitting them with a silence or stun straight off so they dont cast Earthquake. By the time they're able to cast again, they will more than likely cast Healing Wave instead, which you can interrupt again and then finish them off.

You always need to target Earthtalkers first in the pair, because they will almost always cast Earthquake under your feet, even if your pet has the aggro.

For Cheng Bo himself, he comes with two adds, one of which is always an Earthtalker.

I would recommend first parking your pet right in front of the hut, use Misdirection, then send it in to aggro the Earthtalker and quickly pull it back out. The mobs will follow your pet out, where you can stun and silence the Earthtalker from the safety of your hill.

If you want to take a helper, take Protector Yi - he's melee and he taunts, which means he will be well out of your way if the mobs target him.

Remember that you need to not have taken damage on any of the prior quests as well and you're golden! :)

Ai-ya.... Ai-li Hurts!

Not sure when Blizzard decided to change things, but the rare Pandaren mobs around Pandaria (Ai-Li, Ai-Ran etc) that cast Spinning Crane Kick and Healing Mists used to not affect pets when casting the spin, meaning you could leave your pet in melee range and just worry about interrupting the heal.

Now, however, Spinning Crane Kick will kill your pet within a couple of seconds... and just pulling your pet back isn't quick enough.

I recommend saving Master's Call for those spins; otherwise you could probably use Dash.

Solo Pit Fighter

I know I'm not the best PvPer. Far from it, in fact. However, I do like being the underdog - sometimes you can sneak your way to the finish line purely because you're not the most obvious target.

With no extra buffs, under-par PvP gear (still less than 3500 resilience) and not a single party member to back me up, I almost didn't step into the Darkmoon Arena ring tonight because I knew it'd be tough. However, there were enough people fighting that I figured I'd have a chance of ninjaing the chest...

...which is clearly what happened, because I've just come away from the Darkmoon Arena with my second Pit Fighter trinket - and this one I managed solo!

All it took was waiting for the right moment. In this case, a mage put up a Ring of Frost on the chest, clearly expecting to catch everyone and have the chest be safe for a few seconds. I deliberately run in, trinket, FD to make everyone lose me as a target, drop a Freezing Trap and start opening the chest.

Meanwhile, of course, everyone else is still either frozen in the mage's ring or staying out so they don't get caught. I send my bat to stun someone coming close, a warrior charges into my trap... and bam. Cast finishes, I get the trinket. Epic win! Only 10 more to go.... :P

Spinal Tapped

On the eve of the 10% Dragon Soul raiding buff tomorrow night, it gives me great satisfaction that our 10man raid group managed to sever Deathwing's spine today with only the 5% buff up.

We had been working on Ultraxion prior to the 5% buff and just missed killing him with our own power - I'm pretty sure 1 week's worth of gear upgrades for people would have done it - so the kill on Spine was some great timing.

Not to mention, we managed both Blackhorn (a fight we were still a little shaky on) and Spine without Bloodlust, since we had no shaman/mage and our raid leader was confident that we could do it without, even though I've usually volunteered to switch to BM for Ancient Hysteria in the past.

Hunter note about Spine: It seems to take at least 3-4 Arcane shots (less if you get an auto/Chimaera/insta-Aimed in there) to break Fiery Grip, so doing less DPS but keeping a full bar of Focus ready is important, especially when you have to break someone out close to Rolling or Tendon phase.

It'd be interesting to try the fight as BM - with the lower personal DPS it might be more difficult to break people out quickly, even though you'd have better burst DPS available for killing Tendons.

Rare-ly a dull moment

Three more rare pets have been added to my "tamed" list:

Skarr

Solix

Ban'thalos

Skarr was fairly easy (Silence, Deterrence, Tame) and Solix was easy the second time around (kiting with Concussive Shot/Ice Trap until ~40 energy, then Concussive Shot, Deterrence, Tame), but Ban'thalos was a little tricky.

For Ban'thalos, I used the tree method:

1. Move up, down and around until you can stand right at the tip of one of the trees (the tallest one just behind the quest givers)
2. Turn to face Ban'thalos' path (this is important!)
3. Lay a Freezing Trap in front of you (if you're not facing Ban'thalos properly, it won't be in the correct position to trigger the trap without you moving back and forth - and if you move back and forth, you'll fall off the tree!)
4. Mount up and fly directly up so that you're in range to shoot (again, don't move back and forth, or you won't drop back onto the tree tip)
5. Shoot Ban'thalos and quickly cancel your attack. If you don't, you will melee him before he triggers the trap... and the trap will break.
6. Once trapped, tame away!

I probably won't keep any of these 3 pets... as fun as they were to tame, I still don't like the actual skins that much. I will, however, keep them for awhile until I can replace them with pet skins I do actually want (if anyone sees Loq up on US-Proudmoore, please let me know...).

Can Haz Chromaggus

I went into Blackwing Lair recently with a guildie and came out with a new skin colour for Cerberus:

I have to say, duoing BWL with a boomkin is pretty easy - Razorgore gave us the most trouble, but the rest is pretty much a faceroll.

Some tips:

Razorgore: if your partner is controlling Razorgore, keep Mend Pet up to help grab aggro on all the mobs and stand just below the platform so that you can quickly pick up any mobs running towards the orb. I found using a tenacity pet in MM spec the most helpful; if you get low you can hit Chimera, but I mostly relied on traps. Staying in Aspect of the Fox helps to keep your Focus up - you don't really need the extra DPS Hawk provides.

Everything in between: Tank n spank. If you want to tame Chromaggus, just stand at max range and go for it; no tricks required.

Nefarian: Using an heirloom ranged weapon will completely negate Nef's hunter class call, so you won't have to worry about your bow breaking. In phase 1, it's easiest to let the mobs come to you and kill them all in a pile rather than picking them off quickly, so that in phase 3 they'll all rez in the one spot. Being in BM spec can be helpful for breaking you out of fears occasionally. Be mindful what each of your raid member's class calls are and act accordingly.

Guest post on Warcraft Hunters Union

Apparently I've paid my dues, because Frostheim over on the Warcraft Hunters Union blog has honoured me by asking if I would do a guest post on his site... so if you'd like to know about how to get the most out of PuGs, go check it out:

Pain-Free PuGging for Hunters

Surprisingly, he let me post the whole thing - I always ramble on way too long! :)

Cataclysm Pet Control: Part five - Organizing your pet bar

This is the final post in the Pet Control guide, updated for Cataclysm.

Part 1 - Attack, Follow and Move To
Part 2 - Aggressive, Defensive and Passive
Part 3 - General pet abilities
Part 4 - Species-specific pet abilities

To begin: there are 4 slots for pet-specific spells on our pet bar.

For me, the 2 left-most slots are the easiest to reach (Ctrl-4 and Ctrl-5), so the abilities I have here are both important for timing and on long(ish) cooldowns, such as Sonic Blast (for timed stuns in PvP) or Call of the Wild (to coincide with burst DPS - Heroism/trinkets/Beast Within etc).

The right-most slots, if not required for the more important pet spells, are either emergency spells such as Heart of the Phoenix or Last Stand, or abilities that I need to make sure aren't on autocast, such as Growl for my raiding pets and Cower for my tanking pets.

Spells that do NOT need to go on your pet bar include things like Bite/Claw/Smack (ie spells that can be left on autocast ALL the time).

Anything left over that needs to be cast manually and you can't fit onto your pet bar, you will unfortunately have to macro and pull onto your player bar.


Prioritizing pet abilities for the pet bar

Ferocity

Ferocity pets are usually used for DPS and not much else. Almost all of their abilities can be left on or off autocast due to their short cooldown, so you generally won't have problems organizing these.

As an example, here's my usual Ferocity DPS pet bar:

In order, I have Call of the Wild, Dash, Cower and Heart of the Phoenix.

Call of the Wild and Dash (for moving pet in and out quickly) are really the only two spells that I need on the bar, since they need to be cast at specific times. Every other spell is on a short enough cooldown for me not to have to watch it.

To fill the last 2 slots I chose Heart of the Phoenix so I don't have to look for it when my pet dies and Cower because you can use it when your pet is taking too much incidental damage (which doesn't happen often in a raid situation, but may do for specific boss abilities like bleeds).

Cunning

Depending on what purpose your Cunning pet has, you'll need to have a look at your most important spells.

For PvP, this is usually the species-specific spell, since most people choose PvP pets according to these - Sonic Blast or Pin, for example. Of the family-specific spells, Dash, Bullheaded and Roar of Sacrifice are common in PvP specs; you may also have Roar of Recovery.

Wait a minute - that's too many for the pet bar!



Well, if you have all of these, the best one to macro and pull onto your player bar is Roar of Sacrifice. This is mainly because to cast the spell, you need to be targetting someone to cast it on them - using a mouseover, focus or specific player macro can be more useful than having to target someone manually to cast it from your pet bar.

As for Carrion Feeder, it's an out-of-combat talent and it's therefore not essential to have ready access to it. PvPers are unlikely to have this talent anyway, since there are more useful places to spend a talent point; if you're using your Cunning pet for farming you can rearrange your pet bar accordingly (have Growl on there and leave the species-specific spell on autocast, for example).

Tenacity

For me, this is the worst pet bar to organize in terms of how many active talents you can get.

In the talent tree, you can get Charge, Last Stand, Intervene, Taunt, Roar of Sacrifice and Thunderstomp all at the same time if you feel like it, plus your species-specific spell and general pet abilities.

Personally, I only use my tenacity pets for farming or difficult soloing. My turtle's bar therefore looks like this:

In order, Shell Shield, Cower, Thunderstomp and Last Stand, leaving Growl on autocast (I don't have the other active talents; if I did they would replace Thunderstomp). If my turtle had Taunt, I'd put that on the first slot and shift Shell Shield and Cower down one, because you're more likely to want Taunt in an emergency and on an easy-to-reach hotkey than the other abilities.

For the same reason, I recommend putting species-specific spells in the first slot for easy access and macroing Intervene and Roar of Sacrifice to put on your player bar.


And that's it for the Pet Control guide! Feel free to post questions/comments (or email me) if you think I haven't covered something and I'll make sure to get back to you.

Cataclysm Pet Control: Part four - Species-specific pet abilities

To recap:

Part 1 - Attack, Follow and Move To
Part 2 - Aggressive, Defensive and Passive
Part 3 - General pet abilities

Each "species" of pet has a unique ability. Some of these are tailored for DPS, others for PvP, others for tanking... and some are just random bonus abilities that suit the pet but aren't as useful. Below, I've separated the various abilities into specific uses for comparison.

***Note: I am NOT going to argue the pros and cons of each pet here. There are plenty of other places where you can find out which pet is best for what purpose; this guide is about pet control only***


Raid buff or debuff replacements:

Bear: Demoralizing Roar (and Rest)
Devilsaur: Terrifying Roar (and Monstrous Bite)
Dragonhawk: Fire Breath
Hyena: Tendon Rip
Fox: Tailspin (and Play)
Raptor: Tear Armor
Ravager: RavageRhino: Stampede (and Horn Toss)
Serpent: Corrosive Spit
Shale Spider: Embrace of the Shale Spider (and Web Wrap)
Silithid: Qiraji Fortitude (and Venom Web Spray)
Spirit Beast: Roar of Courage (and Spirit Mend and Spirit Walk)
Sporebat: Spore Cloud
Tallstrider: Dust Cloud
Wind Serpent: Lightning Breath
Worm: Acid Spit (and Burrow Attack)Wolf: Furious Howl

Most of the straight buffs and debuffs can be left on autocast, as you will want these to be up at all times. However, if there are adds in particular fights that die quickly and your pet is required to switch targets frequently, it may be better to keep pet debuffs on long cooldowns (such as Fire Breath) off autocast so that it can be fired on the main target as soon as possible.

For the pets with extra abilities (mostly the exotics), some care is needed in using them.

Ancient Hysteria, the equivalent to Bloodlust/Heroism and Time Warp (and sharing a cooldown with these), can only be used once per fight, so you will need to determine exactly when this should be cast and be ready for it. Keep in mind that if your core hound is incapacitated or in the middle of casting another ability (eg. Bite), it may not cast and you'll need to spam the ability to make it work.

Utility spells (Spirit Mend, Horn Toss, Venom Web Spray, Web Wrap and Burrow Attack) should be off autocast. I recommend pulling these onto the pet bar to use as appropriate; Horn Toss, Venom Web Spray and Web Wrap to CC adds and Burrow Attack for AoE.

For Spirit Mend in particular, a macro may work better, as this ability needs to be cast on a friendly target. For example:

/cast [@mouseover,help] Spirit Mend(Exotic Ability)

...will cast Spirit Mend on your mouseover target.

For Prowl (and Spirit Walk as well, if I ever manage to tame a Spirit Beast), I personally have a macro on my player bar:

/cast Shadowmeld
/cast Prowl

....since I like to use my cat for camping nodes in battlegrounds.

Play and Rest are bonus abilities, which I tend to leave in the spellbook and manually find when required.


Utility:

Bat: Sonic Blast
Beetle: Harden Carapace
Bird of Prey: Snatch (and Trick)
Crocolisk: Ankle Crack
Chimaera: Frost Breath (and Froststorm Breath)
Crab: Pin
Dog: Lock Jaw
Gorilla: Pummel
Monkey: Bad Manner
Moth: Serenity Dust
Nether Ray: Nether Shock
Scorpid: ClenchSpider: Web
Turtle: Shell Shield
Warpstalker: Time Warp
Wasp: Sting

For almost all of these, I would recommend pulling them onto your pet bar and manually casting them as required. Frost Breath and Ankle Crack could possibly be left on autocast due to the short cooldown, but you really want the rest to be ready when you need it.

Trick is another bonus ability and as with the others I'd leave it in the spellbook and save your slots on the pet bar for something else.


Now that all the pet abilities have been covered, the fifth and final part of this guide will focus on how to organize the million and one pet spells onto 4 measly spell slots on your pet bar!

Cataclysm Pet Control: Part three - General pet abilities

See Part one (Attack, Follow and Move To) or Part two (Aggressive, Defensive and Passive) for pet commands and stances.

Besides pet commands and stances, your pet will have several "active" abilities or talents that you will need to control. Some will be species-specific (such as Prowl or Pin), but most will be shared abilities between all pets, or within the pet families of Tenacity, Cunning and Ferocity.


Shared pet abilities:

Growl - Generally, you should have Growl on autocast when your pet is tanking and off if not.

One exception to this would be in PvP, where Growl can be used to your advantage by manually Growling at player pets, taking their focus off the player until your opponent redirects them.

Cower - You can leave this on autocast if your pet will be taking some damage and you don't want to worry about it, although I highly recommend not doing so.

The main reason is because if you don't have Improved Cower, your pet will take a 50% movement speed hit - not good if you're trying to switch targets or pull your pet out of danger quickly.

The second reason is that Cower will only autocast when your pet's health dips below 40%. Occasionally there will be times when you can pre-empt incoming burst damage to your pet, so you may want to save the cooldown for those times.

Bite/Claw/Smack - Every pet has one of these abilities, which are pretty much all the same spell. This is a "Focus dump" ability, which means any spare focus your pet may have will be used by casting this spell.

Usually, you would want this on Autocast, as the other pet abilities that cost Focus have a longish cooldown and the Focus would be wasted. However, if for some reason your pet is constantly out of Focus, or you want to make sure your pet will have Focus for when you really need it (a stun or CC ability in PvP, for example), you can turn Autocast off.

Dash/Dive or Charge/Swoop - These aren't pet spells, but talents that are common and useful enough for most people to have at least one pet specced into. Keep autocast off, otherwise the ability will get used every cooldown and waste Focus even if your pet isn't moving.


Tenacity-specific abilities:

Thunderstomp - For AoE tanking, this talent can be kept on autocast. If some kind of crowd control is required (or if you don't want your pet pulling aggro on mobs), this needs to be turned off.

Intervene - You may want to macro this, as you need a friendly target to cast it on. A simple macro may look something like this:

/cast [@player] Intervene

...for yourself, or perhaps:

/cast [@mouseover] Intervene; [@player] Intervene

...which will cast Intervene on your mouseover target, or yourself if you don't have a target.

Roar of Sacrifice - See above for Intervene. This is also a Cunning ability.

Last Stand - If you expect to use this in a hurry, I would recommend pulling this out onto an easy-access place on your pet bar, or creating a macro and pulling it onto the player bars instead. Although it won't be used often, trying to find it in your spellbook can be annoying.

Taunt - See above for Last Stand. In addition, make sure your pet is attacking the target you want it to Taunt before you hit this spell.


Cunning-specific abilities:

Carrion Feeder - Unless you use this a lot and don't need all four spaces for pet abilities, you can leave this one in your spellbook.

Bullheaded and Roar of Recovery - See above for Last Stand.

Roar of Sacrifice - As above for the Tenacity talent.

Wolverine Bite - In general, this can be left on autocast as for Bite/Claw/Smack. Again, if you find you need to save Focus, you can turn autocast off.

Ferocity-specific abilities:

Heart of the Phoenix, Call of the Wild and Lick Your Wounds - See above for Last Stand.

Rabid - See above for Wolverine Bite.

That's it for now. Stay tuned; I will be covering species-specific pet abilities and how to organize your pet bar (Blizzard really needed to give us more than 4 slots on that thing...) in another post.

Cataclysm Pet Control: Part two - Aggressive, Defensive and Passive

Part one of this Cataclysm pet control guide covered the pet commands Attack, Follow and Move To.

Once you have that under control, we move onto the pet "stances" - Aggressive, Defensive and Passive, in that order as the three right-most spells on your pet bar.

As for Attack, Follow and Move To, the default key bindings for these spells are rather awkward to reach, so you may need to re-bind them to a different key and/or make a macro:

/petaggressive

/petdefensive

/petpassive

Using Pet Aggressive

Having your pet on Aggressive is usually not a good thing, as it will randomly attack anything within a small radius without you having to control it. However, there are situations where it is useful.

In PvE, this usually means places where there are lots of adds and you don't have to worry about either loot (you need to "tag" each mob with a spell to get loot from it) or pulling aggro.

An example of this would be Admiral Ripsnarl in The Deadmines, since your pet will often start attacking the elemental adds before they even appear on your screen. However, I wouldn't recommend having your pet on Aggressive in raids and dungeons unless you're absolutely confident that you can control it (and not forget to switch it back to Passive/Defensive later!).

The most useful PvE use of Pet Aggressive is to nab highly-camped mobs - parking your Aggressive pet on top of the spawn point will usually help you tag the mob before anyone else in the area unless there are 20 mages spamming Arcane Explosion around you.

In PvP, having your pet on Aggressive is incredibly useful for flushing out stealthers - your pet will usually be able to see rogues and druids before you do even if you have Track Hidden and a Flare up, so it's best to use it when you know those classes are around.

Using Pet Defensive

If you're comfortable with controlling your pet, it's easiest to leave your pet on Defensive most of the time. This ensures that when you're attacking, your pet is also attacking.

However, you still have to keep an eye on your pet and make sure it's attacking the mob you want it to - as I mentioned in Part one under "Using Pet Attack", pet AI isn't exactly genius. Some fights are better done with your pet on Passive, even if it means more micromanagement; your pet will often turn and attack a mob with an AoE attack that hits your pet rather than sticking to the mobs you're attacking yourself (your pet will usually hightail it for the goblins throwing bombs at you in the Helix Gearbreaker fight in Deadmines after the oaf dies, for instance).


Using Pet Passive

This is what I would recommend you have your pet set to all the time if you want to be safe. The only downside is that if you're not on the ball with Pet Attack, you'll lose DPS.

Pet Passive is also useful for pulling your pet out of danger. In particular, it can be used in conjunction with Master's Call if you need to get your pet back fast - pulling out of Sartharion flame walls, for instance. On the flip side, it can be used to get your pet back into range for Master's Call - often in PvP your pet will be too far away to cast it, even though Blizzard did increase the range for casting to 40yds recently.

Finally, as mentioned in Part one, you will need to have your pet on Passive and Stay if you want to Misdirect them and don't want them attacking when you shoot.


That's it for Part two - hopefully reviewing Part three onwards won't take too long! :)

Cataclysm Pet Control: Part One - Attack, Follow and Move To

This is the first of my updates on my previous series of posts on Pet Control. Things have changed a lot in Cataclysm, but the one thing that hasn't is the importance of making the best use of your constant companions - those 25 best friends you have in your stables! :)


How to make your pet Attack, Follow and Move To:


The 3 leftmost buttons on the pet bar are Attack, Follow and Move To in that order, with the default keys being Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2 and Ctrl-3.

Now, unless you have an unusually-shaped hand (or perhaps have long fingers), these combinations are extremely awkward to hit as keybinds.

There are few ways you can change this to work.

Firstly, you can alter the default options for the Blizzard interface. This can be found by pressing Escape for the Game Menu -> Key Bindings, and scrolling down to Pet Action Buttons 1-10:

Pet Attack is actually given a second default keybinding, found further down and defaulting to Shift-T, which you can change as well (note: I've rebound Shift-T to something else in the screenshot below):

Secondly, you can use macros:

/petattack
/petfollow
/petmoveto

Some people like to combine these commands with other spells so that their pet attacks at the same time as casting:
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack

However, I don't recommend this myself, because I always prefer not to link spells (so I can cast Hunter's Mark *without* sending my pet in, for example).


Using Pet Attack:

Pet Attack should be one of your most-used pet spells, particularly in raids and dungeons or when grouping. You really want your pet to be attacking the main DPS target, which it doesn't always automatically do.

If your pet is on Passive, it will not attack anything unless you use Pet Attack. In this case, you will need to use this ability every time you change targets.

If your pet is on Defensive, it will automatically attack the first target you hit and switch to other targets if the first one dies. In this case, you need to be careful - occasionally your pet will NOT be hitting the target you want it to be hitting, so you still need to use this ability fairly often to make sure it's DPSing the right target.

This is especially the case in raids, where your pet will hightail it for a target that's casting spells, but you don't want it to be DPSing. For example, your pet will often want to go back and whack an unreachable boss (eg. an immune or airborne boss) after an add dies, so you want to make sure it's hitting the next DPS target rather than trying and failing to attack something it shouldn't.


Using Pet Follow and Move To:

Pet Follow brings your pet back to your side, but unless your pet is on Passive, it will run off and continue attacking, so I tend to just hit Passive for the times I want to recall my pet (Pet Follow is generally the default state). I only tend to use Pet Follow after using Pet Move To.

Pet Move To brings up a targetting circle and tells your pet to stay exactly where you tell it to go, meaning it won't run back to your side. This is extremely useful for different situations where you don't want your pet to be next to you.

For example, if you're pulling to a tank using Misdirection, you can use Pet Move To to keep your pet out of the way - particularly useful if you're pulling adds back behind a wall where the rest of your group is.

You can also tell your pet to move to a certain position for easier or faster access to mobs (eg. moving your pet to where the melee DPS will start a boss fight rather than back where the ranged are, so your pet can start hitting that much quicker).

One thing to note: pet AI is quite advanced these days compared to what it used to be, but you still need to be careful in dungeons and raids (particularly in places like Gnomeregan where jumping off without dismissing your pet tends to mean your pet takes the long way around and pulls every mob on the way down). You used to be able to use Eyes of the Beast to jump your pet down and stay while you jump down yourself, but using Move To won't allow this because the AI won't find a viable path. Instead, you'll have to dismiss your pet and recall it after jumping down yourself.

Finally, one of my favourite uses of Pet Move To is when doing difficult soloing. You can park your pet away from you, Misdirect mobs to it, run past the mobs and then Feign Death once far enough away from them (preferably far enough away to auto-dismiss your pet), thus avoiding having to kill them. You can also put a Frost or Freeze Trap in between the mobs and the pet so that they'll be even slower getting to your pet.

Here's an example screenshot in Utgarde Pinnacle of what I mean:

That's it for this section, stay tuned for the rest of the Pet Control guide, updated for Cataclysm!