Hunter pet The Hunter pet is a Hunter ' s constant companion as they travel through Azeroth and Outland . When fighting solo or in small groups , a Hunter ' s pet acts as a tank allowing the Hunter to maintain the range that he / she requires in order to do their best in combat . When not tanking , pets can be used to deal damage in addition to the Hunter ' s shots and stings . Patch 3 . 0 . 2 introduced many changes to how Hunter pets work . Taming . To obtain a pet , the Hunter must use his / her skill on a valid beast , from a select family , who is exactly their level or lower . Upon starting the taming process , the Hunter ' s armor is decreased by 100 % and they cannot perform any other actions , else the attempt at taming should fail . The taming process takes 20 seconds and does not increase with every hit , but it can be interrupted . With Patch 3 . 0 . 2 , Beastmaster Hunters gained the ability to tame additional rare pet types . Taming tips : Feeding . In order to maintain your pet ' s happiness ( a good mood ) , you must feed it . Pets eat up to six different types of food : meat , bread , fish , fruit , fungus , and cheese . Some pets , like wolves , will only eat meat , but bears and boars can eat any of the six food types . It is easiest to feed pets that eat meat , bread , and fish because mobs often drop meat , fish can be caught , and bread can be conjured by a Mage . Feeding pets is very important . The happier a pet is , the more damage it deals : With Patch 3 . 0 . 2 , it became much easier to make a pet happy . From taming the pet to full happiness , it takes only two feedings of appropriate level food and it will not run away due to hunger . With Patch 4 . 1 . 0 , happiness has been removed from the game . Feeding your pet now restores up to half of your pet ' s health , but can only be used out of combat . The pet ' s food preferences remain unchanged . See Pet Feeding for more info . See also below on Abilities that generate happiness . Fighting alongside your pet . Generally , a Hunter will send the pet in from a distance and allow it to get aggro on a mob before opening fire . Try to keep the mob on the pet so you can use the full power of your ranged weapon to take it down . A nice trick is to use your pet to pull mobs that are out of range towards you . Use Attack to send your pet in and as soon as it attracts the attention of the mob , use Follow to call the pet back . The pet will start running towards you and the mob will follow . Once the mob is within range , use Attack again . The pet will turn around and attack the mob , and you can use your ranged weapon on it . This pull works over quite a long distance and even around corners , as long as you can get a mob targeted . It also ensures that any additional mobs will have aggro on the pet , rather than you . It does not work as well with mobs that have a ranged attack . Also , be careful that the pet does not pull any extra mobs on the way to the mob and back again . It is possible to have the pet fight one mob while the Hunter attacks another . Note : the Hunter will not gain loot or experience from a mob that the pet kills solo . This is a deliberate decision by Blizzard , not a bug . If you intend on pulling multiple mobs and having your pet kill one or more of them while you focus on others , it would be best to try to get at least one shot or hit on each of the mobs and then allow your pet to do its work on them . You can set your pet to Aggressive and have it auto - attack but this is generally not a good idea unless you would like to gain a few levels faster than you normally would in another mode . An aggressive pet will typically draw in additional mobs that you and your party would be unprepared to handle . Failing to control your pet is a sure route to causing a wipe in an instance . The Aggressive setting has somewhat more useful results in a battleground , but optimal use of a pet would be a coordinated attack alongside the Hunter , not off on its own . Pet stat lag . Prior to Patch 4 . 2 , if a hunter was dismounted , their pet ' s stats would not update from initial starting stats until a few seconds after they spawned . This delay often caused the death of the pet when the hunter engaged in combat soon after dismounting . In Cataclysm . As of Patch 4 . 2 , pets do not despawn when hunters use a ground mount , thus avoiding the problem above when dismounting from a ground mount , but this is still a problem with flying mounts . Additionally , if the hunter aggros a mob while on a ground mount , their pet slows to % 100 ( run speed ) and can fall behind and despawn . In Mists of Pandaria . Cory Stockton said in a Mists of Pandaria developer Q & A that Blizz ard plans to fix the stat lag issue , but did not address the other mount related issues . Tameable beasts . There are 23 families of pets for Hunters to tame , with seven of them only available through the Burning Crusade expansion , and two exclusive to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion . Each family has its own skills , diet , and statistics . With Patch 3 . 0 . 2 , Hunter pets have been completely reworked . Pet families now are divided into the three classes : Cunning , Ferocity , and Tenacity . Ferocity pets are good for continuous damage , tenacity pets make good tanks , and cunning pets have unique abilities which can be very useful in certain situations . All pets of a class share the same stats and the same skill tree . Each pet family has one special skill . It seems special characteristics that some rare pets used to have were removed . With Patch 3 . 1 . 0 , all Cunning , Ferocity and Tenacity pets now have identical bonuses . ( exotic ) means the pet can only be tamed by Hunters with the 51 - point talent Beast Mastery . Pet diets . Meat is the easiest food type to obtain , so pets that will only eat meat are not difficult to feed . Obtaining fish is not too much trouble either , as long as you are willing to catch them or you could hunt coastal humanoids , like murloc s , as well . Pets that will eat neither of these take a little more effort and planning . Dumpster pets , boars and bears , which eat just about anything , are really nice from an inventory management standpoint . You can toss the odd food drops at them . Besides food , however there are now abilities that generate happiness such as Guard Dog and Carrion Feeder . Pet skills . Pet skills come in two types — passive enhancement skills , and active skills . Passive skills change the pet ' s stats and do not require resources . Each pet family has one special skill ( usually active ) and further skills can be learned from the pet ' s skill tree depending on its class . Most active skills require Focus — a constantly - recharging point pool that works much like a Rogue ' s Energy bar . Some active skills are free . Every pet has 100 Focus , and Focus regenerates at a base rate of 5 points per second . Active skills can be activated in several ways : An active skill does not have to be in the pet action bar to be used , even on autocast . It is perfectly okay to leave Growl in the spellbook and have it on autocast . If using a / cast macro , the skill can be addressed as if it were a Hunter skill , so if the pet has the skill " Taunt " , / cast Taunt will taunt the current target . From Patch 1 . 7 onward , Blizzard started introducing special active pet skills . Each skill can only be used by a specific type of pet and the benefit is quite useful , usually in PvE . This increases the diversity among Hunter ' s pets and often promotes Hunters possessing several pets at the same time . It is expected that , with time , Blizzard will continue to add special skills to other beasts ' types as well . With Patch 3 . 0 . 2 , the following aspects of Hunter pet training became obsolete : pet trainers , learning skills from wild beasts and loyalty . Newly tamed beasts that are four or more levels below the Hunter´s level will have their level increased to three levels below the Hunter´s level . Pets also level much faster , and gain happiness faster from feeding . As of Patch 4 . 1 . 0 , any pet you tame will immediately be the same level as the hunter . Also , the pet ' s separate experience has been removed from the game and your pet now levels immediately when the hunter levels . Training your pet . Pets below your level gain experience by fighting alongside you ( as long as the mob killed is green or higher ) . When the pet reaches the Hunter ' s level , it stops gaining experience until the Hunter levels up . Pets gain approximately the same experience from kills as an unrested character of the same level , and require a much lower amount of experience to level as a character of the same level . With Patch 3 . 0 . 2 , the experience required to level was drastically reduced , to 10 % of the amount needed by player characters to reach the same level . In the current PTR version of Patch 3 . 3 . 0 , the experience requirement has been lowered to 5 % . Pets do not benefit from rest , and do not receive any experience from any sources other than kills . If a pet is more than 5 levels below the Hunter , it will immediately gain enough levels to be 5 levels below the Hunter the next time it is active . The pet ' s available talent points at any given time are determined by its level , with a maximum of 16 reached at level 80 . A Beastmaster Hunter can add four more pet talent points with the 51 point talent Beast Mastery . You can assign the pet talent points in the pet tab of the talent window . Hunter pets can unlearn their talents at Hunter pet trainers without cost . A visual pet calculator is available at Wowhead Petcalc . Pet scaling . Pets receive attribute bonuses at 15 % of their master ' s / mistress ' stats : Appearance . As WoW is an MMORPG , you may find that you want a pet that looks visually appealing to you , be that it " looks good " or " looks menacing . " Be aware that there are a couple of other appearance factors . Size . The pet ' s size is directly related to the level of the pet . Many beasts will dramatically shrink right before your eyes the moment they are tamed , though they will enlarge as they level . Pets such as rhino s are large enough to be a sight obstruction in certain areas , which can be to the player ' s advantage ( PVP ) or disadvantage ( instance s and raid s ) . Flying pets . Flying pets maintain a more or less fixed distance above the ground , essentially hovering rather than flying . Flying pets ' models , particularly the wings , interfere with mouse clicking , blocking access to select what is beyond them . This can work both for you and against you , but you will probably find it at least a little annoying . Note : As the pet levels , it gets bigger , and the wingspan gets larger , making the effect greater . Low - slung pets . Low slung pets , like crab s and scorpid s , can fit into places taller pets cannot go . This is not a highly significant feature , but it does occasionally come up . Bragging rights . If you want a prestige pet , the obvious choices are : Matching pets . You can match some Hunter pets and small pet s , or even mount s , if theme is your thing . Non - tameable beasts . Many types of beasts in the wild cannot be tamed as a Hunter pet . These are : Not all beasts within the tameable families are tameable . Normal rank and file beasts usually are , individually named beasts may or may not be , and any beast that is notably odd is probably not tameable . Beast size critter s , like cow s and deer , are never tameable . Abandoning . To abandon a pet , you should target the pet on its portrait at the top of your screen , right click and select " Abandon Pet . " Keep in mind this is permanent , so be careful not to abandon the wrong pet . Renaming a pet . Initially after you tame a pet , you have the ability to right click on the pet icon after selecting them , and select " Rename " . But after the first time you do this , if you want to rename the same pet , you ' ll need a ( created with Inscription ) .