We want to clarify why your battle boar is faster than your other pets.

Apparently there is either a bug or an unannounced change in pet traveling speed since patch 2.3

It seems that pets tamed BEFORE patch 2.3 will be able to keep up with you no matter what the pet might be. But pet tamed AFTER patch 2.3 cannot.

If you were to go tame another battle boar now, it would also fall behind when you run for very long.

This explains why we didn’t understand what you were trying to say, since our hunters have all had their pets for a long time and the speed change was something we just had not seen in the game because we all trained our pets long before patch 2.3

It doesn’t seem that this problem will be going away any time soon, so you may just have to live with it.

If you recall, in patch 1.9 all pet attack speeds were normalized so all the Rake and Broken Tooth owners out there suddenly had very normal pets.

This may also be the case with pet following speeds from now on. If you have a pet from before patch 2.3, just consider yourself lucky!

The damage each pet does is effected by pet level, pet skills, and hunter talents. There isn’t a direct relationship between pet damage and hunter gear, but there is a correlation between hunter gear and pet life and armor.

Only BM hunters can compete for truly max pet damage. MM and SV spec pets are simply not ever going to be anywhere close. As a matter of fact, with all gear being the same between two hunters, a BM spec will do more DPS than the other two trees because of that big boost to pet damage.

Before anyone complains too much, keep in mind that we said “with the same gear!”

Our hunter staffer’s personal favorite is the Rip Blade Ravager. The thing that makes this ravager so cool is that it changes colors every time you summon them! Neon greens, purples and blues. Truly unique and in a very easy spot to tame just south of Toshley’s Station.

To Lynn – we’re not sure how many pets you’ve been running off and leaving behind. That seems to be a unique issue we haven’t heard of before. We’re not sure why a battle boar would be any faster than any other pet just running around. If what you meant was the skill Charge, then that is a different matter altogether.

Dan – all bats do the same damage. It would be impossible for one bat to do more damage than any other bat. Once pets are tamed all of their stats revert to set values for their type. They lose any special attributes and abilities as well.

Beyond that, Owls, Bats, Spiders and Wind Serpents are identical in all areas and share the same 7% bonus to DPS. All four of these pets have exactly the same tamed HP, Armor and everything else. Only cats and Ravagers share the 10% bonus to DPS. Not to be harsh, but it is mathematically impossible for an Owl using Bite to out DPS a cat using Claw.

We would take into account your own hunter talent points when comparing your pet damage to another hunter using a cat. Also keep in mind that damage meters can be very VERY fickle and are really rough estimates at best. In a raid you will find all ten members will have completely different numbers even if they all use the same mod. (The reason for this has to do with combat log ranges, but that’s for another article).

Anthony – Pet training is a very personal thing and will depend entirely on what you do most.

If you are raiding dungeons, then your pet needs the resists more than anything else. In raids your pet should NEVER pull agro off your main tank, and probably cannot off-tank anything either. It’s the magic damage that will do them in.

For PVP the key is armor and Stamina. Because of the fact that it costs more training points to buff health instead of armor, we’re not sure a Ravager is better than a cat for big time PVP. However, when in doubt put all the points you would have put into resists into stamina first and then armor. Also check out an Owl for PVP, they are a serious nuisance to casters because they really foul up targeting with their flying animation and still have 7% bonus to DPS along with Bite and Screech – a skill which is also great in Raids.

For solo play, a good blend of a little of everything seems to be best. That should cover you in just about every situation you could ever come across. Your pet does not have to be Uber in any one thing, but can’t be weak against any one thing either for solo play.