This is a guest post by Gildor.
By the power of Grayskull! It’s time for the ferocity pet rodeo round-up! Ferocity pets are pure DPS, their armor isn’t great, but the damage they deal is considerable. Pets in this tree are lean, mean fighting machines. I have to be honest, I typically roll with cats when it comes to ferocity (well… I have a wasp too, more on that later). I know that there are many other pets in this family I could choose, but for some reason I have a soft spot for kittehs. In real life, cats are aloof and stubborn…qualities you’d want in a killer pet. Now I admit that my current cat, OldHickory, isn’t 100% awesome at the moment, but once he dings 80 he’ll be great.
As you will see from the list of unique abilities below, these pets can really lend themselves to PvP situations. These pets are scrappy; they like to fight…fight a little dirty. This family is also home to one of the most coveted hunter pets, Loque’nahak, the Spirit Beast. I’m not going to lie; I actually considered going Beast Mastery just to get a crack at taming Loque. It was a moment of weakness that I care not to talk about… I’ll never cheat on you again survival tree!
Here’s the list of maulers, bruisers and ne’er-do-wells with their unique abilities:
- Carrion Birds – Demoralizing Screech
- Cats – Prowl and Rake
- Core Hounds (Exotic, Beastmasters only) – Lava Breath
- Devilsaurs (Exotic, Beastmasters only) – Monstrous Bite
- Hyenas – Tendon Rip
- Moths – Serenity Dust
- Raptors – Savage Rend
- Spirit Beasts (Exotic, Beastmasters only) – Prowl and Spirit Strike
- Tallstriders – Dust Cloud
- Wasps – Sting
- Wolves – Furious Howl
As you may have remembered from the last two articles, all pet trees have 17 total talents (9 are common throughout all three trees, 8 are unique to the particular tree) spaced over 5 tiers. The second tier requires three points in the tree, third tier requires 6 points, fourth tier requires 9 points and the fifth tier requires 12 points. Your 9 commonly shared talents are: Cobra Reflexes, Dash or Dive (depending on animal), Great Stamina, Natural Armor, Spiked Collar, Boar’s Speed, Avoidance, Lionhearted and Great Resistance. I use various combinations of these talents in all of my pets, with varied results. I’m still a huge fan of Natural Armor, Boar’s Speed and Spiked Collar. I used to avoid Cobra Reflexes, but after Santyn left a comment on my last article, I’ve reconsidered. I’m still testing, but it appears that faster hits really do equal greater crit opportunities, thus greater DPS.
Our first two unique ferocity talents come in tier two. Bloodthirsty and Improved Cower are in place to keep your pet less dead. I lean towards Bloodthirsty since a happy pet is a productive pet. Tier three houses Charge. This is one of those talents that you could take for granted, but it is a must have. In tier four we see Heart of the Phoenix and Spider’s Bite. One’s first inclination may be to take Heart of the Phoenix…who wouldn’t want a free rez, right? But, my money is on Spider’s Bite. At rank three you increase your critical strike chances by 9%… winner winner, chicken dinner! Lick Your Wounds, Rabid and Call of the Wild all live in tier 5. Lick Your Wounds is nice for keeping your pet alive a little longer, but it’s hardly worth the price of admission. Rabid is also neat, but the three points you spend in avoidance to get there seem wasted. Call of the Wild will boost your whole party in a raid environment, that 10% attack power boost comes in really handy.
This tree is a lot of fun; it has a lot of nooks and crannies that make it really interesting. I still lean towards the tenacity tree for the solo tanking… but I do likes me some DPS! This brings me back to my wasp. A long time ago I was reading Big Red Kitty’s blog (on a side note: I’m going to miss his craziness but I’m glad he’s doing the right thing) and he convinced me I had to have a wasp. So I shuffled over to Sholazar Basin and tamed the sucker. I’m glad I did too, because as of patch 3.0.8 she is no longer tamable (hence no in game picture?), but since I had her in my stable I get to keep her! I’ll be the first to admit that BlackFlag is pretty annoying, what with the incessant buzzing and giant size, but sting is hands down the coolest thing ever for those pesky rogues. And, buzzing around Dalaran is kinda fun with such a large stinger.
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Hi Gildor –
Thanks for this series – having only tried a few pet families while levelling, it’s great to have the info on what else is available, without having to test it all myself.
Comments:
They changed Call of the Wild in 3.08 so now it no longer affects party, just the hunter and the pet. Still a nice talent, but not blow your socks off anymore.
Personally, I took Rabid, and I find the +avoidance points you have to take to get there are very useful what with all the AOE damage in Wrath.
Thanks,
Kulat
P.S. I too have an LSD Wasp of Doom, named Spike, whom I love. She makes it hard for raids to target (she’s HUGE!), so she and I wander the wilds together.
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Absolutely correct, my mistake for not reading the tooltip! It makes it tougher to choose between CotW and Rabid, but I think I still give the nod to rabid since I like Spider’s Bite. However, I may respec BlackFlag with rabid just to see what’s what.
Giant annoying insects ftw!
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There’s no need to choose between CotW and Rapid, presuming your 80 the default max DPS build will take both. For the current fights in wrath I find movement speed increase far more useful than anything else for keeping my pet up.
Here’s the spec I use for basically all of my DPS pets (wasp, wolf, cat, raptor), the last 2 points tend to be put into *bloodthirsty and either charge or speed.
http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc=zMd00cc00hoo
*The current mend pet can be used in place of bloodthirsty, that is switching in 3.1 so this talent will be more important come 3.1.
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I’m Beastmastery and most of the time I run with my spirit beast, Fëaenaroth. I also use a raptor (Oy!) and have tamed a wolf (Zenyatta!) because I want to see how they work in 3.1 with their attack power buff stacking with the Paladin and Warrior attack buffs. Should be interesting.
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Nice write-up! I actually go Bloodthirsty -> Heart of the Phoenix -> Lick Your Wounds purely because I am quite bad at keeping my pet alive and there’s effectively two free pet rezzes in there.
I guess if I moved points into the “defensive” abilities, my raptor might not die as much! HoftP and LYW are “only” 2 points (4 points total with Bloodthirsty, which is a nice damage boost), whereas there are 3x stamina, 2x armor, 3x avoidance and 3x resistance talent point options, none of which would be quite as effective I think… so it seems like good value for someone like me ^_^
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I’d say the three points in Avoidance to get Rabid are more than worth it. Keeps your pet alive in any AOE-heavy fight without you having to worry about calling it out. Dunno if there’ll be many fights like that in 3.1 but even if not, Rabid is too good to miss.
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I’m a fan of Rabid and have no qualms with the points in Avoidance since there’s no way of telling my wolf to stop standing in the bad stuff without pulling him from the fight altogether.
What I’m not a fan of is how Furious Howl is being kicked from a party/raid buff to a hunter/pet only buff, in 3.1. At lvl 80 that’s 158AP that I appreciate still having, but would have liked to keep sharing.
We have so few buffs to contribute party/raid wide and they keep taking them away! *grump*
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Hiya Gildor, another nice article. I have to agree with the above that “avoidance” is (do I dare say it? – yes, yes! dare! dare!) the cat’s meow. More later – time for lunch. sorry : )
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