Marksmanship Hunter PvP Pets (Season 4)

As a Marksmanship Hunter, you will always want to play with a pet except for very specific matchups where your team already has a Mortal Strike effect, even when talented into Lone Wolf for Hunter's Knowledge.

Having Roar of Sacrifice even when stunned for the enemy team's first set of offensive cooldowns and having Intimidation available when you need it is more important than the slight damage increase from Lone Wolf.

The explanation of pet choices in this guide goes into a lot of detail, but the following pets are safe choices in most cases (although sometimes not optimal)

• Riverbeast (if you are worried about dying in a stun)
• Undead Raptor
• Rodent (if facing a Retribution Paladin).

• Cunning: Rodent family

For mobility and immunity to Wake of Ashes, Turn Evil and Shackle Undead (against Priests and Paladins).

• Cunning: Raptor family (choose an undead raptor)

For mobility and immunity to Polymorph, Hex, Hibernate and Scare Beast (against Mages, Shamans, Druids and Hunters).

• Ferocity: Wasp

For leech in a longer game when you aren't worried about taking burst damage or needing mobility.

• Tenacity: Riverbeast

For the health increase and active health increase cooldown.

• Cunning: Mechanical family

For mobility, the automatic defensive to make your pet harder to kill, and immunity to all category-specific crowd control.

• Ferocity: Scalehide

For leech and the automatic defensive to make your pet harder to kill.

• Tenacity: Beetle

For the health increase and active health increase (Last Stand) cooldown and the automatic defensive to make your pet harder to kill.

4.

Pet Specialisation

Pets do not have talent trees and instead have their own types of specialization (Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity).

Each pet specialization gives an active ability and a passive ability.

• Cunning pets provide Pathfinding and Master's Call
• Ferocity pets provide Primal Rage (which is not usable in arena!) and Predator's Thirst
• Tenacity pets provide Fortitude of the Bear and Endurance Training

Usually, your default pet should be of the Cunning specialization. This specialization will keep you the most mobile and help you avoid sustained damage by making it easier to kite.

Occasionally, you will still want to use Ferocity pets for the leech despite their active ability not being useable in arena. You would choose this in a matchup where the enemy team does not have many snare or root abilities but has high overall damage that your healer may need help with. The most common example of a comp where you may prefer Ferocity pets is Shadowplay (Affliction Warlock + Shadow Priest + Healer).

When you are facing a comp that can only kill you by bursting into a stun and does low sustained damage outside of stun windows that you would need to kite, Tenacity pets are very powerful because they make you more tanky, and the active ability can be used while you are stunned. The very common examples of matchups where you would use a tenacity pet are RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) in 3v3 or Subtlety Rogue + Mage or Priest teams in 2v2. Be aware that you cannot use Fortitude of the Bear while your pet is in crowd control (which is particularly relevant when you are facing RMP and the Mage uses Ring of Frost on your pet).

5.

Pet Abilities

Pets also have their own ability based on their pet family. Some families have the same ability with a different name, but they all have the same effect as the categories below.

• Defence: eg. Bristle
• Dodge: eg. Agile Reflexes
• Magic Defence: eg. Shimmering Scales
• Mortal Wounds: eg. Infected Bite
• Pet Cure / Dispel: eg. Serenity Dust
• Slow: eg. Tendon Rip
• Triggered Defence: eg. Hardy

If your team does not have a Mortal Wounds effect, you should always use a pet that has mortal wounds.

If your team already has a mortal wounds effect, you're free to pick from families with the other abilities. When that is the case, you almost always want to use a pet with the defense family ability, which makes it much harder for the enemy team to kill your pet. You can set the ability to auto-cast, and it will automatically use the defense ability (e.g.. Bristle) when it gets to low health.

6.

Pet Categories

All NPCs in World of Warcraft have a category (e.g., humanoid, beast, undead, demon, or mechanical). Certain crowd control abilities will only be able to effect certain categories.

For example:

• Polymorph can only be cast on humanoids and beasts
• Scare Beast and Hibernate can only be cast on beasts
• Shackle Undead can only be cast on undeads
• Turn Evil can only be cast on undead and demons

Pets can be of the categories Beast, Undead, Demon, Mechanical, or Dragonkin.

Ideally, if you are facing a team that can only use a crowd control ability on certain types of pets, you would use a pet with a different category. This is because the other team can potentially crowd-control your pet before a setup , and you will not be able to use a roar of sacrifice, freedom, or intimidation.

For example:

• To avoid Polymorph Hibernate, or Scare Beast, you would use an Undead/Demon/Mechanical pet
• To avoid Wake of Ashes, Turn Evil, or Shackle Undead, you would use a Beast/Mechanical pet

The main moment that this is relevant is against Retribution Paladins. When a Retribution Paladin is bursting; they will use Wake of Ashes, and if you are using an Undead pet, you will not be able to use Roar of Sacrifice on the burst.

The other time it may be relevant is into Mages, who may Polymorph your pet before bursting, so you are unable to use Roar of Sacrifice. Note that if a Mage uses Polymorph on your pet, they are unable to also Polymorph your healer, so it is not vital to avoid running Beast pets into Mages if it means that you lose a more important pet bonus (e.g., not being able to use a Tenacity pet).

7.

Changelog

• 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 4.
• 20 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for patch 10.2.6.
• 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for patch 10.2.5.
• 19 Nov. 2023: Changed formatting to improve readability.
• 06 Nov. 2023: Page created.
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