Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Pets — The War Within (11.0.5)

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you have access to "Exotic" pet families through your Exotic Beasts passive. The benefit of Exotic pets over regular pets is that they have an extra, Exotic ability. This is the only benefit, and their damage is not tuned higher than regular pets.

Counterintuitively, you will not use Exotic pets often in PvP. This is because there is only one Exotic pet type which has the Mortal Strike effect, which is Devilsaurs.

Unfortunately, Devilsaurs belong to the Ferocity family, which is the least useful pet family, and their exotic ability Feast has no meaningful benefit over regular pets.

You will always play with the talent Animal Companion, though, which will give you a second pet at all times. The pet you choose to summon with Animal Companion is purely cosmetic, and it does not use special abilities or grant bonuses based on the type of pet.

The pet category of your Animal Companion may make it vulnerable to certain crowd control spells, but this will rarely make a difference in Arena an enemy casting crowd control on a secondary pet is unlikely to get any value from it. It may be worth avoiding using an Undead Animal Companion, though, so Retribution Paladins cannot accidentally stun it with Wake of Ashes

The explanation of pet choices in this guide goes into a lot of detail, but the following pet Families have Mortal Strike (also known as Mortal Wounds) and are your default choices.

• Undead Raptor (default)
• Rodent (if facing a Retribution Paladin).
• Riverbeast (if you are worried about dying in a stun)
• Wasp (if you don't need mobility or survivability in a certain matchup, so that you can use Primal Rage with Kindred Beasts)

You can use other pets when your team already has a Mortal Wounds effect, but doing this does risk your team having slightly lower uptime on the Mortal Strike debuff (e.g., when your partner isn't able to connect or when you switch targets).

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.

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, your active pet specialisation ability will be enhanced when you play the Kindred Beasts PvP talent.

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

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 enemies.

Importantly, choosing a Cunning pet will also increase your pet's movement speed and Master's Call will give you the ability to dispel slows or roots from your pet to keep them on target. You should be aware of when your pet is rooted and use Master's Call whenever it is to maintain their damage and allow you to use your core rotational ability Kill Command.

When you are facing a composition that can only kill you by bursting during stun windows, kiting becomes less important, and Tenacity pets become very powerful. 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).

There are situations when you can also save your teammate using Fortitude of the Bear when using the Kindred Beasts talent, as it will temporarily the health of nearby allies by 10%.

The leech effect from Ferocity pets has little value as Beast Mastery, as the bulk of your damage is done by pets, and you will not receive much healing to yourself. Without Kindred Beasts, you also will not be able to use Primal Rage in Arena.

Occasionally, you may encounter a situation in the Arena where neither the Cunning or Tenacity effects are useful to you, and in those situations, you can use a Ferocity pet with Kindred Beasts, as it will make Primal Rage usable in Arena and reduce the cooldown to three minutes (although the haste increase is reduced to 12% and the duration reduced to 20 seconds).

However, combining a Ferocity pet with Kindred Beasts is an exceptionally powerful tactic in Battlegrounds, when the effect will hit many allies at once at the start of a fight and give your team a noticeable advantage.

• Raptor Family (choose an undead raptor)

Use an Undead Raptor against teams that have a Mage, Shaman, Druid, or Hunter (so your pet is immune to Polymorph, Hex, Hibernate and Scare Beast).

• Rodent Family

Use a Rodent against a team that has a Priest or Paladin (so your pet is immune to Wake of Ashes, Turn Evil and Shackle Undead).

• Aqiri Family

Use an Aqiri pet because it has the Exotic passive ability Dune Strider, this will lead to your pet having higher uptime (and therefore damage) on your targets. Aqiri pets also provide Tendon Rip, which will not always be active as the cooldown is longer than the duration, but is a nice crowd control on your target that will sometimes save you from using a global cooldown on Concussive Shot.

• Mechanical Family

Use a mechanical pet when you think your pet is likely to take damage and require maintenance with Mend Pet. Mechanical pets are immune to all category-specific crowd control and have the automatic Defense Matrix to boost its survivability.

• Riverbeast Family

Use a Riverbeast because it is a Tenacity pet with Mortal Wounds.

Use a Spirit Beast, which has the Spirit Mend ability to provide additional healing to your team. This can be used whilst you are in crowd control as long as your pet is not crowd-controlled, which can help you survive stuns. I recommend that you include Spirit Mend in your Fortitude of the Bear and Roar of Sacrifice macros rather than leaving it on auto-cast. This saves you a keybind and ensures that the heal is only used when a teammate actually needs it (rather than potentially being wasted when a friendly target who is not going to die reaches low health). Even if Fortitude of the Bear or Roar of Sacrifice are on cooldown, you can use the macros to cast Spirit Mend when Spirit Mend is off cooldown.

• Beetle Family

Use a Beetle pet when you think your pet is likely to take damage and require maintenance with Mend Pet because it has the automatic defensive Harden Carapace to boost its survivability.

• Wasp Family

Use a Wasp because it is a Ferocity pet with Mortal Wounds and the smaller model makes it less visible than a Devilsaur.

• Clefthoof Family

Use a Clefthoof if you expect your pet to take consistent damage throughout an arena game, as it has increased armor and healing received through Blood of the Rhino.

• Scalehide Family

Use a Scalehide pet if you expect your pet to take burst damage during an arena game because it has the automatic defensive Scale Shield to boost its survivability.

Pets 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.

The advantage of Exotic Pets is that they each have a special Family ability which is unique to that family of pets and is in addition to their Specialisation abilities and pet abilities.

The Exotic Ability of each Exotic Pet Family is listed below with the Specialisation of that Pet Family.

• Molten Hide (Core Hound: Ferocity)
• Froststorm Breath (Chimaera: Ferocity)
• Feast (Devilsaur: Ferocity)
• Blood of the Rhino (Clefthoof: Ferocity)
• Calcified Carapace (Carapid: Tenacity)
• Eternal Guardian (Stone Hound: Tenacity)
• Spirit Mend, Spirit Walk (Spirit Beast: Tenacity)
• Burrow Attack (Worm: Tenacity)
• Calcified Carapace (Krolusk: Tenacity)
• Shimmering Shale (Shale Beast: Tenacity)
• Dune Strider (Aqiri: Tenacity)
• Surface Trot (Water Strider: Tenacity)
• Ancient Hide (Pterrordax: Tenacity)

Unfortunately, the only Exotic Pet with Mortal Wounds is a Devilsaur, which has a relatively useless Exotic Ability, so does not have a power advantage over regular pets, and is of the Ferocity Specialisation, so is not used often in Arena either way.

The most noteworthy Exotic pets in Arena are:

Spirit Beasts that will give you a small amount of bonus healing that can be used whilst you are crowd-controlled (you can either have Spirit Mend set to auto-cast, and it will heal any friendly target who is low health, or you can macro it with abilities such as Fortitude of the Bear, Exhilaration, or Roar of Sacrifice if you want it to only be used when you or a teammate are in danger).

Aqiri, who have greatly increased movement speed and will therefore be more difficult for enemies to avoid in Arena.

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 affect 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 categories 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 important pet abilities and utility (eg. Roar of Sacrifice, Master's Call, Fortitude of the Bear 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 into a setup comp like Rogue Mage Priest, where you need to survive burst while stunned).