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When it comes to Hunters in World of Warcraft (WoW), a character’s tamed pet makes up at least 30% of one’s damage, which places great import on the type of beast selected by the Hunter to stand by his side. Big Red Kitty (BRK) obviously runs with a cat, and considers his selection based on stats and looks. I don’t disagree with this, but don’t consider it optimal, either.

There’s certainly truth in the statement that players should choose a Hunter pet that they like, which holds for character race selections and class spec as well, but let’s be honest: one’s preference does not always translate to what’s most effective for a given role, even if that “role” is as simple as combat sustainability. Let’s be honest: in a game like WoW, if raiding or PvPing is one’s goal, then efficiency is most important in making character decisions.

I’ve always been rather confused as to why BRK cherishes his cat so much, considering that his motto is onefold: DPS is a Hunter’s primary objective. Everything else in a typical BRK sermon follows this basic tenet; his spec, his gear, his enchants, his socketing, and his basic attitude towards the class is derived from the suggestion that DPS is a Hunter’s core focus. Agree or disagree with the basis for Hunter design, BRK and those like him have certainly illustrated just how well a Hunter can DPS when they make it their main objective.

Players who subscribe to this DPS-centric philosophy (DPSCP, we’ll call it) should be making additional decisions to foster the premise of said philosophy, but for some strange reason, their decisions don’t all fall in with the party line. Whey else would a DPSCP Horde Hunter not be rolled as an Orc? Why would a DPSCP Alliance Hunter ever be a Night Elf (NE)? For DPSCP Hunters of either faction, why would they not choose either a the highest-DPS pet available, else a pet with offensive group buffs or better overall survivability for soloing?

Basically, it comes down to this: the ravager is the highest-DPS pet available, in part because of its core stats, which is accentuated by its ability to learn Gore, which is the highest-DPS focus dump available. Given this, there is no reason, other than aesthetics, to choose a cat over a ravager. Cats do not offer other desired abilities over those trainable to ravagers, and therefore are not a “Stat Pet” (to borrow from BRK’s vernacular), and are instead chosen for their appearance. Admittedly, I’m narrowing BRK’s category here, in that I’m throwing out pets that are not the top dog among a given role, but pure DPSCP Hunters need to be this selective to optimize their group role.

(Before someone feels the need to mention Prowl, I stand by the suggestion that it is generally a useless skill, which creates more downtime because it takes longer for a cat with Prowl to get into position to attack than a pet with Dash or Charge. Furthermore, Prowl’s attack bonus is negligible, and the skill is not much better with an active Dash speeding up a stealthed cat’s movement. Prowl’s only advantage is for scouting, or defending Battleground objectives if one is playing a NE Hunter, but in this latter case, one isn’t a DPSCP Hunter anyway, and DPS is what we’re talking about.)

What does this mean for raptors having Dash in patch 2.2? Nothing. Raptors, like cats, were never the highest DPS pet for Hunters, and without Gore, they never will be. Eventually (sooner for new servers), the overall population of raptor-using Hunters and cat-using Hunters will be about the same, with differences based on aesthetic decisions alone; no one is going to choose one over the other for negligible base stat differences, because usefully quantifiable differences for these two beasts would be derived from a different focus dump ability, but as both have Claw, it’s a veritable toss-up. And by “no one,” I mean “no one sane”.

Meanwhile, most DPSCP Hunters will continue using ravagers, with cats on older servers being a holdover from when cats could be tamed with higher attack speeds than other pets. It’ll be nice to see a little more diversity among end-game pets now that raptors were buffed, but this diversity is skin-deep. I’d much rather see unique abilities given to different pet families, such that there’s a useful reason to pick up a different pet, but sadly that’s not the case. At least, not with patch 2.2.

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