Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Pets — The War Within (11.1.0)

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.

In PvP, the Mortal Wounds effect is essential, and the only Exotic pet family that has mortal wounds is Devilsaurs. The Devilsaur Exotic ability is Feast which is not useful in arena, so whether you choose to use a Devilsaur is a cosmetic choice.

In patch 11.1 pets have been reworked, and you are now able to apply any pet Specialisation to your pet at a Stable Master. This means that the most important consideration is choosing any pet family that has a Mortal Wounds effect.

The other relevant consideration is Category of your pet (e.g. Beast, Undead, Mechanical) as many crowd control abilities such as Polymorph, Sap, or Hex cannot be used on Undead units.

The most versatile pet will be an Undead Raptor, as Undead creatures are immune to many common crowd control effects ( Polymorph, Sap, Hex).

If you are facing a Retribution Paladin, you should always use a Beast as a pet, because otherwise your pet may get stunned by Wake of Ashes which will prevent you from being able to use Roar of Sacrifice or Fortitude of the Bear. In those matchups you should choose any Beast that has a Mortal Strike effect:

• Hyena
• Raptor
• Rodent
• Carrion Bird
• Devilsaur (Beast Mastery only)
• Ravager
• Scorpid
• Wasp
• Direhorn
• Hydra
• Lizard
• Riverbeast

You should have a Cunning, Tenacity and Ferocity Specialisation pet from any of the above pet families so you are able to adapt based on matchup.

Usually you will want to use a Cunning pet, although when you are the kill target and would not be able to kite effectively, using a Tenacity pet will make you more durable.

When you are playing Kindred Beasts with a Ferocity pet, you are able to use Primal Rage in Arena (with reduced effectiveness). If you are using this PvP talent and using a Cunning or Tenacity pet, you should always summon a Ferocity pet in the Arena startroom and use Primal Rage whilst casting Dismiss Pet when the Arena gates open, so your team starts each game with additional haste.

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). In the Pet Abilities section below you will find a list of other available active abilities that pet families can have.

In a situation where you know that your partner will always have a mortal strike effect active on your target, you may want to choose a Pet Family with a different active ability. Available abilities are listed below. A useful pet family in these scenarios is Mechanical, as they are immune to all category-specific crowd control and have an automatic Defense Matrix to boost their survivability (and reduce how often you need to use Mend Pet).

Another useful pet family is Aqiri, which 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.

Pets do not have talent trees and instead have a specialization (Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity) which you can assign at a Stable Master.

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.

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

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.

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).