Survival Hunter PvP Pets — The War Within (11.1.0)

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
• 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. Ferocity pets have niche uses, for example in a slower game into specialisations with lots of pets (Demonology/Beast Mastery) you can take advantage of your are of effect damage by healing with the leech from Predator's Thirst.

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).

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.

• 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!) 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.

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).

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) or any team that has lots of pets which you will be doing area of effect damage to.

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.

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).