WolvesFollow

Bear is a bad idea. As of right now, they have no dash/dive, so you'd be looking at a very slow pet. If you want a bear, go with a boar, tallstrider, or carrion bird. Those are the three pets with defensive stats that can learn dash/dive (although on a boar you should go with charge). If you DO get a bear, or any other pet that can't get a speed boost, get beastial swiftness.

Also, if you're looking for a tank pet, a bird is great because they can get screech, which will hold aggro on multiple mobs. The carrion bird is great, although I'm going with a bat on my birdmaster b/c they can do decent DPS and use bite/screech.

Wolves I think are more of a group pet, as they add DPS to the whole party with their special, so if you plan on soloing a lot I wouldn't go with a wolf. Just my opinion, though.

Which do you think is better for keeping aggro, bears or wolves ?

i hate bears.
solo: Carrion bird/boar.
group: wolf/windserpent work great.

I have a wolf, it's an old-school Alterac Frostwolf, yes I had it before the speed nerf and that's why I got it :D. Anyway, I love my puppy, even though IRL I'm a cat person (I need to level my cat, but he has zero training points and therefore doesn't have Growl -_-). I got a wolf because it's great in groups for Furious Howl. He's great for soloing as well because he has 5% armor increase for being a wolf, which is nice for tanking, and Furious Howl will pull aggro on multiple mobs, probably not as much as Screech, but it still aggros. It's just like Battle Shout versus Demo Shout.

A wolf can't learn Claw like a bear can, but it can learn Bite, which helps hold aggro. And since I am full BM ( 41/20/0) I have Go for the Throat (+50 focus on a crit) and Frenzy, my pet has a 1.4 attack speed, 9.8k armor, 5.2k hp, and when fully buffed he has 1100 AP... GftT is a great way to regen focus for your pet, which keeps up the Howls, Growls, and Bites.

I've noticed that in groups my wolf survives a lot more than its feline counterpart, and that's why I love him; low food costs and 1k orange crits, 1.3k KCs.

Anyway, wolves are underrated because they don't have quite the same dmg output as a cat, Ravager, or raptor, but they're great in 5-mans.

Edited, Apr 18th 2007 9:11pm by SamuraiFox

Growl doesn't cost training points. It’s completely free. It used to cost training points, but that was changed a good while back. So we can now teach growl to the freshly tamed pets we tame to learn new skills. This makes it much easer to fight with them when learning the skill. And it’s good for newly tamed permanent pets.



Furious Howl is not an AoE attack. It’s an AoE buff. I don’t think it can pull agro at all. At least I never saw it happen with my black wolf. Here’s the description from Petopia:

Yeah, Furious Howl does cause a bit of threat. It's really nice when I run through mobs and my wolf, Blackfell, casts it. Then instead of blasting me on my mount, they attack Blackfell instead.

A wolf is a nice pet and I leveled the entire game with one. I'd reccomend one over a bear anyday.

Thanks very much everyone :]

I decided to keep my wolf, Reo .He's a Ghostpaw Runner from Ashenvale .

ALSO, I just got Humar the Pridelord :D
He's gorgeous .
SO NOW I'm thinking maybe I want a black wolf to go with my black lion ...
What do y'all think ?

black worgs are easy enough to come by. I have one myself. Actual black wolves are harder. You'll have to wait until around 45ish or if you're lucky you can get Snarler at 42.

Very true. I don’t dislike the worg skin; I just like the wolf skin a lot better. If I remember correctly, while idle worgs just stand there. But wolves will sniff around, scratch and occasionally howl. They also kind of bounce around like they are too full of energy and want to take off running.

At 42, Snarler is the first black wolf we can tame.

http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/mobs/mob_snarler.shtml

This is the wolf I tamed. If you wait four more levels you can tame a Vilebranch Wolf Pup at 46. They are much more accessible. But I couldn’t wait. Also, taming a rare named spawn is just more fun and more rewarding, at least for me.

Should you decide to tame Snarler be sure to use your hunter’s mark. He can and will go into stealth mode while taming and it will spoil the tame. Hunter’s mark will prevent him from pulling that trick.



Cool. I had no idea it would do that.

Many wolf mobs can see rogues in thier stealth mode.

Do wolf pets retain that ability? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere, but can't find it now. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

Seems if wolves can spot a rogue sneaking up on you, that would make them a natural for PvP.

Shelor007

I would highly recommend wolves for PvE and instances. They won't kill quite as fast as say, a cat, but they can hold aggro nicely and are very well-rounded and survivable. Actually, the first time I went through VC, my wolf was the main tank, and there was not trouble at all.

Wolves need a new rank of Furious Howl. The current max rank is pre-BC, I still use one for raids though.

@Calabar: They'd be somewhat of a group buff if the range of Furious Howl was farther then your pee-ing range. Either it's on your side buffing your damage, or it's on the mob, buffing the damage of the players around the mob.

There's no time to position it in the middle, if that's even enough range. It <WON'T> buff your party. It's either you or them.

I think it's when they're OOC long enough to restealth, if you sent your pet after them, they'd stay on them through stealth.