Since there have been a lot of questions about pets lately (and I’m a bit bored), I figured I’d write a quick guide to them. Can’t find one in “Informative and useful hunter threads” atm, but will delete this if someone points a better one out. There’s loads of pet info spread around the web, but I figured a compilation would make things easier to look up.

Part 1
General information about pets:

After finishing the taming quests at lvl 10, you gain the ability Tame Beast. You can now wander off in to the world and find yourself a faithful buddy. (Note that this quest chain must be done in your races starting area, i.e. Orcs in Durotar, Dwarves in Dun Morogh.)
You can only tame mobs classified as Beast (and not even all of them), and only beasts equal to or lower then your own lvl.

When a pet is first tamed, it will have loyalty lvl 1 (Rebellious) and be unhappy. Feed the pet to increase it’s happiness. Your pets happiness is indicated by a little smiley next to it’s portait.


Loyalty and Happiness:

Your pets Happiness is based on Loyalty and food, and affects it’s damage.
Unhappy means it does 75% dmg. (Red sad smiley)
Content means it does 100% dmg. (Yellow indifferent smiley)
Happy means it does 125% dmg. (Green happy smiley)

Happiness also affects Loyalty gain.
Unhappy = Losing loyalty
Content = Gaining Loyalty
Happy = Gaining Loyalty

To keep your pet happy, you must keep it well fed. (more on food later)

As said earlier, your pet starts out at Loyalty rank 1 (Rebellious).
There are six ranks of Loyalty.

Rebellious (Rank 1)
Unruly (Rank 2)
Submissive (Rank 3)
Dependable (Rank 4)
Faithful (Rank 5)
Best Friend (Rank 6)

Gaining loyalty is time and xp based.
Even if your pet is the same lvl as you, it will need to gain xp in order to get to the next Loyalty Rank. The xp required is 5% of hunters xp needed to gain next lvl.
The time required increased with the Loyalty rank.

Rank 2 (Unruly) = 5% of hunter's xp and 0 minutes
Rank 3 (Submissive) = 5% of hunter's xp and 30 minutes
Rank 4 (Dependable) = 5% of hunter's xp and 45 minutes
Rank 5 (Faithful) = 5% of hunter's xp and 60 minutes
Rank 6 (Best Friend) = 5% of hunter's xp at current level and 90 minutes

This means that in order to increase loyalty, you need to grind with your pet. A minimum of 3,5 hours is required to go from Rebellious to Best Friend. However, you can gain the xp needed in less time. Your pet will then ding the next rank after the appropriate time has passed (hence the sudden dings while you’re idling around the AH).

Pet stats:
Pets scale with your hunter in the following manner:
· Pets get 30% of the Hunter's Stamina added to their Stamina.
· Pets get 35% of the Hunter's Armor added to their Armor.
· Pets get 22% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power added to their Melee Attack Power.
· Pets get 12.87% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power added to their Spell Damage.
· Pets get 40% of the Hunter's resistances added to their own resistances.

These stats are the same for all pet families. All pets currently have 2.00 sec Attack speed. (Can be improved by talents and Cobra Reflexes)


Pet Families:
There are currently 23 different pet families, all with various pros and cons.
Pets start out with the same basic Damage, Armor and Health (100%), but this gets adjusted slightly by which family they belong to. (for a full list of pet families and variations, check http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/browse/browse_families.php )

Family_____Damage_____Armor___Health
Bat__________+7%______+0%______+0%
Bear_________-9%______+5%______+8%
Boar_________-10%_____+9%_____+4%
Carrion Bird___+0%______+5%____+0%
Cat__________+10%_____+0%_____-2%
Crab_________-5%______+13%_____ -4%
Crocolisk______+0%_____+10%_____-5%
Dragonhawk ___+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Gorilla________+2%_____+0%_____+4%
Hyena________+0%_____+5%_____+0%
Nether Ray____+3%_____-10%_____+10%
Owl__________+7%_____+0%_____ +0%
Raptor________+10%___+3%_____ -5%
Ravager ______+10%____+5%_____-7%
Scorpid_______-6%_____+10%_____+0%
Serpent_______+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Spider________+7%_____+0%_____+0%
Spore Bat_____+0%_____+0%_____+0%
Tallstrider_____+0%_____+0%_____+5%
Turtle________-10%_____+13%_____+0%
Warp Stalker___-6% _____+5% _____+0%
Wind Serpent __+7%_____+0%______+0%
Wolf__________+0%_____+5%_____+0%

So Cat ends up with 110% Damage, 100% Armor and 98% Health.
As you can see, some pets are better suited for DPS and some for tanking.
However, there’s another factor which comes into play…

Pet Skills:
These are the various skills that you can teach your pet, and they greatly affect how useful it is. There are two basic groups of skills: Those you learn from Pet trainers ( Passive, which all families can learn) and those you have to learn yourself (Active, which are restricted to certain families). Just like player skills, these are all lvl dependant.

To learn a new skill, you have to find the appropriate mob. Some beasts have skills when you tame them and this is where Beast Lore comes in handy. Casting it on a beast type mob, reveals wether or not it is tameable and which skills it will have when tamed.
Let’s say you’re looking for rank 5 of Bite. Find out which mob has it (either by referring to the Petopia chart or checking various mobs ingame.)
Make sure you’ve stabled the pet you want to keep and either have no pet with you (or a disposable one which you abandon).
Once you’ve found the mob with Bite (rank 5), lay down a Freezing Trap, and cast Tame Beast (abandon current pet if necessary). Once the beast is tamed, use Bite (rank 5) a few times. Eventually, you’ll get a message that you just learned Bite (rank 5) and it should show up in your Beast Training list. Now you can abandon the pet, get your stabled one and teach it Bite (rank 5).

As said, skills affect a pets usefulness and performance. But not all families can learn all skills.
While a Spider might look interesting as a damage pet, it can only learn Bite and Cower.
An Owl, on the other hand, can learn Claw, Cower, Dive and Screech, making it more useful.
This is something you should consider if you want the best pet for the best occasion.
If you’re just going for looks, however, go with what you like the most! ^^

The skills trainable from Pet trainer are:
Arcane Resistance, Fire Resistance, Frost resistance, Nature Resistance, Shadow Resistance, Avoidance, Cobra Reflexes, Great Stamina, and Natural Armor.

Those found on various mobs are:
Bite, Charge, Claw, Cower, Dash, Dive, Fire Breath, Furious Howl, Gore, Growl, Lightning Breath, Poison Spit, Prowl, Scorpid Poison, Screech, Shell Shield, Thunderstomp, and Warp.

For a full list of what the various skills do, check http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/skills/skills.php

Growl:
The skill Growl is unique in that it’s the only active skill that can be learned from Pet trainers.
You learn the first two ranks after completing the taming quest chain, and can learn a new rank every 10 lvls after that.
Growl is your pet’s version of Taunt. It doesn’t force the target to focus on your pet, but generates a high amount of threat, giving your pet more aggro. It is arguably the most important pet skill. All pets can learn it (and should) and it costs no Training Points.
It has a cooldown of 4secs and costs 15 Focus to cast.
In solo play (or situations where you want you pet to get aggro), it’s best to leave Growl on auto cast, but when in groups tanks tend to dislike your pet Growling all the time, so you should keep it on manual (and let your pet take a break from being pummelled all the time).

The amount of threat generated by Growl depends on two things: Rank and your AP.

Rank__Threat__Lvl Req
1______+50_____1
2______+65_____10
3______+110____20
4______+170____30
5______+240____40
6______+320____50
7______+415____60
8______+664____70

The exact amount of threat added from hunter AP is uncertain atm (as it was changed from pet AP in 2.4.2). But it is reasonable to assume that it follows the old Growl formula of pet AP, meaning that should your AP rise above a certain threshold, it will contribute to the amount of threat gained. Threshold most likely varies according to pet and hunter lvl.
I’ll add the formulas when (and if) I manage to find them.

Kill Command:
Give the command to kill, causing your pet to instantly attack for an additional 127 damage. Can only be used after the Hunter lands a critical strike on the target.
You can learn this skill from Class trainers after you reach lvl 66.
As of 2.1, it was removed from the global cooldown, essentially making it a bonus attack after any crit from the hunter (melee and ranged). It’s very helpful for helping your pet keep aggro, and scales with AP ( currently, I’m unsure of wether it’s affected by hunter AP or pet AP, so the formula for scaling is uncertain, but I will update when I find out). There have been reports of it criting for as much as 1k, though my highest personal crit with KC is less then 700 dmg, afaik.

Training Points:
For your pet to learn skills, it needs Training points (TP).
Differnt skills (and skill lvls), cost differnt amounts of TP.
Training points are based on pet lvl and pet loyalty.

TrainingPoints = PetLevel * (LoyaltyLevel - 1)

If a pet already has skills when tamed, it’s TPs will be at a negative (comparable to the points needed for the skills). You can reset it to 0 by untraining your pet at the Pet trainer. However, I’d recommend keeping the skills until it has gained some Loyalty (and lvls if needed). Your pet will not lose any points from this, and will get a positive amount of TPs as soon as the required Loyalty/lvl has been reached.

For example:
At lvl 70, with Loyalty rank 6, your pet has 350 TP.
A newly tamed 70 pet with Bite (rank 9) and Cower (rank 7) will have –50 TP. (-29 for Bite, -21 for Cower).
When you reach Loyalty rank 2, you’ll gain 75TP, putting you at +25TP.
Untraining your pet at Loyalty rank two, will put you at +75TP
Had you tamed a 70 pet with no skills, it would have 0 TP to start with and +75TP at Loyalty rank 2.
In other words, nothing gained, nothing lost, other then that you already have Bite and Cower from the start. :)

Focus:
All your pets active skills (Bite, Claw, Dash, etc..) require Focus points.
This works just like a rogues energy bar, with different skills costing different amounts and Focus recharging in ticks.
The base Focus regen is 24.5 focus every 4 seconds.

This can be increased through talents.


Talents that affect pets:
The biggest gain to your pet is naturally found down the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, there are some that will, either directly or indirectly, affect your pet in Marksman and Survival. For the time being, I’ll focus on these, since this is a pet guide, not BM guide. ^^
As a general rule, all talents that increase you AP/RAP also benefit your pet, due to scaling.
This does not apply to talents that only affect the amount of damage caused, like Ranged Weapon Specialization and Survivalist, since pets scale from your stats.

Lethal Shots (1-5 Talent points, MM tree)
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 1-5%
The more you crit, the more you’ll be able to use Kill Command, making your pet do more damage and in turn getting aggro.

Improved Hunters Mark (1-5 Talent points, MM tree)
Causes 20-100% of your Hunter's Mark ability effect to apply to melee attack power as well. Your pets attacks will get a damage buff. However, this buff does not scale with every attack, like it does for ranged attacks, but is a static +110 AP while attacking the marked target.

Go for the throat (1-2 points, MM)
Your ranged critical hits cause your pet to regenerate 25-50% of focus.
This basically increases the amount of damage your pet does by granting it additional focus every time one of your ranged attacks crit. The quicker your pet gains focus, the more it can use it’s skills.

Trueshot Aura (1 point, MM tree)
Increases the Ranged and Melee attack power of party members within 45 yards by 50 (can be further trained at the Hunter Trainer: 75/100/125). Since your pet counts as a group member, it will get the added AP while TSA is active.

Improved Barrage (1-3 points, MM tree)
Increases the Critical Strike chance of your Multi-Shot ability by 5-15% and gives you a 33-100% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage while channeling Volley.
The same way as Lethal Shots, the added crit on Multi-Shots will benefit your pet.
But there’s also an added bonus. Currently a full 6 secs of Volley only counts as 1 charge of Misdirect. This gives you a nice emergency get away if Feign Death is on CD or gets resisted, should you find yourself surrounded by mobs attacking you. Simply MD your pet, cast Volley and your pet will gain all the threat from it. Usually, Volley will be interrupted before it can do much good, but with this talent, it’s un-interruptable. ^^

Hawk Eye (1-3 points, SV tree)
Increases the range of your range weapons by 2-6 yards. Doesn’t affect your pet, but the added range can be a big help if pet loses aggro, by giving you more time to finish the mob off.

Savage Strikes (1-2 points, SV tree)
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 10-20%.
Benefits your pet in the same way as Lethal shots.

Killer Insticts (1-3 points, SV tree)
Increases your critical strike chance with all attacks by 1-3%. Again, added crit = more KC.

Master Tactician (1-5 points, SV tree)
Your successful ranged attacks have a 6% chance to increase your critical strike chance with all attacks by 2-10% for 8 sec. Yup, same as the rest of the crit benefits. ^^



A quick note about pet food:
There are six types of foods: bread, cheese, fish, fruit, fungus, and meat.
Depending on which family your pet belongs to, it will eat one or more of these.
Cat, for example eat Fish and Meat, but nothing else.
Wind Serpents eat Bread, Cheese and Fish, but not Fruit, Fungus or Meat.
Bears and Boars are currently the only pet families that eat everything.

Feeding your pet gives it the buff Feed Pet, making it gain ticks of happiness. Depending on food lvl requirement and item lvl, your pet will gain 8, 17 or 35 happiness per tick.
As your pet rises in lvls, a higher lvl of food is required to gain the best ticks. If the food is too low lvl, your pet won’t eat it.

Easiest way to check if you pet gets the most out of what you’re feeding it is simply check the combat log.

(more on pet food here: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/basics_feeding.php )


Caster pets:
For some reason, some pets are classified as casters. For some reason they end up with higher intellect and spirit then other pets, but lower damage, armour and health.
Since Intellect and Spirit is useless for a pet (it’s supposed to hurt stuff, not perform math), these caster pets are inferior to others. At low lvls this doesn’t really matter, as the difference is small. But at higher lvls, it’s a bigger gap.
Casters have between 80-83% of base Armor of a normal pet, 80% Health (95% at low lvls) and about 80% DPS.
Mostly, you can identify these by their mana bar before you tame them (nether rays have an empty mana bar, but they steal mana from players).
Since no one likes a gimped pet (except maybe clothies), you should check wether or not the pet you intend to tame is a caster pet.

(More on caster pets: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/stats_casters.php )


Sources:

All info was shamelessly stolen from

http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/index.php
http://hunterguide.wikispaces.com/Theorycraft (by Lactose)
http://www.wowwiki.com

Creds to those who did the hard work. ^^


Future additions:
Pets for PvP vs PvE
FAQ

Feel free to add any suggestions or point out any mistakes.

-Curumor-

Nice, newbies should find that useful, good work.
But that was rather easy, wasn't it? Since there is a lot of information about it on the Web anyway. Now what about:

1.
Some clarification about pet skill points system. Why does just tamed pets have a negative value of skill points and how should a player react? How a player can get those points back? Do all of the pets get same amount of skill points? Does this depend on the level which is tamed at?

2.
When a player being level 60 for example decides to tame a new pet, and chooses a low level nice looking pet for example, he gets lets say a level 20 pet. Now there is a small problem - how to level it up, when you suddenly are left alone without your personal tank?
Where to find ranged mobs to fight, what level mobs to pick in general, how to do that in group and how solo (!), where would be the best places for certain level ranges and so on.

Also, you should note, that pet speed value of 2 becomes incorrect once you teach your companion catlike reflexes, and this skill comes rather early.


I know most of the answers to my questions (I'm not asking for answers, just pointing what should be useful to know for every newbie), but I can't be certain and I, unfortunately, don't have nor full knowledge neither time to compile some guide for it :/
But such guide would be certainly useful to have.

Really good, but if you just post petopia home page everyone can check out everything they want to know about pets :P But GJ, if you didnt just copy/paste Petopia.

http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

Noted and working on it atm ^^

Just wanted to get the rough notes in before food and raid time. :P

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Q u o t e:
Really good, but if you just post petopia home page everyone can check out everything they want to know about pets :P But GJ, if you didnt just copy/paste Petopia.

http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

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Aye, most of it can be found by browsing around Petopia.
But additional sites, like Tkasomething and wowwiki offer more info and calculations.
Like I said, I'm not done yet, so I'll be adding more details on various things. :)

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Q u o t e:
Some clarification about pet skill points system. Why does just tamed pets have a negative value of skill points and how should a player react? How a player can get those points back? Do all of the pets get same amount of skill points? Does this depend on the level which is tamed at?

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Done. ^^

Levelling low lvl pets is almost a guide in itself, so have to work a bit more on compiling that. :P

Deí supports this thread.

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Q u o t e:
This thread has been added to the “Informative and useful Hunter threads” compilations sticky:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=304172592

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/cheer! :D

Now to get the rest of it in there :P

Wow....
Why didn't you write this 9 months ago when I started lol?

Great guide.

:)

Updated with:
Growl
Kill Command
Talents that affect pets

More updates will follow. :)

Kc can crit for 2k tbh, with the beastial wrath running ofc

Please tell me you did not write all of that lol must have taken ages

Meh.. only taken a few hours so far. Being a pet freak since I started playing, most I knew from before or was looking into anyway. ^^

But all the calculations and formulas were done by others (ppl who didn't come close to failing math :P)

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Q u o t e:
A quick note about pet food:
There are six types of foods: bread, cheese, fish, fruit, fungus, and meat.
Depending on which family your pet belongs to, it will eat one or more of these.
Cat, for example eat Fish and Meat, but nothing else.
Wind Serpents eat Bread, Cheese and Fish, but not Fruit, Fungus or Meat.
Boars are currently the only pet family that eats everything (well, they are pigs after all…).

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Bears will also eat anything.

Aye, apparently they they will. Thought they didn't eat fungus.
Corrected now :)

wow, very detailed....wish it was out when i started xD

An addition to help new players (or new hunters): The taming quest must be completed in your own home province, trainers in other provinces do not offer this service. A blood elf hunter questing in Durotar must go to Silvermoon, Orc and Troll must go to Durotar etc.

omg i love your guide :P certainly the part where you tell us what pets do best damage ^^