WoW Forever Hunter Pet Tier List

WoW Forever Hunter Pet Tier List TL;DR

• Bear becomes the best AoE leveling pet once you can get Swipe at pet level 12. If you’re just starting at level 10, a Boar with Charge is an easy first tame, or whoever else you have in your starting area, like Cat or even a Crab.

• Best dungeon and raid pet: Wolf is irreplaceable in melee-heavy groups since he buffs attacks. Take a Cat or Raptor if you’re in a ranged group and just want to get as much damage out of the pet as possible. 

• Best PvP pet: Spider is great for open world PvP and battlegrounds. Swap to Crocolisk for a huge 25% healing reduction on your target.

• Best ranged pet: Wind Serpent. Lightning Breath reaches 20 yards, although the pet still needs to get into melee for normal swings.

• My three-pet stable: Bear, Wolf, and Spider. If you rarely play PvP, replace the Spider with a Cat.

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Best Hunter Pets in WoW Forever

I’m ranking these by how much I think they’re worth the stable slot. Priorities can shift based on the content you like to do - Bear can sit in S-Tier while you're leveling via questing despite having a damage penalty. Forever pets scale with your gear, and every family now has an ability of its own - we’re ranking families, not individual pets here. The specific beast’s attack speed matters after that.

S-Tier: Bear, Wolf, Cat, and Spider

Bear is the pet I’d start with on a fresh Hunter, but only if there’s one nearby. Swipe hits three enemies and becomes available at pet level 12, which creates a great opportunity for you to just multi-shot packs while your bear builds up threat on several mobs at once. If you’re mostly fighting one enemy in harder zones and barely using Mend Pet, that’s when I’d try a Cat instead for more targeted damage. 

Wolf is a great group pick when there are enough melee players to get something out of Furious Howl. At rank 4, it grants 84 melee attack power to allies in range for one minute. The range is 15 yards around the Wolf, so you’ll have to control it sometimes to get the most value; send it where your melee are fighting. A group with a Warrior tank and two Rogues gets a lot more out of that setup, especially if you’re playing dual-wielding Survival. 

Cat is a universal option with the most solo target damage, plus they’re everywhere and easy to get anytime. Raptor vs. a Cat is a valid conversation, but Prowl seems very impactful to me in dungeons and during questing. If I don’t care about stealth, I’d rather bring a Raptor with Savage Rend instead, especially if I already had one leveled and trained.

Spider gets my last S-Tier spot for what it can do in battlegrounds and open world skirmishes. Web roots for four seconds from 20 yards - that’s enough to hold someone in place long enough to finish them just from this ability alone. This ability also comes in clutch during leveling since you can kite harder mobs easier with them being constantly stuck in place. 

A-Tier and below: When I’d switch pets

The lower tiers are where you get pets that you either like visually or are trying to fix some niche problems with.  Shop for a specific problem - for example, Turtle makes sense if you’re trying to tank Elites in open world, and Gorilla is worth using if you want one big Thunderstomp at the start of a pull. Hyena and Crab both bring a 50% slow, which is handy when you’re chasing someone and would rather keep them slowed than wait for another Spider’s Web to go off a massive 40-second cooldown. Newly added Foxes simply look adorable, so that could be a reason to occupy a stables slot with their representative.

WoW Forever Hunter Pet Families

There are 18 Hunter pet families in WoW Forever. The numbers below are base family modifiers from the Forever client, and the main thing to look at here is which ability family brings to the table and what the statlines are:

A regular Wolf can use Furious Howl, but it might not come with it right away. If you just want an early rank 1 howl, look for a Worg in Silverpine Forest at 10-11 or a Coyote Packleader in Westfall at 11-12. That gets you to the ability faster than taming a wolf at random and waiting for it to learn the rank on its own.

Best Pet for Every Hunter Spec in WoW Forever

Obviously, you choose the build before the pet. Beast Mastery spends talents making the pet stronger, and Survival goes more into personal damage. Your talent distribution affects which pets are actually worth using:

Best Survival Hunter Pet

Wolf creates way too much value for a melee-heavy Surv in PvE, and Spider is best for PvP. If you’re playing dual-wieldmelee Survival without Lone Wolf, you’ll usually always be standing where the Wolf casts Howl, so it can buff you as well as the melee next to you. On a 2H Surv, a Cat can work alright, or you can use a macro using a howl whenever you weave your melees. I’d definitely run a Cat instead if I’m the only melee getting much use out of it or another Hunter already has Howl covered. 

Best Marksmanship Hunter Pet

A lot of MM hunters just go with a Lone Wolf in dungeons and raids, especially if you have another Hunter with a Howl.  It’s definitely worth calling one out if the raid actually needs Howl and has enough melee in range to benefit from it. During questing, though, I think having a tank is definitely worth losing 20% personal DPS from a Lone Wolf.  

In a battleground, take Spider if you’re spending the fight trying to make enough room to shoot. If you already have that room and the other team keeps topping your target back up, bring a Crocolisk and line up Dismember with Aimed Shot for a massive damage burst that’s also hard to heal back up. 

Best Beast Mastery Hunter Pet

Long story short, Cat for single-target PvE, Bear for solo questing, Spider for PvP. For bosses, it’s either a Cat or a Raptor; the competition is pretty close, especially if you have a leveled raptor ready. In PvP, make sure to not press your Web and Intimidation at the same time, and pace your CCs out for better uptime.  

Best Hunter Pets for Leveling and Where to Tame Them

At level 10, take the nearby tame that comes with something you’ll use. Boar gets to the target quickly with Charge, and generates lots of threat quickly so that you can stay behind and shoot in peace. Bear starts earning its keep when Swipe comes online, and the route takes you through tight camps where you have to farm a lot of mobs. 

Remember that for any beast on the list, you still need the Hunter class quest done at level 10, and that you can’t tame a beast above your level. Try not to tame pets that are too low since you’re going to have to level them yourself. The best approach is to look for a level 12 Giant Grizzled Bear if you’re exactly 12, or just finish the next few quests and come back when either spawn is fair game.

Why Your Hunter Pet Keeps Losing Aggro

If you’re constantly getting harassed before your pet, you’re probably dealing too much damage way too soon. Send the pet in, wait for Growl to land, then start with normal shots and casts until you see your threat level glow yellow. Growl adds threat, but it won’t just magically make enemies stay on your pet - if you generate too much threat yourself, you’ll aggro a mob on yourself. Leveling Growl helps to force mobs to stay on your pet, so make sure you have the highest rank available actually trained. 

Unique Hunter Pets Worth Taming in WoW Forever

Coldrasp is probably the best rare worth hunting early since you can use him pretty much for the entire game. If I’m only after Howl, though, I’m taking a regular Worg and getting back straight to leveling - you can find a rare right away or spend hours running around looking for one. The same goes for Cats: if you want a white lion or a ghost, you can just do quests around the area and maybe get lucky and spot the one you want.

The big reason to go for rares is that most of them simply have better DPS due to faster swing speed or skills you wouldn’t normally get on a regular mob. Swing speed in this table: Fastest = 1.00 s, Very fast = 1.20–1.50 s, Fast = 1.60–1.99 s, Standard = 2.00 s::

I’d do Mathystra at level 20 so you can tame either Ghost Saber spawn. For Echeyakee, use the Horn of Echeyakee at the kodo bones. The quest is Horde-only, but an Alliance Hunter can tame the lion if a Horde player summons it. If you’re camping The Rake or Broken Tooth for performance, remember what you’re chasing: a shorter swing interval can mean more chances for spell pushback. It doesn’t make a rare Cat an automatic raid upgrade.

Best Hunter Pets for Dungeons and Raids

I’d take a Wolf when the group needs Howl, a Cat or Raptor when it needs damage from the pet, and a Carrion Bird if the tank is struggling with melee trash. The Carrion Bird won’t do much about a caster pack, but reducing the melee attack power of several mobs is useful if that’s what’s making the healer fall behind. A Wind Serpent can get Lightning Breath off from 20 yards, which helps when you’re switching targets or pulling the pet back. It still loses normal swings if you leave it out of melee.

Tallstrider is worth discussing before the run. Dust Cloud removes 505 armor for 30 seconds at max rank, but I’d check what it adds to the debuffs your group already uses before assigning a Hunter to it. Whatever pet you bring, I’d turn Growl off, put it on Passive, and bind Pet Attack, Pet Follow, and Move To. When the tank pulls casters around a corner, bring the pet back first. Otherwise, it can stay in the room hitting the very mob the tank is trying to move.

Best Hunter Pets for PvP

Spider is my pick for a random battleground because there’s almost always someone you want to stop from moving. Crocolisk is also a viable choice if you want to burst somebody down by cutting their healing. Even though Dismember is not 50% healing cut but 25%, it’s still a respectable amount of HP that you won’t have to damage. There are 4 total pets that deserve the PvP stable slot:

How to Set Up Your First Hunter Pet

If the pet has nothing but Growl after taming, first check whether that exact beast was supposed to know anything else. Some beasts start with very little. To learn a new rank of Bite or Claw, stable your usual pet, tame a beast that knows the rank, and have it use the ability until chat says you learned it. Then bring your usual pet back and teach it through Beast Training. Growl is the one I’d keep current at the pet trainer while leveling. Check again at levels 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 - those are the major thresholds.

Once you’ve bought both stable slots, you can keep one active pet and two stabled pets. I prefer to leave a slot free while I’m still training ranks - what if you see a rare pet roaming around but have no space to tame it? Or just want to do some sort of content you haven’t done yet and want to use a new pet. Apparently there was some sort of vague thread saying that Blizzard would like to expand the stables to have more pet slots, but I wouldn’t count on it coming soon.

Check out more WoW Forever guides:

• WoW Forever Leveling Guide

• WoW Forever PvP Tier List

• WoW Forever Gold Farming Guide