Compare Pet Skills
Hunter pets can learn as many passive skills as they can afford, but a particular pet can only know four active skills at once. So it pays to be picky when selecting your active skills (keeping in mind, of course, that not all pets can learn all kind of skills). The table below compares the various qualities of all the active skills.
Note: Any field marked with as asterisk also has notes below the table.
| Damage | DoT | AoE | Focus Dump | Aggro | Speed | Ranged (yds) | Special | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bite | Physical | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Charge | - | - | - | - | * | X | 8-25 | Immobilizes enemy, adds attack power to next attack. |
| Claw | Physical | - | - | X | - | - | - | - |
| Cower | - | - | - | - | X | - | - | - |
| Dash | - | - | - | - | - | X | - | - |
| Dive | - | - | - | - | - | X | - | - |
| Fire Breath | Fire | X | X | - | - | - | - | - |
| Furious Howl | - | - | X | - | * | - | 15 | Buffs damage of party members within range. |
| Gore | Physical | - | - | X | - | - | - | 50% chance to do double damage. |
| Damage | DoT | AoE | Focus Dump | Aggro | Speed | Ranged (yds) | Special | |
| Growl | - | - | - | - | X | - | - | - |
| Lightning Breath | Nature | - | - | X | - | - | 20 | - |
| Poison Spit | Nature | X | - | - | - | - | 30 | - |
| Prowl | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Pet stealths. First attack receives a bonus to damage. |
| Scorpid Poison | Nature | X | - | - | - | - | - | Can stack 5 times per target. |
| Screech | Physical | - | X | X | * | - | - | Debuffs attack power of enemies. |
| Shell Shield | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Reduces damage to pet and slows pet's attack speed. |
| Thunderstomp | Nature | - | X | - | X | - | 8 | - |
| Warp | - | - | - | - | - | X | 30 | Pet gains 50% chance to avoid next melee attack. |
Notes
Charge: Prior to Patch 2.4.2, if Growl was the first attack after Charge then the extra attack power from Charge increased the threat generation (aggro) of the Growl. However, Blizzard decided that this interaction between the two skills was a bug and fixed it in Patch 2.4.2.
Furious Howl: Tests have shown that using Furious Howl near a PvP target will draw aggro from the target and will flag both the pet and the hunter for PvP, even if the Furious Howl is the only action taken. This is unexpected behavior: the skill says that it buffs party members, not that it debuffs enemies. So there may be either a hidden debuff or an aggro component to the Furious Howl.
Screech: Although Screech does not explicitly generate extra threat, the AoE debuff component of the skill does very well at keeping multiple opponents focused on the pet.
Focus Dump
What's a "focus dump" and why is it useful?
A focus dump is just a skill with no cooldown timer.
With talents like Bestial Discipline (which increases the focus regeneration of your pet) and Go For the Throat (which gives your pet focus when you score a critical hit), it is now pretty common for hunter pets to have more focus than they need to keep up with the skills with cooldown timers. That is, pets are often limited more by the cooldown timers than they are by how much focus they have available.
Rather than 'waste' this extra focus, it is useful for your pet to have a 'focus dump' - a skill that they can 'dump' their extra focus into when all their other skills are on cooldown.