The hunter is the definitive pet class in wow. Your pet will be able to aid you in nearly every aspect of the game and without it you're just a gimped warrior with a bow. Of course this relationship isn't totally one sided and they expect you to reward them for their services. Pets require constant maintenance, feeding, leveling and lots of tender loving care. But if you take good care of them you'll never play alone.
Using Your Pet
Pet Tanking
The primary purpose of your pet is to act as a tank. The biggest problem a hunter has while soloing is keeping his foe outside his deadzone. But if you let your pet keep the mobs attention you can stand back and shoot it full of holes. Your primary way of keeping threat is your pets Growl ability, which acts like a warrior's Taunt or Voidwalker's Torment. It instantly generates a large spike of threat and puts them higher on the threat list then you. The amount of threat your pets Growl generates can be directly increased with attack power. You can also increase your pets threat by dumping your own. If you use your Feign Death ability your threat will drop to zero, but your pets will stay the way it is. This lets you DPS like crazy once you get back up.
The basics techniques of pet tanking are pretty simple. First have your pet attack the target since the first person to attack an enemy gains an extra bit of threat. (You can do this quickly by hitting Ctrl 1) After their first attack you should generally wait one second before attacking. This is to make sure their first Growl isn't resisted. After they have landed a growl start to DPS lightly. Don't use your major attacks all at once but spread them out. This way you won't spike over your pet in aggro. You can also have your pet increase their threat by using damaging abilities like Bite or Claw. These don't create as much threat as Growl but over the course of a battle their threat will usually cancel out the threat from your own damage dealing attacks. This will use up your pets Focus though and you may not have enough to use growl. So use them manually instead of setting them on auto attack. If you are fighting a powerful monster or an elite you will also need to keep your pet healed. Use Mend Pet after your pet is at seventy five

percent so they can regenerate health. Be careful not to use this too soon though since it can cause a little bit of healing aggro onto you.
Pet DPSing
Many people say that pet DPS isn't worthwhile. If you just let your pet auto attack that can be somewhat true. But if you work with your pet and use their abilities carefully your pet's DPS will increase and increase yours as well. Pet DPS is largely self sustaining. The secret is to build up your pet with talents and teach them new abilities so they can work on their own.
Pet damage takes two forms, white damage and yellow damage. White damage is from your pets regular auto attacks and is the base of your DPS. You can increase this by buffing your pet but it will stay very regular. (Pets also get a portion of your stats like AP or Sta so buffing yourself buffs them as well.) It may seem low compared to your damage, but over a long fight it can add up significantly. Yellow damage comes from abilities like Bite or Gore. These are special attacks that use up your pets Focus and often have a cooldown. Most of these abilities are also restricted by your pets species. Bite can be learned by almost all species, but only boars and ravagers can learn Gore. This means the pet you choose will determine how well they DPS.
The key to pet DPS is careful management of their abilities to increase their yellow damage. Regular white damage is important but since you can't really influence it you don't need to worry about it. One of the first things you need to do to increase your pets DPS in a group or in PVP is turn off Growl. It wastes Focus and can rarely cause problems for the tank. DPS pets can only last for a little bit as a tank anyway so this isn't a real loss. Depending on your pets species your should have one action block dedicated to a generic direct damage ability like Claw or Bite. In the long run I prefer Bite even though it is more focus intensive.

Your second action block should have your pets species specific ability like Warp, Charge or Lighting Breath. These are not always damage abilities, they may have an effect like knockback or interrupt which can greatly help in specific situations like PVP. Your third block should contain a buff or debuff ability. Dash, Dive and Cower are good generic ones but you can also use an extra species specific one like Prowl or Furious Howl. You should always try to save

your final slot for Growl. Even though you don't want your pet to do a lot of tanking it is great for if you need to run away when playing solo and have someone else take all the hits.
The actual techniques to pet DPSing are rather simple. Your pet will be able to take care of itself most of the time by auto casting its generic damage dealing abilities. There are two situations where you need to physically manage your pets abilities. The first is if they have a special effect that you want to save. Charge is best saved for interrupting a caster, and Prowl shouldn't be used until you are ready to attack because it slows your pet down. The second situation revolves around your Kill Command. You should try to activate it every time you get a critical strike.
Maintaining Your Pet
Pets require a lot of maintenance. You need to constantly keep them happy by feeding them, level them up and teach them new skills.
Happiness
Pets have feelings too, and the happier your pet is the better off both of you will be. The more content you keep your pet the more inclined it will be to work for you. Your pet has three different levels of happiness. Unhappy is the lowest state and the one every pet starts with right after you tame them. While unhappy they only cause 75% of their regular damage and lose loyalty. If you keep them unhappy too long they will eventually run away! Unhappy is marked with a red frowny face next to your pets portrait. The second level of happiness is contented. This is a middle ground where your pet deals 100% damage and slowly gains loyalty. This is marked with a yellow smiley face. The final level is happy, marked with a green smiley face. At this level your pet causes 125% damage and gains loyalty very quickly. You want to try and always keep your pet in this state.
Loyalty

The longer you keep your pet happy the more loyal it will become towards you. There are six levels of loyalty. Rebellious, Unruly, Submissive, Dependable, Faithful, and Man's Best Friend. The higher your pets loyalty level the less food it will take to keep

it happy. But more importantly every new loyalty level gives you points to help train your pet. Loyalty can decrease though if it loses too much happiness. If you don't feed your pet enough or you let it die too often it will have no reason to stick by you and eventually run away.
Feeding your Pet
To increase your pets happiness you need to feed them something they like. You can see what your pet's diet is by opening up your character profile, clicking on your pet tab, and mousing over the green smiley icon. As your pet levels up his taste in food will also increase. If you feed them low level food they will only gain a little bit of happiness. But if you feed them food equal to their level they will gain a great deal of happiness. To actually feed your pet first click your Feed Pet icon. Then click on the food you want to feed you pet You also need to give them time to chew. If you spam your feed pet icon your pet won't have time to finish and won't gain any more happiness from the previous piece of food. It takes about ten seconds for a pet to finish eating.
Training
There are two ways to train your pet. The first way is to visit the pet trainer next to your own class trainer. He will teach you new abilities that buff your pet with extra armor, health and new abilities. Learning new skills from the pet trainer doesn't teach them to your pet though, they just stay in your spell book. This way if you get a new pet you don't have to hike back to the trainer.
The second way to learn pet skills is to learn them from other animals. Most of your active abilities like Claw or Screech can only be learned from wild pets that you tame. If you wanted to learn Claw for example you would have to tame a bear. After you have tamed the bear you need to use it in battle and make sure it uses Claw as often as possible. Eventually you will receive a message saying that you have learned Claw. You can now get rid of that pet if you don't want it and teach Claw to any other pet you want. There are two things to remember about learning skills this way. First, only specific animals will know these skills. You can't just tame any bear and learn Claw. Even if you tame a hundred Brown Bears you will never find one with Claw. If you tame an Iceclaw bear though eventually you will find one with Claw. The second thing to

remember is that you will have to tame tougher monsters for a higher rank of an ability. If you want Claw rank 2 you will need to tame a Thistle Bear in Darkshore. Thistle bears are slightly harder then an Iceclaw bear and are slightly higher level. I would recommend checking this website for a list of what animals have what abilities at what level.
http://www.goodintentionsguild.info/hunters.html
After you have learned new skills from the pet trainer or by taming a beast you can teach them to your pet. Take the pet you want to train out of your stable and open up your Beast Training ability under the general tab of your spell book. Inside is a list of all the pet abilities you know and a count of how many training points you have. Training points are used to buy new skills and abilities, so try to raise your pets loyalty as high as possible. If you want to learn a skill like Natural Armor first click on the rank you want to learn and click train. Your pet will lose some training points and instantly get a buff to their armor. You also need to consider the different ranks of abilities. Higher ranks cost more points and once you learn them you won't be able to learn any lower ranks. One final thing to remember is that not all pet species can learn every ability. Cats and bears can learn Claw, but boars and wolves can't. If your pet can't learn an ability it will say so in its description.
Pet Types
Not all pets are equal. If they were there would be no point in taming new ones. Each pet species has certain advantages and disadvantages in terms of stats or abilities which lead them to different styles of play. Plus, its a lot easier to strike fear in the hearts of your enemy when you sic a BEAR on them than a turtle or ostrich! It is generally accepted that there are three different classes of pets. Tanking pets which stress high armor and health but low damage. DPS pets that have high damage but low armor or health. And balanced pets that are well rounded but rarely excel at anything. There are also certain pets out there known as caster pets which you should avoid, but there will be more on that later.
Tanking pets are primarily used while leveling and questing solo. Their primary function is to keep the enemy's attention and out of your ranged weapons dead zone. Their main function is to take a beating for you so

they need high health and armor. High health is slightly better than armor though because armor does nothing for magic damage. The five best tanking pets are
Bears- Bears have the best overall survivability of the hunter pets and moderate damage. They have the highest HP of any pet and the second highest armor. They also have access to some good damage dealing moves for when you need them to DPS instead of tank. As an added bonus they are all omnivorous which makes feeding them much cheaper.
Boars- Boars are the second best pet in terms of survivability. They have less HP than bears, but usually have higher armor. I prefer using a boar over a bear when leveling or grinding though because of the ability Charge. Its a great opening move which helps my pet gain aggro fast and lets me shoot sooner. Also omnivorous like a bear.
Scorpid- Scorpids have moderate survivability compared to other tanking pets and are very situational. Their main selling point is a stackable poisen attack that when combined with a serpent sting can kill a fleeing mob. It is also a great PVP pet which makes it a good choice for a PVP server.
Warpstalker (Non caster)- Warpstalker's have about as much survivability as a Scorpid and are listed as a tanking pet because of their Warp attack. You can use it like a boar's Charge to quicken your fighting time.
Other species like tallstriders, crabs and crocolisks are also considered tanking pets but they will either have low armor and high health or the other way around. The only reason you would want one of these as a tanking pet is if you are looking for something strange or fun.
DPS pets are used when instancing or in PVP. The things to consider when choosing a DPS pet is first what abilities they can learn and second what DPS stats they will get. The abilities your pet gets will determine how much damage they will be able to put out and how long they will be able to do it. If you have moves that use up a lot of your pets focus fast you will do lot of damage fast, but then slack off while they try to regen. These types of pets are best used in PVP since you want to focus on burst damage. If you have moves that are more focus efficient you will do more sustained DPS and are best in a PVE situation. The five best DPS pets are

Cats-Cats have the highest potential DPS of all pets. Mostly this comes through their wide array of abilities. Not only pure DPS ones like Claw, but special abilities like Prowl.
Raptor- Raptors come in as a close second for best DPS pet. The only reason they are second is because they don't have as many abilities as a cat and have ever so slightly lower DPS stats.
Ravager-Ravagers come in at second place because their DPS is situational. One of their primary attacks is Gore, which if everything goes right is a higher DPS ability than Claw or Bite. But that is only if it manages to do double damage and crit often.
Owl- Owls are an interesting pet because of their special abilities that can debuff your opponent. You probably wouldn't want to bring one to an instance, but they can be good in solo play.
Wind Serpent- Wind serpents have average regular damage melee stats. But their Lightning Breath ability is the highest DPS ability in the game. Its best situated for burst fights though since it will eat up your pets focus very quickly.
Balanced pets are built around being ok at everything, but great at nothing. If you foresee yourself having to spend a long time away from the stable master you might want to bring along a balanced pet because you don't know what you will face.
Wolves- Wolves are considered the best balance pet because of their good DPS and survivabilty. Their Howl ability is their main selling point though since it can increase your entire group's Dps.
Dragonhawks- Like Wolves their main selling point is a special ability. Their AOE fire attack can be useful when farming large groups of mobs or when fighting groups in PVP.
Serpents- Serpents are similar to Scorpids because of their poison attack. But their have slightly higher attack and slightly lower defense than a scorpid so they are not a very good tanking pet.

Caster Pets
If you are going to be serious about getting the best pet you can you need to know which ones to avoid. Specifically you will want to avoid caster pets because of their inferior stat growth. Instead of strength or stamina these pets will have high spirit and intellect. Pets really don't need these stats so they essentially get a handicap when going into battle.
Caster pets can be identified in two ways. If they have a mana bar before you tame them or they have anything to do with magical abilities they will probably have casters stats. This is not always true though. The Feral Dragonhawks outside of Silvermoon have caster stats. But the Eclipson Dragonhawks in Shadowmoon Vally don't. The best way to check is compare you pets base armor value against the base armor value of an other equal level pet of a different species. You can do this under your pets UI window.