The Sunken Temple raid in the third phase of WoW Classic Season of Discovery has brought some changes to Hunter pets. With the introduction of the Focus Fire rune, every Hunter spec will now utilize a pet. Blizzard has also unveiled an impressive new pet known as the Core Hound, adding to the excitement.
New Hunter Pet
The newly introduced Hunter pet Core Hound functions similarly to a wind serpent, possessing a major ability, Fire Breath, which costs 50 focus. While this ability deals with semi-comparable damage to the wind serpent, it has a lower AP scaling, making the Core Hound weaker in comparison.
Ranged Hunter
Starting with ranged Hunters, the best pet choice is the Cat. There's no doubt that cats always reign supreme in this role. Although there's a slight variation in attack speed among cats, but the real reason to use Cat now is because of the Focus Fire rune. This rune increases your pet's attack speed by 3% with each attack, stacking up to 5 times.
Cat Ability - Claw
It's important to note that this boost only applies when your pet uses a special ability called Claw. This pet ability with no cooldown and a cost of only 25 Focus. This allows the Cat to quickly stack up the buff, granting you a 15% attack speed bonus when consumed, while your cat promptly rebuilds the stacks.
If you're utilizing this rune as a ranged Hunter, ensure your cat exclusively employs Claw, avoiding Bite. Once the 5 stacks are accumulated, you can activate the Focus Fire buff, and your pet will swiftly replenish the stacks for continuous benefit.
Broken Tooth
The Broken Tooth boasts the swiftest attack speed available in Season of Discovery. The only reason you might desire a faster attack speed cat is to gain a slight increase in DPS, only if your tank is using Gift of Arthas. However, if your tank isn't utilizing Gift of Arthas, there's no need to extensively farm for Broken Tooth.
Melee Hunter
As a melee Hunter, you have 2 choices: a slow attack speed cat or a wind serpent with Lightning Breath rank 5. Wind serpents with this rank are rare in the game, but the easiest one to obtain is from the raid, the Spawn of Hakkar. It's recommended that players enter the raid and tame this wind serpent with their group. The other Hunter can freeze the trap to aid in taming this Hunter pet.
With raid buffs, particularly the Stormstrike from a Shaman or Dreamstate from a Druid, it will be your best pet. These buffs give 20% extra nature damage to everyone in the raid, boosting the nature damage dealt by your wind serpent. So, if you are playing Horde, you can instantly get a wind serpent, and it will be incredibly powerful.
But there's another buff that makes these wind serpents even stronger, which is the off-hand, epic fist weapon, the Serpent's Striker. This increases the nature damage by another 8% and reduces the target's Nature Resistance by 60. So, when you have both buffs, the wind serpent will just be your best pet.
Hunter Pet Abilities
As you have already got these Hunter pets, what you're going to want to do is to train them rank 7 Bite and rank 7 Claw. If you're using Focus Fire, just don't even use Bite. But to get both abilities first, either head to Felwood or head to the Hinterlands. Make sure to stock up on some SOD Gold just in case you need.
Turtles: In the Hinterlands, along the coast, there are the Saltwater Snapjaws that can teach you Bite. If you go to Jintha'alor and head all the way up to the top where you complete the Mallet quest in Zul'Farrak, there are going to be Elite wolves. They are already Level 50, but they hit extremely hard.
Bears: For Claw rank 7, head over to Felwood, and you can tame one of the Angerclaw Maulers. There are 2 types of bears in the zone. Make sure you are taming one of them. You can use the Tame Beast addon to make sure you know what each one of these mobs has before you even try to tame it.
Owls: You can also tame the Ironbeak Hunters. These are going to be the owls around the zone, and they are Level 50 and they come with the max rank of the Claw. You can teach your pets some Nature Resistance. It's definitely helpful, especially if you're using it in Maraudon to solo Mara Princess farms, but it's not necessary actually in the raid.
