BM PvP Guide – Part Two: Pets

Chimaera for Beast Mastery PvP

In part two of my Beast Mastery PvP guide, I’m going to discuss BM PvP pets and ways to spec them. Here we go…

Beast Mastery PvP Pets

Part of the benefit to investing 51 points into the Beast Mastery tree is the ability to tame exotic pets. Although currently they’re so-so for PvE, the PvP benefits of an exotic pet are fantastic in my opinion.

First off, Beast Mastery grants us access to arguably the most overpowered pet of them all, the Chimaera.

Chimaera

Chimaeras are great for a variety of reasons. First off, they have what I consider to be the best all-around special of any pet. This is of course, Froststorm Breath.

Froststorm Breath

  • 30 yard range.
  • applies a 50% movement speed decrease for 5 seconds.
  • is on a 7 second cooldown (with 3/3 Longevity), which can conceivably allow for over 70% uptime on the movement speed debuff.
  • cannot be dispelled.
  • does non-armor mitigated nature damage.

Froststorm Breath owns. Period. It is a great spell for both offensive and defensive purposes. It not only makes kiting melee easier, but it’s also a great tool to slow down casters, making it harder for them to LoS you.

Next, Chimaeras are part of the Cunning family of pets. Cunning pets have a variety of tools available to them that are very useful for PvP.

Cunning Pet PvP build for BM HuntersHere’s how I spec mine…

Cunning Pet BM PvP Build

  • Cobra Strikes 2/2 – A faster attack speed is always good, but for PvP it’s fantastic. Even though they don’t hit as hard, more frequent attacks translates to more efficient caster interrupts and more chances to crit. Crits lead to all sorts of good things.
  • Dive 1/1 – Speed for PvP is essential.
  • Mobility 1/2 – 1 point here, along with 3/3 in Longevity, will give your pet’s Dive ability a 100% uptime as long as your pet has the necessary focus. Unless CC’d or dead, nothing is getting away from your pet.
  • Owl’s Focus 1/2 – I grab 1 point in here for a little added focus efficiency.
  • Spiked Collar 3/3 – Moar dee pee ess.
  • Culling the Herd 3/3 – 3% additional damage for both hunter and pet following a pet crit. Lasts for 10 seconds. Good stuff.
  • Cornered – An awesome ability for PvP. It not only improves pet survivability, but also makes it a ferocious caged tiger when it is in danger.
  • Feeding Frenzy 2/2 – Finishing power. Highly useful for getting the kill.
  • Wolverine Bite 1/1 – Cunning’s beastly damaging attack. A must have talent.
  • Roar of Recovery 1/1 – More mana regen equals less time in Viper, thus equaling more ass-kicking ability. With the reduced cooldown that BM hunters will enjoy for this talent, it’s available approximately every 2 minutes. However, I do recommend putting it on a hotkey and manually activating it. It’s a good idea to use early on, so as to get the cooldown timer going ASAP. By default, it won’t kick in until you get low, so it’s better to activate it once you get down to about 80%. That way you’re likely to have the cooldown back when you really need it.
  • Bullheaded 1/1 – This is the equivalent of a pet PvP trinket and ghetto Shield Wall all in one. I have this talent on a keybind for when my pet is in trouble, plus it is a huge help for maintaining pressure on your target. Oh look, mister Warlock thinks he can Fear my pet and then send a Chaos Bolt at me… wrong… let’s see what he thinks of Bullheaded followed by Intimidation.
  • Wild Hunt 2/2 – More health and more deeps. Perfect.

My pet build focuses solely on DPS and pressure. If you want a pet build that focuses a little bit more on damage mitigation for you and your teammate(s), then a build like this one may be more for you, as it possesses the uber Roar of Sacrifice talent.

Silithid

Another good option in the cunning family is the Silithid. Silithids are similar to spiders in that they have a ranged snare, however unlike the spider’s web, Venom Web Spray hurts.

Personally, I can’t see using a Silithid over a Chimaera, but some hunters really like them. I don’t speak from experience here, as I’ve not used on seriously for PvP, but I have one major issue with them. Because Venom Web Spray applies a DoT while it snares, it makes setting up CC on the target a lot more difficult.

For example, a spider’s web causes no damage, so you can cast it at your target, creating a perfect setup for a Freezing Arrow. The target stands there helpless against your deep freeze, where as if you tried that with a Silithid, the DoT would break your trap. I don’t see this as being much of an issue in a busy BG, but in arena it could be a huge hindrance. This could probably be the reason I have yet to see a hunter with one in arena.

If BGs are your thing, and arena not so much, then I think a Silithid would own. For me though, I prefer the steady 50% movement speed decrease that the Chimaera provides over the 4 second root of the Silithid. The uptime on Froststorm Breath outweighs the 4 second root on a 28 second cooldown. At least that’s what I think.

Silithid owners… weigh in here and give me your thoughts.

Worm

Although they don’t really provide any CC apart from the tiny bit they get from Charge, worms are a great PvP companion. For one, when properly specced, they are very difficult to kill. This is great for those occasions when a DPS target will switch to your pet, leaving you free to deal out the damage while your pet soaks up the blows. Because they are so hardy, they require a bit less micro management. You don’t have to worry as much about your worm getting 3-4 shotted, especially with pets now inheriting full resilience from their master. 😀

In addition to all of the tenacity family goodness, worms possess a very useful PvP ability in Acid Spit. Acid Spit is an awesome tool in the BM hunter’s arsenal. It’s sort of like the hunter’s version of Sunder Armor, only better.

Acid Spit can be cast from 30 yards out, is on a 7 second cooldown (with 3/3 Longevity) and reduces armor by 10% per application, up to a maximum of 20% (two stacks). It lasts for 30 seconds, with the duration being refreshed after each successful Acid Spit. As if that wasn’t enough, Acid Spit also does non-armor mitigated nature damage and can crit quite hard – easily in the neighborhood of 1K.

Bottom line… Acid Spit is great for burning down plate wearers, which coincidentally also happen to include some of the classes that can give hunters the hardest time, ie: Rets, DKs and even Warriors.

Tenacity Pet BM PvP BuildThis is how I’d recommend speccing a BM tenacity pet for PvP, namely a worm.

Tenacity Pet BM PvP Build

  • Cobra Strikes 1/2 – 2 points would be great, but it’s hard to argue sacrificing a point further down the tree to max this one out. 1 point works.
  • Charge 1/1 – Gotta have it. An excellent ability for PvP and the worm’s only form of CC, albeit a weak one.
  • Great Stamina 3/3 – More health is always welcome in PvP, plus this talent gives us access to the oh so wonderful Blood of the Rhino.
  • Spiked Collar 3/3 – 9% more damage. This is sorely needed, as tenacity pets have a lot fewer abilities to enhance their DPS.
  • Boar’s Speed 1/1 – Gotta have that added speed so the pet can maintain pressure and get on its targets quicker.
  • Blood of the Rhino 2/2 – This gives your pet a little additional buff to the health pool, but more importantly, it turns you into your pet’s own personal healbot. Combined with Spirit Bond, Blood of the Rhino causes your SB ticks and Mend Pets to be Resto Druid quality. HoT your pet up before you send him in to attack, then watch and laugh while enemy targets attempt to take it down. Good times.
  • Culling the Herd 3/3 – More deeps.
  • Grace of the Mantis 2/2 – Kinda weak on its own, but you need it to reach the important talents further down.
  • Roar of Sacrifice 1/1 – Causes your pet to start taking one for the team. This is outstanding for damage mitigation when you or a teammate get in trouble.
  • Intervene 1/1 – Excellent ability for PvP. Macro this s**t and use it. It ‘ll save your ass, as well as your teammate’s if needed.
  • Wild Hunt 2/2 – More health and damage.

Apart from the worm, I wouldn’t really recommend any other tenacity pets for BM PvP, simply for the fact that they just don’t do enough damage. BM is pretty reliant upon pet damage, so it’s essential to have a pet that can bring it. The beauty of the worm is that although it doesn’t provide quite the same personal DPS as a cunning or ferocity pet, the debuff makes up for it.

Worm BM PvP pet

Core Hound

For my fourth and final suggestion, I think the Core Hound is worth a look. I’ve yet to try one myself, but I think that they’re a pretty solid option, especially now with pets inheriting full resilience from the hunter.

There are a few reasons why Core Hounds stand out as a BM PvP pet. For one, their DPS is great. Being that they’re ferocity pets, Core Hounds posses more damage increasing talents, including a higher crit chance. Since a lot of BM Hunter DPS is improved by way of pet crits, having a 9% higher crit chance is definitely a plus.

In addition to their improved DPS courtesy of the ferocity tree talents, the thing that makes them really stand out is their special ability, Lava Breath. Lava Breath has a 30 yd range, does non-armor mitigated fire damage, and most importantly, applies a 25% reduced casting speed debuff that last for 10 seconds. The ability itself is on a 7 second cooldown (with 3/3 in Longevity), so it’s quite possible to park this pet on a healer or casting class, keeping the buff up pretty much constantly.

Lastly, the other nice thing about Core Hounds is Heart of the Phoenix. And believe me, this is going to be needed. Casters will be putting a bounty on this pet’s head both in arena and BGs. Because Core Hounds are more of a glass cannon variety pet, lacking any substantial damage mitigation talents, they can be killed fairly easily. The instant res from Heart of the Phoenix helps to solve this issue somewhat, especially in arena.

Ferocity Pet BM PvP BuildFerocity Pet BM PvP Build

If I become curious enough to try a Core Hound out for arena or BGs, this is likely how I would spec it.

Another way to go might be to drop Heart of the Phoenix and go 1/2 in Bloodthirsty, then you’d be able to get the 6% additional damage from Shark Attack and be able to wreak even more havoc. However, I’d only recommend this build if you are specced 2/2 into Improved Revive Pet.

Recap

Well those are my recommendations as far as BM PvP pets are concerned. The Chimaera receives my highest praise due to its cunning family abilities and the unbelievable ranged slow it provides. The worm is another preferred choice of mine due to its excellent ranged armor debuff attack, as well as its tenacity family abilities, which increase survivability for both the pet and the hunter. The Silithid is another good choice due to its ranged snare, as well as the Core Hound for its increased DPS and ranged casting debuff attack.

Okay, so those are four pets I would strongly recommend for the BM Hunter’s PvP needs. There are others worth mentioning such as: Hyenas, Ravagers, and Spiders, but I feel that the three aforementioned pets possess the best skill sets of all the choices BM Hunters have at their disposal. However, pet choice can have a lot to do with your play style and team composition (if you arena). Use my recommendations as a starting point, but by all means, go with whatever works best for you.

14 thoughts on “BM PvP Guide – Part Two: Pets”

  1. For wrath of lich king, what pet do you recommend??? i mean, for example, the Chimaera is it still a good pet??? i really want one that is powerfull. thks

    Reply
  2. I would loooooove to try chimaera for Battlegrounds! Unfortunately though, my stable is full of pets for pvp. I have a spider, corehound, and wolf (which I got before I tamed a spider for SV, and so I haven’t really used him since, because I rarely if ever do dungeons…hate them). And my other two pets are spirit beasts, which I’m told firmly by my friend not to use them for pvp though I love them. So I don’t know which pet to abandon. 🙁 Are spirit beasts any good for pvp?

    I always use my corehound for it, because my friend’s brother is a hunter and he tells me that the corehound is for my BM spec, while my spider is for my SV spec. But I rarely if ever like to use revive pet and Heart of the Phoenix has a long CD and my corehound, CottonCandy, drops a lot.

    My friend drags me into arena a lot for 3v3 (which is really hard since I’m not geared and I’m very low in resilience), and she’s a druid healer, pairing us up with another friend of hers each time, so it’s not really a set arena group. So, since she’s a healer and they always like to go after me since I’m easy to kill, wouldn’t the chimaera’s Froststorm Breath help a lot for CC? The spider’s web CD is a bit of a drawback, and I don’t face as many casters as I do dk, rogue, and warriors so my corehounds ability seems not very useful most of the time. Maybe in arena, since you’re paired against healers and such so aimed shot and lavabreath will help out against it, but I don’t really like to use him for BGs, even though he’s the only BM pet that I can use according to my friend, and I feel pressured to use him.

    I don’t think I really use my wolf much, other than to run around with when I’m using an item called Rituals of the New Moon, because then we match and its for fun lol.

    Sorry for the rambling/rant, I had to get things out of my head ^^;

    Reply
  3. I’m curious as to how to clear the NPCscan data and start afresh?When I d/led the addon it seems to me have already have a cache flow of data.If at all you can clean it up will it still function properly?Not to sure how to properly use this addon.I have noticed when I go to Dalaran it goes off.Which is cool.But does that hinder the process of me looking for that same pet?Any info on how to fully utilize this addon would be greatly appreciated.
    Happy Hunting
    Happy New Year.
    Raybeez.

    Reply
  4. I love my Silithid. Love it, love it, love it. In almost any 1v1 situation its root makes all the difference. For one, I’ve never seen anyone else use one. Opponents never expect the root. Ever. As an opener, the distance of the root is a huge advantage to get off multiple shots or blow their trinket cooldown early. Then I can follow up with a Concussive Shot when it breaks, and finally they hit my Frost Trap. If I need more movement impairing, I’ll jam a Wing-Clip up their butt, Disengage, and by then Venom Web Spray is back up.

    Further: I make liberal use of Starship Troopers references with the Hive’Zora Reaver model (yellow).

    Advantages
    -HUGE (30 yards) range on Web
    -DoT
    -Cunning Tree
    -Very uncommon
    -“Your basic Arachnid warrior isn’t too smart, but you can blow off a limb, and it’s still 86 percent combat effective.”

    Disadvantages
    -Long cooldown (40 sec untalented)
    -Possible cc breaker (as noted)

    Reply
    • Hey Boz,

      Yea, I like the idea of the snare being an almost guaranteed blown trinket. If we ever get more stables I’m definitely going to try one out again at some point.

      Reply
      • D:

        You really need to try one. If you have time you should most definitely level your Orc and grab a Silithid at 60 by hunting the red rare elite around the hive of red Silithids. Its name is Lapress, and I’m sure NPCscan would find it. I’m leveling my Orc BM hunter on a PvP server and thus far the Silithid has been outstanding both in solo’ing quests as my short-term tank along with being a beast of a PvP death machine. I always have him with me. I never know when I’ll be jumped whilst unaware of an Alliance character’s approach.

        Reply
  5. Actually, Core Hound is the best option for BM speced hunter unless you know what opponents you are going to face and you need chimera or worm who are situational.
    Your going to be playing double dps(as retri BM or enh BM most probably) in 2s or beast cleave in 3s and the play-stile of those isn’t control but blowing things up and for that core hound with its massive dmg and reduced casting time debuff is the best.
    Other comps aren’t really suited for BM hunter and SV or MM work out better.
    With that in mind even going for anything but ferocity pet isn’t good. And if you check sk-100 most BM hunters are using Core House if not all(even for side option.
    If you want more controled games BM isn’t really best option, MM or SV are a lot better but pet choices for those are so much different(with crab being the best with 3.3 imo, cunning pets got bug fixed so their dmg reduction doesn’t work anymore).

    Reply
    • It’s occurred to me to try a Core Hound, but the things that have me sketched are its squishiness and lack of CC.

      However, one of the only Hunter/X teams to beat us this season was a Prot-Ret/BM w/ a Core Hound. My partner killed the pet twice pretty easily, but they still outlasted us.

      I’m not too hard core about arena, but my partner and I are really starting to gel, so I’m thinking we could probably at least get our helms this season. If we hit a wall sometime soon, then I may switch to SV. For now, BM seems to be working out alright for us.

      In the meantime though, I may have to finally break down and try a Core Hound.

      Reply
  6. I’ve tried the crab a few times, but its DPS is just too low. The only reason a worm is so viable is because of the sunder.

    I’d go with a Silithid if you wanted the snare. For BM, it’s better than a crab in pretty much every way, apart from it lacking Intervene.

    Reply

Leave a Comment