Late Night PC

I finally got around to playing my hunter again. It's been months. I'd forgotten how nice it was to solo with a hunter. I decided that it's time for me to go find a new pet. I like my owl but he has two problems: first he's always blocking my view and second he has a really dumb name. The great things about the owl are that he's pretty quick and he has no trouble holding aggro at all now at level 36. That's also partly due to my hunter's talent build (I know it says level 38 there, but I was mistaken - I'm still 36) I suppose, but it's been a great combo for me. Still, for some variety I thought I'd like to try out a new beast.

I still want something fast that can hold aggro - my preferred style is to send in the pet, lay a trap and start an aimed shot. Now that I can lay traps in combat that part's not as important. I have aimed shot on 9 so I do ctrl-1 then 9. By the time my aimed shot fires, the owl is already attacking and the mob is paying attention to them. Still my second attack is a concussive shot (which I keep on 8 for convenience) so that if the mob starts coming my way the owl can keep up.

I didn't want to change my play style much with a new pet so I figured I'd still need something fast with a focus on DPS. I think this pretty much limits me to cats, owls and now the ravager. To be honest, ever since I first saw the ravagers when I started my shammy I thought one would make a good pet for my hunter. My hunter is still level 36, so I took a wild guess that the easiest way to get a ravager was to head on over to Azuremyst Isle and find one of the level 10 Ravager Specimens that I'd fought with my Shaman.

The first step in going out to get a new combat pet for your hunter is to park the old one. Find a stable master. There's one in most cities. Since I was heading out to the northeast side of Azuremyst Isle, I stopped at the Exodar on my way. The stable master is just inside near the inn. If you haven't done it before, the stable masters work a lot like the banks in WoW. Just buy a slot then drag your current pet's picture in to the empty slot. After that you can't summon that pet again until you get it back from a stable master. The stable masters are all connected like the banks and auction houses so you don't have to go back to the same one that you initially left your pet with.
This stable master isn't the one in the Exodar but you can see that my new ravager is out and my old owl is in.

Training the ravager was pretty easy since my hunter's level was so much higher. If you're closer in level then I guess you should bring some bandages and a healing potion or maybe a defense potion. After he's trained, his loyalty level is very low and his training points are actually negative. At this moment the new pet is useless, actually it's even a liability since the low level seems to make him have a bigger aggro radius (though not as much as another player would at the same level).

To make the new ravager useful, it's got to be trained and levelled up. Until you can get some training points, it's not going to learn any new skills. To get training points it needs to get levels. To get levels it needs experience.

When I got my ravager, I tried sicking it on every other nearby ravager then once it got a shot in I'd polish off the mob. I killed a bunch of them before I checked the pet's XP bar and saw it hadn't budged. To see the pet's status, including level and experience, press shift-p. Mouse over the XP bar and you get numbers if they aren't already shown.

I went and found some mobs closer to my level and it seems that you have to kill mobs that get you XP to get XP for your pet. Here's the effect on my pet of my 36 hunter killing a level 31 tiger in STV.
Look at the levels and the pet XP before.

And here they are after.

The thing that really sucks here is that my hunter's talents are half beast-mastery and half marksmenship. That means that when a wimpy level 11 pet can't keep a level 31 mob's attention, they come for me. Then I have to use hand-to-hand and it takes a lot longer to make the kill. I tried killing a level 28 and my pet gained no XP for it. So it seems that it has to be within 5 levels, that is an enemy who's green to you. I have to look around to find a good spot with some level 31 mobs that hang out all alone.

In the mean time I decided to stock up on meat since that's the only thing that the ravager will eat. I'd been poking around the auction house but it's hard to find anything reasonable there so when someone mentioned there's a meat vendor in the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire I went straight out there and met my new buddy Toddrick the Butcher.

I read somewhere (probably Petopia) that pets gain the most happiness with food no more than 5 levels below them. So a couple stacks of Mutton Chops it is. Always keep your pet happy, besides doing 125% of normal damage in combat, they'll gain Loyalty Levels and Training Points faster.

I think the first ten levels or so should go quickly for my ravager once I find a nice area to grind on level 31 mobs, after that I'm not sure what to expect. I guess I still get some XP for those mobs as well so it's no loss.

And of course then I have to figure out what to name him - and this time I'll be careful not to pick a stupid name.