Alright. I’m going to skip pet basics, since I assume that you’ve picked those up by now.

First, Petopia is a site that you should definately bookmark.

This will help you with everything you need to know about your pets.

Now, the top damage pets are Cats, Raptors and Ravagers. Ravagers are considered best because of the superior DPS from Gore, but Cats and Raptors are very close. Wind Serpents (non-casters) also put out mad amounts of damage. Any of these 4 are the best for raiding. Ravagers are #1, but don’t feel like you’re gimping youself with one of the other 3. (NOTE: You will want 30%+ crit if you want to use the wind serpent because their Focus Dump costs 50 focus, so you need Go for the Throat to proc as much as you can.)

I’m not going into tanking pets since you rarely need those in raids.

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Feeding:Keep the cost of feeding low by feeding it Level 55 food. It will give the same happiness/tick as Level 65 food, and it’s cheaper.Raiding:

1) Mend Your Pets

During AoE fights, try to keep Mend Pet up as much as you can. As a BM, if your pet dies, you lose a LOT of damage. Not just your pet’s damage, but things such as Ferocious Inspiration, Focus Fire, and The Beast Within will be unavailable.

2) Spec your pet for the fights.

Train your pet with the necessary active abilities. Bite, Gore, Claw, Dash, Lightening Breath etc. (Tip: if you choose a cat, grab Prowl. The little bit of burst damage when it comes out of Prowl is nice, but the stealth, especially with the odd pet-pathing issues introduced in 2.3, there is less of a chance of your pet accidently aggroing something by pathing too close to another mob)

Train your pet with these passive abilities:
Cobra Reflexes
Avoidance

These are big ones. Don’t pass them over. Ever.

With the points you have left, use them as such:
Resistance 1 (Based on the fight. Example: Void Reaver would need Arcane Resist)
Resistance 2 (Depends on if this is necessary. Many fights in SSC require both Frost and Nature)
Great Stamina (Your pet shouldn’t be taking much physical damage, so you should focus on Stamina for magical AoE)
Natural Armor (Use this to eat up any left over TP. Useful for mobs with abilities like Cleave. You can also use these points for a 3rd resistance if you want.)

3) Pet management:

Keep Mend Pet up.

Use the attack/passive macro to pull it out of AoE as much as possible, or if its health get very low and you need to give it a chance to heal up.

Keep your pet happy to get the buff to damage. Keep it’s smiley face green, not yellow.

4) Wind Serpent

If you use a windserpent, take Lightening Breath off auto cast and insert into you SS/AS macro with the following line:

/castrandom [target=pettarget] Lightening Breath

5) Pet Buffs

Very few are available to your pet.

Sporeling Snack will increase Stamina.

Kibler’s Bits will increase Strength. (This should be your preferred buff because Strength = DPS.)

Scrolls!!!! Scrolls are something that get passed over because people don’t realize that it casts on your target, not yourself. So grab some Scrolls of Strength V (or Stamina V) and use them to give your pet and extra bang.

This is what you can provide. Others can buff your pet too:

Paladins - Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids - Gift of the Wild
Priests - Prayer of Fortitude

That’s all you really need to know about pets and raiding.

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Feel free to drop a comment below, or send an email to brigwyn@brigwyn.com with any of your comments, suggestions, etc. And we’ll make sure to get them addressed.