🐺 Pet Families & Abilities

Reference information for Hunter pet family differences and notable abilities in WoW Classic.

For happiness, loyalty, focus, Training Points, autocast priority, and pet attack formulas, see Pet Fundamentals.

For complete pet family listings, tame locations, ability ranks, and individual pet details, see Petopia Classic.

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🧬 Pet Family Differences

Pet families can differ in:

• Damage modifier
• Health modifier
• Armor modifier
• Available abilities
• Diet

Individual pets can also have different base attack speeds, even within the same family.

Faster attack speed means more frequent white attacks but does not inherently increase the pet's base DPS.

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⚔️ Notable Family Modifiers

Family	Damage	Health	Armor	Notable Ability
Cat	1.10	0.98	1.00	Claw / Prowl
Wind Serpent	1.07	1.00	1.00	Lightning Breath
Scorpid	0.94	1.00	1.10	Scorpid Poison

These modifiers are applied as part of pet damage calculations.

See Pet Attack Formulas for the full pet attack formulas.

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🐾 Attack Speed

Pet attack speed controls how frequently normal white attacks occur.

Attack speed can matter for:

• Frenzy uptime
• Spell pushback
• PvP pressure
• Frequency of melee attacks

Some individual pets have unusually fast or slow attack speeds compared to others in the same family.

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📚 Learning Pet Abilities

Pet abilities are learned in two ways.

Wild Pet Abilities

Many active abilities must first be learned by taming a beast that already knows the desired rank.

Examples include:

• Bite
• Claw
• Dash / Dive
• Prowl
• Screech
• Lightning Breath
• Scorpid Poison
• Furious Howl

Once learned, the ability can be taught to another compatible pet using Training Points.

Pet Trainer Abilities

Pet Trainers teach abilities such as:

• Growl
• Great Stamina
• Natural Armor
• Resistances

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🦷 Bite

Bite is a direct-damage yellow attack.

• Focus: 35
• Cooldown: 10 seconds
• Max Rank: Bite 8

Unlike Claw, Bite cannot be used continuously whenever Focus is available because of its cooldown.

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🐾 Claw

Claw is a direct-damage yellow attack.

• Cooldown: None
• Max Rank: Claw 8

Because it has no cooldown, Claw can act as a frequent Focus dump.

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⚡ Lightning Breath

Deals instant Nature damage at range.

• Focus: 50
• Cooldown: None
• Max Rank: Lightning Breath 6

Because it deals Nature damage, it is not reduced by armor.

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📣 Screech

Deals damage and reduces the melee Attack Power of nearby enemies.

• Focus: 20
• Cooldown: None
• Debuff Duration: 4 seconds
• Max Rank: Screech 4
• Rank 4 AP Reduction: 100

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🦂 Scorpid Poison

Deals Nature damage over time.

• Focus: 30
• Cooldown: 4 seconds
• Duration: 10 seconds
• Max Rank: Scorpid Poison 4
• Maximum Stacks: 5

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🐺 Furious Howl

Temporarily increases damage for the wolf and nearby party members.

• Focus: 60
• Cooldown: 10 seconds
• Buff Duration: 10 seconds
• Max Rank: Furious Howl 4

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🐢 Shell Shield

Reduces damage taken by the pet.

• Focus: 10
• Cooldown: 3 minutes
• Duration: 12 seconds
• Damage Reduction: 50%

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🦍 Thunderstomp

Deals damage to nearby enemies.

• Focus: 60
• Cooldown: 1 minute
• Max Rank: Thunderstomp 3

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🏃 Dash & Dive

Dash and Dive increase pet movement speed.

• Focus: 20
• Cooldown: 30 seconds
• Duration: 15 seconds

Rank	Movement Speed
1	+40%
2	+60%
3	+80%

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🥩 Diet

Pet families have different food types they can eat.

Diet primarily matters for maintaining pet happiness.

See Pet Fundamentals for feeding and happiness mechanics.

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📋 Quick Reference

Ability	Cooldown	Notes
Bite	10 sec	Direct damage
Claw	None	Frequent Focus dump
Lightning Breath	None	Ranged Nature damage
Screech	None	Damage + melee AP reduction
Scorpid Poison	4 sec	Stacking Nature DoT
Furious Howl	10 sec	Party damage buff
Shell Shield	3 min	Defensive cooldown
Thunderstomp	1 min	AoE damage
Dash / Dive	30 sec	Movement speed increase