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“Hunters are deadly marksmen, capable of bringing their
enemies down from a distance with bows or rifles. Skilled survivalists,
they can track enemies or lay traps to damage and entrap their foes.
Hunters also possess a primal connection to the beasts of Azeroth,
capable of taming and training them to keep as loyal guardians. Wearing
light to medium armor, hunters can also dual wield weapons in combat,
fighting beside their pets in battle,.” so writes Blizzard
about  the Hunter class.



While we all know hunters are ranged DPS, masters of long distance
pulling, and can lay helpful traps, one element really stands out. One
element in my opinion really defines the Hunter: the Hunter’s
pet. I believe the pet is more essential to the Hunter than to any
Warlock, Shaman, or Mage. In my eyes the Hunter pet is not just a pet,
but part of the Hunter him/herself.



Without his pet a Hunter is no longer truly a Hunter, and without the
Hunter the pet is of course, just another random mob. I am willing to
guess that none of us have ever heard a Hunter exclaim that they have
no pet, nor do they desire one. The pet is part and parcel to the
Hunter class the way stealth is to Rogues.



When choosing a pet, personal preference understandably plays a role in
the choosing. However, most Hunters will find that in a raid setting
there will be certain pets that tend to do more DPS, or benefit the
raid greatly. Of course, there will be debates about which pet is the
best, and heated disagreements as well.



The most common debate I have seen over pets is for Survival Hunters
(probably because Survival is the most common raiding spec). The pets
in question, are (insert Mortal Kombat voice yelling
“FIGHT!” here) the Wolf, and the Wasp. Both are
formidable foes, and both have supporters that claim each is the more
raid worthy pet, but which should you really be bringing to a raid?



First let’s take a look at what each of these pets can do to
gain a better understanding of why they may each be useful in a raid
setting.



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The Wasp is a Ferocity pet whose special ability is Sting. Sting does
nature damage, and also decreases the armor of the target by 5% for 20
seconds. Sting is on a 6 second cool down and the Wasp must be in melee
range to use Sting. Sting does not stack with Faerie Fire, or Curse of
Recklessness.



You can clearly see why this pet would be an asset to a raid, 5%
decreased armor on any boss would be a more than decent DPS boost. Also
since Sting lasts for 20 seconds, and the cool down on the ability is
only 6 seconds, unless your pet is dead, or chasing the boss, this
ability should be up nearly all the time. The one downfall of this
ability is of course that it does not stack with Faerie Fire or Curse
of Recklessness, however if you have no Druid available, or the Druid
in your raid fails to place Faerie Fire on the boss, then this ability
is golden. The same applies to the Warlock curse.



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The Wolf is also a Ferocity pet, whose special ability is Furious Howl.
This ability increases the melee and ranged attack power for the wolf
and it’s master for 20 seconds. This ability is 
instant cast, has a 40 second cool down and the wolf does not need to
be in melee range to use the ability.



Once again the usefulness of this special ability is obvious. Who is
going to turn down an increase in attack power for both Hunter and pet?
However like the Wasp, the Wolf’s special ability does not
stack with any other attack power buff that can be given by other
classes. As before, if you have none of those classes available or
those classes are not giving you the attack power buff  the
wolf will make itself more than useful.



Now that we have determined what special abilities each pet has, how
they both can be useful, and how they can both be warranted useless, I
wanted to try for myself if either of these pets could honestly be
called better than the other. In order to do this over a course of
several weeks, I saved my combat logs from various Ulduar raids, using
a different pet (the Wasp, or Wolf) each week with roughly the same
group of players. I then uploaded these logs to WWS and was able to
study my findings.



I decided to focus on two raids, one from 7-7 and the other from 6-25,
in both of which we killed Kologarn. I thought he would be the most
ideal boss because the let’s face it, the bosses preceding
him are terrabad for pets. Looking at these raids I found what may be
rather shocking results.



On the href="http://wowwebstats.com/rwalaqppoyxfe?s=50501-62969"
target="_blank">6-25 raid
I had my trusty (and very ugly according to my loving wife) Wasp out,
Sting stayed up roughly 75% of the fight. If you then pull up both
raids and compare the numbers side by side it seems that with the Wasp
the melee, myself, and the tanks, all did more DPS as I somewhat
expected.



While on the href="http://wowwebstats.com/e11yeyx1eob3o?s=47368-59519"
target="_blank">7-7 raid
with my Wolf out, Howl only managed to be active 51% of the time.
Looking at the individual DPS of each player you can clearly see the
drop in DPS except my own. I gained 352 DPS on the fight thanks to the
Wolf. Doing some quick math the raid lost roughly 969 DPS, minus my
gain of 352, making the loss of DPS 617 overall, or an average of 205
DPS per person.



I’m going to say it, I just don’t find 205 DPS per
person a big loss. Surprisingly enough looking at the overall raid
damage for the night you can see that with the Wolf out, the overall
raid DPS is higher at 18,166, compared to the Wasp raids at 17,941.
Still only leaving a difference of 225 overall DPS.



[protip]To track your in game DPS
you can download a mod such as Recount[/protip]

So where is the shocking part you may be asking? Well the shocking part
is that it doesn’t really matter which pet you choose to tame
and bring to a raid. The arguments and debates were all in vain. Wasps
and Wolves rejoice and celebrate, possibly resulting in the creation of
freakish Waspish Wolf babies.



My suggestion to all those who still are concerned over which to bring
to a raid is this: tame both, look at your raid set up, and 
consider what buffs you will be getting. If you have no Faerie Fire, or
have a ton of melee, bring your Wasp. If you are lacking in melee, and
will not be receiving any attack power buffs, have your Wolf tag along.
Everyone goes home happy, and you have two very cool useful pets.



Care to share your personal findings with me? Hate both the Wolf and
the Wasp? Would you like to discuss the finer points of Wasp/Wolf
babies? Join us on our forums!