Pet

A pet is any creature that a player can summon or tame, like companions and mounts.

• Combat pets are companions that a player can partially control to aid them in battle. The classes most associated with combat pets are the warlock and hunter, although other classes (mage, druid, shaman, priest, and death knight) can gain access to them.
• Guardian pets are creatures that can be summoned, but cannot be controlled. They react as combat pets do when set to Aggressive and Follow.
• Companions (also called small pets, non-combat pets, follow pets, or vanity pets) are lesser creatures that only provide aesthetic appeal and do not directly affect combat.
• Mounts are usually creature which are rideable.

You may have one of each of these kinds summoned at the same time. Engineers can have two guardian pets summoned at once, a [Gnomish Battle Chicken] and a dragonling.

Abilities

Main article: Pet Abilities

Combat pets have their own abilities. Once a pet is summoned, its action bar appears above the player's action bar. All combat pets share six commands; they are Attack, Follow, Stay, Aggressive, Defensive, and Passive.

See also: Pet commands

Each pet can have a maximum of four unique abilities. These abilities are bought at class trainers, found with trained beasts, or taught by using Grimoires.

Aggro

All pets, with the exception of non-combat pets, will set their owner in combat when they pull aggro. However, if the owner can break combat through effects like [Feign Death] or Flask of Petrification, they will remain out of combat until either they or their pet take another aggressive action. This is true even if the owner mounts, which will dismiss the pet and send any attacking mobs into Evade.

Pet classes

World of Warcraft provides two primary pet classes; the hunter and warlock. In the Burning Crusade, other classes can summon pets. Mages can summon water elementals, priests can summon shadowfiends, shamans can create fire elementals and earth elementals by summoning totems, and druids can summon treants.

Hunter

Main article: Hunter pet

Hunters must tame wild beasts so that they can become their pets.

The hunter's pet is his or her constant companion as he or she travels through Azeroth. The pet usually acts as a tank when the hunter solos, allowing the hunter to maintain the range hunters require to do their best in battle.

(See also, Hunter pets recent changes)

Warlock

Main article: Minion

The warlock can learn spells to summon minions to his command (see Warlock Spells).

Warlocks have the ability to summon or enslave demons under their control.

Warlocks gain the ability to summon an Imp demon early in the game through a quest. Imps are not proficient at melee combat (due to the fact that they are completely incapable of performing a melee attack), and are mainly useful for assisting your party from a range. You can buy grimoires from demon trainers in some cities to teach the Imp new spells and ranks at different levels.

The Warlock can gain the ability to summon other demons as pets through quests. Each pet quest has a level limit on it — players may not attempt the quest until they have reached the required level. The voidwalker quest is received at level 10. The succubus quest begins at 20, felhunter at 30, infernal at 50, and doomguard at 60. The felguard becomes available with the appropriate 41-point Demonology talent.

Mind Control

While not strictly pets, humanoids may be controlled to act like pets by players or creatures via [Mind Control] or the  [Gnomish Mind Control Cap]. While controlling, the player will gain a pet action bar, allowing him/her to command the humanoid.

Mind Control on players in PvP only lasts for 10 seconds and the priest will not get a pet actionbar either.

There are other mind control-like effects:

• The [Gnomish Universal Remote] allows an engineer to control a mechanical creature.
• You possess a Steam Tonk created by a  [Steam Tonk Controller] (or the steam tonk control stands at the Darkmoon Faire).
• certain quests introduced with Burning Crusade have you possess creatures. Some examples: Teleport This!, Teron Gorefiend, I am..., The Fel and the Furious

Guardians

Main article: Guardian pet

Certain items can temporarily summon a pet that will fight for you until it dies or its time limit expires. Some guardian pets are trinkets; these are usually reusable but limited by a cooldown time. A couple of guardian pets are offhand items, (e.g.  [Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire] and  [Book of the Dead]). One is a sword,  [Dragon's Call], which summons Emerald Dragon Whelps. Others are usable from your inventory but will either be consumable or have a limited number of uses. Guardian pets can be acquired in the following ways:

• Given as a quest reward for certain quest lines (for example, the Are We There, Yeti quest sequence from Umi Rumplesnicker in Everlook rewards you with  [Mechanical Yeti]).
• Reputation reward, e.g. the  [Defender of the Timbermaw] trinket that summons a Timbermaw Ancestor requires Exalted reputation with Timbermaw Hold.
• Constructed by an Engineering schematic (e.g. the  [Gnomish Battle Chicken] or  [Arcanite Dragonling]) or Jewelcrafting recipe (e.g. Felsteel Boar or Truesilver Boar).
• Random area drops (e.g. the  [Glowing Cat Figurine] that drops in Darkshore).

Unlike Hunter and Warlock pets, there is no way to control a guardian pet other than by summoning it and/or waiting until it dies or its time expires. The pet will defend its owner, attacking whatever its owner attacks or whatever attacks the owner, which can lead to its attacking unintended targets before the party is ready for them. Caution is necessary before using such a pet in an instance. Use one only in confined spaces or areas where all but a few enemies have been killed, or just don't use it.

Companions

Main article: Companion

Companions are sometimes called small pets, minipets, player pets, trophy pets, or "vanity pets to distinguish these pets from the pets in the game that can directly help characters in some way (usually by attacking). Companions generally do not fight or respond to commands and are summoned (or dismissed) by right-clicking on an associated item (pet-carrier, collar, stone, etc.). Wrath of the Lich King will introduce  [Pet Supplies] vendors (such as Breanni in Dalaran) that sell Fetch Balls and Rope Pet Leashes.

Small pets can be acquired in the following ways:

• Given as a quest reward for owners of the Collector's Edition of World of Warcraft (Panda Cub, Mini-Diablo, or Zergling).
• Bought from vendors (owls, housecats, etc.).
• Constructed by an Engineering skill recipe (mechanical squirrels).
• Sometimes (usually rarely) found on the corpses of killed monsters (parrots sometimes drop from mobs in the Deadmines).
• Obtained through (often highly obscure) quests (i.e. Chickens).

For a more complete list of vanity pets, see Category:Companions.

Rare pets

Rare pets are pets that are: Hard to find, hard to tame, have long respawn times, and/or are just really rare. These type of pets can be worth quite a lot or just look cool.

External links

Hunter

Petopia A picture guide to hunter companions

goodintentionsguild.info Hunter Pet Abilities from the Good Intentions guild

wowhunterpets.info WoW Hunter Pets - A Visual Guide to WoW Hunter Pets

maniasarcania.com Hunter pets in the World of Warcraft blog

Vanity

World of Warcraft Community Site Small pets

WarcraftPets.com Database of Warcraft Minipets & Companions

wowvanitypets.info WoW Vanity Pets – A visual guide to vanity pets

blizzardguides.com WoW Vanity Pet Guide – Nice guide for non-combat vanity pets