Hobbies And Interests
Levels
Unlike players, hunter pets gain talent points at a regular rate, earning an additional talent point every four levels. The first talent point is acquired at level 20; a level 85 pet will have earned its last talent at level 84 and have a total of 17 points available to spend. At the time of publication, the maximum level you can reach and, therefore, the maximum level hunter pets can reach is 85. The release of additional "World of Warcraft" expansions may increase the level cap and, therefore, increase the amount of talent points available to hunter pets.
Additional Talent Points
If you have selected beast mastery as the talent specialization for your hunter, you can earn an additional four talent points for each of your pets as soon as you reach level 69 by placing one of your talent points in the "Beast Mastery" talent. The additional talent points are granted to your pets immediately; they allow you to reach the powerful talents at the end of each pet's talent tree earlier and to improve your pet more than is possible for hunters who have selected a different talent specialization.
Pet Talent Trees
Unlike players, each hunter pet has a single talent tree, determined by the beast family to which the pet belongs. Pets that use the tenacity talent tree, such as turtles, beetles, boars or scorpids, are designed to serve as a tank for your hunter when you are questing alone, keeping enemies' attention while you kill them. Pets that use the ferocity talent tree, such as cats, wolves, raptors or hyenas, are designed to deal high damage to enemies and work better when another player is holding the enemies' attention, such as when you are participating in dungeon or raid groups. Pets that use the cunning talent tree, such as serpents, monkeys, spiders or birds of prey, are designed to be very versatile and can have both offensive and defensive abilities.
Important Pet Talents
Because of the limited amount of pet talent points available, you should ensure you first place talent points in the most useful talents for the role the pet will be fulfilling. When choosing where to spend talent points for a tenacity pet, for example, you should select talents that increase the pet's health, survivability and ability to hold the enemies' attention. While talents that increase a pet's damage also exist in the tenacity talent tree, you should only place talent points in them once you have already obtained all possible survival talents. Similarly, when choosing talent points for a ferocity pet, you should first select talents that directly increase the pet's damage and attack speed, and only increase the pet's survivability once you have obtained all possible damage talents.