pet tanks for 5-boxing?

[Klamor]

having a prot warrior as my main, i'm always the first one to yell at the hunters for saying that their pet could tank....
but, since i started to think about multiboxing hunters, i've been wondering if it's possible

4 NE hunters
1 NE Priest

1st hunter - Boar (Tank)
2nd hunter - Bear (Off-Tank)
3rd hunter - Cat/Wolf (DPS)
4th hunter - Cat/Wolf (DPS)
Priest - Healer

playing on my 43 hunter, my boar can tank a mob my level and keep it off at least three people....
an added bear might just be enough to keep aggro off the hunters and plus, I usually wait at least 4-5 seconds after my pet starts to attack to make sure the mob isn't goin' anywhere

also the races don't have to be night elves, that was just the first class that came to my mind since my hunter is a night elf...
i'm really looking for survivability here, i'm pretty sure that a target can only have one sting shot or w/e on it at a time so the added three won't make a difference, but with that much DPS on a target, it's gonna go down quick, especially if well-geared
the main problem is that after a certain point, it might not work too well in instances because they will be too much damage for the pets....

has anybody tried anything like this? successfully?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Oh, it works fine until you start gearing up with end-game loot and/or taking on heroics. Without the additional threat bonuses and damage mitigation, it falls apart pretty quickly as soon as you get into the 69+ instances.

Now, that's been my experience with full-on demonology spec voidwalkers through 70 and with hunter pets up through the low 60s. Also, this will all change once the pet stuff in WotLK goes live. Could be pretty neat. Then again, they could break the shit out of hunter pets just as badly as they did for the 2 years before patch 2.0. :P

[Klamor]

lol, if i hit 70 i wouldn't even know what to do..... i would just be proud of myself for actually hitting 70 :)

my highest is only like 64 rofl

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Well, if you're pretty casual and don't much care about heroics, then they should do just fine for ya. :P

[Stealthy]

My hunter team is at 61 and I cleared Ramps at 60 with only the quest gear from Hellfire and Zanga with no real problems. For PvE pets I went all owls for a few reasons:
1. Screech is an AOE debuff that generates threat against all mobs in melee range. It generates enough threat to hold against mend pet (very important for pet tanks).
2. The screech debuff lowers the AP of attacking mobs - which means they do less damage. I.e. your pets last longer.
3. Screech has no cooldown, so its a focus dump - i.e. can be cast as soon as your pet has enough focus. More screeches = more multi mob agro.

The reason you want multiple owls is that if you only have one, any mobs besides the one your pets are attacking, will be beating on your owl. Having multiple owls spreads the damage around which means your pets are up for longer.

Cheers,
S.

[Klamor]

so how many owls do you think i will need with 4 hunters and a priest?

[Kyudo]

My thinking is along the same lines as Fur.

My alt team is 4 hunters and a priest, for Wrath I'm going for owl, gorilla, wolf and ravager.

For Wrath, http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?pets from what I've seen of pet talents I'm thinking: Sporebat (new talent: Dusts nearby enemies with spores causing 20 Nature damage every 3 sec sec for 9 sec and reducing armor by 700.), Gorilla, Carrion Bird, Wolf. This should give the most buffs/debuffs for the whole group. Bears with the swipe ability could also make good tanks though, and turtles will probably be the ultimate single target tank.

[-silencer-]

I don't think the Owl AoE debuff stacks, so just one will do ya. (I could be wrong.. never actually tested it. My original dwarf hunter had an owl for over a year... "Peckerhead" lol )
I believe the debuff does stack if you use a different rank on each pet..

[Ticks]

I currently have a 4x hunter and 1 shaman team. I chose Shaman because I have a 70 priest that I can hook up with later but more than likely, I'll stick with the Shaman as the healer for all the buffs he gives the hunters and pets with totems. While the priest only has the fort buff that is of any real value.

My guys are level 52 and I've yet to run into anything that gave us a problem. While in Un'Goro, I've killed every Elite Devilsaur I came across and they were 5 or 6 levels above my team. For now I'm just using cats. I spec them with full natural armor and great stamina. I also use dash to make the grinding a little quicker.

My entire decision to go with this team was based on early WotLK information I gathered from various resources. With the new talent trees for pets and scaling with hunter gear, I am hoping 4 pet tanks will do the trick. If not, I guess I'm gonna have to roll a pally.

[Stealthy]

The reason you want multiple owls is that if you only have one, any mobs besides the one your pets are attacking, will be beating on your owl. Having multiple owls spreads the damage around which means your pets are up for longer.

Quoting my own post for emphasis. :D

Lets say your doing an instance and come up to a group of 4 mobs. If you only have one owl - you send your pets in to attack one mob, the other three mobs start beating on your owl becuase screech is generating threat against them. Three elite mobs beating on one pet pretty soon = dead pet. When your owl dies, more than likely they will target your hunters (becuase of the agro generated by mend pet).

Same scenario but with 4 owls instead - all 4 owls are generating threat agains all attacking mobs. In practice this usually results in the other three mobs beating on two, three or 4 of your owls. Worst case - one pet dies, the mobs immediately attack another owl (becuase all owls should be highest on its threat table). This is better than having your hunters targeted when the pet dies.

You can probably get away with less owls, but you would want to have at least 2 IMO.

Cheers,
S.

[Stealthy]

I don't think the Owl AoE debuff stacks, so just one will do ya. (I could be wrong.. never actually tested it. My original dwarf hunter had an owl for over a year... "Peckerhead" lol )

Bears have been stated to get swipe in WotLK, which will hit three targets. That will go a long way to hold aggro on additional mobs. But this won't help you now.... :(
Gorillas have an AoE thunderstomp ability, which would help as well (lowers attack speed). They only eat fruit though (pain to feed).
Wolves have the AoE AP buff, which means more DPS for all pets, which means more aggro.
Scorpids get poison DoT debuff, which stacks. Again, goes a long way to holding aggro.

If you're BM spec'd, all pets do considerable damage, so I'd focus more on abilities than DPS output. Plus the serpent swiftness talent in the BM gives a nice overall damage increase to both hunter and pet.

Now with that said, I've had a lot of success with 5x cats. I just send them all in, and tab target + pet attack spam all mobs in the group, so when one dies, they automatically pick up the next instead of returning to the parent hunter. Drop a mend pet as they run in, so you don't get healing aggro. ;)

Having a healer in the group would make things insanely easy... I do it the hard way without a healer (even though its not really hard).

So if I was motivated to build a PvE "pet team", I'd probably get:

Owl
Wolf
Gorilla
Then two DPS pets. (for 5 huntards)

FYI - Owls are losing the aoe debuff in WotLK. The ability is going to carrion birds. Owls are getting a disarm ability.
Screech doesn't stack - thats true. Unfortunately different ranks don't stack anymore either (i have tested this). However the screech debuff still generates threat against all mobs within melee range each time it's cast - and this is what makes it so valueable.

For WotLK - IMO bears will probably be the boxers choice of tank. Swipe only has a 10 sec cooldown and damages 3 enemies. Thunderstomp (Gorillas) has a 1 minute cooldown - good for an opener, and thats about it. Furious howl (Wolves) gets a range increase (to 20 yards, up from 15) - which is good, but not nearly enough IMO. Currently in practice your toons will only see the benefit from Furious Howl when you first send your pets in. After that, most likely your toons will be outside of the 15 or 20 yard range and won't get the buff (your pets however will).

However that being said, I think having a mix of pets (2 or 3 tank pets and 2 others) will be the best bet.

Cheers,
S.