Post by oddbrown
For nearly all pets
Dash or it's equivalent (
Dive for birds and
Charge for boars/ravagers) is a must.
Cats can also teach
Prowl (a handy little skill) and
Cower (more useful for endgame BM hunters who don't want their pet to get nuked in raids).
As a rule
Claw is more focus efficient than
Bite (I'm not 100% on this as I have only ever really used cats and scorpids for any long period of time).
Hope this gives you a slightly better insight. Aside from this check out the pet spells available and the new pet talent calculator to get a full understanding of what is out there.
Also be aware, some pets have "caster" (i.e. weak in mele) stats that make them less than ideal for most hunters.
There are plenty of pet info sites around (can't remember the addresses of any off the top of my head) so have a check before you camp out for that special elite with the unusual look you have always wanted, only to discover it gets 2 shotted by a plainstrider...
Post by Kroeber
I fix'd some of the stuff in oddbrown's post, my edits are bold:
Dash/Dive are great 'must-have' time-savers since your pet will be on the target faster. :) Boars can get away with just their unique (for the time being) family ability, Charge, which lets them quickly close that distance gap.
Cats can also learn Prowl which I find to mostly useless for PvE leveling. Time spent prowling to the target doesn't seem worth the damage boost, from my experience.
ALL pets can learn Cower, but there is hardly ever anytime while leveling that you will need your pet to lose some threat. Even at the end-game, I can't justify one of my pet's precious four ability slots with Cower.
As a rule Claw is more focus efficient than Bite (I'm not 100% on this as I have only ever really used cats and scorpids for any long period of time).Claw and Bite are both great abilities to have on one pet. Claw, while it does less DPS per Focus than Bite (2.6 vs. 3.4 @ Rank 9), has no cooldown and can be spammed, making it a "Focus dump" to squeeze the most of out that quickly-regenerating Focus pool. Especially if you have Go For The Throat and Bestial Discipline. Bite is the opposite, more damage per Focus BUT has a noticeable cooldown. Using both abilities, your pet will Claw every chance it can until Bite is ready to be used again. Screech and Gore are also considered Focus dumps.Hope this gives you a slightly better insight. Aside from this check out the pet spells available and the new pet talent calculator to get a full understanding of what is out there.
Also be aware, some pets have "caster" (i.e. weak in mele) stats that make them less than ideal for most hunters.
There are plenty of pet info sites around (
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/index.php,
know it, love it) so have a check before you camp out for that special elite with the unusual look you have always wanted, only to discover it gets 2 shotted by a plainstrider...
For an easy comparison though, my pets always had Growl, Bite, Dash/Dive/Charge, Claw/Screech/Gore. It may just be my foggy memory but I thought we could only teach four abilities, which is why I am a little hard on Prowl, Cower, or the others when it comes to leveling. I can't see giving up Growl, Bite, a movement boost, or a Focus dump for something only slightly helpful.