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Happiness

Happiness is a rating for a Hunter's pet that increases or decreases the pet's damage based on how well fed they are.

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Comment by kurji

A Hunter's pet has a happiness rating, also sometimes known as mood. A happy pet will deal more damage. An unhappy pet will deal less damage. Keeping your pet happy also increases their loyalty, which makes it less likely for them to run away.

Keeping your pet happy is something a Hunter should always keep in mind.

Happiness affects only Hunters' pets. Warlock pets are unaffected.

Loyalty

Loyalty is a property of a Hunter pet. It determined if the pet would stay with you or run off. Loyalty gain or loss is determined by the pet's Happiness. Raising the loyalty level would be your first concern after taming a new pet.

The pet's loyalty is shown in the Pet tab of the Character Info window.

When you first tame a pet, its Loyalty index is at the lowest level. If you immediately fed it, this would raise happiness which, in time, would help to raise the pet's loyalty index. The player had to keep in mind that loyalty was directly tied to happiness. You could not neglect one without the other trait suffering.

There are several stages of Loyalty:

Rebellious (Rank 1)
During this stage, your pet's happiness fluctuates a great deal. If the pet or yourself are constantly dying, or if you dismiss the pet too often, he could begin to become very hard to handle and might leave you.
Unruly (Rank 2)
You've begun to show the pet who the Alpha is but you still haven't totally convinced him. You need to keep feeding and treating the pet well.
Submissive (Rank 3)
You've won the pet over to some degree and it is ready to work harder at becoming your faithful companion. Feeding becomes a little less strenuous at this point, requiring less food to keep the pet happy.
Dependable (Rank 4)
That's it, you are the boss unless you mess up by letting the food bowl stay empty too long. The pet has fully accepted you as its master and things are good. Your pet requires less food to remain happy.
Faithful (Rank 5)
It would be extremely hard at this point to run the pet off except by a concerted plan of neglect and abuse.
Best Friend (Rank 6)
Ahhh, isn't he cute? Your pet is now a furry rug at your feet when you settle down in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine and a good book. At this loyalty level your pet requires the least food to remain happy.

At this stage of the pet keeping game, you would really have to work hard to get rid of your pet. Only by letting its happiness rating fall to unacceptable levels and remain there for an extended amount of time could you undo all the trust and faith your pet now has in you.

More about Loyalty: wowwiki-archive

Happiness levels

The happiness of a pet is shown beside the pet's portrait and in his pet paper doll as a small smiley face icon. This icon shows the states of happiness your pet goes through:

Happy (Green big smiley face)
Your pet is perfectly happy with you and the world. In this state, your pet will do 125% of its normal damage to the mob during a fight.
Content (Yellow smiley face)
Your pet is contented but not really happy. It's worth feeding your pet at this stage to get it back to the Happy state above. Your pet will deal 100% of its damage at this stage.
Unhappy (Red frowning face)
Your pet is unhappy and will only do 75% damage during fights.

Each level spans about 350 happiness points. So if your pet just dropped from Happy to Content, it will require food for 350 happiness to get it to maximum happiness.

Gaining happiness

The most basic way to increase the happiness of your pet is by feeding it. One feeding will give the pet 10 bites of food, distributed over 20 seconds. Depending on the quality of the food, each bite will give 8, 17 or 35 happiness, for a total of 80, 170 or 350 per feeding. You can follow the gain in happiness in the combat log. If your pet attacks or is attacked during the feed period, the feeding is interrupted.

A pet cannot fight and gain happiness via because it stops eating when entering combat and won't eat while in combat.

Losing Happiness

Things that make a pet lose happiness are:

Just standing around
Your pet will lose happiness at a steady rate over time. The loss has been reported to be about 50 happiness in 6 minutes.
Dismiss Pet
This action makes the pet lose 50 happiness.
Dying
It has been reported that the death of a pet causes a loss of 350 happiness.
Abandon
When you go out of range of your pet (either while it is in combat or you made it Stay) and it disappears, it loses 10 happiness. Hunters can use this rather than Dismiss Pet as it loses less happiness.
Not helping
There are suggestions that letting a pet kill a mob on its own while not helping will cause the pet to lose happiness.

Mounting up will make your pet disappear, but it will not make it lose any happiness. The pet does not lose happiness over time while the Hunter is mounted.

Comment by FLambda

Here's the requirements to rank up to the next loyalty level:

To get to rank ...	XP Gain required	Time required
Rank 2 (Unruly)	5% of hunter's xp at current level	0 minutes
Rank 3 (Submissive)	5% of hunter's xp at current level	30 minutes
Rank 4 (Dependable)	5% of hunter's xp at current level	45 minutes
Rank 5 (Faithful)	5% of hunter's xp at current level	60 minutes
Rank 6 (Best Friend)	5% of hunter's xp at current level	90 minutes

Happiness

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