Hunter Pet Damage Tests

So, while leveling towards 70 on my hunter, and contemplating switching my pet, i was running into the same problem many hunters do. Which pet to choose..

I have had my rare bugged spawn white windserpent ARASHETHIS since level 49, and he has always been my pride and joy (was hell to capture, but thats another blog)

So, one day i get bored (or motivated, whichever you prefer) and i went and tamed two new pets: a lvl 60 plagueboar, and a lvl 60 frostsaber. I trained them both with Cobra Reflexes, the boar with Gore8, the cat with Claw8, and i took them to my favorite DPS testing grounds, SFK...

(For those of you who don't know, there is a Horde quest mob inside sfk, in the first big courtroom, who is on the ground dead. As an Ally, you can endlessly beat on him, he will sometimes feign death, but will never actually die. So basically you can beat on him for as long as you want. This is a great place to test pet damage.)

Now, first i let the boar beat on the testmob for 10minutes, then i ran back to Southshore, grabbed my cat, and let the cat beat on him for 10minutes (the instance didnt reset, so the mob stayed the same lvl), after that, i threw Growl7 on auto, and let the cat beat on him again for 10minutes, and after that, i ran back to Southshore, grabbed my lvl 63windserpent, with cobrareflexes, and lightning breath5, and let him beat on good ole deathguard vincent for 10 minutes.




Here are the independent DMGMeter results:


BOAR (Gore on auto)
Damage Done = 113831 (100.0%) #1
[Melee] = 88652 (77.9%) 158/616 25.6% 143.9 Avg
Gore = 25179 (22.1%) 106/243 43.6% 103.6 Avg

CAT (Claw on auto)
Damage Done = 130976 (100.0%) #1
[Melee] = 106192 (81.1%) 146/615 23.7% 172.7 Avg
Claw = 24784 (18.9%) 91/245 37.1% 101.2 Avg

CAT (Claw and Growl on auto)
Damage Done = 128247 (100.0%) #1
[Melee] = 108809 (84.8%) 172/612 28.1% 177.8 Avg
Claw = 19438 (15.2%) 73/184 39.7% 105.6 Avg

WINDSERPENT (Lightning Breath on auto)
Damage Done = 110840 (100.0%) #1
[Melee] = 93822 (84.6%) 118/516 22.9% 181.8 Avg
Lightning Breath = 17018 (15.4%) 6/118 5.1% 144.2 Avg



If you breakdown these results, you get a chart that looks like this:

Ignore the & % of total, i removed that statistic cause it was irrelevant




Anyways, if you look at straight melee dmg, the cat (615attacks 23.7%crit) out performs the boar (616attacks 25.6%crit) by nearly 30dps, or 16.5%

If you look at claw (245attacks 31.7%crit) vs gore (243attacks 43.6%crit), they come out with nearly identical DPS ratings, only varying 1.5% in favor of gore





A couple points of interest:

-The crit% of straight melee hits varied within 5%, from 22.9 to 28.1, this will alter the straight melee dmg slightly (for example, in cat and cat with growl, these are tests in which meleedps should be unchanged, but due to the increased crit% the dps varied ~5%)

-The windserpent got off significantly less hits in 10minutes than its counterparts, around 16% less... this i believe to be caused by the following points:

-Windserpents stop in midflight (think during dash/dive) to cast their lightning breath, they also will fly away from the target while it is stunned or rooted, to cast LB, wasting time they could be beating on the mob in melee, and costing them DPS

-Lightningbreath is a spell, and possibly cannot trigger the increased swing speed from the beastmaster talent tree, while gore and claw, being melee attacks, can

-Also, lightning breath had a much lower crit rate(5%) than gore and claw(around 40%) This significantly reduces the dmg potential of the windserpent in comparison to the abilities of other pets.









So, after that drink from a fire hydrant's worth of information, what can you conclude?

Well, you can conclude and believe whatever you want...




What do i conclude?

As it stands, windserpents are a gimped pet, due to the mechanics of Lightningbreath

Cats outdamage boars in straight melee by over 15%, and gore does not help make up that gap, because, although it has a higher delve, their lowered dps and ap reduces its effectiveness to be on par with a cats claw

Ravagers are most likely the highest source of pet DPS in the game, because they will have the same dps and ap, meaning they will have the same white dmg, and a ravagers gore will outperform a cats claw