The main reason is just responsibility to your fellow raiders. Players inadvertantly pulling aggro or pulling another group is bad enough. When a pet does it, you can expect massive amounts of grief. There are several places where defensive makes sense – XT and Thorim’s arena are two. But, I’ve left Thorim’s and gone to Freya and been tasked with MDing a group to the tank. Shot it, pet takes off becasue it was on defensive (from Thorim’s) and despite pulling it back quickly with a Cntrl-2, the pet still aggros a second group of trash. We’re good enough to survive the double pull now, but it still looks really bad.

Amen, sista! I see Warlocks and Hunters with pets on defensive now and cry a little inside What happened to straining your fingers with the ctrl-1-9 buttons!

This isn’t exactly on-topic for this particular post, so I sincerely apologize for that; but I wanted to jot this down anyway.

My computer went “kerblooey” literally the day before 3.1 hit, and only in the last week have I been able to get back up and running. I was able, during that time, to use the Internet at the local library, but the (understandable) time constraints that they place on Internet use prevented me from doing anything more than e-mailing and keeping tabs on a handful of characters in the Armory.

Needless to say, I’ve missed quite a lot. In addition to 3.1, we have 3.2, and all of the little Patches in between. This means that there is a LOT of stuff that I’ve missed, plus God knows what stuff I don’t know about yet at all. Plus, BlizzCon just so happens to be going on now, and with all the news about the next Expansion coming out, I have quite the backlog of stuff to catch up with, and I’m still racking my brain trying to figure out the best way to approach it all. Some of the more recent stuff I’ve been able to gather is mind-blowing to an extent, at least to me.

Compound that with the fact that my Guild pretty much disintegrated in the past four months (for reasons still a bit unclear to me), with people moving off in every which way, and some of my friendships dying along the way, it leaves this poor Hunter; still in the Naxx-10 mindset, feeling a bit lost and confused, in addition to the happiness of finally being “back in business”, as it were. And I haven’t actually logged back into the game yet!

But I digress. I just wanted to let you know that you’ve been one of my favorite WoW bloggers, and it’s great to see you still writing. I’ve done a little bit of blog surfing after coming back, and there have been some pretty big changes to the scene since I’ve been gone. Lassira’s exit from the spotlight, for example.

So, it’s good to be back, and good to see you still going strong. I look forward to eventually, hopefully, somehow catching up with all of the blogs I like. (Let alone the podcasts…) Rest assured that yours is right up on the top of the list, Pike.

I wish you all the best, and, since departures seem to be rather frequent these days, don’t you dare quit blogging right after I come back into the fold!

Will

Have fun in the 25 man run tomorrow!

I must say though, that while it would indeed be a very bad thing, I can’t recall ever having my pet (on def., not agro) aggroing a mob I wasn’t already in combat with.

Reminds me of a month or so back when I was playing a super-lowbie alt mage (~14), and teamed up with a hunter who would NOT take his pet off aggressive. Was driving me nuts and nearly got me killed a couple times. We finished up the one quest we were doing and I moved on.

If my pet runs up to attack something that I’m trying to pull into a specific position, to trap or whatnot, it’s a Very Bad Thing.

If a raid boss looks at my pet funny and my pet runs off to attack it, it’s a Very Bad Thing. Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

I want my pet doing what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it, and no sooner and no later. A hunter is a master of time and space, that includes being able to fight a mob where I want to fight it. My pet running up to attack it while I’m trying to pull it would nullify that.

Besides which, I have to use Hunter’s Mark anyway, and you can send your pet in to attack on the same cooldown, so there’s really no reason not to do it, in my opinion. My pet not attacking something is a good reminder that I don’t have Hunter’s Mark up on said mob yet.

You do have to be very aware of your pet to pull it off, or you’ll lose DPS, but it’s doable if you’re good, and attentive.

To be honest I think I am one of the few holdouts of the Passive School… nobody else really does it anymore =P

I’m just curious what exactly is so bad about keeping your pet on defensive instead of passive. Passive requires several extra actions, and I can’t ever recall a fight in which a pet on defensive has caused a problem. Not solo, 5-mans, raids, etc. Now, I haven’t done much raiding to be sure, but Ive run quite a few heroics, and again it hasn’t been a problem.

I open up on a mob, the pet goes and attacks. When the mob is dead it switches to another in the same combat. I suppose there’s some possibility of it pulling aggro or something, but in practice it doesn’t seem to happen. The last mob dies, he comes trotting back to me.

So, AotH community, I’d like to ask what advantages passive has for you.

Thanks!

@ WB - Aww, what a great compliment, thanks!

@ All the people giving me tips on XT's heart. Hmm. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks a bunch!

@ Lupius - Yes, it would appear that because I keep my pet on Passive, he doesn't attack the heart. >.> I’ll put him on Defensive for that fight next time.

Last time I was BM for XT hard mode, my pet totally did 6k dps to the heart all by himself.