Survival Hunter: Hunting Companion and Pet Type

[Swol]

Hey all, I'm Swol, the theorycraft guy at Ask Mr. Robot.

Nakauri mentioned to me that some folks were wondering how much the various unique pet special abilities might affect survival DPS, since they proc Hunting Companion. I implemented a number of pets for people to try out in the AMR simulator.

TLDR: Pet type doesn't make a drastic difference, but, probably enough to warrant using a Carrion Bird, Riverbeast, or Scorpid when you don't need to bring a Nether Ray for your group. (This is assuming that the abilities will proc Hunting Companion on whatever boss/content you are doing. I'm not 100% sure that they will work on all bosses.)

Here is a simulation I did to quantify the results.
Please read these notes before viewing the report:
Note 1: The margin of error is 0.1%. The results are shown relative to the ferocity pet with a 6 second cooldown special. The first row shows as -0.05% because it was within the margin of error of the reference, which was that same pet.
Note 2: The 10 and 15 second cooldown pets where within 0.1% of each other, which is why you see them flip-flopped. Obviously 10 second cooldown will be slightly better than 15 second cooldown, but they are so close it matters very little.

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...cd96c08f630123

The 6 second pet specials are:
Carrion Bird - Bloody Screech
Riverbeast - Gruesome Bite
Scorpid - Deadly Sting

The 10 second pet specials are:
Crocolisk: Ankle Crack
Spider: Web Spray

The 15 second pet special is:
Warp Stalker: Warp Time

I tested each of these and also a pet with no special. I tested them all as ferocity and tenacity. I only did the test with one set of talents because I don't think talents are going to significantly affect the results, but, you can read below on how to set up the pets you would like to use for your own testing.

I didn't test or implement any of the abilities with longer cooldowns than that. They just won't be significant.

How do you pick your pet in the AMR simulator?

To pick your pet in the AMR simulator, you need to copy the default rotation and make a slight edit. Here is the default:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory...l&version=live

Click the Copy button in the gray toolbar at the top center of the page. Give your rotation a name and save. Now an Edit button becomes available in the toolbar. Click that to edit the rotation.
At the top you can see "Included Rotations" - In that list is a rotation named "AmrPetCarrionBird"
Delete that and replace it with the pet you want to test. You can see the list of available pet rotations in the tree view on the left. There is also type-ahead in the Included Rotations list.

If you want your pet to be a Tenacity pet, that is a little less obvious to set up. You can see from the tests above that using a tenacity pet doesn't really help or hurt you significantly, so, I'd recommend sticking with Ferocity. But, for the curious, here is how you would do it:
In the Included Rotations you will see a rotation called AmrHunterSurvivalPreFight. That rotation can be seen here:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory...l&version=live

There is a disabled action that will turn your pet into a Tenacity pet. You need to make a copy of this and enable that action. After you do that, go back to your main rotation and remove AmrHunterSurvivalPreFight and replace it with your modified pre fight rotation.

I know this is not particularly user-friendly, but, the effect of these pets is so small that we decided not to spend a ton of time creating special UI options for it. Here are a couple example rotations that I used in my tests:

Tenacity Carrion Bird (Notice I created "SurvivalTenacityPreFight" and replaced the AmrHunterSurvivalPreFight with it.):
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory...ive&share=true

Ferocity Spider (Notice I replaced AmrPetCarrionBird with AmrPetSpider.)
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory...ive&share=true

[Typhod]

Thank you for this post. I was curious about this aswell. One thing I found out was that Growl can also proc Hunting Companion, which theoretically should make it a DPS gain too, but I don't want to annoy nor screw up mechanics with that turned on.

[Kwaai]

Thank you for this post. I was curious about this aswell. One thing I found out was that Growl can also proc Hunting Companion, which theoretically should make it a DPS gain too, but I don't want to annoy nor screw up mechanics with that turned on.

Bosses are immune to Growl, and there's always the slight chance a non-immune mob will decide to put Fluffy to sleep if it gets Growled before the tank picks it up.