I put mine at the foot of the ramp on the side where I am assigned -- there are no pathing issues there and it is just far enough away to despawn after I jump down to Thaddius.

According to the tooltip it's the next 3 attacks. How does this compare to shell shield as far as soloing old instance/raid bosses go? I really have no idea how hard/often those bosses hit, or how much magic damage they do.

Also, how many bosses have interruptable spells that would benefit using a gorilla for pummel?

Has happened to me a few times too... And then on other fights it joins me. I can't figure out what it might be down to.

Pummel would definately be nice against the Bat boss in ZG if you are not MM, particularly since the Viper drain might be going to take endless ages to do now. Of course the manaregen it gives back means we are likely going to be able to last forever.

And the Tiger boss should also see some added benefit due to the heals there too, though this can apparently be managed without.

Kel'Thusad's frostbolts can be interupted.

Were you parking the pet with 5 yards of the doorway? There are, or at least were, some issues with boss room doorways trapping pets. Maybe it's worse with "stay". Like the other poster suggested, try closer to the ramp you are on.

I can confirm those bugs still exist then. When I put my pet against the wall directly behind the ramp, it attacked appropriately and could still be recalled.

On a related note, has anyone else experienced issue with the pet disappearing (not dying) on Sapphiron some time during the air phase? Is this another known bug?

im sure this has been asked and answered before but how does a pet level? is it a percentage of the XP the hunter gets? does it matter if the pet is on passive or not?

First off a pet levels instantly when tamed to the hunters level - 5 if it is lower level than that.

After this the pet gains experience in the same amount the hunter would if at the pets level, as long as the hunter would still gain experience from the mobs (grey mobs = no exp, green and above give exp).

Pets do not gain rested or quest xp, but I do belive the heirloom items increase the pets experience gain as well.

To elaborate on Nooska's answer:

Pets have their own experience bar, and it has only 6 "bubbles." They do not get rest bonus or quest XP, but with only 6 bubbles they fill a level pretty quickly. (I didn't know that pets benefited from the heirloom shoulders XP buff -- next time I level a pet I will borrow my mage's shoulders!)

If you want to see how close your pet is to leveling, open the pet's character sheet and you can see its XP bar. Look under the "Pet" tab on your own character sheet.

Let me be quick to say that I have not personally tested the heirloom stuff (my hunter was the first to lvl 80), but as pets gain the xp you would, and the heirloom directly increases xp gained from killing mobs I can't imaginge it doesn't work - the Zone buffs in TBC works, and I would imaging gear is calculated even before the zone buffs.

It does warant some testing however, I should try it some time.

my pet pops on top of me after a successful feign... not sure if ppl realized.

On sapphiron when she takes off for the flying phase and lands back down my pet will have positioned itself directly behind her which means it gets tail knock backs. This will eventually lead to it despawning because of the distance it gets thrown away from me. I solve it by putting it on passive right before Sapphiron is about to land, then sending it back in again leaving it safe from knockbacks on Sapphirons side.

On an entirely different note, I've been looking at the new pet talents, and I'm hesitating where to put the final talent - in shark attack or in wild hunt? I'm thinking 10% of my atp from WH should give my pet the most dmg, but a constant 3% extra dmg from SA sounds pretty nice too. Any thoughts on this?

The relevant question is;

10% more contributed ap > than 3 % extra damage?

Napkin math incoming!

For 1 point in wild hunt to be more damage than 1 point in shark attack, 10% increase ap cintribution must be more than 3% damage increase.
Ap scaling before wild hunt is 22% of your ap (please correct me if I somehow misremember this) so for 6k ap (which sounds reasonable for a non BM hunter (?)) you would transfer 1320 AP to your pet. 10% more is 132 ap.
For this to be more than a 3% increase (when looking at white dps) your pet has to do les than 315 dps (white dps) before wild hunt is chosen and after static raid buffs to your pet (BoM, BS, BoK).

If at is the case Wild hunt is a bigger dps increase than 3% - assuming the special and focusdump abilities gain relatively the same from pet ap.
(A BM should have both for maximizing dps)

Everyone does this fight a bit differently. What has worked best for me:

Our MT tanks Sapph facing the ice wall opposite the portal into Sapph's room. When we run in, I run to about 5 o'clock (if Sapph facing away from the portal is 12 o'clock) and send the pet in. I get at max range and nuke away. This position works best for me because Blizzard seems to rarely move that far "back" and so I'm not moving out of it or taxing the healers.

Yes, my pet gets tail lashed periodically, but it's survivable and the pet won't despawn.

Depending on what happens when Sapph lands after ice block, I will recall the pet if it ends up on the other side of Sapph from me (i.e. on the other side of Sapph's tail).

i've tried something like that once, the entire fight (just about) i'd see a flying cat go past my left shoulder, for some reason it was the funniest thing to watch so i just let em keep doing it... cat runs in, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, back past me, runs in again, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, back again...

so funny...

Mugsley, our tank positions himself the same as yours (with sapph facing icewall) and i position myself at max range (for sniper) at 3 o'clock (assuming sapph's head being 12 o'clock). At this position i hardly ever get blizzards either and i'm in range for the healers to heal me. But the best of it is that when i send my pet in she positions herself at sapphiron's SIDE where she wont get tail knockbacks, which would mean a loss in dps. And there she pretty much tends to herself the entire fight, don't even have to heal her. And if her position gets messed up after sapph has completed the flying phase i just call her back a bit and send her back in to reposition her on sapph's side.
That seems to work best for me.

@ Rosamonde

Easily the best way to manage your pet is to not even bother using him for the first phase. After you kill Stalagg/Feugen and jump down the ledge, then bring out your pet. This could present a problem if you are BM, but if you dismiss your pet say 3 seconds before the Stalagg/Feugen dies, resummon him after you jump down. I'm currently SV and it works fine because I know most of my damage isn't from the pet, but from myself.

Hope this helps.

For a BM hunter, "not using the pet" is definitely not the best way to manage one and I would not recommend it. In any case, I was responding to someone else who was having difficulty with the Thaddius fight; I am not in search of a solution myself. While dismissing the pet and resummoning after the jump works, I prefer the method I described because it is less time-consuming and I find it less trouble in the middle of the fight.

I tried this out today working with my new moth. He is lvl 75 and he got 1127 XP from lvl 78 mobs and 1176 XP from lvl 79 mobs whether I was wearing heirloom shoulders or not.

Therefore I conclude that the heirloom shoulder XP boost does NOT benefit pets.

I've looked everywhere in this post about what happens when a Boss is tamed vs. a normal mob but I can't find anything on this subject..I want to try and tame Lord Lakmaeran (62 elite Chimaera on Isle of Dread) because I was told once tamed he has better stats than a regular level 62 Chimaera. Because he has 332k HP he is not an easy tame and I am wondering is it worth it to try???

All pets of a given family and level have the same stats once tamed, it makes no difference if they were a boss or elite before they were tamed. There used to be (perhaps still is?) a bug whereby if you named your pet the same as a boss or elite, other players would sometimes see them as having the elite dragon frame around their portrait, however this was just a visual bug and did not make them elite in any way.

Edit: also, the mob's health is not a factor in how easy he is to tame. The only issues are really: (1) will he kill you before you complete the tame, or (2) will he constantly interrupt the taming process.

On the subject of managing pets, I have posted a suggestion on the european forums about changing mend pet (so it actually becomes useful).
Anyone on the US forums feel free to repost it (as I doubt the european forums really get the same attention from developers as the US ones)

World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> [Hunter] Improved Mend Pet talent change