This was a correction to Rank 4 and Rank 5, which were producing a higher AP boost than intended. Rank 6 (and thus the raid viability of the Wolf) did not suffer from the bug and thus is unchanged.

So I'm getting the XT Heart issue with my pet, but on Yogg's brain. Sometimes the pet will attack it, sometimes it doesn't. Pulling it back, or putting it on passive/defensive doesn't do anything. It moves into position, and then just sits there. It's quite annoying.

I've had this problem too, also when the pet is in position (and not attacking) it wont let you cast its spells like call of the wild, you must pull it back to use it.

Wondering if anyone has had a chance to run some good back to back tests with
their regular cat versus Sköll and if there was much of a DPS bump? Is the current
theory to leave Spirit Strike in auto-cast mode or off for better DPS?

Issues of note with ToC bosses. (This is for 25-man heroic difficulties)

Northern Beasts - be careful with the freezing breath from Icehowl. I suggest positioning yourself so that it's impossible for both your pet and you to be frozen at the same time. A quick mend pet can come in handy. Also, watch the poison cloud from Dreadscale. It will kill your pet. Be ready to move him out if your tank is too stupid to move Dreadscale (when he's mobile of course).
Jaraxxus - legion flame tends to hurt. Never been an issue with me.
Faction Champs - Is anyone able to keep their pet alive for this encounter? Keep it on passive the entire fight?
Twin Valkyr's - no issues.
Anub'arak - no issues.

I've never had my pet die here. I just keep it on passive and send it after my target. Mind you - our healers heal hunter pets by default, which is a great help.

The poison clouds in the Jormungar fight are the only thing it's died of in ToC.

They aren't affected by auras and do not pop orbs. Near as I can tell they are also ignored by the vortexes (although that could just be a lot of luck with Avoidance).

I searched the forums and haven't found an answer for this, so here goes. With the return of Onyxia to the raid schedule I've noticed that the pet AI mechanism that sends it to the rear of the boss results in him getting repeatedly tailwhipped. I'm BM spec so this puts a large damper on my DPS. Is there a workaround for this?

No, due to the Pet AI change a while back that puts the pet behind the boss, it's something that we have to kinda deal with. I've tried putting my pet on stay with attack on her side, but it didn't fix it.

it's going to get changed with 3.3 so that pets won't be affected by the tailswipe.

In the meantime, send the pet in to attack, then once it's behind her, tell it to follow, and then [edit: stay] as soon as it's out of tail swipe range. She has a massive hit box. Just remember to put the pet back on follow when Onyxia repositions.

Has anyone had their pet trigger the enrage with Icehowl's charge?

I wasn't in the raid at the time, but our raid leader mentioned to me in a 10m heroic that Icehowl did a charge, enraged, yet 10 people were standing and somehow concluded it was the hunter's pet.

I wanted to confirm if anyone else has had this happen.

Personally I've never experienced this. More likely I'd say is a paladin getting hit, and AD proc'ing.

Personally, I have never seen a pet that stood still during this, usually the pets are chasing Icehowl right after the stun from the Massive Crash wears off. In non-heroic (both 10 and 25) I have seen tanks and high health players live through the charge after getting hit. Also, I have seen paladin tanks get hit by the charge in heroic (even in 25 person) and live due to Argent Defender. I am not sure if a non Paladin tank would like survive getting hit by the charge in heroic 10 (and 25 of course) person.

Remember they always try and blame the hunter pets when they can't figure out why something went wrong.

Hunter pets do not trigger trample, i have watched my pet run straight at Ice Howl and then get run over countless times. It sounds like that if you had a prot paladin it was him, if you have fail bot it will tell you who the trample target was.

I apologize up front if this sounds like a dumb question (I always tell my students there are no stupid questions... but we all know better...).

We obviously have more pet abilities than the 4 spaces on the pet bar, so does the pet use ONLY the 4 abilities one the pet bar... if not, does it matter which ORDER they're on the pet bar? I'm sorry, but I really having a hard time figuring this one out.

On the topic of blaming pets...

Is there any danger with letting your pet get tail-swiped by Onyxia? (other than the frustrating loss of dps?) Specifically, will pets pull whelps if they get swiped into the whelp cave?

I haven't observed any issues with pets pulling whelps. And my wolf gets knocked back constantly during phase 1.

I'm fairly certain I've seen Shaman wolves and DK ghouls pull whelps if they are knocked into the coves. I don't see why hunter pets would be any different.

I can confirm 100% that hunter pets do not spawn any whelps when they get tail swiped. The pets get pushed straight back, not to the side. If it looks like they are spawning whelps, then you have a range dps too far back and trying to place blame on the pets instead of admitting they messed up.

Depending upon how Ony is facing, "straight back" may be "into a whelp cave", no? Not all tanks (especially in PUG runs) are good at keeping her centered and facing directly North.

I was really asking the question... if a pet gets swiped into a cave, does it spawn whelps? If so, then having a pet on Ony is a potential danger until they fix the whole "pets getting swiped" problem in 3.3.

You can test this pretty easily if you're really that curious by just using Eyes of the Beast to run your pet into a whelp cave.