Scattered Shots is for Hunters. David Bowers is caught in a Freezing Trap this week, so Daniel Whitcomb -- who did not set the trap, he swears to the Light -- is substituting for him.

You hear it pretty much all the time if you've ever slightly dipped into the world of Hunters. If you want to play in the big leagues, conventional wisdom says you're pretty much stuck with a select handful of pet types (also known as pet families): Ravagers, Cats, and Raptors for PvE, Scorpids for PvP.

But do you know why those pet families are so desired? What it really comes down to is Hunter roles and abilities.

DPS: The PvE Hunter pet's raison d'etre.

In PvE, a Hunter has one role: DPS. Yes, he can bring a little bit of extra utility in the form of traps, dispelling, mana drain, pet off-tanking, and Misdirection, and I shall not deny that, but his ultimate role is to make sure the boss dies fast by optimizing his DPS. One aspect of Hunter DPS is their pet, especially if they are Beastmastery specced. So in order to do the best DPS they can, a Hunter must get a pet who turns out the best DPS. Ravagers, Cats, and Raptors fill this role the most readily, for two reasons.

The first reason is their base damage. Each pet family will have innate modifiers as compared to a baseline of their DPS, HP, and AC. Sometimes it will be a positive modifier, sometimes a negative modifier. In the case of the aforementioned Cats, Ravagers, and Raptors, they all have a +10% modifier to their DPS, which means that they will do more base DPS than most other pet families.

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