Cuz the moment I start AoEing my Turtle can’t keep aggro on all the mobs. Makes me hesitate using stuff like the Glaive and Barrage.
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macro /tar pet /cast misdirection before multishotting usually
also multishot and kill command before barraging, give your pet a chance to actually hit the mobs. bm barrage is usually about as much deeps as widdling on the enemy anyway, if your pet has a chance to hit the mobs with a kill cleave or two you shouldn’t pull.
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Don’t drop targets
/use [@pet]Misdirection
Use “use” to limit character amount, use “@syntax” to dictate the target.
Ex: /use [mod:ctrl,@player]Spirit Mend
Or [@mouseover]Skill Name - to first cast on your mouseover like Interrupt or Intimidation or if not mousing over anything then just on your target. Easy way to interrupt/stun without switching targets. Same with Kill shot during AOE so you don’t need to swap targets, just mouseover - Kill Shot.
The empty brace allows you to use it on your target or hold Ctrl to use it on yourself. You can set more conditions like a multi-button macro for talent specifics you know won’t cross in the same macro:
/use [known:Binding Arrow]Binding Arrow
/use [known:Scatter Shot]Scatter Shot
Now depending on the talent that macro will either cast Binding or Scatter. Since you can only select one you’re good.
Alt: [noknown:Skill Name]Other Skill
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My cleft hoof had never lost aggro… never…
He’s a good boy
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It seems I have much to learn about pet macros
Yeah… You literally need none of that
Get a clefthoof turn on growl
Profit
They are the best tanking pet for BM. Period. Not even close
clefthooves are usually considered the best solo PVE pet due to having leech, lust, defensive CD, and blood of the rhino (+10% armor and +20% healing received).
There’s a website called Petopia that has every tameable pet in the game with pics, locations, etc.
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I’d like to add in there’s currently a ‘clefthoof’ that is one of those new fancy dragon rhino thingies… So if you dont like the clefthoof look, thats an option.
It looks like it’s a bug, but I guess it’s something you could use right now.
Petopia has info, as mentioned above.
If you rely on your pet for tanking(non-group content) you always want to utilize misdirection as a means of helping your pet. Any time you’ve just pulled a big pack, or whenever you’re about to use abilities like Barrage or Chakram, you want to use misdirection to your pet first, to make sure that threat is diverted to your pet.
There’s no reason not to do this really.
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Good idea.
When did this all change? at what point in the game did growl not keep aggro?
why did it change? Retail gets more and more aggravating every expansion.
This has probably been an issue for a while and wanted to level a hunter and ran into the issue of pet can’t keep aggro on anything not even a single mob.
Your turtle is likely a tenacity pet, if you want a tank, try a Ferocity pet. Petopia .com is your friend.
As everyone else said, use misdirect when necessary. An extra tip is to get a threat meter. If your pet isn’t holding aggro with misdirect, try feigning death to drop your own aggro.
Hope that helps 
btw:
Before anyone gets up my tushy about Ferocity as a tank… when you are solo’ing, things need to die and fast, right? Tenacity pets don’t have an extra special growl, but they do have low dps. Ferocity pets will have the same growl and help you kill things faster, plus they have some healing/leech abilities, that off-set tenacity defenses, to look out for. Personally I run a spirit beast (cat) with a ferocity cat, when doing world content, and am very happy with the combo. The best tanky pet changes constantly: eons ago, it was an owl, last xpac it was the clefthoof. One of my favs back in WotLK was the gorilla as a tank.
I don’t even have MD talentesd. What I do is multi shot into barb and kill command, my pet do the damage and take aggro, BM hunter does little to no damage, so it’s fairly easy for pets to snap aggro.
pet specs’ damage was equalized an expac or two ago, so a tenacity pet and a ferocity pet will deal the same damage. pet spec only affects what active ability & passive effect they give. for tenacity that’s fortitude of the bear and endurance training. for ferocity it’s primal rage and predator’s thirst
Hey Maila!
You are right, they did that forever ago, but it didn’t include attack speed. Did they change that? Just for reference, I came back at the very end of BFA and don’t recall them making that change in Shadowlands.
oh, huh. i didn’t realize different pet attack speeds were still a thing in BfA! did some googling and, according to some forum threads, that was indeed normalized in SL, when all pets were replaced with the “generic hunter pet” NPC and simply have a model & name applied to make ‘em look like the animal you tamed
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Sounds to me that they need to buff other pets if a dps pet type tanks better than an actual tank type.
None of which has anything to do with holding aggro.
I press multishot and one kill command, pet has aggro on everything I need it to. Nothing special required.
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This is good advice, although I would toss in misdirection and make sure growl is on autocast too.
Multisnot does nada for damage by itself and generates very little aggro to you as a result, but it activates beast cleave AOE damage, which is damage your pet actually does and generates lots of aggro towards it. Throw in kill command, more damage your pet actually does, which also activates Kill Cleave AOE damage, more damage your pet actually does, and now your pet has a f— ton of aggro.
In large groups there will be mobs that join the fight “late” and don’t actually have aggro to your pet as a result and they might chase you. Do a kill command on them or multisnot+kill command and then FD, and even if misdirection is on CD, the aggro goes to the pet. Knowing your toolkit helps a lot in walking away from all your open world fights without getting a scratch on you.
Easy, make sure your pet has growl on.