Mopping up the stable

In Mists of Pandaria hunters will have 44 different pet families to play with! All of them able to fill the role we need them to; cunning, ferocity or tenacity. But there are limitations... We can only keep 25 pets each; 20 in the stable and 5 with us. With cool new looks, buffs, families and abilities coming, it's time to clean up the stable.

Luckily for me, I'm mostly hung up on cats and spirit beasts, and not that crazy about the 42 other pet families. If I was to fill Lae's Ark with animals, I would probably only bring cats. :) But even I will have to make some choices now.

My current stable

I have all the nine current spirit beasts; Ankha, Arcturis, Ban'thalos, Ghostcrawler, Gondria, Karoma, Loque'nahak, Magria and Skoll.

I have a core hound for Ancient Hysteria, a wolf for Furious Howl, a fox, two Molten Front spiders (Kirix and Deth'tilac) for looks and PVP, a wind serpent for spell damage debuff, a monkey for PVP, a raptor, a ravager for "four percent physical damage" and Terrorpene for looks. We're up to 19 now.

The remaining six slots are for my cats;

Ratchet

Ratchet, my first pet

Doser

Doser, my first ever rare camp

Sofus

Sofus

Ratchet, Doser and Sofus are very dear to me, as they're named after the rulers of my real life:

Ratchet (6 years old now) and Sofus (2 years old now)

Sofus (2 years old) and Doser (4 years old)

Aslan

Aslan

Leo

Leo

Skarr

Skarr

My stable in Mists of Pandaria

My stable in Mists of Pandaria will be divided into three categories;

The sentimental stable (14 slots): Five of the Spirit Beasts, all six cats, Terrorpene, Kirix and Deth'tilac.

The sensible buff stable (estimated 8 slots): When the buff design is set in stone, I will have to look at my raid team and map out which buffs we're likely to struggle with bringing. Optimally I would have two pets for each buff, one exotic and one not. But I won't have room for that, so one of each will have to suffice.

For now, the buff coverage looks like this:

Buffs	Attack Power Critical Strike Mastery Physical Haste Spell Haste Spell Power Stamina Stats	Hunter Devilsaur (exotic), Wolf, Quilen (exotic), Water Strider (exotic) Cat, Spirit Beast (exotic) Hyena, Serpent The only buff hunters can't bring Water Strider (exotic) Silithid (exotic) Shale Spider (exotic)
Debuffs	Magic Vulnerability Mortal Wounds Physical Vulnerability Slow Casting Weakened Armor Weakened Blows	Dragon Hawk, Wind Serpent Devilsaur (exotic), Hunter Boar, Ravager, Rhino (exotic), Worm (exotic) Core Hound (exotic), Fox, Goat, Sporebat Raptor, Tallstrider Bear, Carrion Bird
Other abilities	Ancient Hysteria AOE Battle Ress Water Walking	Core Hound (exotic) Chimaera (exotic), Worm (exotic) Quilen (exotic) Water Strider (exotic)

The "crazy gatherer stable" (3 slots): The remaining Spirit Beasts and other rares, unique looks or just cool looks.

Conclusion

This isn't adding up at all. I don't feel like releasing the four Spirit Beasts that I don't feel as attached to, they're part of my collection! But if I keep them, someone else will have to go. With new taming challenges and new skins, I know I want at the very least a new white tiger, a black tiger and a blue porcupine. I have seen people on more pet-centric blogs name different skins the same name, and in that way they keep the "pet," although they update the look. I'll have to give it a try I think. This makes me feel a bit silly though. I have killed thousands upon thousands of humanoids, beasts and anything with or without a pulse in this game, why do I get this tear-dripping image in my head as soon as it comes to "Abandon Pet"? On the same note, everyone should check out Aspect of the Dork's "What hunter spec are you?" cosmo quiz. I became Beast Master, the lover of happyful and prettyful pets of course. :)

How is your stable filling up?