All the new features of the Hunter pet stable in patch 10.2.7

World of Warcraft‘s latest patch 10.2.7 has a special treat for Hunters: a completely overhauled stable UI for managing pets. It’s been almost four years since the last big update to the Hunter pet stable, when the number of pets you could store was increased to 205. While the maximum number of pets isn’t changing, there are a vast number of quality-of-life features now available for Hunter pet management.

The biggest change is that the interface is actually laid out logically, with the ability to sort, favorite, and search for a pet directly instead of having to scroll through several pages of the stable to find what you’re looking for. Favorites always appear at the top of the list regardless of how you’re sorting, although they will not display if a search or filter does not include them. The search feature is robust, allowing you to search by the pet’s name, family or specialization via either full or partial text. The one filter included is for Exotic pets, displaying the Beast Mastery-only pets if selected. You can sort by specialization, family, or name (both alphabetically and reverse) and the results list is collapsible when sorted by specialization or family — for example, if you don’t care to see your Tenacity pets.

The updated pet pane has a lot of features, including some that have been desired for a long time. Besides marking a pet as your favorite you can also easily change its name at will — no more needing to use a Certificate of Ownership to change a pet’s name, and this can be done outside the stable as well by right-clicking your pet and choosing Rename. A list of all the pet’s abilities are provided, with mouseovers giving the full description; however even if the pet is summoned you can’t drag abilities to the pet action bar from the stable interface.

Switching the pet between stable and your active roster is as simple as a right-click (if there is available space) or dragging-and-dropping to swap. There is also a button to “Put in Stable” or “Make Active” based on what pet you have selected, although be forewarned that if your active roster is full making a stabled pet active via the button will swap with the pet in position one. Beast Mastery Hunters are given an additional “Active” slot for the Animal Companion talent as there’s no longer a “slot one” in the stable for the talent to summon from. Finally, if you don’t have the heart to face your pet before abandoning them, you can release them back to the wild directly from the stable interface. Don’t worry though, you’ll still be prompted to confirm that you wish to set them free.

The new Hunter pet stable UI is a phenomenal addition to the game and one that Hunters have longed for since the beginning. It’s practically perfect in every way — although they could’ve given more pet slots, just sayin’.