Sporebat Review
Sporebat – Underbat
Overall Rank: 23/23 – Not Recommended
| Name: Gus DPS: 134.0/148.8 HP: 6237 Armor: 11000 Damage reduction: 51.03% Skills: … |
Solo: (F) I went looking for a way to rename my Frost Trap since it was more useful. Instance: (F) Enjoy your DoT with hitpoints. BG: (F) My pet despawned when that horde ran out of ranged? I never noticed… Arena:(F+) Not worth the mana it takes to use ‘Call Pet.’ I guess it still helps with spell pushback. |
You know how you get all excited about taming a new pet? You know that bit of frustration when you realize you have to wait for loyalty level 2 before you can train any skills? Living with that frustration is what having a sporebat is like.
This family was actually the inspiration for doing the pet review. I went and tamed Sporewing on a whim and thought he was the coolest looking pet. The glow effects, the flowing movement. I really, really liked it. I knew sporebats were ‘bad pets’ but no one had really shown what that meant. Are they bad compared to the OP-ness that is cats or just slightly worse than my crab? The answer – They’re pretty bad.
They slowly swim through the air to the mob, and play pat-a-cake with it for a few moments before you pull agro. That’s really all there is to say about combat with it. Seriously. In PvP, my opponents thought I didn’t have a pet. In fact there were several times where I didn’t notice he had despawned for several minutes at a time. It’s almost like they should despawn when you bring out your miniwing. That useless. However, this has given me a new idea, I think my next hunter will level without ever taming a pet. That is, if I ever make a new hunter.
NOTE: I was in a bad mood the day I wrote this. While it’s still a fair assessment, some exaggeration may have occurred during the flight. Watch for falling objects when you open the overhead bins.
The Mystic Hunter 
batgrl said,
May 22, 2008 at 5:38 am
Thank you for suffering through this so now I don’t have to. But dammit, I still want one of those as a pet, just would like to be able to actually train it in something, anything!
Intrepidacious said,
May 22, 2008 at 8:56 am
I know, I still want one, too, and I already had one and abandoned it. I tamed one of them and spent a while with it before figuring out the bad news. It’s pretty sad because they’re really gorgeous pets, like something out of the movie Close Encounters. Only thing these pets can do is growl, I guess. But I suppose some would argue that you could give it Cobra Reflexes and then lots of armor/stamina and resistances….. But a serious defect would be its liesurely pace, with no Dash or Dive or anything to help with the chase.
Melirra said,
June 5, 2008 at 7:49 am
i trained one yesterday they are very kool looking pets but its not much of a fighter really. i wouldnt have it as my main pet thats for sure deffently have a back up..
Intrepidacious said,
June 9, 2008 at 12:22 pm
A sporebat is a nice pet IF: (1) you and your sporebat are the same level, and (2) you’ve got its loyalty up. Any pet that’s several levels below your level can’t hold aggro from you very well, and won’t be very much fun to grind up to your level.
If you’re 70 you need to pick up a level 70 sporebat, as I did from Underbog. There are two level 70 sporebats right near the entrance if you enter in Heroic mode, and it’s very easy to time your shot so that you only lure one of them. (They hit extremely hard in heroic mode so you better ice-trap it and tame it fast or you could be dead if it hits you more than twice.)
I’ve only got the sporebat up ONE loyalty step, so he’s “unruly”. I used the earned training points to give him cobra reflexes and 4th or 5th level stamina and armor. I’ll use future points for a good high-level mix of stamina and armor and resistances.
But even at unruly he can easily hold aggro against typical mobs 68-71 in Netherstorm, usually without bothering with intimidate, and he can already tank very easily against typical stuff like the level 70-ish ogres above Aldor Rise. Looking forward to getting the rest of the loyalty points on him!
Obviously since he just growls and autoattacks, his DPS is lower, but the lack of points in those categories means more points spent on stamina, armor or resistances. The lack of “dive” is unfortunate, but they otherwise move as fast as any other pet, and that, too, frees up training points for resistances and so forth.
Of course the only real reason to pick one is because of their good looks and perhaps their current exclusivity, but they seem like decent enough hunter pets for second or third slots. For soloing or grouping for fun and profit, any average pet will do fine, and the sporebat is no exception.
meanperson said,
June 22, 2008 at 1:40 am
I trained one of these once, then spent half an hour reading trade chat (I was bored). Due to its utility level I named the thing “Lavalamp”.
Teika said,
August 20, 2008 at 2:13 pm
This pet’s going from noboy to stardom in wotlk :D
Bibai said,
August 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Terrible hunter pet at the moment, But stick it on passive and then its the best non-combat pet in the game!!
:D
Fountainhead said,
October 15, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Hmmm, I think sporebats may be worth a second look now in 3.0. Spore cloud sounds very useful.
rob said,
July 3, 2009 at 2:05 pm
ya all the noobs that bashed the spore bat need to take a second look now that sporecloud is in the sporebat family, but one of the first things a noob hunter dose is blame his pet when in reality the pets dont suck the hunter does
the wonderful me said,
July 5, 2009 at 5:22 pm
no pet is really useless, now for excample, the spore cloud also has a -3% armor to all hostiles to everything in the cloud, and this seems to stack with everything
plus, i compleatly fell in love with my spore bat back in BC, when the gorilla was the only pet with an AoE threat thing, i noticed, that the spore cloud also had a tiny threat on everything, so if i had any adds, they would automatically charge him, and not me, meaning i could have the pet hold aggro on many targets, without actually having to have a gorilla, which i really hate..