Felhunter



The Felhunter is the fourth demonic minion available to a warlock, summoned through the Summon Felhunter ability, available at level 30. Thanks to Shadow Bite's increased damage for every DoT on a target, the Felhunter is the pet of choice for Affliction warlocks when it comes to damage output.

It deals melee damage and possesses several anti-caster abilities. It has the same amount of health as the Succubus; more than the Imp but less than the Voidwalker.

Abilities
The felhunter possesses four abilities, each handy in specific scenarios:


 * Demonic Empowerment: Increases the Felhunter's health by 20%, its Haste by 50% and its damage dealt for 12 seconds.

Acquiring a felhunter
The felhunter is a pet available to the warlock at level 30. Prior to patch 3.3, it required a quest chain to earn, as can be seen below.

Quest chain
Talk to warlock trainer Strahad Farsan to obtain these quests:
 * Seeking Strahad (Stormwind)
 * Tome of the Cabal (Alliance)
 * Tome of the Cabal (Alliance, 2)
 * Tome of the Cabal (Alliance, 3)
 * The Binding (Felhunter)

Tips

 * Take Spell Lock off auto-cast. If you have auto-cast on, the AI will cast this at an enemy caster as soon as possible; it won't wait until it's casting a spell, wasting the Spell Lock for the next 24 seconds.  Until this is fixed, hit the button yourself or get a UI add-on (such as Servitude, although this mod is no longer being developed).


 * Devour Magic is a powerful offensive tool. Use it to strip off shields and buffs from enemy players or mobs before beginning to deal damage. Use it regularly to remove your target's buffs.


 * In PvP, the felhunter is highly useful against caster classes, but it's much less effective against melee classes. Few melee classes will try to kill off your felhunter; most of the time, they will probably ignore it.
 * With Spell Lock, the Felhunter is the only method of interruption a warlock has (excluding substitutes such as knock backs or stuns to shut down a spell cast).

Strengths



 * Useful when fighting casters, particularly those that rely on magic based buffs and debuffs, which the felhunter can devour.
 * Make excellent Soul Link candidates, as they can use Devour Magic to heal the damage they take from Soul Link.
 * Highly resistant to magical damage which helps it tank caster mobs and resist damage in pvp situations while still being an annoying presence on the field of battle. Felhunters have innate magic resistance, equal to twice its master's level.

Weaknesses

 * No taunt ability means it can only be used to off-tank a mob when there is nothing else present to draw aggro away (e.g., healers).
 * Risky to use in PvP, since the only utility against melee opponents is limited DPS output.
 * Long cooldown timer for Spell Lock.
 * Spell Lock "auto-cast" functionality is suboptimal. It will auto-cast against any opponent as soon as possible without regard for whether the target is actually casting a spell (it will also Spell Lock non-casters!).  Consequently, Spell Lock should be manually operated.

In the RPG
Felhunters are fel stalkers that have been specially trained by the Burning Legion to hunt, counter and devour mortal spellcasters.

The most intelligent of fel stalkers are selected and trained specially to hunt spellcasters. They look much like a normal fel stalker, except for a golden band placed around one of their horns marking them as hunters. Normal fel stalkers prefer spellcasters, but fel hunters are so well trained that they ignore melee opponents entirely in favor of spellcasters, especially arcane casters. A fel hunter has the same abilities as a fel stalker. It also manifests demonic spell-like abilities - brought out due to its higher intelligence, coupled with the intense training it undergoes to become an elite spellcaster killing machine.

Trivia

 * When in water, the felhunter swims similarly to a shark using its tail.
 * The felhunter unmistakably resembles a Zergling from Starcraft, Warcraft's sister series.
 * The felhunter is often called a "fel puppy" by some players.
 * In the quest An Unusual Tome, the warlock can ask the felhunter for information, but it only reacts much like your dog might to a command it doesn't understand.
 * The digestive tract of felhunters is unable to digest teeth.