Pet longevity

[Jarekai]

For the most part, I manually weave my shot rotations. I've scoured for useful macros that will maximize my damage output but it seems from the various hunter forums that these aren't really as necessary now post-WotLK. Doing so means that much of my focus in combat is on timing of my shots, managing CDs, etc.

The challenge with this is that I'm not able to focus as much on micro-managing my pet, which ultimately means he dies alot. As a rough guess, I'd say my cat dies roughly 50% of the time against the Naxx bosses. That's alot of lost DPS, even moreso now that I have the set bonus with my tier 7.5 armor that gives an additional 5% to pet damage.

I realize some fights are more pet-friendly than others (Patchwerk vs say Heigen as an example). I'm just curious if there is something I'm not doing. Do most of these fights require microing our pets or is pet death basically expected? Would macro integration of my shots ease micro-ing and pet management during combat?

[Arcdelad]

ive been wanting to talk about razor's longevity for quite some time, but have been embarassed about it...thank you for bringing it up! 

[Air]

Yeah macroing shots does make pet management much easier.  But macro's do limit dps to a certain extent.  Manually weaving shots will alway's be better.

For managing a pet, the best that can be done is to know the fights your going into and to adjust accordingly.  If I know my pet is gonna take some damage I'll just throw a mend pet on it.  Bringing pet back and than sending your pet back in is another way.  Than sometimes, just keeping your pet by your side is the best option to.  Archimonde fight is a particularly good example of that.  The doom fires would generally destroy my pet, and made managing it fairly tedious.  Keeping decent amount of dps and staying alive on the fight was much more important to me on that fight.

[Zario]

Just a tip on pet management during bosses.  I have pet attack bound to my mouse scroll up wheel and recall my pet on mouse wheel down.  I also bound some of the special attacks to scroll wheel tilt left and right.  It leads to much better pet control and leaves your left hand free for your other controls.