Hey all, Arth again. Time for Round 2 of the WHU’s ongoing pet tanking guide.
For pet tanking we need a tenacity pet for the damage mitigation talents and thunderstomp; however, we also need a pet that is going to generate the maximum amount of threat to the targets that it’s tanking. That means we need a pet whose special ability will cause more damage, preferably to as many mobs as possible.
Your two choices for pet tanking are a Bear and a Crocalisk.
I favor the croc, but both are viable options. Both have AoE special abilities that make them ideal for holding aggro on multiple targets. But which is better? A brief description of each pet is below, followed by a formal analysis.
Bear
A bear will give you better dps in most situations with his three-target special attack swipe, which equates to more threat, which is our goal.
The drawback to his special ability is that it only works on up to 3 targets, and has a 180 degree radius around your bear, instead of a full 360. This means that attackers from behind won’t be aggro’d as well.
Still, for single target tanking, this should be your best option, and this will cause the most threat against single target boss fights.
Crocolisk
The croc’s special ability, Bad Attitude, causes damage to anyone attacking him with every attack, and has a 360 radius, making him ideal for large pulls.
The downside is less damage overall on single or double target fights. I’m generally more worried about holding multiple targets than I am about single target dps. Healing aggro and incidental AoE’s pull secondary targets off my pet far more often than he loses aggro on the main target (which isn’t often). So I like the extra cushion this provides, but I’m sacrificing some dps on small pulls.
Conclusions
The bear is going to be a more consistent boss tank, while the croc is better for trash. Overall, I’d favor a crocalisk. The croc’s dps isn’t too far off the bear’s on most pulls depending on uptime for BA, and it’s still an extra cushion for threat when you have 4+ targets.
If this were dps, I’d say “screw the trash, we care about bosses” and endorse the bear. But with tanking sometimes the trash is just as difficult or even trickier than boss fights.
The Unsung Pet Tanks
Turtle
A lot of hunters have turtles already for extreme soloing. This is excellent, because the turtle is actually a nice “backup” tank for certain situations. I’ll give you an example:
My group was in DTK and we were on King Dred. Dred has a group-wide fear that throws everything into chaos, and he also spawns adds. Now, popping Bestial Wrath can get us through one of these fears, but the fear happens too often to have BW up every time. My pet had died three straight times during or right after a fear, each of which led to wipes. I also noticed that threat wasn’t an issue on this boss with my group. So I brought out my turtle, made a macro for Shell Shield, and popped it just before the 2nd fear. Voila! Living pet, and I had one more ability to help me get through the fears.
Turtles won’t hold aggro well, so they don’t make good tanks. But they can be useful in specific situations. So if you don’t have one and want to tank, don’t worry about it. But if you have a turtle for soloing, keep it in mind as an occasional option.
Gorillas
Gorillas used to be far and away the best AoE tanks. This is no longer so. All tank pets have thunderstomp now, and the gorilla’s new special ability is better for PvP than tanking. If you’re still clinging to a gorilla, it’s time to level a new tank.
Worms
I’ve seen Worms employed for their armor reduction – and that armor reduction does apply a good amount of threat. This is all well and good, and may result in better single target tps than those listed above, but does nothing to help your pet hold aggro on multiple targets, and that is the biggest challenge in heroic pet tanking. Stick with the big boys, and a turtle as a backup. The worm just doesn’t make the cut.
That should cover pet choice. As before, expect more pet tanking articles in the coming days and weeks.
The math from the Bear-Croc competition that Frost and I used isn’t posted here, but what we found was that on short pulls, where Bad Attitude’s uptime is 100% or very high, the croc can actually out-dps the bear even with fewer targets. Any pull under about 55 seconds will favor the croc in total dps, unless BA is on cooldown at the start of the fight. And with time in between pulls for mana regen, marking targets, or waiting for talents to come off of cooldown, you can actually get a higher total dps from a croc on a large number of pulls.
Still, like the article says, bears for bosses, croc’s for trash, and croc’s overall. The dps gap isn’t huge, and we’re just as concerned with trash pulls as we are with bosses while tanking.
Sry, I should amend: the 55 seconds I mentioned is ballpark, and depends on the targets’ attack speed, which affects BA’s usefulness. It’s the lone variable that can’t be standardized in determining a croc’s dps. Still, the point is, the dps gap isn’t terribly large between the two, making the catch-all nature of BA the more enticing talent.
I guess I need another stable slot. I have my cat for PVP, my Wolf for instances, my Pig ‘cuz I’ve had him since lvl 10 and he’s still my favourite to quest with, and my turtle which I figured was best for extreme solo and tank……now I gotta tame a croc.
WTB more stable slots as well
, although there is one i think i can get ride of , i have my cat which shes been with me since the beginning, and my spirit beast which i refuse to delete him. I have two wolves so i guess i need to make a decision… hmmm croc or bear? thanks for this information very useful 
For what it’s worth, the 3 target swipe limit was removed a while ago. Bears now hit all mobs in front of them when they swipe.
The long cooldown of bad attitude is just too annoying to me, so I run with a bear
. Swipe + thunderstomp is great. Plus for short term convenience, being able to tame an 80 bear any time I want is nice.
Euripides:
Good to know. It shouldn’t change a whole lot, but the 180 degrees of the swipe was always the bigger issue, since even with groups of 3 you’ll usually have 1 behind your pet.
Anon:
That’s what I thought initially too. But then I started tanking. And in between each pull was probably 30 seconds while I topped up on mana, marked targets, etc. So for each new pull, BA was off of cooldown, and it’s up for an entire 45 seconds once it goes. And then most pulls last under a minute, so BA is nearly always up. So part of the reason the croc gets my recommendation is that while technically it’s only up for 45 seconds out of 84 (after talents, spec, etc.) in an actual instance it will be up FAR more often than that percentage would suggest. So there’s nothing wrong with a bear. But a croc will indeed be better more of the time.
This makes me even more sad that I dumped my bear I had since I was level 10 for a ravager only to learn ravagers were useless in Wrath AND they also added a pet slot…poor Hans /cry
Even better, Yorigrim. Now you don’t have to say “eh, the bear’s good enough” and can go out and tame a croc.
I’ve still got the bugged slime-croc from the Oracles daily in the stables.
I just can’t bring myself to part with Uhk’loc after camping him for 5 hours.
I have a question – I thought the best tanking pet was a ferocity pet. I switched to a raptor around level 30 something after reading your article. I have to say I was highly suspect when I first read it but it was one of the best decision I made. Are you now saying to get a bear or croc? There was no discussion that your view had changed.
I love the fact that your info is based on impartial facts attained through scientific analysis. Thanks for making this the “go to” site for reliable hunter information.
Kaizen, the article I think you’re referring to is about threat levels for leveling a pet. The basic idea was that a ferocity pet was going to do more threat than a tenacity pet because it will have much better dps. But that was all it talked about: threat. And the point was that it was better to level with a ferocity pet because it would be harder to pull aggro off of them, and also because they’d kill your targets faster. That remains largely true, with cats or raptors (or devilsaurs) being ideal pets for leveling.
But. It was several patches ago, before tenacity pets got a large revamp. Their threat is now quite a bit better. Second, it was only about holding aggro off of a hunter. For tanking multiple targets, no ferocity pet will be sufficient. Third, you’d never be able to keep a ferocity pet alive in a heroic lvl 70+ instance if it was your tank.
Basically, the articles were covering different aspects of pets. These recent articles are the first designed specifically for pet tanking heroic difficulty instances in Northrend. The earlier one had an entirely different focus.
Btw, I think you’re thinking of me and Frostheim as the same person. Frost wrote the earlier article, I’m currently handling the pet tanking articles. So sorry for the confusion, but I’m glad you asked so that it could be cleared up.
Arthemystia, are you as obsessive as Frost?
And I mean “in a good way”
Lol.
Yes and no (my guildies would say yes). I’m a spreadsheet and training dummy junky, but I don’t have as much theorycrafting experience as Frost. He’s been able to tweak a few aspects of my logic, and remind of things I’m forgetting (such as, I didn’t think to check how these pets scaled with AP at first, though it turns out both bear and croc are at about 4% of AP as damage).
And I had always been upset that people wouldn’t let me off-tank when I was leveling in Northrend, because I KNEW I could hold better aggro than some fail tanks. So once I got to a place where I had done all the little things for dps, and only raiding for better gear would help my dps, I started using my free time to work on tanking. Frost is a great, great hunter, and I still can’t quite hit the numbers he gets in raids despite having similar gear. Same with soloing. So I don’t pretend to be epic and sweet at tanking. But I try to put as much rigor into tanking as he does into dps, and I hope the results speak for themselves. As of this weekend I can add heroic Nexus to the list of heroics I’ve tanked (UK, DTK), and I’m saving higher-level heroics for post-3.2 when tanking will be made easier for us. My eventual goal is heroic HoL, and maybe tanking Sarth in one of my 10M’s since it’s been on farm for us for months now.
I’m also looking into videos. Frost proves his soloing by actually showing it. I’d like to be able to do the same. Though that’s not a promise, just an eventual hope.
Sure, crocolisks might make great tanks, but who can stand their constant whining? And you thought devilsaurs were bad…
That being said, a great article. I’ve been thinking about dumping my worm lately, since I always seem to use my bear. I’m not sure I follow the rationale on why Swipe makes the bear better for boss fights, though. I get it for trash, but wouldn’t a single-target attack – particularly an armor-reduction attack if there is no warrior tanking – make more sense on a fight like Loken or Cyanigosa?
Boz, the idea that you can’t have 3 stable slots for tanking, or probably even two. The worm doesn’t do enough well. The bear is a good boss tank, and an acceptable trash tank. The croc is a good trash tank and an acceptable boss tank. The worm is only one of those: possibly good boss tank, but a horrible trash tank.
The other problem is that if you use your “Call Stabled Pet” cooldown mid-instance to bring out the worm, then you’re stuck with it and will likely be wiping on trash between bosses. So it would only be viable on the final boss of an instance. I can’t endorse a pet with such limited usefulness. So if you have one and want to try it for a final boss, great. It will probably go fine. But if you need a pet for all your tanking needs, use a croc or bear.
I tried tanking Nexus myself – only on normal – with a small group (1 other 80 and 1 70) and it was an interesting experience. The way I had to shift my focus from the usual was fascinating. Not as impressive as yourself, obviously, but still – we had fun!
The only thing I struggled with was the debuff from Keristrasza. I fixed this by writing a macro for my pet to “follow”. When he had 3-5 stacks of the debuff I hit the button and it cleared the debuff. Pet went back to his job straight afterwards.
This whole adventure was with my Turtle, Ethala, as my croc is still level 75.
Thanks for inspiring me to try this!
Oh, and she took three attempts… It was the “one more try and we give up” attempt when it worked *grin*
With the jumping and moving everyone needs to do, an occasional debuff-cleansing lapse doesn’t affect threat too much on that fight. Though I usually tried to time the follows to come when BA was on cooldown, or immediately after a thunderstomp. King Dred was my biggest “one more and we give up” boss so far, though. Even with a turtle, dude sucks for pet tanking.
I’ve been fortunate that one of the people I’ve converted into believing pets can tank is our mostly-Ulduar-geared Priest, who is kind enough to go Discipline for our excursions. The lone instance I’ve done without him healing (DTK, the hardest of the bunch anyway) was far shakier. So I’ve been lucky. But yes, it’s a different experience than dps. Glad you’re liking it though.
Looks like another pet i need to level thanks for the info
, But i love tanking so im going to give a croc a go
Thanks for taking the time to answer that in such detail for me. Much appreciated.
@Arthemystia – I get it; overall bears make better pets because their family skill is more useful in more situations than any other pet. Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Thank you so much for taking the time to deal with these articles. I have been very curious to try and find something much mroe interesting to do with my off-spec besides…..well, more damage. I am finding the Croc a very usuable pet, but I am probably not alone in thinking he is way too noisy. Does anyone know of any addons or file edits I could do to make running with him a little bit more palatable?
I just don’t have sound affects on. All my mod notices are visual. I couldn’t even tell you what the croc sounds like. But that’s kinda funny.
@Arthemystia: Thanks for responding to me regarding crocs vs bears. I have never tanked anything hard enough with my pet to need the best possible pet for the job, so the bear has been great for questing and stuff like running people through ramps (hardly ever even have to stop moving in there!) but if I ever try northrend instances I will probably have to level up a croc.
@Jhenson: you could try looking at the “Quiet that Horse!” addon as a starting point, it adds a couple extra sound files to replace the default death knight horse scream with a less annoying thunder crash (and is fabulous btw, still sounds appropriate, just much less shrill). You would then probably need to find out what tools people are using to browse/extract sounds from the data files in order to find the name of the sound effects for the croc, then you can replace them with something in the same manner. Sorry if you already knew all that; that’s all I got.
Oh and another nice sound replacement addon that I use, which I don’t remember the name of, silences the dragon at the login screen. Sooo nice.
I’d like to see some detail around the tame-able “rare spawns” with respect to this. I have Loque, Gondria, and Aotona tamed and on the hunt for Skoll. Their DPS appears to be higher than other pets but I have not really crunched the numbers.
It would definitely be interesting to see if that’s the case, Spleet. Though I doubt Aotona would produce good numbers, since birds are a fair amount below a lot of other pets in dps, regardless of which one it is. Personally, I doubt that rare spawns are different, but hunches are not reliable. Spirit beasts are another matter entirely, and likely have competitive dps with any pet class.
But as it pertains to this particular column, we’re only interested in tps (threat per second), as well as keeping them alive. Regardless of their dps, those pets would not make good tanks. I’m not aware of any rare-spawned bears or crocs (alas!), though the now impossible-to-tame Scholozar “ooze-o-dile” might count, so we may have to wait for such an opportunity.
Arth,
I’ve been reading your articles and have respecced one of my talents to try this stuff out. I’m at the point now where I need to level my new pet-tank to 80 from 75 and I was wondering if you have any good advice.
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/07/level-your-pet/
That should help, Chimy. Good luck!
And if you meant more general advice, most everything I’ve learned is somewhere in the pet tanking articles here on the WHU. And there should be at least 1-2 more posts coming out in the coming weeks, with both videos and updated advice.
I may have missed it, but what kind of pet spec are you running with this. I just started easy by tanking Brewfest boss, got a few chuckles the first time i suggested it earlier in the week, but i had a couple people request me to tank it today, even though there was a tank available.
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/01/best-tenacity-pet-talent-build-level-80/
And yeah, tanking the Brewfest boss isn’t too hard. And it can also be a nice way to get priority on the stamina trinkets that he drops, which will help our tanking immensely.
Frost i hope you read this! I am a fairly big fan and i love tanking(i am a hunter). I prefer to use a rhino tho i have named him nomnoms. with regular 5 man buffs he is around 37k health. that is usualy with kings fortitude and dk horn and druid bufff(on both of us) The hardest boss my guild has let me tank tho is the adds on 25 man anub recan in naxx and OT 25 man maxxeena(My job was spider adds which was hard due to suck little aoe tanking web wrap duety and also to pick up during raid wipe web wrap and if the tank dies)(which he did). Unfortunately no one respects my hunter tanking. nomnoms is imune 2 crits and has over 40k hp(during 25 mans) i ask one of the best warrior tanks i knew on the server awillkon and he said that i should stick 2 dps and delete nomnoms and if i want 2 tank to make a DK(i hate any class that doesn’t have mana and doesn’t shoot arrows) why can’t any1 respect us hunter tanks?
col – it’s the nature of our class. Few hunters tank, even fewer tank well, and we have epic dps. One can hardly blame other classes for discouraging our tanking. It doesn’t mean we can’t gain respect, it just means we have to work that much harder to earn it. You’ll never win over a 25M, though, so don’t worry about it. Start small, do whatever you can with whoever you can (Outland heroics, Northrend instances, quest tanking, etc. etc.), and eventually you’ll see support.
I would take one piece of his advice, though. Delete the rhino. Then get yourself one of the 2 recommended in this article. Same survivability, better aggro. If your goal is raid off-tanking, a bear might be your best bet.
Anybody can help me please!
What pet would you guys recommend to quest with? I want a pet that don’t die too much and does pretty good damage that can aggro good. And can you provide a build with it please.
Thank You.
Zheng – Not quite my realm, but Frost has written a couple excellent guides that should help:
Hunter: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/10/leveling-hunter-build/
Pet: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2008/11/best-leveling-pet/
If you still have problems keeping your pet alive, you could switch to a tank pet like a croc or bear. But a dps pet should be your best bet, combined with the other suggestions from those guides.
I read that devilsaur is best pet for leveling, but I haven’t got 51 talent points in BM. Plus I’m only level 50, which is about like 10 more levels away till getting myself a devilsaur.
So which Ferocity do you recommend me questing with besides with devilsaur for now?
I’m sorry if you thought I was talking about Hunter leveling build, but I was talking about if you can give me a Ferocity pet build please for leveling.
Thank You.
I understood the question, but since you’re leveling thought you might also benefit from the hunter guide. Sorry for the confusion though.
In lieu of a dino for leveling, your best bets are probably a cat or raptor. A wolf will be more overall dps, but it won’t hold aggro quite as well. And the truth about pet builds, and even your hunter build, while leveling is that it’s hard to go wrong. You’d probably be fine with a variety of pet builds.
The WHU does have a ferocity pet build (on the main guides page) that is as good a template as any. It’s for maximizing damage, and should work well for killing things as quickly as possible.
To support my earlier point, I was a level 68 hun-tard before I even realized our pets had their own spec. Yes, it was an embarassing moment. Point is, I leveled fine until that point without a ton of trouble, despite my obvious inexperience with the class. As long as you’re Beastmaster spec, a hunter is one of the smoothest classes to level.
I think I’ll get a cat.
Thank You Very Much for your help.
I really don’t know which to get. I decided to get cat but I don’t know. Can you provide me some cons or pros for which? Which one would you choose?
Pros – It’ll kill stuff quicker than pretty much any other pet.
Cons – ??
As I said before, it’s hard to mess up horribly while leveling. Do whatever you want…WoW is first and foremost a game, and picking a pet you’re happy with is more important than micromanaging what the best decision is. Most dps (ferocity) pets are fine for leveling, even though some will be better than others.
Question regarding leveling multiple pets. Right now I’m just getting into Northrend a bit, and I have a bear and a wolf. Ultimately, I’d like to level them both. Any experience or suggestions whether it is better to switch back and forth periodically to level “simultaneously” or to just level one with me all the way to 80 and then bring the other one up after the fact?
Thanks!
p.s. LOVE this site!
Level the bear to 80, then get a premade lvl 80 wolf in Storm Peaks….no leveling required.
Just wondering, Does the Aspect of the Monkey contribute to the pets dodge or tanking abilities at all?
PS…In fact do any of the aspects help any of the pets abilities??
I know aspect of beast helps out the pet, wondering if any of the others do.
Only stats that transfer normally. Which is why, for example, a stamina elixir will help our pet, but one that increases our health by 3000 won’t. Off the top of my head, AotBeast and AotHawk/Dragonhawk will be the only ones that benefit our pets.
I’ll be putting this into a future article, but this is a great place to put it as well:
There’s been some misconceptions about the bear recently. It can indeed affect more than 3 targets now (which I’ll try to get updated into this article soon), but it does NOT have a 360 degree radius now. It remains at 180.
With the 3.3 addition of MD Volleys, bear being able to affect more than three targets, and their superior single-target threat, I’m starting to side with the bear as an all-purpose tanking pet. Both remain viable, however.
My thanks to Frost for testing this, since I have a full stable and no bear to run the tests properly myself.
>>1st, I want to cover the turtle not holding agro. I have never had a problem with my turtle, and no other pet will last as long a turtle, because of its shield. Thats the way it is, and there is no getting around it.
>>2nd. You didnt even mention a Scorpid. They make fantastic tanks for single pull mobs. Just try to have a a bear or Croc “crap in my book” pull agro from a Scorp. not going to happen very often, if at all. Ive tested it. and for single target. the Scorp is awsome.
> Turtles can be great, and I gave them a nod above. They should be used in situations where survivability is more of an issue than threat. But with difficulty-to-gear ratios in instances these days, healers keeping a pet up isn’t as hard as it once was. Pets holding aggro off of AoE spam from the dps usually is, however.
> There just aren’t many situations where a tank will need single target threat only, and a Scorpid doesn’t blow away pets like the bear, certainly. Your suggestion is fine for very particular situations, but a Scorpid isn’t a better all-purpose tank at the moment.
I heard of a BM hunter who tanks with a warp stalker.
Does anyone in this thread have experience with warp stalkers?
I use a bear and a crocolisk.
A warp stalker’s special ability grants it some extra damage mitigation. But it’s not as much mitigation as a turtle’s Shell Shield ability, so there’s no reason to use one. The same could be said of extreme soloing enthusiasts, who almost universally choose turtles for the same reason.
Technically, any tank-tree pet could be used to effectively tank heroics. And warp stalkers are the second best choice in situations where extra damage mitigation is needed. So there’s nothing particularly wrong with them, there’s just better options.
Sounds like my bear and croc combination is better. I do most of the run with my croc, pulling my bear out for bosses.
I am thinking about taming a turtle.
Thank you much.
OK I AM A SURV HUNTER . BEEN USING A CAT FOR EVTHING ! NOOB OK I GUESS. SO I’VE BEEN TRYING TOO FIND SKOLL ! IS THIS NOT A WISE CHOICE ? SHOULD I GET A BEAR OR CROCK ? WE ARE STILL DOING THE NEW 5 MANS AND WORKING OUR WAY TO THE 10-25MANS . WHAT WOULD B THE BEST PET FOR ME ? AND I HAVE LEARNED ALOT FROM THIS WEBSITE. MY DPS WENT FROM LIKE 1900 AND SINCE READING FROST AND EV1 ELSES POST . I’VE BEEN DOING FROM 3000-4100 . AND I THANK U GUYS SO MUCH FOR MAKING IT EASY FOR ME TOO UNSERSTAND UR COMMENTS .
Koza – A wolf is the best pet for dps. Cat, Raptor, or Devilsaur if you’re BM all come close. This article focuses on pet tanking, which shouldn’t be your concern in a survival spec.
I notice there’s no mention of the Special Abilities for the Crocolisk noted. I saw there are at least two; Fatal Bite and Tendon Rip. Of the two which would be better for tanking?
Sorry, but neither of those are Croc abilities. The croc’s special ability is Bad Attitude, which goes along with his base attack “Bite” that all tenacity pets have (or an equivalent attack, sometimes called Smack or Claw).
I tamed a barbscale croc. and wowhead shows tendon rip as an ability
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=20773#abilities
I looked up others and there a a few that show different ones.
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=24138
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=17144#abilities
Am I to assume that once tamed they don’t retain these abilities?
Right, they don’t retain the abilities. That’s just what they have when they are untamed. A couple of those abilities would massively rewrite the book on not just tanking but pet dps in general (that one that increases physical dmg. 35% would be ridiculous).
I personally like the Warp Stalker for tanking. I still use the bear for some tanking situations, but with Warp you don’t really need to put a point into your pets Charge, considering that Warp can work just as well as long as you have your pet make the first move.
Hi,
The cool-down on Bad Attitude is obviously a hindrance for the croc. In your experiences, do you have the setting for that attack on auto? If not, it seems difficult to manage the pet’s focus points to use it when you need it. If the “kicker-card” to select the croc, over that of the bear, for best tanking pet was this Bad Attitude attack – then how do you manage this cool-down hurdle?
BA’s cooldown seems intimidating, but it’s also up for a long time. And how many trash pulls last longer than 45 seconds or so? None in instances. So a lot of the downtime between BA’s will come between pulls. I routinely wait for Misdirection to come off cooldown anyway, and BA is usually up by that time. The net affect of this is that BA uptime can easily be 80-90% in an instance.
Crocs also have better single target threat, detailed here:
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/02/single-target-tps-pet-tanking/
Which I wasn’t aware of when this article was written. In all, crocs > bears for pretty much everything tank-related.
Ahoy lads,
I have a few questions: do different mobs of the same class have pros/cons over one another when you tame them? I.e., is taming Kresh, the turtle boss in WC is better than taming a regular turtle, say the one in Hillsbrad Foothills?
Continuing, what would be the best croc to tame?
Dedmy – Nope, there’s no difference between pets of the same type, outside of look.
Ty Arth, appreciated
This may seem like a total n00b move, but for pet tanking, I use a Rhino. I have had several comments in Heroics from the healers saying that my Rhino can take one HELL of a hit and keep on going! I think it is the increased armour, but I doubt that it actually has anymore than other tank pets.
Math – Rhinos were mediocre at best before the 4.0 patch, and tenacity pets have largely been standardized with the new changes.
You can tank well with ANY tenacity pet, rhinos included. But if you’re min-maxing, you currently have only a few options: turtle for mitigation, worm for AoE threat, or one of the others for the raid buff they provide. The recommendations above have been invalidated by the patch. Use a rhino if you must, and good luck, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Favorite pet tank for just soloing/questing since Cata- the Beetle! But I’ve had a bear since day one. I will definitely try the croc though, and see how that goes. Best pet moment in Cata so far- while in Heroic Deadmines on Foereaper 5000, tank went down (he went too far out of LoS) so I broke out my turtle (just happend to have him on me) and he tanked the rest of the encounter, barely took any damage. Priest actually switched to DPS! And I wasn’t even in BM spec. Go Hunters!