BC Hunter Builds?

[Kevin]

I'm a complete newbie to Hunters, and would like to know what a really good, effective PvE solo Hunter spec is for the upcoming expansion (spec for level 70), plus a little bit explanation why you have chosen this or that talent:)

I'm looking at a [url=http://http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/bc-hunter/talents.html?5520300050501015311510505201200000000000000300000000000000000000"]"Speed freak"[/url] build that still buffs the pet a lot. I don't like not having imp mend pet but I can live without it since I still figure I'll have a shaman around when doing stuff out in the world. No imp revive pet hurts more since a lot of the damage I do is boosted by the pet and imp revive means it's worth spending the time to get the pet back up mid combat, but I wanted the extra +hit and some extra dodge for the pet and I didn't want to give up my extra range either. Bestial swiftness would be helpful, but it's been bugged so many times and can be overcome for nearly all solo situations by just having a pet with a charge or dash ability (since it never stacked with those anyway) that I can ignore it, heck good toggling of aspect of the daze can make up for not having this talent in all but PvP environments too.

Some of the keys are that rapid fire goes from a 5 to a 3 minute cooldown, I don't care about the "next shot" bonus from it, it's the cooldown on rapid fire I'm after. Imp AotH being a 10% chance to proc a 15% speed increase should be nearly the same DPS increase as mortal shots upping my crits by 30%. You do have to have serpent's swiftness for this to work out though since that will get you enough shots per unit time to keep the imp AotH up enough. I've always had mortal shots, but if I wanted the range as well as the pet boosts I couldn't get it. Ferocius inspiration is there because I plan to be in 5 mans a lot and upping the groups damage by 3% pretty much all the time will be nice (yes I expect that the pet will crit enough to keep it up nearly all the time). And of course using well timed beastial wraths to up my damage again. But I'll generally have a 5% damage boost (2% from having the pet out, another 3% from the pets crits) as well as the speed increase.

I think +2% more to hit for the pet is fine, especially if the pet can get any +hit from my own gear and I don't care about the extra mounted speed for me. I do want more points to get the pets dodge up though. 9% more dodge on the pet would be a very large increase in survivability since I can simply train the resists into the pet to deal with magical/environmental damage. But I settled for just the 3%. Depending on just how aimed shot works in the expansion I might move the point from aimed over to this talent as well. Beastial discipline seems pretty much useless with having go for the throat.

I'm also hoping that in the raids they are more like ZG/AQ20/MC where the pet can actually be used pretty much all the time. Sure it's a dash in and out on Luci to avoid the curse and I only get one or two goes in at Rags before the pet dies, but I send it in just before the knockback call so that if the tank gets knocked back the pet might be there to eat the hit instead of someone else. BWL was really the first raid instance where you couln't use the pets to help with damage. In ZG and AQ20 a beastmaster pet can off tank stuff right now. Assuming there is stuff like that in the new dungeons I see a beastmaster + pet being able to keep up on damage with the other specs + pet. Though a lot of that depends on how much the pet scales with my gear and just all of what scales.

But in the end I may take the points out of hawk eye and and aimed shot and get imp revive pet, 1 point in mend pet, and one more point in catlike reflexes.

Even without the pet getting scaling from my gear, if I could have those talents right now I figure my cat pet could push 115 DPS (I could actually use the claw ability because of my crits giving the pet focus) if not more, I'm not always the best at back of the envelop theorycrafting, that's a pretty big increase for the 55-65 it does now.