BC Hunter Builds?

[Luminon]

In general I think Beast Mastery will always be the strongest to solo with

Your own damage is restricted by the requirement to not pull aggro. OK, there are counters (Misdirection, FD and so on) but using a counter every time on trivial pulls is not efficient

With Beast Mastery you can send the pet in and start autoshot and the pet will usually keep aggro. With MM you need to allow time for the pet to reach the mob before you open up. Plus BM pets move faster and Spirit Bond is a very good soloing talent

Reports from some Hunters in Beta are of growl working exceptionally well so this may be less of an issue

If so there is another reason to consider: simply that you can win stand-up fights with BM you couldn't win solo with MM. That I've found to be true in the current build may or may not hold true for BC. It is possible to win fights with MM that you couldn't win in a standup fight by kiting. I've found kiting very risky and quite time-consuming. It's all very well being able to kill some super-hard elite in 20 minutes of kiting it along a road but I doubt you'd want to solo that way especially if it takes you a death or two before you actually get a kill

Sadly most super-hard elites are snare immune anyway (think spellmaw in winterspring :wacko:), but those usually hit so hard your pet won't survive either. For grinding I tried both BM and MM specs, and allthough the BM one has far less downtime and is increadibly easy to play I found marksmanship more fun. There's nothing like opening with aimed+multi, feign death, aimed + multi again, then kite as needed.

A bit OT, but related to Hunter skills anyway:

Does any (BC beta tester) know where I can teach my Blood Elf hunter's "Dragonhawk" pet further ranks of its unique ability "Fire Breath" beyond rank 1?

I hope Blizzard didn't just make this fine pet with its nifty AE fire attack a beginner pet for Blood Elves, which cannot be upgraded.

A couple of things about pets: you'll want a pet with < 1.5 attack speed for continuous frenzy procs. Also I reccomend getting a cat type pet, their stealth skill is incredibly usefull when you make a bad pull or get unwanted aggro; you can then feign death without having your pet get eaten.

Here's a great pet guide and a pet skill calculator.