hey, i would like to know whats the best spec for solo questing and a lil bit of running instances

              Thanks,
                         

BM 41/20/0

BM is the best for soloing in cercen places. marksmenship u get some cool stuuf wich is almost just as good

BM is the best for solo.  It's up to u wheter u should go MM or SV for off spec.  I personally prefer SV as off spec in case I get in a lil trouble, I have improved traps and an increased 10% health.  If u go MM as off spec, then u will get the all mighty Aimed shot  (since u cant tell my tone thru a post, Im being sarcastic).  I personally don't like wasting 11 points to get a shot that takes twice as long to shoot than my other shots.  In the time that it takes to shoot 1 Aimed, i can get off 2 or usually 3 shots to do at the very least the same amount of dmg but very often I do more dmg (as BM without Aimed).  Another problem I dont like about MM is that with a high crit rate, you will pull aggro a lot more often from ur pet.  A good way to counter this is to get a good pet with as many learnable attacks (like claw, bite, etc) as possible along with an aoe attack.  This will give ur pet a lot more aggro to hold mobs.  The last piece of advice i can give is to learn a shot rotation that will give u high dmg output and also keep u from aggroing a mob until it is below 20% health.

As BM would you guys get a tank or dps for the fight against skarr in DM?
he out dps my heal on pet so pet dies and im screwed. would a tank make a big difference? longer pet life but less damage?
or is the cat better?

BM all the way.

Everyone's already said it already, but BM is key. the added health, armor and dmg provided by your pet helps him last longer in battle, take more damage, but what no one ever seems to realize and what a huge factor it becomes, is the 2% health regen from spirit bond that not only you get, but your pet gets as well. doesn't sound like much, but lets put it in perspective. i'm a  level 70 BM hunter and when i switched to MM, the first thing i noticed was constantly having to stop after fighting mobs in order to get my health back up.

as a 70 with 11,200 health, i gain roughly 225 health every 10 seconds, or 1350 health a minute while my pet is alive. i don't think anyone actually ever mentions this as a high point of being a BM spec, but in any serious raid, how often do you get to a boss in an instance that requirea a solid 2-3 minutes of solid pummeling to take down. well, i'm usually the last one standing when i'm around a MM hunter cause i might have regenerated a good 4000 health in that 3 minutes, this saves me from having to heal my pet as often, my priest from healing me as often, or having to stop and bandage in the middle of a fight. i can't say enough about having spirit bond. plus, your health doesn't typically regen during an active fight like your mana will(although you can't be casting), so having that extra 2% goes a real long way in a lot of instances

ive got a lvl 65 hunter my self, and bm handsdown has got to be the best. ur pet will always hold aggro so u get good ranged dps. when i first started i was mm. but its like whats the sense in having a pet. with mm my pet does 50dmg all the time, with bm my pet crits like crazy. bm is great for lvling,pvp, but not raids. if your raiding or instincing mm. because survival helps out with melee, which i dont kno how that helps, but mm u get that good ranged dps, like what u want, but ur pet dosent aggro. i always use bm in most of the instinces i do my pet is off tank, because it agros alot. when im lvling its alot easier on my part. alls i have to do is auto shot and my pet does crazy dps. when im in pvp i use bestial wrath quit a bit and bm is a real saver against rogues any were, i use intimidation then i can finally get some ranged dps on them. if u dont put the last talent point in bm theres no sense in having bestial wrath. because if u put that point in the beast within which alot of people dont because then they put the last point in scatter shot, which is very good also against rogues. but if u dont have that bestial wrath will do prolly 50 percent less dmg, and plus u cant go feared if u have that.

bm FTW!

is aimed shot that good?
i think so because if u crit with it it do a heck lot of dmg.. but it is worth 11 points?

aimed shot is defintiely worth having, and it has it's perks. if you're in an instance, or in PVP, and your fighting a priest or paly combo with a warrior, rogue, whatever the case, hit him with an aimed shot. the point of the shot isn't so much the added damage, but the 50% less heals that a enemy will receive from a priest or paly on their side will make a huge difference.

i'm a level 70 hunter, and in all honesty, i never use it when i'm fighting something other than a group where i notice a healer alongside of a dps class. problem is, the casting time. here and there i'll be fighting another hunter in PVP, and i'll get off 4-5 shots by the time they hit me wth one aimed shot. even if it hits for 1000-1500 damage, doesn't matter, i've already hit him with 4-5 shots of 5-600 per hit, got a sting already on him, and my pet is beating him down and keeps delaying the casting time. just for the sake of it, get into a duel or PVP match, and try shooting a hunter with an aimed shot just for the sake of seeing what happens. you'll take so long because it keeps getting delayed by the pets and the hunters hits, you'll be 50% or less by the time you actually get that shot off. so while it has its benefits of course, it's not a shot that you should be using too much. like i said, there's certain times when it'll be great, but when it comes down to it the cast time is brutal and makes it a pain in the neck to deal with.

I am lvling my first BM, and I am liking it for the pace I can keep, and for how I can take on mobs 4 lvl higher and not die all of the time.

But I would put at least 12 points early into the mm tree as a minimum.

mortal shots (+crits)
mproved hunters mark (mele bonus)
go for throat (pet generates 50 focus with a ranged crit).

And if your going to pvp at all for me it would be hard to do without scattershot, hugely useful it will get you distance from mele characters and goot for pulling guys off of mounts and stopping flag carriers. And oddly scatershot works well with aimed shot since scatter shot will give you time to cast the big hit. But that is 21 points up the MM tree so there would be some serious trade offs.

BM has got to be the way to go for me.

I've finally made it to 56 with my BM hunter (with the help of all you people). By reading this forum, and your patience in answering my questions, I am doing a much better job using my pet, and getting better dps because of it.  Y'all have taught me how to send in my pet, and stand back and shoot, instead of the way I used to operate. Shoot, draw the mob to me, then the cat and I take it down in melee.  What the hell was I thinking??  I'm still reading, and still learning, but I digress...

A couple days ago, I read a post where the person said spirit bond was a waste of talent points.  Gotta disagree with that.  Even at 56, with only 2538 hp (TSD, 11,00 HP? I pray for the day I have that), the benefit of spirit bond is obvious.  Most of my time is spent solo, and when taking down compounds of mobs, I find that I have to do a much better job of managing mana than HP.  I usually send the cat in, hit them with a sting, a couple autoshots, an arcane shot, then auto shoot the hell out of them just so I don't drain mana faster than I lose HP from the occasions where I do take a hit.

BM spec and mana management.

you got it right buddy, someone said it was a waste of 2 talent points and i was the one who disagreed. each and every day i play in PVP i realize more and more how much better BM is imo. the simple fact that when you're fighting a MM hunter who throws down a trap, well, just use BW and that solves that problem. warlocks, priests, warriors, whenever they use fear, just pop BW. i always make sure that when i'm fighting a lock especially to stay out of range as long as possible, let them use fear, so that i'll still have control from far away and start pounding them into the ground. i'm not full BM, but a hybrid 31/30 mixe of BM/MM, so especially for PVP i have a majority of the better points in both trees. intimidation, beastial wrath, scatter shot, all perfect for taking down either a caster or a melee class

I'm sorry, but Improved Hunter's Mark is worthless. A Hunter's strength is in his pet and his ranged damage. You so rarely actually need to do melee damage that the bonus it gives you is useless.

That is unless you're a melee hunter, I hear they are in huge demand in the raiding community..

quote "I'm sorry, but Improved Hunter's Mark is worthless. A Hunter's strength is in his pet and his ranged damage. You so rarely actually need to do melee damage that the bonus it gives you is useless."


For solo questing, like the thread is about, sure, not that valuable, but for groups in instances and raids, it is far from worthless.  It applies to ranged AND melee for the WHOLE group. 

BM is the best by far. 41/17/3 you get aimed shot that way and + crit, -mana cost for shots, + ranged, + energy regain when you crit, and + damage  just from off speccing. so its a really good  combo with your pet imporved. 41/20/0 is also really good and you also get + crit damage.

Improved hunters mark is not useless, it is one of the best low level improvments. increase ap for all attackers not just ranged.

wowwiki's is more accurate
http://www.wowwiki.com/Improved_Hunter%27s_Mark

ya, the hunters mark definitely has some great use, especially in a group. main thing is, for me, i'd presonally rather use those points somewhere else rather than on the imporved hunters mark. bottom line is, ya it's great that it adds to your melee damage, but i'm not ever going to be within melee range if i can help it. i've respecced too many dam times to remember now, and i think my next move is to go full on SV, just wondering for all the SV hunters out there if anyone has a good talent tree they'd care to show me. i knda have an idea of what i what to do, but i'm just wondering what to do with the extra points i have as far as whether i should put them into BM or MM