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.

[quote]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...

My Comment to the above:

I happen to be a learning BM Hunter with my highest toon @ 62.  I should point out that I predominantly play solo in order to keep things somewhat in context.

With respect to your post above:  There are no hard fast rules in useing your pet IMHO, what determines what you do is environment/situation with the greatest emphasis in avoiding mele when possible.  That said, in some cases it is best to pull a mob yourself and (this requires timeing)when it gets out of aggro range of surrounding mobs, you should have already commited you pet to intercept so that the mob never gets to you and if in doubt, hit it with concussive shot holding your feign death in reserve in the event that the world goes to hell in a handbasket.  As a matter of finesse consider placeing a frost trap at your anticipated point of intercept so that your pet has time to get the mobs attention, additionally you can even (assuming you have the time) wait out part of the cooldown on the trap so you can cast another in the event that your dealing with an elite. You also have the option to use intimidate in conjunction with essentially any of the methods in this example.  Some mobs simply refuse to accept Feign Death and will beat you into the graveyard so every situation is different but in the end IMHO finesse is something you learn over time by gaining experience.

Dungeon/Instance play:  Understand I am still in the learning curve, however, experience has taught me the following.  In the above environs it is best to keep your pet on Passive all the time and commit your pet as needed, additionally it is wise to turn off growl to reduce pet aggors.  If the situation goes bad and the tank goes down, you can aways turn growl back on and use intimidate and beastal wrath in a last stand attempt.  It has been my experience that a GOOD party leader makes sure everyone is on the same sheet of music and that includes (especially in PUGS) explaining exactly which targeting marks mean what.  Just because a party leader in X guild always uses X mark for this, that or the other, does not make such marks universal and other players can not be expected to read your mind.

Last but not least.  I keep my pet on passive in every town, especially in those towns that are neutral or joint use such as gadgetstan.  I got wacked once not haveing my pet on passive when another hunter or maybe it was a Lock came by and the pets aggroed and apparentl;y mine tossed the first punch and I found myself on the not so favorable list of all those bruisers, who promptly beat me into extinction.