Most any spec while leveling will get the job done. It's just a matter of which route makes it the less painful to do so. Personally, most specs leveling are slightly different from choosing the playstyle you prefer. Perhaps you want to be capable to stand your ground when getting ganked in stv, or perhaps you want the lone ranger who has his pet to do all his dirty work. There are many different forms.
From my personal opinion,
choosing a spec like this is both very viable in all aspects to level with. Provides all your pet bonuses, heavy CC for PvP encounters, and doesn't gimp on wasted talents. "but what about my imp hawk, imp mend pet, imp (pet)movespeed, aim shot!"
What about them? They are nearly all useless for a BM hunter who is leveling. Imp hawk is useless since your pet is the main dmg dealer in your duo; doing more shots isn't going to make your pet hit harder. Imp (pet) speed is useless when your have your opponent on lockdown from CC. Imp mend pet is useless since it's channeled in vanilla, and only removes things that don't really affect your pet (aka let it die and revive it). Aim shot....please.
Being said, with this spec, you're going to want to go down into the BM tree to around 5/5 U-Fury. From there, imo, head into the surv tree to get your imp WC, and traps. You'll be level 40 when you get your 2/2 C-traps. Pick up the 4/5 conc on your way back into the beefy parts of BM. As always, people will suggest you tame a kitty cat to level with. While they are a great pvp pet due to attk speed and dmg, I generally prefer the boar. More utility to level with (1 sec stun, that boosts pet AP on next hit), and eats near anything you pickup. Up to you though (can always stable 1 or the other).
As for raiding, it's pretty much always dat marks spec. Only variances are your hit, and if you're the marks bitch or not.
5% hit self buffedThis is the avg cookie cutter spec for raiding, given you have 5% hit (+3 making the base 8% for bosses), and are not a marks bitch. If you are 8% hit w/o talents helping you, you can shift that 3/3 in SF into imp hawk. If you are the designated marks bitch, you'll have to juggle some talents around to get 5/5 imp mark (generally taken from hawk, or any excess SF points).
Given this server lasts, and you see break of T3 era, the shift happens to favor BM subspec over full surv spec. You'll start to see T3 hunters
with a spec like this.Doubt it will progress that far, but info is info.
Hope this helps how you feel you should play as a hunter. Also note, getting hit capped > anything else before raiding. Don't be bullied by people saying Surefooted isn't needed cause gear provides all the hit you need from preraid (quite hard, and can gimp).
Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 1:50 pm