Best spec for leveling?

[:1]So I plan on making an Undead Hunter when the servers are back up. Is BM still the best spec for leveling?
Any spec will honestly work just fine.
BM is usually preferred because your pet will do more damage = your pet holds aggro better.
If you don't mind kiting and you want a few more shot options, MM is always fun (what I personally did).
People like SV once you get explosive shot because of the burst damage. Also serpent spread is fantastic for AoE.
Once an MM hunter gets to level 51, they get 50 Focus for every killing blow with the talents Rapid Killing and Rapid Recuperation. There is rarely a need to Steady Shot to regenerate Focus.




It depends, if you have BoA items then go with Marksmanship and use a wolf pet for the buff, things will die before they get to you and you get alot of focus back. If not go Beast Mastery with a Bear, but keep a turtle with you to solo those pesky elites whom nobody really wants to help you kill.
From what I've read, all three specs are viable. So, basically, it comes down to playstyle:

- If you want your pet to be a tank, and do lots of the work, go BM with a tenacity pet (bear & turtle are great)
- If you want to ride the aggro train, and learn to kite, go MM with a ferocity pet (cat & wolf are great)
- If you want to go the AoE grind route, go SV with a tenacity pet (bear w/ Thunderstomp probably best)
- You can always mix it up (e.g. MM with a tenacity pet)

I personally will be using MM with my beloved gorilla Mobusu. My secondary spec is my leveling spec if you want to take a look.


NOTE: as soon as you hit level 40, I strongly advise picking up dual spec. It's only 100g now, and the flexibility is awesome. You can have one spec for questing, and the other for instances.
Im running with a wolf for DF and Bear for solo lvl and doing fine
Well, it's hard to say if the damage nerf in the patch notes is going to have any effect. I mean, the way it is now, you literally kill mobs in 3 seconds as a hunter untalented (or almost any class for that matter) while leveling. Anyone who thought the last few weeks at 80 were horribly unbalanced hasn't been leveling any characters recently. ;p

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when mobs die as fast as they do when soloing, there's absolutely no difference in which talent spec you are.

Maybe the nerfs will make the leveling experience similar to how it was when we were all brand new in quest gear and you could buy gear off the AH for silver, even at level 60, and you didn't even get your epic mount until a month after reaching said level. I doubt it though. I imagine even with this so called nerf you'll still be killing mobs in 5 seconds (instead of 3), which is just too short for your talents to matter.

Please keep in mind, much of the "advice" you get is from people who leveled hunters in a very different game mechanics environment. ;p Half the posts here are really them talking about how they're going to level 80-85 as well.

Let's assume damage is seriously nerfed and mobs won't die even in 5 seconds. That you'll actually have to care about what skills you might use, and you might even care if your pet is able to hold aggro or not. In that case, it'll probably be BM. But, I seriously doubt the damage nerf is that severe. I 100% expect even with the damage nerfs in the patch notes, all classes will still be killing things within 5 s. My hunter is currently level 54, and while I think the class is near the bottom of the heap now in pvp, I'd be lying if she wasn't still able to often times kill things before her pet even reached a mob. It's going to take a severe damage nerf to change things significantly enough that hunter spec matters for leveling. And she's MM if you wanted to know.