Best hunter dungeon (aoe) spec?

[luxlunae]

I'm starting a new group with three hunters to try and learn to like the class. What spec is going to give me the best bang for my buck in dungeons?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

BM, IMO. It's by far the most resilient and versatile. I tried MM for a bit and while it didn't require the pet for max damage, it was also not as forgiving of errors. Just keep in mind that a bunch of additional AoE (Glaive Toss or Barrage at 90, Incendiary ammo at 100) won't be available until later. Beast Cleave (pet AoE for 4 secs after multishot) isn't until 24.

Between Glyph of Misdirection and 2-second pet revival, unless your pets are getting one-shotted or you don't have an auto-pet-rez macro in your setup, you should very rarely if ever need to Feign Death.

[luxlunae]

I'm going to be running them with a standard tank/healer so not too worried about the aggro issue. But bm sounds like the solid option.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I liked it additionally because you can tame exotic pets to better fill in group buff slots.

[emitchell109]

I believe you can get Every buff possible with the correct combo of raid pets, or maybe it was like 8/9 buffs + a heal.

But yea, playstyle really dictates the spec choice.
BM to me personally is very consistent and smooth across the board, properly timing out your multi shots to engage beast cleave so that it is almost up 100% of the pack pulls is a pretty easy feat.
MM is a bursty spec, that I enjoy as well just to see those big crits/numbers and watching those 5man instance bosses MELT down asap.

I have yet to play around with Surv spec, haven't really used It since cata now that I am thinking about it.

[luxlunae]

What pets should I tame along the way if I want to switch to 4 hunters and a healer at 60? (crazy idea to me, no tank, but in heirlooms this team is just melting dungeons). What brings the best hunter buffs?

Right now I'm just using the 3 cats that came with the team with growl turned off.

[emitchell109]

There is no need for that Healer, I promise you.
Buffs are also up to your own pref/style.

At 69 you can Tame exotic pets that drop off 2x buff each.
Until then, I personally say you cant get wrong with
Versatility - The Boar is ONE of the pets that provides this stat ++ to over all dmg healing and dmg absorb 3% I believe
Stats - Dog is also ONE of the pets with this stat ++ 5% to stats aka more attack power/crit
Crit - Wolf/Raptor offer up the CRIT buff of 5% [Pet crits return focus to you = more focus cost moves ++ dmg]
Those are my 3 that I tend to prioritize

After that
Haste - Spore bat
Multishot - Dragonhawk
Stamina - Bear

After I get this far into my reply I recall this link.
http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/25...pet-guide-wod/
Nice like quick reference for buffs and pets to help you assemble your army!

[Andreauk]

My x5 hunter team is now level 77 and it's so nice not having to worry about a healer (I found with my x4 hunter and healer grp the healer sometimes got too much aggro).. and I can play them as if I were just playing one. The freedom of movement is amazing, MD glyph and the much faster pet rez compared to the old days makes it easy and soo much fun. Kill shot heals you, and I have the disengage heal glyph - that with spirit bond and it's quite nice. You just burst everything down. I macro intimidation to multi-shot for nice pet stuns during aoe.

I managed to do shadow labs when the bosses were 4 levels above me with zero deaths.. even with being feared and mc'd in there.

My only gripes with this team is I keep forgetting my focus fire.. so need to use an addon I think to track it better and the same with tracking beast cleave uptime.. maybe TellMeWhen would work..

[emitchell109]

I just work my Focus fire into my macro. Sometimes I proc it with 1 charge sometimes 3-4x. Either way it always gets consumed and used.
That pet cleave can be difficult to keep up 100%, but I was running something along the lines of
#showtooltip
/castsequence Multi,multi,steady,steady,multi,multi,steady,stead y
/castrandom !killshot

Not perfect syntax but it got the job done for my needs.

[Andreauk]

I just work my Focus fire into my macro. Sometimes I proc it with 1 charge sometimes 3-4x. Either way it always gets consumed and used.
That pet cleave can be difficult to keep up 100%, but I was running something along the lines of
#showtooltip
/castsequence Multi,multi,steady,steady,multi,multi,steady,stead y
/castrandom !killshot

Not perfect syntax but it got the job done for my needs.

I have my focus builder on it's own as I use thrill of the hunt talent.. it's passive saving me actionbar space plus it procs like mad on aoe. I did post a macro in the macro forums which I made on my 100 hunter it even lets barrage channel for it's full duration, but now I am playing all hunters I want a little more control.