Like a lot of you know, I've been playing my hunters more lately as my shaman team got somewhat gear capped. They initially leveled to 70 in instances as BM spec with Boars and a Priest healer. Going to probably level them first with the WotLK launch, since I can stay inside instances and avoid the crazy gankfest in the open world.

I am considering mixing my group up a bit... Here's some background:

Since the 3.0 era, my preferred instance-tanking pets have been Worms, which is a little counter intuitive to solo play where the Gorilladin is a great pet. Worms have some amazing advantages for my multibox situation, in that:

* Their special attack, acid spit, stacks 5 times for a nice chunk of armor reduction. This stacks "cross-worm", meaning I can sick all 4 worms on the same target and it will get a 4xSpit debuff on it almost immediately. (That's -2000 armor now, which is impressive).
* Additionally, it's a ranged attack that the pets can do to grab initial aggro. Normally, I designate targets with 4 keypresses before a pull and then start a pull by either just sending the pets in to attack or by launching a scorpid sting to pull as the pets are told to attack. This second method allows the fight to happen away from the initial pull zone and reduces the chance of getting unwanted adds. With the worms, they can move towards the pack of mobs and pause to spit at 20yds, which pulls the mobs to each pet tank and avoids the hunters building undesirable early aggro.
* The AoE features of the Gorilla or the Bear are liabilities for my setup, where I really only want 1 elite mob per worm. (If I get a pull that's larger than 4-5 mobs, I generally lay down traps in order to deal with the extras). Although I haven't tried it, I can imagine a 4xGorilla group might end up accidentally distributing mobs 2-3 to an individual gorilla if there was some RNG action taking place to produce misses or crits at awkward times.

A typical pull for me involves assignment of targets, sending the worms loose, then DPSing down the individual mobs. Multi-shot is used when available, but most of my DPS is a rotation of Steady and Concussive Shots (I've posted on my reasons for that elsewhere...). Volley, unfortunately, is not practical for most pulls because it requires mouse clicking to target. I will sometimes volley with 1-2 hunters, but it requires that I become defocused from healing.

3.0 did break some aspects of my team, namely that I used to benefit from stacked 4xFerocious Inspirations. While I miss that mechanic, it is nice that they changed the way Defensive works for pets. Pre 3.0, I had to manually re-target the pets onto mobs if their pre-assigned target had been killed-- now the pets that were tanking will automagically snap over to the next focus-fire target once their original target is dead. Overall, I am thrilled with the changes to pets, especially tenacity pets.

Here are my questions:

1.) I've never run with a "mixed" group of hunters. For example, there are obvious benefits to going 3xBM+1Marksman. Trueshot Aura on one hunter would have a nice impact on the entire group's DPS. 2xBM,1xMarks,1xSurvival would add some nice mana regen to the mix as well. The main reason I have never had a split group is that I need Beastial Wrath protection from fear-bombs when I PvP. It was very nice to be able to pop 4xBW and not worry about CC for a while. Fear is a multiboxers worst nightmare (other than a pre-nerf Ret Pally, that is!). For WotLK instances, I am strongly considering going the 3xBM,1xMarks route for TSA.

2.) I've *rarely* run with different pets, mostly for aesthetic reasons. However, I can see the advantages of a mixed-pet group. The Worms are great tanks, but it might be nice to have a Bear in there for more AoE DPS, a buffing/debuffing pet, or even a Gorilla to nab any loose mobs and deal with non-elite AoE trash pulls. It is my preference to include at least 3 tenacity pets, since my playstyle is generally 1 pet/mob. I am strongly considering going with one Wolf in the group for Furious Howl, however.

Based off 1.) and 2.), I think my first step is going to be 3xBM with Worms and 1xMarks with a Wolf. Feel free to let me know if you have a great theorycraft idea for the perfect pet group (that can still tank well).

3.) Lastly, I have a choice of 3 healers at my disposal. I have played 95% of my time with the priest, but I do have some Heroic experience with the post-3.0 Druid and Pally. Priests are dominating in this setup because of the power of Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending. Fort buff and Inspiration are also nice. Downsides of the priest is that he can be very squishy if something goes wrong. The Pally is the most "work" for me to manage, since there's still no great AoE heal, but the upside is that 8xBlessing of Might is a lot of extra AP to throw at targets in a 5-man instance. The pally is incredibly durable, to boot. I escaped a few very bad pulls by popping Bubble+Feign Death and letting the pets re-acquire targets. Pally is a very flexible buffer/healer that is insanely durable with the cost of having heals that are challenging in my setup. Druid is somewhat of a middle ground-- he's more durable than a priest, has decent AoE healing with Wild Growth, can quickly rotate HoTs across multiple targets, and can CC certain problem targets if needed. Druid downside is that their buffs are the least useful for my specific situation. Proper healing of the pets on a boss is also tougher since I tend to let the pets fight each other for aggro during a boss fight to split damage around the team. (It's not uncommon to lose a pet or 3 on some fights... I treat them as one 40,000 hp tank that can be broken apart in stages).

I'd welcome any feedback on my best healer choice as well. I am leaning towards the druid for other reasons (he'd make a nice boomkin to go with my shamans!!), but there may be some hunter/pet/instance mechanics that I'm missing.