Not really a huge hunter player (though I have toyed with it off and on), my sole alliance toon that is 110 happens to be a hunter, and I went with BM because I felt like it's closer to the old Survival spec than Marksmanship is.That said, I don't know if it's actually a major bug, but I've noticed a lot of issues with Animal Companion unrelated to what's in the guide. Sometimes it takes a million years for the second pet to show up. If it doesn't disappear when you dismiss a pet before summoning another one, it won't correctly use Kill Command. If it doesn't disappear when you're mounted (flying) and then you dismount, sometimes it won't obey Kill Command. Super fun. /eyerollAlso, some pets I feel are not as capable on the tank front as others. Example, I don't have any issues with using, say, a Wind Serpent, or better, a Stag, but should I choose to use a Marsuul, it's absolutely worthless and squishy. Interestingly, I didn't really feel much difference with the Serpent pets.Just the Marsuuls suck.
CedricDur you are absolutely correct when you said this:"Tenacity is -not- the tank pet despite what it may sound like by what we had in the past. Ferocity's leech is absolutely brutal in a BM hunter and surpasses the 5% extra HP and the 3 minute 20% damage reduction. I was looking at the healing meter and the pet's Leech alone (not counting Mend Pet and I wasn't even 100 to have the 50% extra effect) healed its whole HP during a fight. We're talking a short fight and 7k HP for a 7k HP HP pet.Clefthood is not Tenacity, it's Ferocity. So it also has bloodlust, leech, damage reduction ability AND 10% armor with 20% extra healing. It really is the new turtle and there are no downsides in using it for dungeons or open world."I am now using the Clefthoove and its a beast of a tank! I have 1 spirit beast,(for the heal that is worth it again to use) 1 Ray (for the frenzy effect removal if needed) 1 Clefthoove (for the haste buff) you can use a Core Hound also, it had the same atributes as the Clefthoove for tanking and it also has the haste buff), 1 pet of my choice that goes well with my mood when hanging around someplace. Thats it. I do not PvP, so the other pet classes are useless to me. Its Ferocity all the way now.
There's a linked "hunter pet" guide, so that's why they didn't go in depth on new pet "specs", but I've found it better to call pets by their new traits- forget the whole, DPS pet, Tank pet, pvp pet thing. Now it's leech or health or speed pet. "tank" pets will be determined by family (those with damage reductions or self heals mostly) of whichever spec you prefer. (leech is AWESOME)P.S I HATE the generic "command pet" button. I've dragged the abilities directly from the pet book to my bars so they stay separate and don't change because the last thing I need is to swap pets and forgetfully hit a button that used to be a damage reduction and pop bloodlust at the wrong time in the middle of a raid.....
I don't like Barbed Shot...feels like a halfway solution that just added more problems. Having your main Focus generator double as being a buff/DoT is just ungainly--you want to get buffs and DoTs up first thing on the boss, yet you want to use a focus Generator later in you rotation so you don't focus cap. So which is it going to be, Barbed Shot? Both, you say? Then it forces us to play the buff stack-watching game, which I also don't enjoy. It's not fun to have the boss go invulnerable/run out of range and watch your hard earned sweet spot fall off, nor is it fun trying to keep a fiddly buff up while avoiding red swirlies on the ground.I've always love the idea of having lots of pets, but the reality that BM's rotation has always felt clunky to me means yet another pass on it for this expac.