Leveling questions: Pet / Spec / GlyphFollow

Hey there Hunter community!

Me and all my buds just rolled on Borean Tundra together, and I decided to, at long last, level a Hunter! I've played them off and on and had a bunch of Hunter alts since vanilla WoW, but never gotten one to the cap. Obviously, things have changed over time, but I do have the basics, for the most part.

What I'm curious about is...I've read the sites, and I've figured out what the three different types of pet specs pretty much do, but I'm still left wondering, what kind of pets do you guys level with? Just for solo leveling do you prefer going with a max dps pet (cat) or a max defense tanking pet (turtle)? Do you level up both? Can you honestly tank instances and big group quests if you have a max defense pet? Need to be BM?

Which leads me to my next question: I know Survival is the raiding spec now, which is what I'm leveling my Hunter for. I know max PvE dps =/= most optimal leveling spec...BUT that being said, traiditionally, I do like leveling as my max dps spec for any given class, so I perform better in instances and whatnot. So my question here is, at what level can I spec the best dps Survival spec (while leveling) and not be completely gimp?

To transition back to pets, I'm level like...14 on my Hunter now; obviously he has talent points but my pet does not. The trees for pets look pretty small, I'm guessing they just pop up enable around 40-50 or something? Any links where I can look up specs for pets? I'm guessing pettopia might have something, haven't checked yet, heading off to college right after I get done writing this.

Last question: Any mods you all recommend for Hunters in general? I used to allways get Hunter's Helper but it looks like that was discontinued. = / Others?

That's probably it for now, heh, pretty big post. Needless to say I'm excited about finally getting back in to Hunter, and I'm determined to take it to the top this time with my friends, and be able to play it as well as it can be played. :)

I am by no means an expert, but BM is pretty easy for leveling.

I use a wolf for my pet. mainly because his howl is an AP buff that stacks with aspects :) But check out http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ they have some real helpful info for pet stuff :)

If you want to do more dps yourself (and pet can hold enoug aggro) go with Marks for leveling. Your pet won't be as much of a beast, but your dps will drop the mob faster (and burn through mana faster)

So really it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

BM can get away with leveling with a squishy kitty, but as SV you'd probably want to grab a bear until you can get a gorilla or something tougher.

For glyphs, try picking up the Feign Death one as soon as you get the skill (which won't be as soon as you might need it if you don't go BM), it's awesome. :)

I'm not an expert in this either, but i'm doing a BM hunter atm now, which works just fine for me. You're not missing special stuff in the survival tree (as ES comes at lvl 60) and I have the feeling I can take on most mobs (even 5 lvls above) when I come across them. As glyph, I picked up an Improved Aspect of the Monkey, (was only 10s) because it's nice when you want to skip loads of mobs, as you can just run through them all with +30% speed when you dodge.

You get pet talents at pet lvl 20 I think. I got myself a raptor (just for the looks) and it seems it kinda better than a bear or any pet not in the Ferocity tree, due to Bloodthirsty keeping pet happiness and health up all the time. I'm happy with my raptor, and I'll stick to it till I reach 60, and then the white devilsaur will be mine.

As for mods, I have Omen threat (mostly for managing pet aggro), Little helper (for auto shot timing) and that's about it.

Aethien is right , on my first Hunter i did nothing with talents until about level 25-30 , had strength gear instead of agi and many other mistakes were made .

I would say the best tree to level with is the one you will enjoy the most , BM has advantages with the revive pet/heal pet talents and extra pet health and other talents but they all are ok , Survival takes a while to get at the good talents so is not as good at lower levels but still easily possible , and MM well that also takes a few levels before it becomes as good as BM is at the lowest levels.

I would say for me the best pet at low level is one with good health + armour and unless you do cooking ( which you should for the extra stats )or buy food the one i would pick is a boar as they will eat anything that drops off mobs that is edible , cats are good and do more damage but are not great against more than one mob as the damage they take can be more than you can heal .

I would say as you are going to be learning as you level try all the pet types you find as one may be better for the way you intend to play , before all the changes and even in the Vanilla WoW i had pets of all different types , some i liked and did rubbish damage or had low health ( casters ect ) some by the noises they made put me off them , some back then had terrible movements ( anyone remember the bears sledging to the mobs ? ) which put me off them , the way it is now any pet can get you to 80 and they are all good.

Bears are great.

I'm speaking as a SV hunter; Swipe helps him keep threat on my Explosive Shots (have to wait until ~50% to use ES).