Well, this weekend I did it. Feeling guilty about slating BM hunters all the time, I respecced Kit to try it out. And it felt so dirty. :)
She does a lot of damage as Beast Mastery, as she should, so if she was raiding it wouldn’t be a bad spec. Once I’m doing 5-mans again I’ll spec back to a MM/Survival build, as I think that would be of more value to small groups. I know that you can still chain-trap as BM, but it’s more difficult due to the cooldowns. I don’t know how you’d trap in a place where you need to pull casters without Silencing Shot. BM pets seem to tank adequately, which surprises me. Normally I have to be very careful when grinding to not pull mobs off my pet, and that was much less of a problem after re-speccing.
So, I’ll stay BM for now (since I still feel like cutting my throat rather than doing pugs), but once I start actively playing her again I’ll re-spec back again.
On Saturday night there was a guild fun run to AQ40, and I actually had a lot of fun. Miz went along on her mage, which was nice, and I took Kit. Even though I hate AQ40/20 like poison, it was still a very good time. We made it up to Twin Emps, and then called it a night. I’m looking to Miz getting her mage to 70 so that we can play a lot more together – I have really, really missed that.
From someone who levelled as MM from 1 to 48, and changed then for BM I would say stick with it for a while.
The main reason I respecced back then was because my pet stop holding aggro when grinding and questing, and that made me mad.
I should try some survival sometime… not ready yet AGI wise.
Hunters are fun… I leveled my hunter BM from 10 to 70 with a little in marks and survive (aimshot/range increase). Hehe, I need to switch over to the darkside of MM/S and see how that is.
You are correct on how the pet tanks, they do quite well and are good in a pinch (pulling aggro off of casters in an instance). I am definitely jealous of chaining traps and silencing shot on caster pulls.