BM Spec

Preferred Marks Spec

Possible Survival Spec

Beast Mastery - Highest dps spec. However, it is extremely pet dependant(Check out short section on pets below). With the exception of Ferocious Inspiration the BM tree really does't do much to help out the rest of the party. Your shot rotation is basically steady, auto, steady, auto, etc. Due to the fast attack speed with this spec you will really not use multi shot or arcane, and they won't be in your rotation as your just attacking too fast. Points in improved mend pet can be invaluable as losing him is a faily major dps hit, and being able to revive it faster and with more health is pretty nice.

Marksmanship - Big numbers, big crits. The build is much more flexible than the bm tree. Total dps is very good, assuming proper shot rotations. Dps not as dependant on pets. Shots for a marks or Surv build would be Steady, Auto, Arcane, Steady, Auto, Multi, Steady, Auto, Steady, Auto, Arcane, etc. The cons of Marks hunters is that they are not very mana efficient. It is very hard to sustain mana even with viper on over the course of longer fights.

Survival - Lower personal DPS on most fights, more raid benefit. Expose weakness is the biggest raid buff hunters have. Agi, Agi, Agi. Every point will count. Have read magic # is 600 unbuffed. However, you need a TON. EW does not stack however, so having more than 1 in a party only is not beneficial in any way. Shot rotations will be same as Marks build. On a side note, I have seen Survival hunters top damage meters, so don't stop trying to whip everyone's ass just because you have seen that Surv hunters are supposed to be lower dps.

Please remember that the shot rotation is based on the spec, not the other way around. Something that worked well for you as Marks will NOT work as BM. Also note that while BM may be the highest DPS, it comes down to how you play, and what you want. This is a game, and if your are playing a spec that is not fun for you your not going to be playing as well as you could regardless of gear or shot rotations due to you not having fun.

Pet training- Max out stam as much as possible, before adding armor. This may seem backwards, but armor only mititgates physical dmg. Unless your pet is tanking, your pet should probably not be getting hit with physical damage. Every raiding hunter should have his pet trained in Lvl 2 avoidance as well as cobra reflexes(espicially bm for cobra). As BM, even with only 4/5 points spent in Frenzy, Ferocious Inspiration can still be up 99% of the time. Finally, find a pet that have an instant, no cooldown special attack. Claw and Gore are both examples of this, and are used by Cats and Ravagers, respectively. These dmg dealing "focus dumps" can be used by your pet as fast as they can generate focus. Keep them on autocast always. This is why Go for the Throat is such an amazing talant.

There are some great mods out there that make our job a LOT easier. Quartz is awesome, (regardless of what Boner says) has a built in Auto Shot timer, plus easy to see cast bars and cooldown bars. Perl is great, makes changing targets and seeing what is going on around you really easy. Nature Enemy cast bars is also a must, tracks CD's on everything. I try to keep it pretty simple, in a 25 man theres usually a ton going on onscreen anyway, its pretty easy to get bogged down.

STATS

Agility - Standard hunter stat. Survival and BM generally like it more than marks. Improves AP, crit, and Armor. 1 Agi>2 AP in terms of weight.

Attack Power - Solid stat, bigger numbers=more damage. Marks uses it the most. Adds to pets AP as well, so fairly important for everyone. Don't sacrifice alot of Agi for this, but you should see it scale with your gear improvements.

Crit - Good stat. More crits=more kill command spams or the more Expose Weakness is up. Remember to FD though:) Most important for BM and Survival.

Hit - Cap is 142, or 92 with surefooted talent in Surv tree. Rating of 143 is going to get you no misses on a 73 boss. If your missing a couple of points, don't sacrifice other stats to cap it, but if you are say, below 100 you may need to look into some gear changes. Missing 1% of the time in a 10 man over 3 hours turns into a substantial amount of damage over the course of say, 3000 shots fired. Hunters are the only class that is capable of hitting 100% of the time, and we should take advantage of that.

Stamina - Don't go picking up stam gear, but this is an important stat for us. Some bosses WILL one shot you without a certain base amount of health, and its great to have tons for PvP

Intellect - Hunters have mana problems. Having gear Int or Mp5 can help alleviate these problems. Running out of will kill your dps faster than anything else. Marks and Surv hunters have the biggest issues with this.

Spirit and Strength - Not on our gear and for a reason; we don't need it

Haste - A fairly new stat. Be very careful with it. A small amount of haste on a weapon can quickly get you to a point where you can no longer thread your shots. Covering an auto and waiting for the next one=lower damage. Use Cheeky's Spreadsheet before going to haste gear to help ensure that you are making an upgrade and not getting a higher lvl piece of gear but in reality doing less damage.

That pretty much covers the basics. The only thing I didn't cover is macros. I'm a computer retard, and am not really good with them. However, the guy that gave me most of the information you just read is a macro genius, and I have alot of the shot rotation macros written down. Also, Cheeky's Spreadsheet is an amazing tool to check personal dps, gear upgrades, how shot rotations are going to affect your total damage.....it will tell you pretty much any possible thing you could think of. It can be kind of overwhelming at first, but with a little time put into it can be figured out and is a great tool.