The Burning Crusade Hunter Secondary Skills

2.2 Secondary Skills

2.2.1 Fishing
Fishing is a cheap way to keep your pet happy. Fishing also can net you rare fish to sell on the AH. The issue with fishing is that skilling up can be quite painful particularly in the beginning. However, fishing also gives you something to do while you're waiting for boats or the next BG to pop. It is an easy source of income once you have skilled up, since you can catch rare fish or even items. You may initially find fishing pointless, but you'll be surprised at how much downtime you can fill up through fishing whereas normally you'd have nothing better to do.

2.2.2 Cooking
Cooking is of course useful for us since it provides us with food to keep our pets happy. For BGs in particular, cooked foods are important because they give various bonuses that last for a significant amount of time (typically +sta and +spi), or until death. These can give quite an advantage, or a needed buff during critical times such as when you're carrying the flag and need extra survability. Definitely spend the time to learn cooking, and start on it early. If you start on cooking late, the mobs you're grinding won't be giving you the type of meats that you need to level up your cooking, so you'll have to resort to buying them on the AH where they are rare and overpriced.

Once you have food that increases your stats, use it situationally. You don't want to be wasting time eating food after you res unless there is truly nothing going on. I will usually just eat at the beginning of BGs, particularly when I'm in a game where I don't think I'll be dying frequently (i.e. where I'm unlikely to get killed within the first minute such that my food buff goes to waste).

Of course, your pet will not benefit from +stats food, so don't waste it on them thinking that it will.

Finally, bear in mind that whenever you are resurrected in a BG, your pet gains a ton of happiness. Playing a pet in BGs is an easy way of keeping him happy. Some players have even used BGs to maintain pets that have been discontinued (i.e. you can no longer tame them, nor feed them if they are tamed). You can also use restoration power-ups in BGs to improve pet happiness.

2.2.3 First Aid
First aid is critical and should always be leveled up to the max. In arenas, bandages are used constantly since we rarely have time to sit down and eat/drink, and food is unavailable in arenas unless it is conjured by a mage on our team.