The Burning Crusade Hunter Talent Spec

1.3 Talent Spec

All three talent trees are viable for PvP depending on style and situation. This subject is far too in depth to cover completely here, so I will discuss each talent spec in general and then urge you to check out any of the other good talent guides on the forum for more information. The important point is that each spec is useful for PvP; a lot of what spec you decide on will depend on your own personal preference as well as other factors such as how important raiding is to you.

1.3.1 Beast Master
BM is an easy and extremely effective spec for PvP and is often referred to as the "2-minute free kill" spec. The basic idea behind BM is that the pet does the killing while the hunter keeps himself (and his pet) alive. BM is particularly useuful in 2v2 arenas since it can be used to hold still and quickly burn down one target.

*BM allows the hunter to stun a target and burn it down with an extreme amount of burst damage every 2 minutes.
*BM allows the hunter to use his pet as the main source of his damage, which negates traditional methods of killing hunters by getting into their deadzone.
*BM coupled with some survival talents gives the hunter and his pet a lot of armor and health.
*BM is a fairly easy spec to play since it relies less on kiting and deadzone management.
*BM is one of the best anti-gank specs for world PvP since if an opponent engages us and our BM is up, we can typically burn him down easily.
*BM gives us and our pets the ability (the beast within) to become immune to crowd control, which is devestating in PvP.

1.3.2 Marksman
MM is the most popular spec because it is useful for both PvP and PvE. MM focuses the hunter's primary damage on his own ranged attacks. The main disadvantage of MM is that it is vulnerable to opponents getting into the hunter's deadzone, and it does not itself allow for much survivability.

*MM gives the hunter a very short cooldown ability to get out of deadzone (scattershot).
*MM gives the hunter an effective tool for silencing casters (silencing shot).
*MM gives the hunter a significant amount of ranged burst damage.

1.3.3 Survival
"Going survival does not guarantee survival". However, survival affords a lot of flexibility and makes the hunter significantly harder to burn down and gives him further utility with better traps. Survival is one of the more complicated specs to play, but with appropriate use it can be extremely annoying to enemy players.

*Survival allows the hunter to reset his cooldowns (readiness), allowing for all manner of abuse with traps and such.
*Survival gives a hunter a high crit chance, which translates into important burst damage.
*Survival gives the hunter long range crowd control (wyvern sting).