Just serveral things I've noticed since the patch, farming AB with the guild like a madman:

Improved Barrage is all sorts of insane. With Renataki's, I can single-handedly destroy 3 cloth/leather wearers, assuming they're not all 3-minute mages who have me targeted. Nearly 40% crit rate on multishot is just unreal.

I was initially lukewarm towards Silencing Shot, until I tried it in PvP - this basically turns the classes I had problems with pre-patch (Warlocks, Shadow Priests, Shamans) into manageable opponents. It also makes any mage who can't insta-gib me into a free kill.

Rapid Killing is also much, much better than I expected - I was thinking of skipping it and putting the points into Imp. Arcane, but again, it's just an amazing skill in PvP, especially when jumped by 2 people - trap one, kill the other, get 20% on Aimed Shotting the one you trapped. Collect honor.

As has been discussed many times in this thread, Wind Serpent + GFTT is "Your Critical Strikes deal an additional 200 Nature damage".

Are we overpowered? I'm honestly not sure. Looking at what other classes have right now, especially Mages, Rogues, and Warlocks, I'd say we're about where we need to be in terms of PvP effectiveness, since going deep Marks cuts down heavily on survivability - no Survivalist, no Entrapment, no Deterrence. We're very definetly very, very strong in PvP, though, and it scares me to think what adding the above 3 talents and Savage Strikes to a level 70 41 marks build will do. Then again, every class will have new stuff. Speculation is fun!

edit: post makes sense now

Hrm, i have Broken Tooth, LBRS Worg, and had a Pig, which i used for grinding.
Dropped the pig.
Grabbed the serpent.
Can't really see myself using the cat ever again, or a pig.
It's all in one, really.
An excellent solo pve pet, since every time you crit, and thus risk pulling aggro, the pet will discharge a LB, and normally covers the threat again.
An excellent raid pet, since LB is ranged, thus you avoid cleaves and quite a few AoE, on top of the added damage.

And also an excellent PvP pet, since LB goes through any kind of armor \o\

Wolf might still have an use, due to furious howl, so i'm keeping it.

Drop the turtle, imho.

On a related note, has anyone found an outland windserpent that has the highest rank lightning breath? I tamed a lvl 69 one in Netherstorm last night and he didn't have anything.

I picked up my HWL bow on Thursday night and the increase in ammo drain is more than I would have imagined. I'd advice filling any spare bag space with extra arrows and warning your co-Hunters that you might be bugging them near the end of the evening if you raid for a long time.

Like every other Hunter, I've got a Son of Hakkar I'm taking to raids. I've had my other pets for so long, I don't recall how long it took, but the process of ranking up this bugger's loyalty seems to be taking forever! I've never been clear on the mechanics for Loyalty ranking up, just that you feed your pet until he is happy, and wait. But I've been feeding and feeding and waiting and waiting, and he's still only Rank 2. Is there a trick to it?

My pet has been rank 6 for a while, but I recall that you had to kill stuff to raise it's loyality (being happy does increase its gain). So PvP and raiding will very slowly gain loyality, but grinding against level 50s and doing 5 mans raises it fast.

Take it solo grinding 54+ mobs. Deadwind pass ogres are a favorite of mine since they fall over in two shots. I'd had all my other pets since level 20 or so, so I didn't realize that you needed to kill things that give xp to rank it up.

I've never managed to figure out loyalty. Couple anecdotal observations:

- I've never had a pet gain a loyalty level while he was standing still.
- I've never had one ding a loyalty level in the middle of combat.
- Times for different pets to gain loyalty has varied widely.
- It takes a longer if the pet dies along the way.

Based on that I used to take my pets with me on skinning/herbing runs, killing stuff along the way and it seemed to go pretty quick.

In beta if I am running around questing and it usually takes a couple hours per level of loyalty. My pets die constantly in instances so if I'm doing instance runs I don't bother to take a sub loyalty 6 pet.

These are just observations and aren't fact but what I noticed after grinding many pets to loyalty rank 6 at level 60 was this:

Loyalty ranked up faster if I melee'd with my pet. I mean, actually get in range with him. This was never a problem back before growl was free, since when I first got the pet he didn't have enough training points to train it heh.

I could usually tell when he was ranking up, because he would go from green happiness to yellow happiness, and after I clicked "Feed Pet" he would ding loyalty. ALWAYS. My pet never dinged loyalty in combat, standing still, etc. ALWAYS after we had been fighting and I gave him something to eat.

Loyalty grinding takes longer in an instance. Whether it's coded specifically like this or not, it always felt like the more pet and I bonded and fought together (actively fighting, in range of each other) the faster it went. It makes sense, but I've never proven it.

When I rank up a pet nowadays I head to the winterfall village in winterspring and just kill for hours. Always in melee with my pet and it'll take me about two days of 1 session each. It wasn't long at all; was always an hr or two before a raid.

Here's another question in regards to windserpent:

From what I recall windserpents can have caster stats or fighter stats. Any reason to get one over the other, or am I incorrect?

Sounds pretty anecdotal :)

I find that the first 2 levels of loyalty are by far the hardest/longest, and honestly, once you are at loyalty 3, i hardly notice the next 3 gains. The lower levels tend to eat food like a trash compactor and still remain angry.

I swear i can remember a time in the past when i was afk at the bank and my pet loyalty leveled up, but i was unable to reproduce this result as of late. I tried to sit with a happy pet, feeding him at level 1 loyalty for hours, didnt seem to have an effect.

So i will agree that it seems loyalty at least in some way is tied directly to EXP gain, hence the loyalty upgrades in 5 man/solo encounters, but at the same time i dont think EXP and loyalty gains are the same.

Wind Serpents are amazing in PvP, they're awesome for Fire and Forget, as long as you give em Lightning Breath (easy, Son of Hakkar), Dive 3 and max Shadow/Nature resist. The damage output of the Wind Serpent and the fact that it doesn't fire DoTs at everything makes it better than a regular Serpent, in my opinion of course.

As for Loyalty, I've had my pet gain loyalty out of the blue, but 1-2 is always from grinding mobs that would give experience. It does gain loyalty a lot faster if you're just grinding a lot (so yes, demonic rune farming = fun times for pet loyalty).