Here is some advice I've been preparing for my guild; my perspective is BM but parts are relevant to other specs.

Level 70 3.0 specs were discussed a few pages back, but here is the basic rundown. Longevity isn't worth it right now without the glyph; it just isn't that much increased DPS. It is very intuitively appealing, and seems like it would be great, but just doesn't hold up compared to points in Kindred Spirits. Cobra Strikes is much better (partly because you can skip a point in frenzy). Animal Handler is basically useless now since you should already be at hit cap and your pet inherits your hit, so those points can be spent elsewhere, with Spirit Bond being a popular choice because of the +heal (quite nice in a raid environment like Sunwell).

I don't think a 50/11 build can work because of focus stalls, but it may be worth trying, depending on your crit rate in a raid buffed environment. I suspect there will be focus stalls, but perhaps not 4% pet dps worth of stalls (unless it prevented a stacking debuff like scorpid poison from staying at 5 stacks). With Mortal Shots no longer affecting autoshot, three points of MS are better spent in careful aim. Both Haste and Crit are now worth less to hunters because of the unlinking of steady shot and the change to Mortal Shots, respectively. So somehting like this 49/12/0 build (the point in Longevity can be moved anywhere, such as Invigoration, but I think it will do more damage here, especially with a cat since it can mean 100% uptime of rake).

Currently I'm personally seeing the highest DPS from a scorpid (roughly 1000 dps in a random raid buffed setting on random debuff training dummies; poison damage was higher than melee attack damage, and would tick for crazy amounts). Cats are close at around 850. It depends on various factors (I'd like to get trauma or mangle debuffs up to compare). My personal DPS is around 2.9k-3.1k in this situation (with gear you'd expect when 4/6 SWP).

Aspect of the Beast looks like it possibly could be the highest DPS aspect, at least during Bestial Wrath. Ten percent AP to your pet is significant once you're in a raid buffed situation. I did some testing and dps was close enough to AotH to be a draw since raid buffs etc weren't really held static. More analysis is needed, but the cost of switching aspects too frequently may wash it out; maybe in a hawk->viper->beast->BW/tinket->hawk rotation (so only costing 1 GCD for beast, which for aspect switching, is just one second).

Serpent Sting should be worth keeping up at all times, especially glyphed (Curse of the Elements will affect it). Scorpid Sting is less so with a 3% instead of 5% reduction in +hit.

Hunter's Mark no longer stacks with each ranged hit, so bear that in mind; this especially makes the Imp Hunter's Mark talent worthless at 70 (and probably beyond). Bummer.

Heroic Presence from Draenei will give you +1% hit much more often nowadays (since it is both spell and physical hit, and no longer dependent upon the class the draenei happens to be). In most raid environments, hunters are in a group with other hunters, a resto shaman, and a feral, so for Alliance, that group will now benefit from the +1% hit. Most buffs are raid wide, but this presence isn't; likewise, Leader of the Pack isn't, so try to get the group you had pre-3.0.

Also, as-is, the best glyphs will probably be Glyph of Serpent Sting and Glyph of Rapid Fire (remember you only get two major glyphs at level 70). Sadly the truly powerful glyphs require Northrend mats.

just a short note on glyphs and lvl70 raiding:
as i have understood, every player will be able to use glyphes according to his level but only those players with the expansion wotlk will be able to choose that profession. if that is true, there will be no glyphs before the expansion is released. so it is not only the northrend-materials that are unavailable before release (and the interesting glyphs that can be produced with them) but ALL glyphs.

There are glyphs on the PTR so I doubt that is the case.

There is a Blue Post in the Beta Forums telling that everyone can learn the new Profession up to 375 as soon as the Content Patch hits Live.
Maybe they make the Profession Addon only later when Wrath really is out in stores. However basically it is that way anyway since you wont be able to lvl that Profession any further than 375 with just BC

regards

yes, you are right - there will be glyphes. i just did a bit of investigation and it seems that my information was completely out of date. thx

@ Cranch

As BM I was able to solo all of the 3-person group quests up to Dragonblight in beta (haven't gone any further) which included lvl 74 elites using my boar of equal level.

@ arison

On paper (spreadsheet) 50/11 does the most dps for my gear and Longevity shows a significantly higher dps increase than cobra strikes. I asume Invigoration isn't needed for the weeks of lvl 70 raiding.
On the other hand a glyphed serpent sting (but without steady shot glyph) shows a whooping 2 dps increase (with close to 3,3k dps) but reducing time to oom from 270s to 220s, so I doubt it's useful at 70.

Xoran -- which pet does your spreadsheet model? The value of longevity varies depending on the pet (as does Cobra Strikes). For your spec, you can safely move one point from frenzy to Cobra Strikes for sure. But my math (here) shows Longevity being a very small dps increase vs other talents.

Cobra Strikes is interesting; the more crit your pet has, the less valuable it is (after all, it guarantees a crit, but the better than chance of a crit happening 'naturally,' the less valuable the benefit). Given a SS fired every 1.5 seconds, and a 40% crit chance raid buffed (suitable for late T6/SWP), every steady has a 24% chance of triggering CS, or a proc rate of around 10 procs per minute. In the same minute, your pet will use specials 40 times (assuming infinite focus; mostly a safe assumption). If your pet has a 30% crit chance, 12 of these will be crits. Ten procs of CS will add 20 more crits in that minute, though some of the added crits will overlap with "natural" crits, and since the buff doesn't stack, some will be lost. However, 70% won't overlap, so effectively we add 14 crits in that minute. This effectively makes your pet's specials crit at 26 out of 40 hits, or 65%. In practice, I see around 50% crit rate (compared to 28%). So three talent points for 22% more crits on yellow attacks. That's a pretty good return, especially considering you can time Kill Command with it.

A quick simulation confirms this:

That assumes every hunter GCD is Steady and every pet GCD is a special, so somewhat optimistic assumptions. It is interesting that 9% pet crit difference from Spider's Bite (the 21% pet crit to 30% pet crit) turns into only an effective 5% crit difference with 3/3 CS. Of course, this is only yellow attacks, not all attacks, but 3/3 CS does narrow the gap between Ferocity pets and other pets, at least with respect to yellow crit rate.

He does say reducing time to OOM, I'm guessing the numbers are either the other way around or it's new value is 320s

Questions about Tenacity pets:
Many people have talked about AoE grinding with gorillas. Wouldn't a bear be just as effective given that Swipe is on a 5 sec CD. Sure, its only 3 targets vs Thunderstomp's unlimited (is this true? ) but I'd think the bear would be more effective at holding threat on those 3 then the gorilla would be on his AoE group.

Has anyone actually tried to MT an instance with a pet? Which family and did you outgear the instance significantly?

No, I was talking about not using serpent sting at all (thus using the gcd for a steady). Without using the glyph of serpent sting using the sting instead of a steady is just a plain dps loss. With the glyph I see the minimal dps increase mentioned above, but at the expense of much more mana used.

I haven't (on PTR) but some people have.

Would this be because CS could (and would) make an ability that was going to crit anyway (after the normal RNG roll) have 100% crit, thus lowering it's actual effectiveness?
(Gawd, don't even know if that made sense after i typed it, it's late, and we just killed KJ for the 1st time woo for last attempt of the night, on the night b4 the 3.0 patch :P, so yeah, my brain is kinda fried)

I believe this means it does not work with Serpent Sting.

Serpent Sting, I'm pretty sure that's it. Traps shouldn't get damage mods of any kind (they didn't on the Wrathgate line for example), Volley may be included in the "periodic damage" umbrella but I doubt it seeing as it can crit and requires a channel. I think the intention was to prevent people from Stinging things then not being able to refresh their stings.

It would also get kinda wonkey with Track Hidden in regards to inconsistent bonus damage I would imagine, i.e., you sting a stealther with track hidden on and when they come out of stealth you can no longer refresh your sting without swapping to humanoid tracking.

With the changes to the mechanics on Aspect of the Viper will they be changing the t6 2piece bonus? From looking at the new mechanics intellect has nothing to do with AotV anymore.

It hasn't been changed yet and no mention has been made of it either. I've bug-reported it a few times in different builds. It's probably not very high on their priority list if at all.

Can anyone else confirm this? I was under the impression LOTP was raid wide.

I believe the strength of mob vs. the player is relative to the players gear level and skill. I know you are pointing out the durability of our pets more so than the overall player/pet ability to handle multiple mobs, but I do have to believe that the mobs in Northrend are not going to be too terrible to handle for the leveling grind.

The elites you mentioned in front of BT are a bit squishy. I found myself having to deal with 2 of them once after they aggro'd me while attempting to pick a Nightmare Vine. I had my squishy Wind Serpent and the mobs popped from nowhere catching me off guard. I solo'd both in the end even though my WS did take some damage in the process (no T5 bonus, only mend pet), but tanked them and survived.

My point is the pet changes are pretty substantial for 3.0 and the ability for pets to handle bigger mobs and/or multiple mobs is a given. I have to believe Blizz has placed mobs at the appropriate levels to be a slight challenge for the avg. hunter while leveling. It should not be any different than a t3 or t2 hunter entering TBC and handling mobs a lot easier than a blue geared hunter.

Spell power totem is now spell haste totem, so nope, no benefit at all. Unless you mean the new flametongue totem, which requires a weapon! Good news is, Windfury is now melee haste buff, and should affect pet's autoattacks!

BTW, thanks for all the testing guys, good to know before hand that my exotic pet dreams are pointless

@Arison:

Thanks for the quick and dirty info.

@ All:

Am I understanding correctly from previous postings that the reason 51pt BM isn't viable at 70 is lack of pet focus without GftT? Is there a consensus yet beyond 70 whether 51pt BM will be viable?

Didn't point of no return use to...do more damage to people below 20%? Or was that just killing shot? Also, I've been reluctant to look up hunter information until 3.0 went live. Now that it's going live, I can't find Survival information in this thread. You guys seem very BM focused. Is a new thread for each spec in the works to replace the old ones, or are we really merging all the hunter info into a single thread?

Yes, I have a spec laid out in calculator. Yes, I have the spreadsheet. No, I haven't looked up glyphs and no I don't have beta.

Rhoi, Bull; Did MT undergo some impressive change that makes it worth getting? Also, stamina? What? I have to regem? Like...it makes sense nominally, but....Stamina? PVP set is king, yes?

will i be able to viper sting, chimera shot bosses for mana back? would 2/2 in special shots cost 60% less during rapid fire, make it mana efficient to chimera shot a boss twice during rapid fire with viper sting? would i actually gain mana during rapid fire by doing this?
one last thing, i think i still want mortal shots as MM b/c i'll be using more special shots than bm. am i way off here?
sorry for all the questions, i'm still waiting on my ptr copies to go through