A Hunter's Dilemma

Patch 3.0.2 opens up lots of possibilities for hunters, even lowbie ones like most of mine. There aren't too many talent changes at the lower end of things so most of mine have spent the first 12 points in marksman to get Go for the Throat, then moved over to beastmastery for their remaining points. Where the pets are high enough, I've spent points in dash/dive and cobra reflexes. Only a couple are high enough to get tier two stuff yet.

The simple choice available of course is to spend money on new stable slots. Almost all my characters had bought the original two stable slots and now hunters have to cough up 200g more for the new two slots. This hasn't been an issue on my main realms where a lazy 200g is easy to come by. The dilemma then arises in what pets to take to fill the slots. Most of my hunters had two pets already. I want to have at least one member of each talent tree, Tenacity, Ferocity and Cunning. None of my hunters are high enough yet to take exotic pets. Most have a cat pet already, then either a boar or a bird. So far, cats are still great pets. My carrion birds are still nice but I'm not sure I like what they have done to my owls and boars.

I'd like to have 2 ferocity and 2 cunning pets on each hunter, with a tenacity pet to take up he 5th slot. Most of my existing pets are ferocity. I grabbed a WC snake last night to start testing cunning pets.... so far its not bad!
Of tenacity pets, I like the AOE of bears and gorillas. I might give scorpids another try too, I quite liked them pre patch. The other accessible families aren't too interesting.

I guess I'll just have to trial them all in various situations to see how they play. I'm not fond of turtles, bats, moths, but the rest are ok for aesthetics. I'll also try out all the exotics once my main hunter gets high enough.

The other dilemma that arises is of course what to do with temporary pets. Not all pet families will have an attractive skin near my level. Some pets will only be found deep in dungeons, and I'd need a temporary pet to find my way to them. Just last night I grabbed a Barrens cat from just outside crossroads as a temp pet to get inside Wailing Caverns. That young lioness served me well battling hordes of raptors and blob creatures until we got deep into the caverns. Ahead I saw a likely specimen, a purple and blue viper. I fed cat one last hunk of meat, gave her an affectionate pat and thankyou, then released her. She had been my companion for only half an hour or so, and was just a sandy coloured cat like thousands of others, yet I was growing attached to her already. A pat and a feed are barely acceptable thanks for saving my hide so often!