Turtle vs Bear for leveling a new hunter

[moguri]

I've seen a lot of older posts that say use a bear over the turtle, but is that still true? Looking at petopia it seems they have the same base health, armor & damage bonuses. I'll use a bear if its best but I like the look of the turtle much better

[Biernot]

All the tenacity pets are the same now in terms of health/armor/damage, so what makes a difference is their special ability.

All Tenacity Pets

You have to choose what you want:
- Turtle: shield wall
- Bear: good aoe threat "without cooldown"
- Croco: super aoe threat with 50% uptime (as beastmaster)
- The other pets bring either more single target threat, debuffs or other utility.

Turtle is the best for tanking big elites
Bear is probably best for overall questing and grinding
Croco is the best for big mass pulls + aoe'ing (the aoe threat from Bad Attitude is so good, that you won't pull aggro with volley... ever)

[Quibble]

Go for the black rare cat in barrens (only that one and pitch has that design and color)

[Niero123]

I actually always use a cat. Mobs die so fast

[catmeat]

Tenacity pets are good because you get thunderstomp, which is nice aoe threat move.

[Pokemaster]

Get whatever pet you like

[roflpot]

Lvld my belf hunter with a dragon hawk you find in the starting zone.

Was damn nice for pvp with it's perma swoop feature!

[Unspecified]

Crab!!!

[Malk]

I've still been convinced that my Agam'ar is probably the best I could get for me.
I constantly top dps (by over 100 dps) in my level 40-50 dungeons as a BM Hunter with it. Over Cats, Raptors, Dragonhawks and Wolves.. and MM/Surv hunters as well. I've yet to be beaten in a lowbie dungeon as a BM with full BOA gear and the right number of chromosomes.

Even hunters with IDENTICAL gear and almost identical specs are at least 90 dps behind me in 40-50 dungeons (where DPS is measured by 100's not 1000's mind you... a usual instance will get me at 350dps-ish, where the nearest person will be 170-210 usually..)
And while levelling , I think the only time I've ever had to use Mend Pet was when I was taking on 2-3 elites at once.

[Daginni]

I like Turtles because they have a built in "Oh Shit Button", that auto fires if its health went to 50% because I forgot to heal it.

Bears Swipe, in my opinion at least, is pointless when you have Thunderstomp.

[moguri]

So here's my problem. I'm only level 25 yet none of my pets can keep threat off me. This is my alt toon and I have full heirloom items & enchants so I put out some pretty good dps.

I've tried; Bear, Boar, ravager, Wolf, etc and none of them can keep threat off me, should I just go marksman for leveling?

[frun]

Use a cat, more dps, faster killing of small groups of mobs.

Bear if you wanna volley mobs down.

[veltins]

i like the turtle in low levels. shield wall + aoe threat is pretty good.
but you have to spec BM if you want your pet to hold aggro.

[Mix]

Recently I started a hunter alt.

And tamed a wind serpent cause I like the more interesting pets, but i encountered a problem as I edged into the 20s. Wind serpent is really bad vs groups with no aoe. So at 26 I've grabbed a bear to try in the meantime for the swipe aoe, can't get any old tenacity pet with thunderstomp due to not enough talent points, but if you aren't attacking single or groups of two (where you can trap one) you might want to think about a temporary aoe pet.

[Whitcher]

I leveled MM till 60 then went survival till 80. Used a pig till 60 then got a wolf. Everything typically dies too fast for it to make that big of a difference early on.

If you level by instancing, get a wolf. If you want to solo, I recommend a bear.