Welcome new hunter!

Yes, the day after my druid dinged 80 I managed to ding my hunter 80. They've been really close in level all the way so it was really just a mere chance by choice of random instance that the druid got first (since some instances are longer and thus give more exp).

Leveling the hunter through pure instancing (70-80 like the druid) was way harder than with the druid. Not only the fact that I had to wait 20 minutes plus in queue for a group instead of 30 sec, being dps of a group is usually tougher than being the tank. Because if you're the tank or healer, you'll at least have some sort of control. But if you're dps and the tank and healer don't know their rear from their faces, things are going to take a while, and there isn't much you can do about it. I've managed to collect awesome amounts of eternal fires and waters and herbs and frost lotuses while waiting in queue though, just flying around scholazar sucking up steam clouds (by being an engineer) and herbing like there was no tomorrow.

I leveled as BM, and it worked really well. My bear pet Bjärven had to double as substitute tank at times, which actually was one of the reasons I had a bear at all. The BM spec is a really easy spec to play and I recommend it for instancing (and solo play of course) up to 80. Having a pet that's able to help out with some emergency tanking at times has really proven useful for me.

Now at 80 I've specced Survival and gotten me a black wolf, named Luke after my late cat. The survival spec is some of the tougher spec I've tried with a dozen different skills and some that enhance other that has to be used first and so on. As a BM you basically just spam steady shot, arcane shot and Aimed shot if you've specced that. I never used Serpent Sting and things like that. As a Survival hunter you've got serpent sting, black arrow, explosive shot, aimed shot and steady shot to keep track off. I really should get a cooldown and dot tracking addon for this... I had one but it broke.

So far I like the hunter dpsing, it's complex but rewarding (unlike enhancement shaman which is complex but unrewarding and retri paladin which isn't complex at all and therefore boring). Unfortunetaly, getting groups still takes ages on level 80, so she'll probably gear up way slower than my druid. Ah well!