Thoughts: I’m thinking… that they dont do any special abilities, but just auto attack? Maybe I’m wrong. Sometimes I see monsters attacking the second pet, but that could be aggro and not auto growl.
Also yes. It has a hidden 35% damage reduction aura to your pets. This is still a damage increase since you have a 2nd pet also doing damage rather than just the one.
You could stack mastery if you want to see more damage from your pets, though generally speaking I would recommend against it. While your mastery increases pet damage, it doesn’t boost your personal damage (as the hunter) at all.
For general stat or rotation guides, I would use the Icyveins or WoWhead guides.
The general rule of thumb is Agility > Haste >= Crit > Vers = Mastery IIRC.
But to see better results specific to your character (since stat weights start to shift once you have more and more gear), you should always sim yourself. Raidbots is a great site to do that with.
Sorry for the long winded answer to that question, but hope it helps!
It doesn’t matter what specialty your pets are. This goes for your main pet and your companion pet. Pets all actually do the same damage, regardless of specialization. The specializations determine a few bonus perks your main pet brings. Ferocity will grant you access to Ancient Hysteria (a bloodlust / heroism effect) as well as 10% leech. Tenacity provides a 3 minute CD for 20% damage reduction and 5% extra health. And cunning provides master’s call which frees your pet and whoever you target from roots, slows, and snares for four seconds. It also provides (8%? I might be wrong) movement speed.
Your second pet’s specializations do not matter at all and will not change anything.
I made a post a while back about Hunter pets, (This one), just some useful stuff to know about them. To get some sort of base to work with when you play as a hunter.
Feel free to read it through if you want, perhaps there’s something new in there^^
If you want to learn more about specific pets/families, don’t hesitate to check the links at the bottom.