Pet Talent Specializations - The New System
You Choose The Spec
The most important thing to know about pet talents in Mists of Pandaria is this: you will be able to choose your pet's talent specialization - what we used to call a pet talent tree.
Just as before, a hunter pet can have Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity talents. When you tame a new pet, it will have the default talent spec for that family - the same spec that the families have now. In other words, when you tame a cat in MoP it will use the Ferocity talents. A newly-tamed turtle will use the Tenacity talents. And so on.
The difference is that you can change your pet's talent spec with a simple visit to the trainer. Any pet family can choose from any of the three talent specializations. Cunning crab? Yes! Tenacity devilsaur? Yes! Ferocity sporebat? Yes, yes, yes!
Not So Much a Tree ...
The flip side of choosing your pet's spec, however, is that you won't be choosing individual talents for your pet. Once you choose a specialization ... you're done. Instead of slowly getting pet talent points and spending those to buy talents in a tree setup, your pet gains immediately access to the standard set of abilities associated with that talent spec.
In fact, with one exception your pet gets all the talents the instant you choose the spec, no matter what level it is. (Thunderstomp requires level 20. And keep in mind that you can't do anything with talents until you are level 10.)