Hello again, welcome! Before we start digging into the endless rabbit hole of Hunter theorycrafting and chaotic gameplay, I advise you that this is another very long guide. Use your search tool or the index below to find the topics you are interested in to check, although I really recommend giving the whole guide a quick read for a better understanding. Enjoy!
INDEX:
0. Introduction.
1. Why should I play as a Hunter?
a. Overview of the class as a whole.2. Build-a-character: What I’m looking for as a Hunter?
b. Pros and Cons about Beast Mastery, compared to Marksmanship and Survival.
a. Stats: Their caps and priorities.3. In-depth view of your build paths and the choices around it.
b. Races: Overall opinion about your virtual skin.
c. Professions: Why do I need to work while gaming?
a. Talents: Learn about your spec.4. Keyboarding your way to the top parsing club.
b. Pet Talents: Learn about your companions as well.
c. Pet Arsenal: Gotta catch 'em all, or should I say tame?
d. Glyphs: How to increase your performance using rune-written toilet paper.
a. Abilities and Cooldowns: What do I have at my disposal?5. What is the BiS Gear and what should I aim for?
b. Rotation: The magic around shooting enemies, pet controlling and trapping.
c. Refinement: Advanced Tips and Tricks to improve your gameplay.
a. Brief discussion between Attack Power and Agility Stacking.6. How can I make my gear setup even stronger?
b. Finally the BiS Gear list (why didn’t you put this first?)
a. Gems: Getting your gear shiny with colorful rocks.7. Extra stuff that may be helpful, or not, for your hunter gameplay.
b. Enchants: Cold steel and wizardry altogether.
c. Consumables: If you have enough gold for raiding, otherwise lie about it.
a. Macros: Why should you learn about C++ and Python.8. Since you spent all this time reading this guide.
b. Addons: The cherry on top of your pet-friendly cake.
a. Final Considerations.9. Changelog for future reference.
b. Logs for the curious and disbelievers.
0. Introduction.
Spoiler:Show Before anything else, let me introduce myself: My name is Cogo and I’ve been playing WoW for more time than I’m proud of, dating from the original WotlK release on Blizzard until the last expansion until now, The War Within. I've been a member of the Warmane community for a couple years now and I've explored all the content available, while raiding with every single class and spec imaginable – except Paladins, and I’ll keep that way until I quit or perish – and I kept hidden on my first guide my secret passion of one of the most amazing specs ever released: Beast Mastery Hunter!
Despite being heavily biased and a big fan of the spec, not only restricted to this expansion, the motivation to write this guide is the same as the one before: There is not a single well detailed guide explaining how the spec can perform on end-game raiding and there is a lot of mysticism and misinformation about it, leading both new and old players to have an unfair criticism towards it. So sit down on your chair, grab some sweet and sour chips and behold the Beast Mastery Hunter PvE compendium for the 3.3.5.a version of World of Warcraft!
Before I forget, if you are remotely interested in checking my previous guide for Subtlety Rogue, check out this hyperlink (or just type it on google or the Warmane Forum): [Guide] Subtlety Rogue PvE Compendium - The Stealthy Rascal
1. Why should I play as a Hunter?
Spoiler:Show a. Overview of the class as a whole.
Spoiler:Show Hunters are arguably one of the most unique classes designed to this expansion, being the only ranged damage dealer that have a consistent physical damage profile, paired with multiple different types of magic damage, while also possessing a permanent and developed pet that even has its own talent tree and different abilities depending on its family type.
Known to be one of the strongest leveling classes, Hunters are also very consistent on both PvP and PvE scenarios, where you may find all three specs on the arena ladders, battlegrounds and world PvP, and also at least one on every raid setup across all phases, both on 10 and 25 versions. Their solid reputation comes due to the consistent damage output and their flexible utility, allowing Hunters to be highly required for at least a dozen different roles within raids, being a core piece on raid compositions from early raids to end game ones.
Despite being a mana-based ranged auto attacker, due to the almost exclusively Mail itemization and giving priority to a good ranged weapon, Hunters usually have a good time on the gearing process, although keep in mind that the offset parts are usually highly contested for sharing the same stat priorities with the physical melee classes.
Therefore, taking all of this giant wall of text above in consideration – that I am pretty sure you didn’t read at all – my whole point is to make it clear how unique the Hunter class is and how everyone should give it a try at least once, I can assure you that will be a one of a kind experience and you might fall in love with the class, at least after reading this whole guide, maybe, who knows.
b. Pros and Cons about Beast Mastery, compared to Marksmanship and Survival.
Spoiler:Show Getting started on the first important topic of this guide, like every other pure DPS class Hunters have three different specs that swaps the number one position on the damage charts accordingly to the gear level and content available – and very similar to the Rogue discussion – you have two leading specs that fights against each other across the content release: Marksmanship and Survival. For our beloved Beast Mastery spec, mostly is reserved the pole position on the pre-raid gear level and as a massive noob stomper on the lower tiers of the PvP scenario.
Even though the spec performs a bit lower on the DPS side compared to its older siblings, you will be surprised by how powerful are the tools at your disposal as its trade-off and the surprisingly high skill ceiling it has to extract all the potential that can be offered in a raiding scenario. Every spec has something to bring to the table and to give you an overall view about the comparison between the specs, lies below a brief table of Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Very beginner-friendly spec with a high skill ceiling, being engaging from zero to hero.
- The strongest Pet class by a long shot, turning yourself into a terrifying 2-man army that excels at multi-targeting.
- Amazing arsenal of Beasts that provides both damage and unparalleled utility.
- Shortest offensive cooldown available: Bestial Wrath, leading to more frequently and one of the most obscene burst windows of the expansion.
- Lowest downtime due to significant Pet damage, no matter the Hunter conditions at the moment.
- Unmatched mobility due to Kindred Spirits and Disengage, plus the fastest Pets available.
- Raid-wide Damage buff, in case you are missing a Retribution Paladin or an Arcane Mage.
- You can tame Dinosaurs, what else do you want?
Cons:
- Lower overall damage output compared to the other specs.
- Toxic relationship with gear stats due to the different priorities between the Hunter and the Pet.
- Deep understanding of the spec is mandatory to be competitive in the end-game raiding scenario.
- Being a non-meta spec, you will have a harder time finding spots on groups due to the lack of overall knowledge about the spec from the average player.
- You can’t tame Feral Druids.
2. Build-a-character: What I’m looking for as a Hunter?
Spoiler:Show a. Stats: Their caps and priorities.Spoiler:Show Stats are the basis of every calculation in the game towards your damage capabilities, so one of the things you should be aware of is which stats are important and which ones should be your priority. Most of the gear simulators will do the hard work calculating the equivalent value of each stat compared to each other, but in this guide I’ll simplify which are the caps and split them in 2 groups: High priority and Low priority.
Group 1: High Priority
- Hit and Hit Rating (5% and 164)
Hit is a very straightforward concept, meaning the chance you are able to hit or miss your attacks and spells. For every 32.79 points of Hit Rating, you’ll get 1% Hit Chance. Since Hunters have a head start with 3% coming from talents, you should aim for only 5% or 164 total, to achieve the real cap that is 8% or 263 total. Overall this is a very easy stat to get through gear, so you might be overcapped during your gearing process and that’s fine, since towards the end-game gear most of the hit will shift towards other stats.
- Armor Penetration and Armor Penetration rating (100% and 1400)
The all-time favorite stat for almost half of the DPS specs in WotLK, where the math around it is so messy and complicated that was completely removed on the next expansion, Cataclysm. To be very direct and simple about how this stat works: it increases your non-bleed physical damage, and the more you have it, the more valuable is the amount you already have. Amongst the Hunter specs, Beast Mastery is the most physically heavy one by far, so aiming towards the Armor Penetration cap is a must, however keep in mind that your Pet damage doesn’t scale from this stat, only the Hunter’s physical damage.
Group 2: Low Priority
- Attack Power (no limit)
Also known as AP for the intimate, this stat increases the damage of about everything you do to your enemies: auto attacks, shots, traps and most importantly your Pet damage. Hunters have a great scaling with AP and Beast Mastery even more due to Pet scaling, so this stat is highly valuable especially on lower gears. There is a common misconception about being the best stat for the spec, but I’ll make it clear that this only remains true on early gears, where Armor Penetration gets more and more valuable towards the end game.
- Agility (no limit)
Most of the time you will find Agility on the base stats of your gear, not as an extra stat, unless in low level gear or by extra stats like gems, enchants and such. Every 83.12 points of Agility will increase your critical chance by 1%, have a base of 1:1 ratio to Attack Power, and give you a little bit of dodge. Also, your Agility may be boosted by raid buffs, such as Greater Blessing of Kings, so it is always a very welcoming stat to increase your overall offensive power.
- Critical Chance and Critical Strike rating (no limit)
Critical is a very welcoming stat that will further enhance every attack you do by multiplying it for more than 1.0x, turning a big hit into a BIGGER hit. The scaling goes for 45.87 points of critical strike rating for every 1% increase and it is a very decent stat that synergizes well with talents like Mortal Shots, Cobra Strikes and Go For the Throat.
- Haste (no limit)
The last stat worth mentioning, Haste increases the frequency of your ranged auto attacks, by the ratio of 32.85 haste rating for every 1% increase. Usually for Hunters it is a mediocre stat, but since Beast Mastery has a higher usage of Steady Shot on the rotation and paired with Auto-Shot makes up the largest fraction of your core damage, it has its value. At BiS gear, you’ll have two items with Haste, so if during your gear process you get some leftover Haste, keep in mind that it is not a useless stat and just a lower value one.
- Expertise and Expertise Rating (0 and 0/0)
You do not need Expertise as a Hunter, period. Stop rolling items with Expertise or I will find where you live and piss on your door. (For legal reasons, this is not a threat and just a mediocre joke).
b. Races: Overall opinion about your virtual skin.
Spoiler:Show There are 10 races available on the WotLK expansion, where you have 7 alternatives for races as a Hunter, being 4 on Horde side and 3 on Alliance side. Some people choose a race by the looks, others for the lore, and some for the racial traits that each one offers. For both factions, there are clear winners if you are looking purely towards the most potential damage possible, where I’ll be listing below briefly:
Horde: Orc >> Troll > Blood Elf ~ Tauren
Orcs provide extra Pet damage and an Attack Power cooldown, being the perfect match for Beast Mastery Hunters, no questions asked. Trolls, on the second position, offers a Haste cooldown and a slight Critical Strike increase on bows, which can be useful. Both Blood Elves and Taurens have no direct damage increase on their racial traits, but you can argue that the former has a small mana cooldown while the latter is just a big cow with a gun.
Alliance: Draenei >> Night Elf ~ Dwarf
On the wrong faction, Draeneis gives the permit of a slightly different gear configuration by the passive extra Hit Chance, allowing to squeeze a little bit extra of other stats, plus a healing that scales of Attack Power. Night Elves and Dwarves have no real damage increase from their traits, but the former has a bit more of base Agility than the latter, but honestly none of these are comparable to Draeneis.
c. Professions: Why do I need to work while gaming?
Spoiler:Show Professions are used both for economic purposes and for extra combat stats. Like everything in this game, you can maximize your character in every aspect, and this is one of those cases. There are 11 professions equally available for every class that I’ll split in 3 groups due to priority order, and also detail the relevant ones:
Group 1: Best-in-Slot Professions
- Engineering: Arguably the only profession I would consider mandatory for every Hunter spec due to the utility it provides: A parachute on Flexweave Underlay to match with your Disengage, a minor DPS cooldown on Hyperspeed Accelerators and a mobility cooldown on Nitro Boosts. Also I recommend going for the Gnomish Specialization so you can craft your own Arrows and even some niche trinkets like the Almighty Gnomish Battle Chicken. It is a must, period.
- Jewelcrafting: Allows you to craft special gems by cutting Dragon’s Eye and equipping 3 of those in your gear. This profession is BiS for every PvE spec due to the higher raw stats improvement and Beast Mastery Hunters aren’t an exception: you have an easier time to reach your Armor Penetration cap or to squeeze more stats when closer to BiS gearing.
Group 2: Useful Professions
- Tailoring: Solid profession that some Beast Mastery Hunters like to use, especially due to the Swordguard Embroidery enchant that gives you a stronger burst window in exchange of your Agility Parachute from Engineering. Personally, I find it a niche choice for short fights, but on longer ones the average value is lower than the Professions above.
- Blacksmithing: Gives you some flexibility to squeeze some extra stats, due to the extra 2 prismatic sockets on your gear – 1 on wrist, 1 on gloves – but since you’ll be using Engineering as one of the professions, BS is just a worse JC.
- Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Leatherworking, Skinning: All of these professions provide you some kind of DPS increase by giving extra offensive stats – most commonly AP – but clearly have a lower value than those mentioned in the group above. I’m not here to judge you, if you want to keep any of your professions for the sake of multi characters or economy, feel free to take one of these from Group 2.
Group 3: Not Recommended Professions
- Mining, Herbalism: Both of these don’t provide any damage increase and are not recommended for PvE raiding as a DPS class. However, you do whatever you want since I'm pretty sure you are a grown up person, I won't judge that much.
3. In-depth view of your build paths and the choices around it:
Spoiler:Show a. Talents: Learn about your spec.
Spoiler:Show As expected, this is a very important part of the guide since the wise choice of talents is essential for a good performance, therefore I’ll make a more deep and detailed analysis of every talent worth mentioning as the tiers go on. Since this is a Hunter guide, I will also cover the Pet talent tree – yes, they do have one – to optimize your overall damage. Down below I will use my own talent trees as examples and I'll be using a color system for clarity purposes. While the mandatory talents will not be highlighted, I’ll mark the ones that can be interchangeable depending on your gear level and current stats available:
(5/5) Improved Aspect of the Hawk: Since you will be using the Aspect of the Dragonhawk for the majority of a fight, it is a decent 15% Haste buff that will keep almost 50% of uptime for free, quite good Tier 1 talent.
(1/5) Endurance Training: This one is a filler talent to get to the Tier 3 row, and it is the best EHP alternative compared to extra armor or dodge, but pretty unnoticeable one.
Tier 2
(2/2) Focused Fire: Flat 2% extra damage to the Hunter and extra 20% Critical Chance for your Pet skills during the Kill Command active time, which makes your Pet to hit like a truck and it is so decent that is even a talent choice for other specs.
(2/2) Improved Revive Pet: Handy talent in case of your Pet dying during a boss fight or adds pulls, and surprisingly happens once in a while since Beast Mastery Pets do a lot of damage and threat. Should be paired with the Minor Glyph of Revive Pet.
Tier 3
(1/1) Aspect Mastery: Gives you extra Attack Power and flat Damage Reduction (DR) while using the Aspect of the Dragonhawk, while punishing you less when using Aspect of the Viper to regain mana. Overall solid talent that makes Aspect swapping a lot easier compared to the other specs.
(5/5) Unleashed Fury: The first big buff to Pets on the tree, gives your Pet a flat 15% damage increase, which contributes a lot to the Pet damage scaling through gear and raid buffs.
Tier 4
(5/5) Ferocity: Extra 10% Critical Strike Chance to your Pet. Big numbers turning into bigger numbers, can’t be a bad choice.
Tier 5
(1/2) Spirit Bond: Provides a small passive HP regeneration but the reason for this talent is the extra received healing, that is quite handy for heavy AoE bosses like Sindragosa, being the best filler for this Tier.
(1/1) Intimidation: Targeted 3 seconds Stun from your Pet on a 1 minute cooldown, which can be used for Add management as an emergency tool. Also, it is a requirement for two of the strongest damage buffs from the tree, so it is a no-brainer pick.
(2/2) Bestial Discipline: Doubles the Focus regeneration of your Pet, which combined with Go for the Throat, will provide infinite resources for your pet during a fight, which translates to a clear DPS increase and making sure your utility Pets are doing their jobs.
Tier 6
(2/2) Animal Handler: Increases your Pet AP by 10%, which is a noticeable DPS boost, while also increases your Master’s Call duration to 10 seconds, being a powerful tool to make your Pet and any target immune to slows and roots for quite a long duration. Congratulations, now you have your own improved version of a Hand of Freedom.
(3/5) or (4/5) Frenzy: Provides a massive attack speed buff to your Pet after it deals a critical Strike, and the uptime difference between 3 and 4 points are minimal. My personal preference is to keep at 3 since it is more than enough to make the buff last at least 90% of a fight.
Tier 7
(3/3) Ferocious Inspiration: Gives a 3% raid-wide damage buff that is the same as Retribution Paladins and Arcane Mages, in case you don’t have one or it's dead for some reason. But also, this talent provides a flat 9% damage increase to both Steady Shot and Arcane Shot, which are quite frequently used spells.
(1/1) Bestial Wrath: The big cooldown from the Beast Mastery tree, increases your Pet damage by 50% for 10 seconds on a 2 minutes base cooldown. By now you must have realized that the talents are very shifted towards Pet damage, and this cooldown is the cherry on top to make your Pet go wild and hit as hard as your raid members. Also makes your pet go enormous and red – I swear I’m talking about WoW – plus CC immune, that can be handy once in a while.
(1/3) or (0/3) Catlike Reflexes: The main reason for 1 filler point on this talent is that on long fights you might use an extra Kill Command, since it decreases the cooldown from 60 to 50 seconds.This is a very minor personal preference, you can instead put this point into Frenzy for slightly better RNG.
Tier 8
(1/2) or (2/2) Invigoration: The mana resource from Beast Mastery Hunters where you regain mana when your Pet does a critical strike with their abilities. I recommend at least 1 point so you don’t worry about resources on short and mid fights, and 2 points if you are a low geared Hunter. Keep in mind that this talent is also a DPS increase because it allows you to spend less time on Aspect of the Viper, which diminishes your damage in exchange of mana regen.
(5/5) Serpent’s Swiftness: Provides both the Hunter and the Pet 20% Haste, which is a huge DPS increase, both single target while also providing some solid AoE since Volley ticks also scales from Haste. No brainer choice and the best talent of this Tier, period.
Tier 9
(3/3) Longevity: Reduces the cooldown of your strongest cooldown, your Pet signature skill and your target stun by 30%. This is a huge DPS increase while a fair strong utility buff, since you’ll be able to keep your utility Pets debuffs on a 100% uptime or stack them faster. Very strong talent and should never be skipped.
(1/1) The Beast Within: THE STRONGEST TALENT OF THE WHOLE TREE. Gives you a flat 10% damage increase, and when you cast Bestial Wrath adds 10% more on top of that and your spells costs half of the mana for 10 seconds. As if it weren't enough for a single talent point, you also go CC immune for the same time window, which can be used to break Festergut’s Vile Gas, Blood Queen Lanathel’s Incite terror and at least 437 other mechanics. And you also turn red, just like your massive terrifying Pet.
(1/3) until (3/3) Cobra Strikes: When you critically hit with Steady, Arcane or Kill shot, your next 2 Pet special attacks also will be critical strikes. At BiS gear, I suggest to get at least 1 point here, but as lower your gear are, the higher share of your damage comes from the Pet and you should get more talent points here. This buff doesn’t stack so if it procs back to back, refreshes to 2 procs, but still is a strong DPS increase and also pairs very well with Invigoration for mana regeneration.
Tier 10
(5/5) Kindred Spirits: Another massive Pet damage buff, increasing it by flat 20%, but also increases both the Pet and the Hunter movement speed by 10%, giving you a good extra mobility while your Pet is active and therefore reducing your downtime on fights that requires you to move around.
Tier 11
(1/1) Beast Mastery: The talent that gives the name to the spec, not only allows you to tame Exotic Pets – which are the core of your Utility and Damage – but also improves your Pet talent tree from 16 to 20 talent points, which is a huge upgrade. This talent is a must for every raiding setup and its effects will be further discussed on the Pet talents section.
Marksmanship Tree
Tier 1
(3/3) Focused Aim: Provides you free 3% Hit Chance, bringing your cap from 8% to 5%, and also gives you pushback immunity on Steady Shot while under the effect of Concentration Aura from a Paladin. This talent allows you to be a lot more flexible towards gearing and its a massive DPS increase on fights where you take constant damage, so it is a must take.
(2/5) Lethal Shots: Increases your Critical Strike by 2%. That’s it, free stats to reach the Tier 2.
Tier 2
(3/3) Careful Aim: Converts in a 1:1 ratio all of your Intellect into Attack power, which is almost 1000 AP at BiS gear in a raiding scenario, consolidating this talent as arguably the best Stat increase one and also justifying the gearing towards Mail armor instead of Leather ones.
(2/5) until (5/5) Mortal Shots: If you are taking talent points out of Invigoration or Cobra Strikes, this one is an option for dumping the extra points. For each talent point, it increases by 6% the critical strike damage bonus of your abilities – and if you are good at math, it caps out at 30% at 5 points – improving even more the value of Critical Strike for Hunters. My personal preference is going (5/5) on this one for being a very solid overall DPS choice.
Tier 3
(1/2) Go for the Throat: Every time you do a critical strike, your Pet regains 25% of its resource bar. Combined with Bestial Discipline, a single talent point here is enough to provide your Pet infinite resources to unleash its full potential, both damage and utility wise.
Survival Tree
Tier 1
(5/5) Improved Tracking: While you have any of your Tracking spells active, with the exception of Track Hidden, increases the Hunter damage towards those types by 5%. This is an important reminder to activate your Tracking while raiding, and not necessarily you need to Track the specific type of your enemy, meaning that if you have Track Humanoids and you are attacking an Undead, the damage increase still persists. My rule of thumb is to activate your tracking before the raid starts to the most common enemy type – Undeads for Icecrown Citadel, Dragonkin for Ruby Sanctum and so on – so you can use your minimap to locate these enemies.
(0/3) or (3/3) Trap Mastery: If you are not dumping points into Mortal Shots, one of the options is to get 3 talent points here into Trap Mastery, which will increase the damage of your Explosive trap by 30% and the number of snakes by 6. Using your traps on cooldown results in a DPS increase on two or more targets. On a single target, it’s roughly DPS neutral, and if you’re not placing traps every 30 seconds, it’s actually a DPS loss. Unlike the other specs, you cannot afford to get both Trap Mastery and Mortal Shots maxed out, so it comes into personal preference. If you feel like you need more AoE damage – Ruby Sanctum 25 Heroic is a good example – it is a good option, but I’d rather go for Mortal Shots for a more consistent overall damage.
b. Pet Talents: Learn about your companions as well.
Spoiler:Show Remember when I said that Hunters are a very unique class? Well, one of the reasons is that you have a complete companion by your side that also has its own talent tree. I’m not going deep down yet on the whole arsenal of Pets that you can tame on this topic, but a very important information about them is that all of the Pet families are included in three major groups: Ferocity, Cunning and Tenacity. For each major group, you have a particular talent tree where you can maximize their damage and utility potential.
Overall, for the raiding scenario, the talent trees are not that much flexible for each major group, so down below I'll cover an example of each one that you should be using, no matter the family type of your beloved companion, with also including a brief explanation of the talents in a similar way as I did for the Hunter talent tree:
(2/2) Cobra Reflexes: Increases your pet attack speed by 30% but decreases its damage by 23%, turning into a “neutral” DPS change (1.30*0.77 = 1, if you don’t believe me, trust your calculator). At a first glance, this sounds like a dumb and useless talent, but what it actually does is to stack and activate both Pet and Hunter procs a lot faster, which translates into a noticeable DPS increase.
(1/1) Dash: Massive burst of movement speed for 16s, which is great to make your Pet move between targets in a blink. Keep in mind that Beast Mastery Pets are a large fraction of your damage, so this talent reduces drastically the downtime.
Tier 2
(3/3) Spiked Collar: Another Pet damage modifier, increasing by a flat 9%. Nice.
(0/1) or (1/1) Boar’s Speed: Sets the base movement speed of your Pet from 110% (due to Kindred Spirits) to 130%. It is an optional talent since you can activate Dash when your pet has to move, but quite useful when it is on cooldown, which makes this one my personal preference.
(0/2) or (1/2) Bloodthirsty: Provides your Pet a small healing, and 21 happiness each tick on auto attacks where it takes out the effort of feeding through Feed Pet or healing through Mend Pet while paired with the Glyph. I find this talent pretty much useless, but if you are a bad parent and don't properly take care of your Pet, it is an option instead of Boar’s Speed.
Tier 3
(3/3) Culling the Herd: When your Pet does a critical strike with their basic ability, both the Hunter and the Pet get 1% damage increase for 10 seconds, stacking up to 3%. Thanks to the infinite resources and extra Critical Chance you get from talents, this talent stacks quite fast and never drops.
(1/1) Charge: 25 yards Pet charge that increases the next attack by 25%. The important part of this talent is to minimize even more the downtime, so it is a must take for every Beast Mastery Hunter.
Tier 4
(3/3) Spider’s Bite: Increases your pet Critical Strike by 9%. Very good interaction with all the other bonuses.
Tier 5
(1/1) Rabid: Pet damage cooldown that gives a stacking AP buff up to 25% for 20 seconds. Thanks to Longevity, it has only a 32 seconds cooldown, which is a massive damage boost.
(1/1) Call of the Wild: Hunter damage cooldown that increases both entities AP by 10% for 20 seconds, on a 3.5 minutes cooldown. As you can see the pattern, since most of these cooldowns are off GCD, you can activate all of them at once for a massive burst window, one of the signatures of the spec.
Tier 6
(2/2) Shark Attack: Another flat 6% damage increase to your pet that is only achievable due to the extra Talent points from Beast Mastery.
(2/2) Wild Hunt: Increases your Pet Stamina by 40% and Attack Power by 30% from the Hunter stats, adding another great scaling towards the end game.
(2/2) Cobra Reflexes: Increases your pet attack speed by 30% but decreases its damage by 23%, turning into a “neutral” DPS change (1.30*0.77 = 1, if you don’t believe me, trust your calculator). At a first glance, this sounds like a dumb and useless talent, but what it actually does is to stack and activate both Pet and Hunter procs a lot faster, which translates into a noticeable DPS increase.
(1/1) Charge: 25 yards Pet charge that increases the next attack by 25%. The important part of this talent is to minimize even more the downtime, so it is a must take for every Beast Mastery Hunter.
Tier 2
(3/3) Spiked Collar: Another Pet damage modifier, increasing by a flat 9%. Nice.
(1/1) Boar’s Speed: Sets the base movement speed of your Pet from 110% (due to Kindred Spirits) to 130%. You can activate Dash when your pet has to move, but still is quite useful when it is on cooldown and you need the extra mobility.
Tier 3
(3/3) Culling the Herd: When your Pet does a critical strike with their basic ability, both the Hunter and the Pet get 1% damage increase for 10 seconds, stacking up to 3%. With the infinite resources and extra Critical Chance you get from talents, this talent stacks quite fast and never drops.
(2/2) Guard Dog: Mostly taken to unlock the talent Taunt, but quite useful if you need to do solo content for a massive boost to your Pet threat. By personal tests, the happiness increase might be bugged, but barely matters as well.
(1/1) Thunderstomp: Provides an extra AoE damage source for your Tenacity Pets, which is surprisingly useful for adds pulls and boss fights with grouped up targets.
Tier 4
(2/2) Grace of the Mantis: Pretty much a filler talent to unlock the stronger ones below.
Tier 5
(1/1) Last Stand: Defensive cooldown that increases your Pet Health by 30% for 20 seconds. Surprisingly good when you need to soak damage or to do an aggro swap, because your Pet reaches a health bar over 40k.
(1/1) Taunt: Taunts a target for 3 seconds. Amazing backup Spell when your Distracting Shot is on cooldown or for critical moments where you need to Taunt some add off your healers. Keep this one on a different keybind for emergency purposes and pair incredibly well with Last Stand so your pet doesn't die.
(1/1) Roar of Sacrifice: A cheap version of a Hand of Sacrifice where your Pet soaks 20% of the damage dealt to the target for 12 seconds, plus granting critical strike immunity. Adds to the Hunter one of the things we lack the most, which is a defensive cooldown.
Tier 6
(2/2) Wild Hunt: Increases your Pet Stamina by 40% and Attack Power by 30% from the Hunter stats, adding another great scaling towards the end game.
(2/2) Cobra Reflexes: Increases your pet attack speed by 30% but decreases its damage by 23%, turning into a “neutral” DPS change (1.30*0.77 = 1, if you don’t believe me, trust your calculator). At a first glance, this sounds like a dumb and useless talent, but what it actually does is to stack and activate both Pet and Hunter procs a lot faster, which translates into a noticeable DPS increase.
(1/1) Dive: Massive burst of movement speed for 16s, which is great to make your Pet move between targets in a blink. Keep in mind that Beast Mastery Pets are a large fraction of your damage, so this talent reduces drastically the downtime.
(1/3) Great Stamina: Filler point for a tiny bit more of EHP for your pet. Can be put anywhere else, doesn’t matter much.
Tier 2
(1/2) Mobility: Allows your Dive to be off cooldown all the time, turning your Pet into the fastest entity possible in a raid, being always on a base 180% movement speed.
(3/3) Spiked Collar: Another Pet damage modifier, increasing by a flat 9%. Nice.
Tier 3
(3/3) Culling the Herd: When your Pet does a critical strike with their basic ability, both the Hunter and the Pet get 1% damage increase for 10 seconds, stacking up to 3%. With the infinite resources and extra Critical Chance you get from talents, this talent stacks quite fast and never drops.
Tier 4
(2/2) Feeding Frenzy: Increases your Pet damage by 16% on enemies with less than 35% Health, giving you a nice execution phase in case you are using a Cunning Pet.
Tier 5
(1/1) Wolverine Bite: Extra ability that is an enhanced attack since it is a guaranteed hit. Also required for the next Tier talent.
(1/1) Roar of Recovery: Quite decent mana cooldown, providing the Hunter 30% of its total mana on a 3 minutes base cooldown. Very useful especially on longer fights so you don’t have to swap often to Aspect of the Viper.
(2/2) Grace of the Mantis: Pretty much a filler talent to unlock the stronger ones below.
Tier 6
(2/2) Wild Hunt: Increases your Pet Stamina by 40% and Attack Power by 30% from the Hunter stats, adding another great scaling towards the end game.
(1/1) Roar of Sacrifice: A cheap version of a Hand of Sacrifice where your Pet soaks 20% of the damage dealt to the target for 12 seconds, plus granting critical strike immunity. Adds to the Hunter one of the things we lack the most, which is a defensive cooldown.
c. Pet Arsenal: Gotta catch 'em all, or should I say tame?
Spoiler:Show One of the greatest aspects of Beast Mastery Hunters is the huge flexibility on the Pet choices, both for damage and utility, where also you have a lot more options compared to the other specs due to the Beast Mastery talent. First of all, you are obliged to go into any major city to a Stable Master and buy all the five slots – one active, four in stables – so you can unlock your full potential. My personal recommendation, and obviously the setup that I use, is to have at least one pure DPS Pet and at least two utility ones, depending on the raid setups that you usually play with. And before I forget, for the love of Cthulhu, feed it to maximum happiness and level your pet to 80 before any raid, for some reason it is quite common to see unleveled Pets and it is a massive DPS decrease if you are a Beast Mastery Hunter.
Since this is a guide for raiding, I will not list every single possible Pet you can tame but the ones that provide either major or minor uses for a raid group. Down below I’ll be listing those amazing beasts in two different groups in alphabetical order, where in between parentheses will be their type – F/T/C for Ferocity, Tenacity and Cunning respectively – so you can browse towards the suggested talent trees for each one. Before I forget, you can open this Amazing Link! to see every tamable Pet and their locations so you can find them easier.
Pure Damage Pets:
Devilsaur (F): The most iconic Pet of all, the massive lizard kings that came out straight from a Steven Spielberg movie are the highest DPS Pets available of this expansion. Their special ability is a Pet damage buff that increases from 3% to 9% at max stacks, which turns them into a DPS machine made of scales and teeth with a great scaling towards the end game. It is my personal preference and I have tamed myself King Krush, who has been raiding with me for more time than I can remember.
Spirit Beast (F): The weakest of the three pure DPS Pets, all the legendary beasts – Skoll, Loque’nahak, Gondria and Arcturis – share the same two extra abilities. First, Spirit Strike is a 30 yards Arcane attack that also applies a DoT, and second is Prowl where they can shift into a stealth mode and gain 50% bonus damage on the first strike. Even though they are not the best available, I do recognize that they are very cool, so if you don’t care that much for min-max, they are a solid option.
Wolf (F): Even though our beloved Wolves are not the highest DPS Pet by itself, they are the ones that provides the highest DPS for a Beast Mastery Hunter, due to its special ability Furious Howl where it increases both entities Attack Power by 320 for 20 seconds, on a base cooldown of 40 seconds. If you are looking for that top parsing spot and you are used to raid with your fluffy wolf on other specs, they are the best option as a pure DPS Pet.
Utility Pets:
Carrion Bird (F): Their special ability is Demoralizing Screech, which lowers the AP of all enemies around by 574, which is the same as the improved versions of Bear Tanks and Protection Warriors. They are quite good when no one else on your raid can provide this debuff, since it is a significant improvement to your tank EHP.
Chimaera (C): Their special ability is Froststorm Breath, which is a 30 yards ranged attack that applies a 50% undispellable slow for 5 seconds. This pet is very niche and their best usage is on Blood Prince Council where you can keep all the kinetics up with no effort, especially if you are a new Hunter player. Also they can fly and keep 180% movement speed at all times for being a Cunning type pet.
Core Hound (F): Their special ability is Lava Breath, a 30 yards ranged attack that reduces casting speed by 25% for 10 seconds. When you don’t have a Warlock in your group – and your Rogues are probably not carrying Mind-Numbing Poison because they didn’t read my Subtlety Guide – this is a great option to slow cast bosses in fights like Sindragosa, Blood Prince Council, the Faction Champions and many others.
Gorilla (T) or Nether Ray (C): Their special ability is Pummel/Nether Shock, which is an attack that interrupts spellcasting, with the former being a melee range with a 30 seconds cooldown and the latter a 20 yards attack with a 40 seconds cooldown. Very situational Pets, but in case your raid members are not doing their proper jobs, you can provide an interrupt similar to Silencing Shot from the Marksmanship spec.
Turtle (T): Their special ability is Shell Shield, reducing damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds. This is only an honorable mention because it is the only Pet I’ve ever seen that can tank more than 1 hit from a raid boss, these turtles are the toughest amongst all Pets and absolutely great for older content.
Wasp (F): Their special ability is Sting, which decreases the target armor by 5% for 20 seconds. In case your group is missing a Druid for Faerie Fire or Warlock for Curse of Weakness, this pet can also provide the same minor armor debuff.
Worm (T): Their special ability is Acid Spit, which reduces the target armor by 10% and stacks up to 20%. It is the equivalent of Sunder Armor from Warriors and Expose Armor from Rogues, you can apply 20% in 7 seconds which is surprisingly great. The best use for this Pet is on Ruby Sanctum 25 Heroic, where you can keep the armor debuff on the outside group and also have an extra AoE damage for being a Tenacity Pet.
d. Glyphs: How to increase your performance using rune-written toilet paper.
Spoiler:Show Glyphs are enhancers that people with the profession Inscription are allowed to craft, by some witchcraft related to toilet paper, that further improves your abilities. Every specialization allows you to have 3 major Glyphs and 3 minor Glyphs, and usually they are chosen by overall performance. For Beast Mastery Hunters, the options for Glyphs are not set in stone and may vary accordingly to your playstyle and raid performance. For major Glyphs, which are the ones who affects your damage, these are the options:
Major Glyphs:
- (Mandatory) Glyph of Steady Shot: Increases the damage of Steady Shot by 10% when your target is affected by Serpent Sting. Decent DPS increase for your most used shot since you will always keep the Serpent Sting DoT on bosses, no-brainer pick.
- (Strongly Suggested) Glyph of Bestial Wrath: Decreases the cooldown of your Bestial Wrath by 20 seconds, so your massive burst windows happens more frequently. The decrease happens before the interaction with the talent Longevity – for the sake of clarity, the formula is ((120-20)*0,7) – so the final cooldown with both is 70 seconds. My personal recommendation is to keep this glyph at all times, but on a side note for the min-maxers: For fights that lasts between 94 and 140 seconds, it loses its value because you will activate Bestial Wrath twice nonetheless, so on these fights you can swap this one out for a tiny DPS increase.
- (Strongly Suggested) Glyph of Explosive Trap: Allows the DoT of your Explosive Trap to be critical strikes, which is a noticeable DPS boost that scales well with your gear and even more on AoE fights. If you are comfortable with using Traps regularly on your rotation, this is my 3rd option for a Major Glyph and currently on my own setup.
- (Viable Alternative) Glyph of Kill Shot: For any reasons you have to not be using the two Glyphs above – either highly optimizing your setup or a new Hunter player afraid of trap weaving – this is a solid alternative that will boost your DPS by lowering the cooldown of the highest priority shot on your rotation.
- (Viable Alternative) Glyph of the Hawk: If you don’t enjoy the gambling of “Can I use one more Kill Shot?” this Glyph is a solid option boosting even more your attack speed, which translates to a small DPS increase on fights that you can’t take advantage of the reduced cooldown of Kill Shot for whatever excuse you might have.
Minor Glyphs:
- (Mandatory) Glyph of Feign Death: Brings the cooldown of your Feign Death from 30 to 25 seconds. Quite useful to be able to reset your threat more often, both on boss fights and adds pulls.
- (Mandatory) Glyph of Revive Pet: Gives you pushback immunity while casting Revive Pet, which is a mandatory Glyph and pairs really well with the Improved Revive Pet talent. Trust me, your pet will die more often than you expect.
- (Strongly Suggested) Glyph of Mend Pet: Using your Mend Pet increases your Pet’s happiness by 21 each tick, for a total of 105. In general this is a quality of life glyph, but you can swap to anything else if you are speccing into Bloodthirsty or using your Feed Pet properly.
- (Viable Alternative) Glyph of the Pack: Small quality of life Glyph where it upgrades you from a regular taxi to an Uber Black when transporting your raid friends, by increasing the range of your Aspect of the Pack from 40 to 55 yards.
4. Keyboarding your way to the top parsing club:
Spoiler:Show a. Abilities and Cooldowns: What do I have at my disposal?
Spoiler:Show Before discussing the rotation itself, it is vital to understand your abilities, both offensive and defensive ones, and what each one of them are able to do so you can perform the best as possible. In this section I'll briefly explain about them and provide some smart tips for the massive arsenal of spells that you’ll be using on raids, in different categories, mostly focused for the new Hunters. So if you are already an experienced Hunter player, I would suggest doing a quick read at most because you might find some relevant info.
Damage Cooldowns:
- Bestial Wrath: Comes paired with The Beast Within and when talented and glyphed reaches a 70 seconds cooldown. It is the strongest spell of the spec and should be used on cooldown when both the Hunter and the Pet can comfortably attack for the 10 seconds of duration, so keep in mind that you can delay a couple seconds if you or your pet are on a downtime window.
- Call of the Wild: Strong cooldown for both entities, where the Pet double-dips both from the spell itself and from the Hunter’s increased AP. With a 210 seconds cooldown and having no GCD, should be used together on every 1st, 4th, 7th and so on Bestial Wrath cast, due to the matching cooldowns.
- Rapid Fire: A massive burst of 40% haste for 15 seconds, should be used on every opener with all the other cooldowns since it is off GCD. Since your attack speed will be incredibly high – especially if paired with Bloodlust/Heroism – moving while this cooldown is active will be most of the times a DPS loss, since sidestepping will be mostly unviable, so stand still for these 15 seconds.
- Blood Fury (or any other lesser Racial): Since you should choose to be an Orc for zug zug purposes, use Blood Fury on cooldown. Keep in mind these damage multipliers stack multiplicatively with each other, so pairing them on start and popping on cooldown later is the best usage.
- Kill Command: Makes your Pet hit harder than a hard-casted Chaos Bolt from a very angry Warlock. There is no GCD tied to it, so you should macro this spell on every spell so you can use it whenever it is available. Also, since its duration is 30 seconds, it can be pre-casted about 20 seconds before the fight starts for a tiny DPS increase.
- Rabid: Since it is a Pet skill with a very low cooldown, my personal recommendation is to set on auto-cast so you keep the most uptime possible on fights, since you’ll have on every boss fight starter nonetheless.
Shots n’ Stings (and Volley):
- Kill Shot: The hardest hitting shot, available when the target is at or below 20% Health on a 45y range. Should be used every time it is available on bosses, but also it is a great spell to finish off secondary targets that need to die as soon as possible, just keep in mind to not waste it – because there is a travel time for the shot to arrive – due to its rather long cooldown.
- Multi-Shot: Your second stronger shot, hits up to 3 grouped targets after a small cast time that decreases with your Haste. It is considered a “cleave” spell, so against enemies that have AoE damage resistance – the most notorious being the Blood Beasts from Deathbringer Saurfang – will do very low damage, however if you cast it on Saurfang himself, you’ll get the full damage on him plus 2 small hits on the adds. Should be used on cooldown unless you have a better opportunity in a few seconds window – Bone Spikes about to spawn, Lady Deathwhisper adds grouping up, you got the idea.
- Steady Shot: Your bread and butter shot, it is the largest share of your DPS amongst the others, so it is vital to optimize your movement during fights due to the existence of a casting time. Gladly, the casting time decreases with your Haste and Beast Mastery Hunters have a lot of passive Haste bonuses coming from talents, gear and cooldowns, making this spell a lot easier to manage.
- Arcane Shot: The only frequently used shot that doesn’t scale with Armor Penetration, it is surprisingly strong on early gears but still holds its charm at higher gear levels, since it is the only reliable instant shot that Beast Mastery Hunters have access to when moving. Will be further discussed in the Rotation section about its niche usage.
- Serpent Sting: The only sting you’ll be frequently using, it deals the least damage per cast among your spells but should be active on bosses as much as possible, since the real reason for the debuff is the Glyph that increases Steady Shot damage by 10%.
- Volley: It is not a shot or a sting – so I’ll allow you to complain once – but it is the main source of active AoE damage for Beast Mastery Hunters. It does Arcane damage and scales incredibly well from both Attack Power and Haste, giving Hunters a consistent AoE potential on larger groups of enemies.
Trap Spells:
- Explosive Trap: The good usage of this spell is part of the skill ceiling of Hunters, because its damage is obscenely high for a single GCD but comes with the cost of being a melee range ability. This spell has two different components: an upfront fire explosion and a DoT for those enemies who stay within 10 yards of the explosion for up to 20 seconds, so it is a good idea to plan ahead both boss movement and add/entities spawn to get affected by the DoT. Will be further discussed in the Rotation section about its niche usage.
- Snake Trap: Spawns a lot of snakes that can apply three different poisons: a DoT (similar to Deadly Poison), a slow-cast (similar to Mind-Numbing Poison) and a movement slow (similar to Crippling Poison). Quite useful in fights where you can pre-trap for free damage and debuffs, but also one of your niche uses is to soak damage from the Volatile Ooze Adhesive from the Green Ooze (Professor Putricide).
- Frost Trap: Creates a 10-yard area that slows the enemies by 50% while they are inside. Largely used when you need a “pre-casted” slow for add management, and good examples are: Blood Beasts (Deathbringer Saurfang), Val’kyr Shadowguards (Lich King) and Valithria Dreamwalker adds. Share the same cooldown with Freezing Trap and Freezing Arrow.
- Freezing Trap/Freezing Arrow: Melee and 40 yards version of the same spell, disables an enemy target for 20 seconds or until it takes damage. Quite useful to hold in place pesky enemies – like Small Oozes (Rotface) and the nasty Blood Quarter San’Layn adds – but also mind-controlled raid members from Lady Deathwhisper encounter. It works like a charm until a moonkin decides to press its Starfall button.
Aspect Spells:
- Aspect of the Dragonhawk: The Aspect that you should be using most of the time, it increases your Attack Power quite significantly and gives your flat 5% damage reduction (DR) from Aspect Mastery. Every Aspect spell is off the GCD, so keep in mind that you can macro this on your burst cooldowns to make sure you’ll get another multiplicative layer of damage.
- Aspect of the Viper: When you are short on mana, you should be swapping your current active Aspect to this one, and since it lowers your damage by 40% (due to Aspect Mastery) the ideal moment to use it is when you are on a lower damage window, which means outside of any cooldown windows and only from your Auto Shots and Steady Shots.
- Aspect of the Wild: Very niche Aspect that increases quite decently the Nature Resistance of everyone inside a 30 yards range from the Hunter. Can be used on fights like Professor Putricide, Rotface and many others, but since it is a massive DPS decrease you should only swap on the moment you need the resistance and quickly swap back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk.
- Aspect of the Pack/Cheetah: First of all, never use any of these while in combat because taking damage will get you (or your whole raid) undispellable slowed by 50% for 3 seconds. That being said, you should be using these outside combat to taxi people out to hasten the raid, and can be used before pulls so you can pre-trap faster – Blood Prince Council being the best example of it, where you use to reach the stairs faster and then swap back to Dragonhawk.
Utility Spells:
- Hunter’s Mark: “Oh, but this is a damage spell, not an utility one!” Did I ask you anything? Anyway, this spell is a DPS increase for all the Hunters in the group and should be on bosses and important targets at all times. If you are a solo Hunter, only mark targets that will live 10 seconds or more, but when you have another Hunter raid member, it is always a good idea to communicate so each one marks different targets to minimize wasted GCDs.
- Misdirection: Redirect your threat to a target for 4 seconds after your next attack, on a 30 seconds cooldown, being one of the core utilities of Hunters. Paired with one of the strongest opening bursts of this expansion, your first MD will be insanely strong. You don’t necessarily need to use it on cooldown after the starting one, but it is advisable to keep an eye on your tank’s threat and pop it whenever you have a good window to help your meat shield.
- Tranquilizing Shot: Remove 1 enrage and 1 magic effect on your target, largely used for the de-enrage itself on encounters like Saviana Ragefire (Ruby Sanctum) and the Shambling Horrors (Lich King). But keep in mind there is a magic debuffer as well, so you can cancel stacks from Lord Jaraxxus (Trial of the Crusader) and add buffs once in a while.
- Distracting Shot: It is a 35 yards ranged taunt that lasts for 6 seconds. Since it is not a “true taunt” it doesn’t change the threat tables, so the target will go back to the highest threat member after it expires. This spell has two main uses: First, using paired with Deterrence to take stacks of debuffs that usually would go towards your tank – Mutated Plague (Professor Putricide), Gastric Bloat (Festergut), etc. – and second to actually taunt away dangerous enemies from the raid for a brief period of time – Blistering Zombies (Valithria Dreamwalker) or even Lich King while enraged.
- Wing Clip/Concussive Shot: Melee and 35 yards spells that apply a 50% slow to a target. Either you will be using these to kite dangerous adds – Blistering Zombies (Valithria Dreamwalker) – or as a backup slow for the ones that need to be controlled, like the Val’kyr Shadowguards (Lich King).
- Track (Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids, Undead): Only worth mentioning due to the talent Improved Tracking, so keep any of these active while raiding for a free 5% damage boost. Track Hidden doesn’t count, but I’m sure you figured it out yourself since I didn’t list this one.
Defensive Spells:
- Deterrence: Gives you a fake version of Divine Shield for 5 seconds in exchange for not being able to attack for the same period of time. Most of the time you’ll be using this spell paired with Distracting Shot so you don’t instantly die, but don’t get too overconfident because half of the attacks on raids will bypass Deterrence and you’ll die nonetheless, it is trial and error to learn which ones work properly.
- Disengage: Your wee-wee move, allows you to leap backwards while in combat and can be further enhanced if you jump + activate a parachute at the same time. Should be used anytime you need to move away from imminent danger – Vengeful Spirits (Lady Deathwhisper), Malleable Goo (Professor Putricide and Festergut) and at least 353 other mechanics – or when you need to carry a debuff as fast as possible away from the raid – Defile (Lich King), Fiery Combustion and Soul Consumption (Halion), Gravity Bomb (XT-002), etc.
- Feign Death: Resets your threat towards your enemies on a 25 seconds cooldown while Glyphed. Great spell for both boss encounters and adds pulls since you can completely reset your threat – that after your Misdirection wears off, trust me it will build up really fast – that most specs would love to have. Always keep an eye on your own threat and pop this spell whenever you are remotely in danger.
- Master’s Call: For Beast Mastery Hunters, it is an improved version of Hand of Freedom because it gives both the Pet and the desired target a 10 seconds immunity from slows and roots. The uses are the same as the Paladins, and should be used on yourself in fights where you might die due to a massive slow + incoming damage – Lady Deathwhisper, Blood Prince Council, Freya and many others – or to dispel a slow on an important target – Frost Breath on Sindragosa tank, Consumption target on Halion.
Pet-Related Spells:
- Intimidation: Targeted 3 seconds stun from your Pet melee range, which is mostly used as a backup stun – Val’kyr Shadowguard (Lich King) as an example – or to interrupt add casts that might kill a raid member – Empowered Adherents (Lady Deathwhisper) or any enemy from the Factions Champions encounter.
- Call Stabled Pet: Allows you to swap your different Pets during the raid, while out of combat and on a 5 minutes cooldown. Should be used before a boss encounter when you need a specific debuff or raw power, as discussed above on the Pet Arsenal section.
- Revive Pet: While talented and glyphed as expected, allows you to revive your Pet with 40% Health on a 4 seconds cast time. Quite useful mid fight if your Pet dies due to aggro or lack of healing, since a lot of the core talents and abilities from Beast Mastery Hunters are tied to your companion. Since dying causes your Pet to lose happiness, either throw a glyphed Mend Pet or spec into Bloodthirsty for it to recover, and use Feed Pet right after combat.
- Mend Pet: Gives a HoT on your Pet, while also increasing its happiness (21 each tick or 105 total when glyphed). In fights where there is a lot of AoE and your companion is far away from your healers – Lich King transitions are a good example – it is always a nice idea to throw a heal or two to keep it alive, since it is a 45 yards spell.
- Feed Pet: The main reason for you to keep different types of food in your bag, it is the best source of providing happiness to your Pet, giving 35 each tick for a total of 350. When you open your Character > Pet tab, hover over it to check its diet and how happy it is, where it should be always on green at all times to maximize its DPS. I’m using this spell every time I summon any of my Pets and out of combat after they die for some reason.
- Eyes of the Beast: Allows you to go inside of your Pet’s mind and control it for 1 minute. The best usage of this spell – besides going to Stranglethorn Valley to eliminate level 40 players – is to pair with Nitro Boosts for pet pulls, where your Pet can run on lightning speeds to aggro a pack of adds, usually to hasten a raid clear. Another useful strategy is to reposition your Pet and use the command Stay, so you and your pet can cover different spots – Valithria Dreamwalker is a great example, especially on the 10-man version.
b. Rotation: The magic around shooting enemies, pet controlling and trapping.
Spoiler:Show Rotation is the core essence of performance and gameplay since it guides you on what to do, when to do it, and how to do everything you need in the most effective way. Since I did a brief explanation of the most commonly used abilities in the section above, I’ll try to be very objective in this part of the guide.
Similar to almost every DPS spec, the ideal rotation is composed of three segments: First, a pre-pull setup that allows you to prepare everything you need before the encounter starts. Second, an opener sequence so you can extract the most DPS possible in your first 20 seconds of the fight, which is considered your burst window. Third, your priority list that you should keep up until the end of the fight in the most optimal way.
However, before discussing about them, there are a couple of things that you should keep in your mind in every encounter as a Beast Mastery Hunter:
- Try not to kill yourself or let your Pet die, and I know that may sound like a very obvious statement but since you are a 2-man army, dying is the biggest DPS loss possible. So be sharp on the encounter tactics and use your defensive spells wisely.
- Keeping maximum activity and uptime for both the Hunter and the Pet is the key to success, because every second that you are not shooting arrows or your Pet is not biting someone, translates into a clear DPS decrease. Be smart about your positioning and always keep an eye on what your Pet is doing, the hardest concept of the spec is understanding that you have to control two different entities at the same time.
- Take advantage of the mechanics in the encounter and the common strategies used in raid groups, so you can anticipate your next moves to optimize your gameplay. Understanding “low damage state” windows to recover mana, bosses pathing and adds spawns for preemptive trapping and cleaving, sweet spots to minimize movement and many other small improvements are the difference between an average and a great player.
Talking about the opener, there is a checklist of things you should do before the pull:
- Check if both you and your Pet are buffed to the teeth, your Pet has maximum happiness and – I swear I’ve seen this happen more than once – if you have enough Arrows/Bullets for the fight.
- Use your consumables like Food and Flasks/Elixirs if you don’t have their buffs on, also don’t forget to use your Pet Food as well.
- Preemptively set up your Traps – Explosive Trap is the most important one, but Snake and Frost Traps also have their uses – on the boss pathing or add spawns if those conditions are met before they expire.
- Use your Misdirection on the starting tank or, if there is an exception, on the designated target.
- Use your Potion as a pre-pot right before the pull.
Right when the fight starts, there are 2 possible cases that slightly change your pre-pull and opener and that difference is based on if you can be in melee range when the fight starts – usually the boss will have a timer for the engage – or if you start the fight on a ranged distance. Keep in mind that this is a guideline and every boss has their particularities, so give more attention to the idea instead of just memorizing the opening sequence.
Opener if you start in melee range with a timer (i.e. Deathbringer Saurfang, Blood Prince Council, The Lich King):
Pre-trapping 28 seconds before start (Explosive + Snake) > Pre-cast Kill Command 20 seconds before start > Misdirection > (when the pull timer hits 0) > Hunter’s Mark + Pet/Hunter Attack > Pop every damage cooldown > Explosive Trap > Serpent Sting > Multi-Shot > Steady Shot > Steady Shot… > Keep Priority Rotation
Opener if you start in ranged with the boss targetable (i.e. Lord Marrowgar, Festergut, Halion):
Pre-cast Kill Command 20 seconds before start > Misdirection > Hunter’s Mark > (when the pull timer hits 0) > Pop every damage cooldown > Serpent Sting + Pet/Hunter Attack > Multi-Shot > Steady Shot > Keep Priority Rotation … (Rapid Fire fades) > Move slowly towards trap range > Explosive Trap > Keep Priority Rotation
Spell Priority list:
After your opener sequence, since Beast Mastery Hunters do not have a set in stone rotation for being a priority based spec, there is a small list of spells you should keep track of. As stated above, you should be using every damage cooldown on the start of the encounter and every time they are off cooldown, as long as you can benefit from their full duration. The priority list means you should be using the highest priority spell available as your next attack, as listed below:
Single Target Priority List
- 1) Hunter’s Mark if the target lives for more than 10 seconds.
- 2) Kill Shot.
- 3) Explosive Trap if the target lives for the full DoT duration (20 seconds).
- 4) Multi-Shot.
- 5) Serpent Sting if the target lives for the full duration (15 seconds).
- 6) Steady Shot.
- 7) Arcane Shot, but has higher priority depending on the conditions.
AoE Priority List
- 1) Volley
- 2) Explosive Trap.
- 3) Multi-Shot if 3 targets are alive, otherwise keep Volley + Explosive Trap.
c. Refinement: Advanced Tips and Tricks to improve your gameplay.
Spoiler:Show There are two major twists like Trap Weaving and Arcane Shot usage that are important to improve your rotation, but also a lot of smart techs that can be helpful to improve your gameplay and this topic is reserved for these discussions. Technically there is also Melee Weaving, but since the majority of the audience of this guide will not care enough – and I can't be bothered either – to learn and execute it properly, I will not talk about it anytime soon.
Trap Weaving: Nothing better than exploding your enemies.
Spoiler:Show Trap Weaving consists of adding Explosive Trap on your rotation by positioning yourself as close as possible to the boss while still being able to attack with your ranged abilities. It might sound very odd at first for a Hunter to be on short range, but this allows you to shorten the distance for you to add Explosive Trap on your rotation while also shortening the path for your projectiles. Since every boss has a different hitbox size and raid mechanics, it is only through experience that you’ll learn the sweet spots for each one, but I do encourage Hunters to be brave and explore this technique, since it is a noticeable DPS increase.
Almost every boss will allow you to trap on the “minimal ranged” range, so you can continue your rotation as it is supposed to be without the hassle of moving all the time – being Deathbringer Saurfang a good example of it. However, in some encounters you might struggle to be on this short range all the time, but you can take advantage of add spawns to expand your Trap range towards the boss, since it affects a 10 yards radius – some good examples are Small Oozes (Rotface), Drudge Ghouls (Lich King) and Flame Embers (Halion).
Despite the increase in single target damage, Trap Weaving also allows you to increase your AoE potential that is quite helpful both on harder bosses and adds pulls, so keep in mind that you can position yourself in melee range or into the path of your enemies to pair Explosive Trap + Volley to unleash your full AoE damage potential, pretty much doubling your DPS.
Arcane Shot: Discussion about its volatile priority over Steady Shot.
Spoiler:Show Arcane Shot usage is a niche discussion of the Beast Mastery spec since this spell is almost obsolete on Marksmanship and Survival priority lists. Unlike our siblings, Arcane Shot is the only instant shot we have access to, which is slightly improved by talents such as Ferocious Inspiration and Cobra Strikes. Having said that, there are 2 different topics to talk about this infamous ability.
First of all, every time you need to move a reasonable distance, either through Disengage or Nitro Boosts, you should use Arcane Shot during this window, ranking it in a higher priority than Steady Shot since you won’t be able to cast it due to the existence of a cast time. This advice is always true and there's no debate about it.
However, on a second topic, if you are not at BiS gear there are some conditions where Arcane Shot damage is superior over Steady Shot due to the balance between two stats – Armor Penetration and Attack Power – since it deals Arcane damage and has a better scaling through AP. But when should you prioritize one over another? Well, I took 15 minutes of my lunch break to make a quick analysis of the Average Cast Damage of both in a raid setup, presented on the graph below:
Since the damage of Arcane Shot increases only by your Ranged Attack Power but your Steady Shot scales both from Ranged Attack Power and Armor Penetration, it is unnecessarily hard to evaluate precisely the damage increase on every stage of your gear. However, since both stats increase at a very similar pace through your gear progression, I took an approach of finding a coefficient that would translate into the Armor Penetration threshold for prioritizing one over another.
And the answer to all this mathematical piñata is actually very simple and expected: If you are under 600 Armor Penetration, you should prioritize Arcane Shot. If you are over 750 Armor Penetration, Steady Shot has a higher priority like the list I’ve provided on this topic. Between those two values, they are about the same because in a raid environment there are a lot more variables to take into consideration, so it doesn't matter that much what you choose.
Bomb Weaving: How to generate mana by turning yourself into a M79 Grenade Launcher.
Spoiler:Show At this point, you are already aware that Aspect of the Viper is the main resource for Hunters to regenerate mana, but how can you extract the best of it? Well, the spell has two different mechanics: a passive income of 4% every 3 seconds and an active regain that procs as an on-hit effect. Since you try to avoid as much as possible to stay on this Aspect for a long time, we can focus on the active part to optimize the mana regen.
Besides the traditional Auto-shot + Steady Shot combo, there are other ways you can squeeze out more mana if you hit multiple enemies at once while on Aspect of the Viper. One of the ways is to use Multi-Shot or Explosive Trap upfront damage, but the issue is that you will be crippling high damage spells due to the damage penalty and the trade-off – unless you are desperate for mana – usually is not worth it.
Having said that, finally we can talk about Bomb Weaving, which is a tech based on swapping to Aspect of the Viper and using an AoE damage consumable – most often Saronite Bombs or, if you made the mistake of not going towards the Gnomish Engineering Specialization, also the Global Thermal Sapper Charge – on as many enemies as possible and then swap back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk, providing you a massive amount of mana in a blink of an eye, since both the consumables and the Aspects are off the GCD.
Since the mana regeneration is based on the number of enemies you hit, naturally this is a tech that is most useful on boss fights that you face a large amount of enemies – like the Dredge Ghouls on The Lich King and Flaming Embers on the Halion encounters – while its value is pretty much pointless on fights that you face only the boss, and in these cases you should stick to the traditional ways of recovering mana.
Runic Mana Injector: When you decide to do cultural appropriation on Restoration Shamans.
Spoiler:Show We have established previously that in a good raiding scenario Engineering is mandatory and you should be using a Potion of Speed as your pre-pot before every boss encounter, however there is room to discuss your second potion during the fight and that is the reason for this topic.
On short fights like Deathbringer Saurfang, you should definitely opt for a second Potion of Haste by the time your Bestial Wrath comes out of the cooldown for the maximum damage possible, since you won’t run towards mana problems at all. However, on longer fights where you struggle to effectively execute Bomb Weaving – such as the Professor Putricide encounter – you might find yourself in need of swapping Aspects for regenerating mana at some point.
Since swapping to Aspect of the Viper diminishes your damage by 40%, there is an argument for swapping your second potion for a Runic Mana Injector for a big instant chunk of mana, sacrificing the additional burst of Haste in exchange for a smaller time window during Aspect of the Viper, being a damage trade-off where you lower a burst window for more consistent overall damage phases.
Unlike the majority of this guide, it is really hard to pinpoint which one – Runic Mana Injector or Potion of Speed – is better as a second potion because it depends on both your gearing and the overall raid group quality. By my analysis and experience, both are situational and equally good, where I like to keep it flexible depending on the raid performance, so I’ll leave this alternative to you to test and judge yourself what fits you the best.
Gnomish Battle Chicken: Daily petition for Elon Musk to create one of these.
Spoiler:Show It pecks with a titanium beak, it enrages red and furious and it squeaks as a war song, it is another big reason for getting the Gnomish Engineering Specialization because this craftable trinket is absolutely great for increasing your damage directly and indirectly, where I’ll clarify on this topic. First of all, you should swap and activate this trinket about a minute before a fight starts and swap back to your regular trinket, so you can have your Chicken active paired with both of your regular trinkets.
Besides its base damage that is not that great, the main reason to have a Chicken is a chance of casting Battle Squawk, which increases the melee attack speed of everyone in your group by 5% for 5 minutes. At first, it might sound completely pointless for a Hunter to get increased melee attack speed, but the important part is that the buff also affects your Pet which leads to a noticeable direct damage increase.
Other than the clear direct damage increase, it is important to keep in mind that Beast Mastery Hunter is a very heavy burst spec, so by increasing the melee attack speed of your group members and their pets, you also increase the overall raid damage that will lead to shorter fights, and therefore an indirect damage increase to yourself. With that said, there is no excuse to not craft your own since it is a great asset for you and your raid members to get that extra edge on DPS, period.
5. What is the BiS Gear and what should I aim for?
Spoiler:Show a. Brief discussion between Attack Power and Agility Stacking.
Spoiler:Show When talking about gear, there are two stages that should be discussed with a bit more depth: Early Gear (up to 5k Gear Score) and BiS Gear (around 6.5k Gear Score). For a fresh Hunter, stacking Attack Power is the way to go, even over Armor Penetration, because it will improve your overall DPS but most importantly your Pet damage, which will be about 40% of your overall DPS.
However, around BiS Gear where you have achieved both Hit and Armor Penetration caps, you will have some spare gem slots for stacking extra stats. Going for the Attack Power route will lean towards your Pet, Traps and Sting damage while going for Agility will increase more your Shots damage. On fights where you have downtime and lots of movement – Lady Deathwhisper, Lich King, Halion – Attack Power stacking is stronger, while on fights that you can stand still and have almost no downtime at all – Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, Blood Queen Lana’thel – Agility stacking is stronger.
By the end of the day, the difference between both setups is not even 1%, so it is a matter of personal preference according to your playstyle. Since I chose to use a Devilsaur as a Pet and I find the end game bosses more relevant, my personal recommendation (and the setup I use myself) is to stack Attack Power, but I’ll leave it to you to decide what suits you best.
b. Finally the BiS Gear list (why didn’t you put this first?)
Spoiler:Show Finally the section everybody was waiting for since WoW players are obsessed with their gear scores and precious loot from raids, the Best in Slot gear list for Beast Mastery Hunters is very similar to the other specs, since all three specs have similar stats priorities, although there are some major differences on the offset choices and stat polishing through gems. You may opt for other gear setups based on what you have at your disposal or personal opinions, but this is the list that will provide you the maximum overall DPS available for the spec:
- Head: Sanctified Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Headpiece
Enchant: Arcanum of Torment
Gems: [M] Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Neck: Sindragosa’s Cruel Claw
Enchant: –
Gems: [B] Bright Cardinal Ruby
- Shoulder: Sanctified Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Spaulders
Enchant: Greater Inscription of the Axe
Gems: [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Back: Shadowvault Slayer’s Cloak
Enchant: Flexweave Underlay
Gems: [Y] Pristine Ametrine
- Chest: Sanctified Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Tunic
Enchant: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats
Gems: [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby, [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Wrist: Scourge Hunter’s Vambraces
Enchant: Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault
Gems: [B] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Hands: Sanctified Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Handguards
Enchant: Hyperspeed Accelerators
Gems: [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Waist: Nerub’ar Stalker’s Cord
Enchant: Eternal Belt Buckle
Gems: [Y] Wicked Ametrine, [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby, [P] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Legs: Leggings of Northern Lights
Enchant: Icescale Leg Armor
Gems: [B] Bright Cardinal Ruby, [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby, [Y] Fractured Cardinal Ruby
- Feet: Returning Footfalls
Enchant: Nitro Boosts
Gems: [R] Fractured Cardinal Ruby, [Y] Pristine Ametrine
- Finger 1: Frostbrood Sapphire Ring
Enchant: –
Gems: [R] Bright Dragon’s Eye
- Finger 2: Signet of Twilight
Enchant: –
Gems: [Y] Pristine Ametrine
- Trinket 1: Sharpened Twilight Scale
Enchant: –
Gems: –
- Trinket 2: Deathbringer’s Will
Enchant: –
Gems: –
- Main Hand Weapon: Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General
Enchant: Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre
Gems: [R] Fractured Dragon’s Eye, [B] Nightmare Tear, [Y] Pristine Ametrine
- Ranged Weapon: Fal’inrush, Defender of Quel’thalas
Enchant: Heartseeker Scope
Gems: [R] Bright Dragon’s Eye
6. How can I make my gear setup even stronger?
Spoiler:Show a. Gems: Getting your gear shiny with colorful rocks
Spoiler:Show Besides giving the jewelcrafters of Azeroth their source of income, gems are a very interesting way to improve your gear by adding extra stats which will help you reach the most needed stat caps stated before. There are a couple discussions about socket bonuses and when you should try to activate them – since you should be evaluating the relative weight of stats based on your current and future gear – but my personal take on this is to oversimplify and try to activate as many as possible by using hybrid gems for the stats you are lacking.
For the sake of instructing new players, so you don’t waste gold and time in some awful gems, there is a list of the most commonly used ones for the Beast Mastery gear, ordered by color:
- Relentless Earthsiege Diamond for +21 Agility and 3% Increased Critical Damage
- Fractured Cardinal Ruby for +20 Armor Penetration Rating
- Bright Cardinal Ruby for +40 Attack Power
- Delicate Cardinal Ruby for +20 Agility
- Pristine Ametrine for +20 Attack Power and +10 Hit Rating
- Glinting Ametrine for +10 Agility and +10 Hit Rating
- Wicked Ametrine for +20 Attack Power and +10 Critical Strike Rating
- Deadly Ametrine for +10 Agility and +10 Hit Rating
- Rigid King’s Amber for +20 Hit Rating
- Nightmare Tear for +10 All Stats
The respective Dragon’s Eye versions with improved stats:
- Fractured Dragon’s Eye for +34 Armor Penetration
- Bright Dragon’s Eye for +68 Attack Power
- Delicate Dragon’s Eye for +34 Agility
- Rigid Dragon’s Eye for +34 Hit Rating
b. Enchants: Cold steel and wizardry altogether.
Spoiler:Show Unlike gems, your options for enchants are much more strict because you have more clear choices when it comes to performance, regardless of your gear level and availability of stats. For this reason, you should be using the enchants recommended in the BiS gear list for every stage of your post level 80 journey, except in certain niche cases related to profession choices, like the ones below:
- Master’s Inscription of the Axe on your Shoulder gear if you opt for the Inscription profession
- Fur Lining - Attack Power on your Wrist gear if you opt for the Leatherworking profession
- Swordguard Embroidery on your Back gear, if you opt for the Tailoring profession
- Enchant Ring - Assault on your Finger gear, if you opt for the Enchanting profession
- Extra prismatic gem sockets on your Wrist and Hands gear, if you opt for the Blacksmithing profession.
c. Consumables: If you have enough gold for raiding, otherwise lie about it
Spoiler:Show
Also like the topic above, all consumables you may use while raiding are very straightforward in their choices – I trust you to not be using some spell power or mana regeneration consumables – and can be divided in three types: Flasks, Potions and Food. Therefore, the best options to maximize your damage are Flask of Endless Rage and Potion of Speed as a double pot. When it comes to Food, there are a couple options depending on which stats you are lacking, such as:
- Spiced Mammoth Treats for +30 Strength and Stamina for your Pet (Mandatory)
- Snapper Extreme for +40 Hit rating and +40 Stamina, if you aren’t capped
- Hearty Rhino for +40 Armor Penetration rating and +40 Stamina, if you aren’t capped
- Blackened Dragonfin for +40 Agility and +40 Stamina, if you have all your caps (for the Agility stackers).
- Fish Feast for you and your raid friends to share for some free stats, such as +80 Attack Power, +46 Spell Power and +40 Stamina (for the Attack Power stackers).
There are some extra consumables you may find across Azeroth for more minor boosts, but at the end of the day, an extra 10 DPS won’t matter much, so it is a personal choice to research about them and find out where to get those.
7. Extra stuff that may be helpful, or not, for your Hunter gameplay:
Spoiler:Show a. Macros: Why should you learn about C++ and Python
Spoiler:Show Unless you are a very new player – and if that is the case, you shouldn’t be wasting time reading this guide because you are probably clicking your spells – you may have heard of macros and how amazing they are at improving your gameplay. Macros are a built-in system that allows you to bind one or more actions to the same button, making the player’s life a lot easier and simpler to execute your rotation and manage other functions.
There is an endless number of combinations and conditions you can set on a macro, and since this subject can be quite extensive, I'll simplify and summarize the most commonly used ones, as a Beast Mastery Hunter, in practical examples that you may modify for your own preferences and gear available.
Basic Shot macro:
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/startattack
/cast [nochanneling:steady shot] steady shot
/cast Kill Command
/use 10
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Basic Burst macro:
#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/startattack
/cast bestial wrath
/cast !aspect of the dragonhawk
/cast dash
/cast dive
/cast Kill Command
/cast blood fury
/cast call of the wild
/cast rapid fire
/use 10
/use 13
/use 14
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Deterrence + Roar Defensive:
#showtooltip
/cast Deterrence
/cast [target=player] Roar of Sacrifice
/cancelaura Deterrence
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Disengage + Parachute:
#showtooltip disengage
/startattack
/cast disengage
/use 15
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Misdirection macros:
#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [@targettarget] Misdirection
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Pet Attack Macro:
#showtooltip
/petattack
/cast Dash
/cast Dive
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Pet Return Macro:
/target pet
/petpassive
/stopattack
/petfollow
/cast Mend Pet
/cast Dash
/cast Swoop
/cleartarget
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Eyes of the Beast + Nitro Boosts for Pet pulls:
#showtooltip eyes of the beast
/use 8
/cast eyes of the beast
/cast dive
/cast dash
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Trap + Raptor Strike Macro
#showtooltip Explosive Trap
/cast !Raptor Strike
/cast Explosive Trap
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Bomb Weaving Macro
#showtooltip Saronite Bomb
/cast !Aspect of the Viper
/use Saronite Bomb
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
b. Addons: The cherry on top of your pet-friendly cake:
Spoiler:Show Everybody knows that the vanilla game is well designed, flawless and perfectly adequate compared to the games of the same genre, right? Well, that may be true 15 years ago, but compared to nowadays UI and interactions are not that polished. For this reason, addons began to play a vital role in the performance of your gameplay and overall quality of life improvements, and it is highly recommended to have at least the most commonly used ones. Down below I’ll list the ones I’m using and the reason behind it, although I won’t link to the download sites since they change a lot, so it is up to you to whether they are worth searching for, downloading, and installing:
Raiding Addons:
- Deadly Boss Mods (DBM): Amazing due to how complete this addon is, it gives you a warning and timers for every raid mechanic of the game, which is essential for new players to learn about the encounters, also really useful for old timers as well.
- Omen: Shows you a live threat meter on the chosen target which is really useful to track who has aggro or is about to get aggro. Especially for Hunters, since you are in one of the roles responsible for redirecting threat, it is a must for raiding.
- Recount and Skada: Live tracking addon that gives you a window that shows damage, healing, resource generation and a lot of different types of data to track while raiding. Really useful if you want to track your performance or if you are interested in extra information, but in my humble opinion it is not essential for raiding.
- Tell Me When (TMW): Simple but very effective highly-customizable addon that allows you to create windows to track buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns on your screen. At least one addon of this type is recommended to raid and this is my personal preference due to its simplicity to configure and display.
Quality of Life (QoL) Addons:
- Atlas Loot: Great addon for showing you a list of almost every item available in the game that you can select by categories such as dungeons/raids, crafting, reputation rewards, et cetera. Also, allows you to create a wishlist for easy tracking of the items you want on a specific character.
- Atlas Map: Responsible for showing you a minimap of every instance of the game, really useful for new players when facing some dungeon leveling – especially for you to not get lost inside Wailing Caverns – or just for curiosity about the instance.
- Auctioneer: Really useful for navigating the Auction House in a cleaner way, both for casual and hardcore players which has a lot of depth, if you are trying to be a tycoon in some specific area.
- DressMe: Fun addon that allows you to search about every item appearance of the game and save presets, very similar to a wardrobe functionality, which is very helpful if you are into transmogrification.
- GearScore: Useful for tracking the average gear level of every player in the game, setting an arbitrary number roughly between 0 and 7000. Although I personally dislike this addon and the impacts of it on the social aspect of the game, it’s a must if you plan to join PUG raids (pick up group) or if you are looking for a guild.
- Ignore More: Grant you the ability to add more people to your ignore list than the vanilla game allows, which may be useful long term.
- Mapster: Great addon that improves your minimap functionalities, was mandatory for me to complete the Explorer achievement with no effort at all.
- NPCScan: Very interesting if you are either hunting rares or tracking very rare Beasts to tame, like King Krush, Aotona and all the four Spirit Beasts (Arcturis, Gondria, Loque’nahak and Skoll)
- Postal: Changes how your mailbox works, where the most important functionality is to allow you to open every unread mail at once, very useful while buying and selling items on the Auction House.
Interface (UI) Addons:
- Bagnon: Good addon that allows you to customize your personal bag frames, guild vault interface and check your other characters’ bags.
- Chatter and Prat: Improves your chat window functionality, such as adding class colors and improving overall formatting.
- OmniCC: Adds text to items, spells and abilities that are on cooldown to show when they'll be ready to use again.
- ShadowedUnitFrames: UI addon that changes your vanilla interface to a more clean and modern one, it is my favorite UI overhaul addon and the one I recommend for everybody, although not being the most common one.
- Tidy Plates: Changes the appearance of the friendly and enemy targets health bars to a more clean and modern one, also has some extra functionalities like an in-built debuff tracking and threat meters, very interesting to complete the UI overhaul.
8. Since you spent all this time reading this guide:
Spoiler:Show a. Final Considerations
Spoiler:Show Being my second and last unnecessarily long guide released, I felt the responsibility to put time and effort into this one because there is not a single complete or effective guide for Beast Mastery Hunters, at least for the WotLK expansion, focused on the PvE aspect of the game. Since this is arguably my favorite spec from this expansion and across every expansion released after WotLK, I had to share a bit of my knowledge because I’m pretty sure a lot of people love the spec and sometimes struggle to participate in all available content due to the whole stigma and misconceptions about the spec.
Once more, if you’ve had the patience to read until here, I hope for 3 results from this guide: 1) that you have a good time reading it; 2) that you learned something; 3) that you might try it yourself someday. My DMs will always be open for people interested in talking about it, and I would like to thank everyone who was involved on my WoW journey up to this moment!
b. Logs for the curious and disbelievers.
Spoiler:Show I don’t believe in being the best Beast Mastery Hunter to ever exist, because I’m not delusional, but you can check my own logs if you are interested in a bit more depth regarding performance in raids. I find raid logs a very useful tool for theorycrafting, even though, at higher ranks, there is a lot of “tailoring” and different raid groups quality. I hope this is helpful for you, but if you are just a casual player, feel free to skip this section completely.
9. Changelog for future reference
Spoiler:Show
- 26-05-25: Added a Refinement topic with extra content for increasing overall performance (Topic 4.c)
- 16-05-25: Added the numbers for your resources to generate Pet Happiness (Topics 3.b, 3.d, 4.a).
- 14-05-25: Added Trap Weaving and Arcane Shot value discussions (Topic 4.c).
- 09-05-25: Fixed some typos and overall formatting.
