Beast Mastery Hunter Raid Guide

Welcome to the Beast Mastery Hunter Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

Beast Mastery HunterRaid

Single-Target

Strong

AoE

Average

Utility

Weak

Survivability

Excellent

Mobility

Excellent

• Dark Ranger and Pack Leader perform similarly in pure single-target. Dark Ranger does not bring anything significant in AoE while Pack Leader has a lot of passive damage increases that contribute more towards your AoE.

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Barbed Shot further increases your pet's attack speed by 5%.
• 4-Set: Your pet's attacks have a 10% chance to increase all pet damage you deal by 10% for 10 seconds.

Single-Target

AoE

Maximizing your damage output during Bestial Wrath

• Ensure you are going into Bestial Wrath with at least 1 charge of Kill Command, but having 2 is best.
• Make sure you don't focus starve yourself by weaving in Barbed Shots during this window and not letting it over-cap on charges.
• Try to line this damage window up with either of the buffs provided by Huntmaster's Call. These are quite large and Bestial Wrath windows are further buffed by these.

Tracking Thrill of the Hunt and knowing when to use Barbed Shot

• Unless you have 1 point in Scent of Blood, never cast 2 Barbed Shots back-to-back.
• Outside of Bestial Wrath you want to have at least one spell cast between Barbed Shot casts.
  • The amount of casts you should have between Barbed Shots increases the less haste you have.
• High Thrill of the Hunt uptime comes from doing these things and just naturally spacing out uses of Barbed Shot.

Below, you find an example of how to correctly manage Barbed Shot casts.

Maximizing your damage output during Bloodshed

• The damage you deal during Bloodshed should be consistent because you should always pair it with Bestial Wrath.
  • Since you are pairing Bloodshed and Bestial Wrath together you also follow the Bestial Wrath rotation.

Below is an example of what happens when you correctly manage your Bloodshed window and you are talented into Killer Cobra.

• This is not a fixed rotation; This is just one example of how to play during your Bestial Wrath window. War Orders procs can increase your amount of Kill Command resets without needing to cast Cobra Shot along with Wild Call increasing the amount of Barbed Shot resets you can have.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are released after our progression concludes.

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Beast Mastery Hunter. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing. The damage of your pets does not heal you thus Leech is an awful tertiary for you since most of your damage is coming from your pets.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Signet of the Priory
  • Large amount of your highest secondary stat, if this isn't mastery of crit it's probably a lot worse.
• Treacherous Transmitter
  • Requires you to meet certain requirements before giving you a very large amount of main stat. Some examples so far are jump 3 times or find an orb on the floor.
• Imperfect Ascendancy Serum
  • 1.5 second channel that gives you a decently large amount of main stat. The main downside is the channel making you unable to do any other action until it's over.
• Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
  • A worse option than the rest simply because it has no main stat baseline and you won't have the main stat it gives reliably while it stacks.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj
  • Large amount of a random secondary.
• Dead-Eye Spyglass
  • As long as you hit the target this proc's on it's very strong.
• Bottled Flayedwing Toxin
  • Passive effect that gives you an average amount of overall damage.
• Mistcaller Ocarina
  • Average amount of versatility on a random proc chance. Decently worse than the rest of the alternatives.

Embellishments

• 2x Dawnthread Lining
  • It is a good choice if you have over 80% health most of the time and during your cooldowns.
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Waist or Boots depending on your available gear.

or

• 2x Duskthread Lining
  • Less DPS than Dawnthread Lining but overall more survivability if you are above 80% especially for larger hits.

Remaining Sparks

• Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 636 on max item level, therefore, it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Alchemical Chaos -- maximum DPS.
  • Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
• Food
  • Feast of the Divine Day
  • Feast of the Midnight Masquerade
• Weapon Oil
  • Algari Mana Oil
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion -- a big burst of healing
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Deadly Onyx
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem color to enhance your Culminating Blasphemite.
    • Masterful Sapphire
    • Masterful Emerald
    • Masterful Ruby

Enchantments

For min-maxing a Beast Mastery Hunter in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
• Rocket Jump -- Goblin
  • Do a small jump in the direction your character is facing.
  • While you're in the Rocket Jump animation you are placed on a global cooldown until your character lands.
• Berserking -- Troll
  • Strong DPS racial but lines up poorly with Call of the Wild.
  • Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
• Blood Fury -- Orc
  • Strong racial for damage because of both Command and Blood Fury which lines up with Call of the Wild.
  • 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
• Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
  • Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, and activate it again to teleport to it.
  • Maximum range of 100 yards.

Recommendation

In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS, you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said, the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably, Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift and Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.

Discover recommended macros for Beast Mastery Hunter during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Cursor Macros

Binding Shot -- Casts Binding Shot on your cursor without confirmation.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Binding Shot

Tar Trap - Uses Tar Trap on your cursor position without confirmation.

#showtooltip Tar Trap
/cast [@cursor] Tar Trap

Mouseover Macros

Barbed Shot -- Casts Barbed Shot on your mouseover or target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Barbed Shot

Tranquilizing Shot -- Casts Tranquilizing Shot on your mouseover target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Tranquilizing Shot

Concussive Shot -- Casts Concussive Shot on your mouseover target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Concussive Shot

Pet Macros

We're mainly using custom macros for Pets because pets don't cast their own abilities reliably enough and doing it yourself is a DPS gain.

Kill Command pet attack -- Casts Kill Command and your pets basic attack at your target.

#showtooltip Kill Command
/petattack
/cast Kill Command
/cast [@pettarget]Claw
/cast [@pettarget]Bite
/cast [@pettarget]Smack

Multi-Shot pet attack -- Casts Multi-Shot and your pets basic attack at your target.

#showtooltip Multi-Shot
/petattack
/cast Multi-Shot
/cast [@pettarget]Claw
/cast [@pettarget]Bite
/cast [@pettarget]Smack

Barbed Shot pet attack -- Casts Barbed Shot and your pets basic attack at your target.

#showtooltip Barbed Shot
/petattack
/cast Barbed Shot
/cast [@pettarget]Claw
/cast [@pettarget]Bite
/cast [@pettarget]Smack

Cobra Shot pet attack -- Casts Cobra Shot and your pets basic attack at your target.

#showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/cast [@pettarget]Claw
/cast [@pettarget]Bite
/cast [@pettarget]Smack

Utility Macros

Counter Shot focus -- Casts Counter Shot at your focus target or your current target if your focus target doesn't exist.

#showtooltip Counter Shot
/cast [@focus,exists,harm,nodead][] Counter Shot

Aspect of the Turtle cancelaura -- Casts Aspect of the Turtle and allows you to immediately cancel it upon pressing it again.

#showtooltip
/cast Aspect of the Turtle
/cancelaura Aspect of the Turtle

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Beast Mastery Hunter, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

• MRT -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Helpful addon for Raiders, especially for Raid leaders and officers.
• ElvUI -- Full User Interface replacement
  • A user interface designed around user-friendliness with extra features that are not included in the standard UI.
  • Alternatively, you can also use Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF) and an action bar addon of your choice or of course the stock UI.
• BigWigs -- Generic Boss Mod
  • BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific Raid encounter.
• WeakAuras -- Jack of all trades
  • WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework that allows the display of highly customizable graphics on World of Warcraft's user interface to indicate buffs, debuffs, and other relevant information. This addon was created to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras but has since introduced more functionalities while remaining efficient and easy to use.
• Plater -- Advanced Nameplates
  • Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras and wago.io + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
• Details -- In-depth Damage Meter
  • Most powerful, reliable, handsome, damage meter.

WeakAuras

Focus Bar

Shows your current focus.

Thrill of the Hunter tracker

Tracks the uptime of your Thrill of the Hunt and the current stack count.

Beast Cleave Tracker

Tracks the remaining time on your Beast Cleave.

Patch 11.0.2

• Hunter
  • Rejuvenating Wind now heals 12% maximum health over its duration (was 20%).
  • An issue with Ghillie Suit not activating when uncovered by Flare effect has been resolved.
    • Beast Mastery
      • Pet melee damage reduced by 10%.
      • Laceration damage reduced to 8% (was 15%).
      • Kill Command damage reduced by 20%.
      • Huntmaster's Call Hati and Fenryr attack damage reduced by 33%.
      • Dire Beast damage reduced by 10%.
      • Smack damage reduced by 10%
      • Stomp damage reduced by 10%.
      • Barbed Shot damage reduced by 25%.
      • Laceration now has proper support attribution.
      • Fixed an issue with Territorial Instincts summoning an extra pet when talented into Animal Companion.
      • Fixed an issue that was causing Laceration to contribute 100% of pet critical strike damage instead of 8%.

Patch 11.0

• Hunter
  • New Talent: Laceration – Whenever your pets critically strike, they cause their target to bleed for 15% of the damage dealt.
  • New Talent: Go For the Throat – Kill Command deals increased critical strike damage equal to 100% of your critical strike chance.
  • New Talent: Venom's Bite – Kill Shot applies Serpent Sting for 12 seconds.
  • New Talent: Venomous Bite – Bloodshed damage bonus increased by an additional 15% and makes Kill Command deal 20% increased damage to the target.
  • New Talent: Shower of Blood – Bloodshed now hits two additional targets near the primary target.
  • New Talent: Basilisk Collar – Each damage over time effect on your target increases the damage they receive from your pet's attacks by 5%/10%.
  • New Talent: Huntmaster's Call – Every 3 casts of Dire Beast sounds the Horn of Valor, summoning either Hati or Fenryr to battle. Hati increases the damage of all your pets by 8%. Fenryr pounces your primary target, inflicting a heavy bleed that deals damage over 8 seconds and grants you 10% Haste.
  • New Talent: Explosive Venom – Every 5 casts of Cobra Shot or Multi-Shot makes your next Multi-Shot or Explosive Shot apply Serpent's Sting to up to 5 targets.
  • Bloodshed has been updated – Command your pet to tear into your target, causing your target to bleed for high damage over 18 seconds and take 15% increased damage from your pet.
  • A Murder of Crows is now passive and has been updated – Every 5 casts of Kill Command summons a Murder of Crows. Murder of Crows no longer resets its cooldown if the affected target dies.
  • Barrage, Kill Command, Improved Kill Command, Killer Instinct, and Alpha Predator are now Beast Mastery talents (was Class).
    • Killer Instinct now deals 25/50% increased damage against enemies below 35% health.
  • Barrage now also grants Beast Cleave.
    • Bestial Wrath initial damage increased by 280%.
    • Kill Command damage increased by 8%.
    • Dire Beast damage increased by 10% and now grants 20 Focus.
    • War Orders now properly grants a 50% chance to reset the cooldown of Kill Command.
  • Improved Kill Command has a new icon.
  • Many 2-point talents are now 1 point.
  • The following talents have been removed:
  • One With the Pack
  • Sharp Barbs
  • Wailing Arrow
  • Cobra Sting

Q: Why is my Thrill of the Hunt uptime low / stacks dropping?

A: You need to space out your Barbed Shots better. In general outside of the opener or right before Bestial Wrath windows you should never send 2 Barbed Shots back-to-back.

Credits

Written By: Shodam

Reviewed By: Soda