World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Beast Mastery Hunter Complete Guide (2024)

It’s no secret that the many classes of World of Warcraft are looking particularly good in Dragonflight. This, of course, means you can really dig into any class you choose. While having too many alternate characters may have once caused issues, Dragonflight makes it a much more enjoyable experience, especially when leveling Hunter.

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With that in mind, Hunter saw some amazing improvements throughout the beta, the Beast Mastery specialization especially. With some great talent options in both the regular Hunter and Beast Mastery trees, this specialization’s playstyle is in wonderful condition. However, there’s more than just the talent tree; here’s the complete guide for Beast Mastery Hunter.

Why Beast Mastery?

Here are three reasons you should consider choosing Beast Mastery:

1. Beast Mastery Hunter is one of the simpler classes to get the hang of, as their rotation is relatively simple. So, if you want to play a specialization that doesn’t require you to think too hard about which button to press next (and therefore focus more on everything else going on), this is the specialization for you.
2. They are the only ranged class that never needs to stop moving to cast a spell, allowing for incredible mobility when it comes to end-game content like dungeons, raids, and PvP. If that sounds appealing, pick up Beast Mastery for sure.
3. Lastly, and from strictly a class-fantasy point of view, this is the class you should pick up if you want to fight alongside a bunch of pets and truly be one with the wild.

Best Beast Mastery Races

While you can pick any race you want as your Beast Mastery Hunter, if you’re looking for some extra benefits, here are some races that can provide them:

While some of these are better than others, you’ll get the most out of the Orc’s racial passive. The racial passive effects shared by Tauren and Dwarves are great as well, as Beast Mastery Hunters do very well with Critical Strike. At the end of the day, though, don’t let these prevent you from picking what you want to play.

Beast Mastery Pets

There are only three types of pet families: Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning. Each gives you a different active ability and passive effect, and for general dungeon and raid content, your best bet is Tenacity. They passively give you and your pet more health, plus another defensive cooldown (Fortitude of the Bear) which gives even more health to you and your pet (albeit temporarily).

Best Talents For The Main Hunter Tree

The above is a decent guideline to follow when it comes to the main tree for Hunters. No matter which talents you take along the way, Alpha Predator and Death Chakram are your best keystone talents regardless of what kind of PvE content you’re doing. Outside those, Counter Shot and Posthaste are very important talents to aim for in any build.

While leveling and while doing your world content, don’t worry too much about optimization. Instead, pick the talents you want to pick and try them out. Considering you can change them literally anywhere, have fun with them and play around with your options. This goes for the Beast Mastery talent tree as well.

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Best Beast Mastery Talent Tree For Dungeons

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This tree is more geared toward your area-of-effect talents. The most important area-of-effect talents you’ll always want to have are Multi-Shot, Beast Cleave, Kill Cleave, and Stomp.

Best Beast Mastery Talent Tree For Raids

See Also

Beast Mastery Hunter Guide for The War Within

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When it comes to raids, you’re going to want single-target damage, which is why all the vital area-of-effect talents you saw in the dungeon tree are not taken here (except Stomp). Instead, the key talents in this raid tree that you’ll want to note are the following:

• Bloodshed: since you’re no longer utilizing the MultiShot path, you need another way to get to War Orders, and Bloodshed does so just fine.
• Dire Pack: this keystone talent (left side of the tree), and its entire pathway, which includes Dire Command and Dire Frenzy, focuses far more on churning out Dire Beasts as often as possible, which will subsequently allow you to use Kill Command more.
• Dire Beast: this isn’t a talent you particularly need elsewhere, but it’s certainly a great one to have if you’re running Dire Pack so you can get your five Dire Beasts summoned more often.

This talent tree might not be as good in raid fights that require a lot of area-of-effect damage, either due to it being a council-type fight or to there just being loads of adds to kill. Outside these exceptions, this is your go-to single-target build.

Beast Mastery Tree Must-Haves

Aside from the most integral talents like Barbed Shot, Aspect of the Beast, Animal Companion, and Bestial Wrath, no matter what kind of content you’re doing, there are a couple of other talents you’re always going to want to have:

• Training Expert: the flat damage increase to your pets’ overall damage is invaluable.
• Killer Command: the flat damage increase to Kill Command is also invaluable.
• Piercing Fangs: this is the central keystone talent and is incredible. You’re going to want all the talents in this row, from Bestial Wrath to Piercing Fang, as they are all necessities.

Rotation

When it comes to the rotation, it’s as simple as keeping three stacks of your Barbed Shot up at all times and using Bestial Wrath and Kill Command on cooldown.

When it comes to your Barbed Shot, you don’t necessarily need to use it every time a charge is up, since you shouldn’t rely on the luck of Wild Call to reset its cooldown if you can avoid it. Instead, try to use it when your three stacks are about to expire. All in all, between your Barbed Wrath and Scent of Blood talents, you should be able to keep three stacks of Barbed Shot up while cycling through Bestial Wrath rather consistently.

Beast Mastery Tips And Tricks

• Always make sure you never have two charges of Kill Command up.
• In multi-mob fights, you’re going to want to keep Beast Cleave active with your Multi-Shot, just be careful not to overuse your Multi-Shot, as it’ll deplete your Focus rather quickly.
• Usually, steadily keeping your three stacks of Barbed Shot up will supply you with a fair amount of Focus, but sometimes you’ll have Lust active and a lot of haste, allowing you to spend much more Focus than usual. In these situations, it pays to use Barbed Shot more frequently to generate more Focus to keep up with your increased haste. Take care not to drop your three stacks in the process.
• Don’t panic if you lose your three stacks of Barbed Shot. It happens. Sometimes, the math just doesn’t add up, even if you only use it when your three stacks are about to expire. Just focus on getting the three stacks back up as soon as possible.

Beast Mastery Macros

One of the best macros you can have as a Hunter lets you send an ability to your cursor’s location (like quick cast). Normally, abilities like your traps or Flare or Binding Shot need to first be selected, and then you must click where you want to deploy it. This macro combines that into one step, sending your ability to your cursor’s location:

/cast [@cursor] *insert ability name here*

Some examples:

• /cast [@cursor] Tar Trap
• /cast [@cursor] Binding Shot

Another great addition is one for Counter Shot:

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

This allows you to silence your Focus Target (if you have one). This is extremely useful for fights where you need to interrupt a target that isn’t the target you’re dealing damage to, as it removes the need to manually switch targets by either clicking or Tab-targeting.

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Beast Mastery Stat Priority And Gear

In general, as long as you’re avoiding Versatility, you’re good to go. Agility is your primary stat, but when it comes to secondary stats – Haste, Critical Strike, Mastery, and Versatility – they are all great to have as a Beast Mastery Hunter except Versatility. That said, while the following stat priority list is good to follow, it is by no means a hard and fast rule for you to always adhere to.

1. Haste/Critical Strike
2. Mastery
3. Versatility

The Focus regeneration granted by Haste is always lovely to have, so it’s a good stat to prefer over the others. Alternatively, you can prefer Critical Strike, which directly impacts how often you get your Barbed Shot cooldown refreshers from Wild Call.

Either way, both of these stats are top-notch. Mastery is great, too, since it gives your pets a flat damage increase. All the secondary stats (except Versatility) are very close in value for Beast Mastery Hunters, so don’t stress too much about it.

Gems

Considering how close the secondary stats are, your choice of gems comes down to preference or perhaps picking up some stats that your gear lacks. For example, if your gear is Haste and Mastery heavy, definitely pick up some gems that favor Critical Strike.

Even so, getting a combination of Haste and Critical Strike will usually be your best bet, so picking up either Crafty Ysemerald (more Haste) or Crafty Alexstraszites (more Critical Strike) are stellar options. But in reality, you can get any combination of Haste, Critical Strike, and Mastery.

Enchants

There are many enchants to choose from, but below are the most important ones that you should strive for no matter what. And again, remember that the value of the enchant depends on its crafting tier.

Gearing While Leveling

As accessible as gear has become in Dragonflight, this cannot be stressed enough: while you’re leveling, just pick up the quest rewards (or dungeon rewards if you’re dungeon grinding) as they improve. Don’t worry too much about your stats or item level.

While leveling, you can also craft some good gear through your professions. In an ideal world, as a Hunter, you’d want to have Skinning and Leatherworking as your two primary professions, and as you quest, you’ll be doing plenty of Skinning. As such, feel free to craft up some Mail gear as you level, but don’t worry too much about Item Level, at least not until you’re level 70.

Gearing At Level 70

Before the release of Mythic Plus and raiding content, there are a few key ways to gear up: Dungeons, World Quests, and crafting. Crafting gear can net you the highest item level at this point, so aim for those 382 pieces if you can.

Otherwise, regular Mythic dungeons will get you 372 gear, which isn’t too shabby. Here are some good pieces of gear to aim for in the new dungeons prior to the release of Mythic Plus and Raids:

You will notice that most of this gear favors Critical Strike and Haste, with only a few pieces granting Mastery. This doesn’t mean Mastery is bad, just that the former two stats are slightly better. However, you will also notice that there is absolutely no Versatility here, and for good reason.

That said if you pick up a sweet upgrade that happens to have Versatility as one of the stats it grants, wear it anyway. The boost to all your primary stats and item level is worth it.

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