In this article, we list your Beast Mastery Hunter (WoW MoP 5.3) core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing a Beast Mastery Hunter will face you with.

The other articles of our Beast Mastery Hunter guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Kennyloggins, a leading figure in the Hunter community, who raids in Blood Legion.

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

The single target rotation for a Beast Mastery Hunter is based on the following priority system.

1. Apply Hunter's Mark on the target.
2. Cast Kill Command on cooldown.
3. Cast Kill Shot (only available below 20% health).
4. Apply and maintain Serpent Sting to the target
   • it will be refreshed by Cobra Shot so it only needs to be done once, normally.
5. Cast your Tier 6 talent (normally Glaive Toss).
6. Cast your Tier 4 talent (normally Dire Beast).
7. Cast Focus Fire when your pet's Frenzy reaches 5 stacks (the icon will glow)
8. Cast Arcane Shot to dump any excess focus.
9. Cast Cobra Shot.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

When facing 2-4 enemies, you maintain your single target rotation, while using Multi-Shot once every 4 seconds to keep up the Beast Cleave buff on your pet.

Against 5 or more enemies, you should abandon your normal shot priority and instead use the following priority instead:

1. Cast Multi-Shot as often as your focus allows.
2. Cast Kill Shot.
3. Cast Glaive Toss in such a way that it hits all enemies. If AoE damage is of paramount importance, you should choose Barrage instead of Glaive Toss.
4. Cast Cobra Shot whenever you have insufficient focus for Multi-Shot.

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, two exotic pets have AoE abilities of their own. Using these in conjunction with the above rotation will yield more DPS.

• Chimaeras have Froststorm Breath, a frontal cone breath attack.
• Worms have Burrow Attack, a ground-based AoE attack.

Note that if the targets you are AoEing will be alive and in the same location for extended periods of time, you should keep up an Explosive Trap under them (even against as few as 2 enemies).

3. Cooldown Usage↑top

In this section, we assume that you have taken Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows, and Glaive Toss from your tier 4, 5, and 6 talents, respectively. This is because we deem them to be best talents for your DPS.

In short, this is how you should make use of your DPS cooldowns.

• Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, Dire Beast, A Murder of Crows, and Stampede should be used as many times as possible during the encounter. Stacking Rapid Fire and Bestial Wrath provides no real benefit, but stacking Rapid Fire and Stampede is important.
• Rabid (an ability your pet gains if you choose the Ferocity specialisation) should be used as many times as possible during the encounter. You should try to stack this ability with Bestial Wrath whenever possible, which in practice means every other Bestial Wrath should be stacked with a Rabid.
• Glaive Toss should be used on cooldown.
• Readiness should be used immediately after using Kill Command, with Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, A Murder of Crows, and Dire Beast all on cooldown.

More details about cooldown usage, as well as information about the other talents (that we do not deem optimal at the moment) can be found in our detailed cooldown usage section.

4. Aspects↑top

You should always have an Aspect active. As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you should always be using Aspect of the Hawk.

Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack are generally not advised during combat because of their negative dazing effect, but can be useful for speeding up your raid's running after a wipe. Note that in the case of Aspect of the Cheetah, you can remove the dazing penalty by using Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah.

A hunter's aspect will persist until removed by the hunter or until the hunter's death. Aspects can be changed in combat, but they cannot be changed while a cast is in progress. Aspects are on the global cooldown.

5. Optional Read: Mastering Your Beast Mastery Hunter↑top

While the rotations we gave in the previous sections will yield very good results, there are many things you should be aware of, in order to play your Beast Mastery Hunter to its full potential. You will need to understand all the subtleties, pertaining to your abilities, rotations, and cooldown usage, that we present below.

5.1. Focus

Hunters and their pets use a unique resource, called focus. Focus works in much the same way as other class resources, like rage and energy, in the sense that some abilities grant focus, while others cost focus in order to be used.

A Beast Mastery Hunter's focus has a maximum capacity of 120, and regenerates at an innate rate of 4 focus per second. This rate is increased by Haste Rating. In addition to this, certain abilities such as Steady Shot (Marksmanship-only) and Cobra Shot (Beast Mastery and Survival-only) also grant focus.

Most of the abilities in the hunter rotation cost focus to use, and some talents decrease the focus costs, or offer other ways to gain additional focus.

Hunter pet focus works similarly, and is of no concern to you as you cannot do anything to modify it, nor will you be casting pet abilities manually.

As a general rule, you should always have enough focus to cast your shots as soon as they come off cooldown, but also to never have 120 focus (as any extra focus you generate would then go to waste).

5.2. Auto-shots and Special Shots

Hunters do the majority of their damage through the use of shots. The rest of the damage is made up of pet damage and DoT damage.

Auto Shot is the default Hunter attack, which works similarly to melee classes' auto attacks or "white swings". It is affected by your Ranged Attack Speed, and it continues to work while moving.

The other hunter shots are of all varieties: instant cast or with a cast time, costing focus or granting focus, and some are utility shots which cost no focus and deal no damage.

One of the most important aspects of doing competitive Hunter DPS is to make sure your shots are always used without delay.

5.3. Pet Contribution

The greatest contribution to your DPS is your pet's damage, both through its simple melee attacks and through Kill Command. For this reason, it is imperative that your pet is always on the target, stays alive, and that you always cast Kill Command on cooldown. Keep this in mind, otherwise your DPS will plummet.

There are a few useful things to remember regarding pet movement.

First of all, when you are switching targets, if you simply target a new enemy and use Kill Command, your pet will cast Kill Command on its current (your old) target. Therefore, you must always make sure to tell your pet to first change target (through the Pet Attack command), and then use Kill Command.

Secondly, if you need to have your pet move to a target that is far from it, you can help close the gap faster by having the pet use Master's Call on a friendly target that is located between the two enemies.

5.4. Detailed Cooldown Usage

5.4.1. Focus Fire

Focus Fire should be used as soon as your pet's Frenzy reaches 5 stacks. When that happens, your pet's buff of 20% increased attack speed will be transformed into a 30% ranged haste buff for you. The duration of the buff is 20 seconds, and it takes between 25 and 30 seconds for Frenzy to reach 5 stacks on your pet again. This means that while you usually will not be able to maintain 100% uptime on Focus Fire.

You should never use Focus Fire while Bestial Wrath is active, since this is basically a wasted global cooldown, and during Bestial Wrath you must make every global cooldown deal damage.

5.4.2. Bestial Wrath

Bestial Wrath should, as well, be used as many times as possible during an encounter. In addition to the aforementioned interaction with Focus Fire, it's also advisable to delay your Bestial Wrath so that its duration lines up with Kill Command cooldowns in such a way that you can use two Kill Commands during Bestial Wrath. You should ensure that you have a fair amount of focus when casting Bestial Wrath, and you should spend its 10 second duration casting Kill Command and Arcane Shot, and as few Cobra Shots as possible (ideally none).

You should make sure that Serpent Sting has enough duration before using Bestial Wrath so that it does not drop off while Bestial Wrath is active.

If you have the Dire Beast talent, then you should ideally summon the Dire Beast a few seconds before using Bestial Wrath.

5.4.3. Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire should be used as many times as possible during the encounter. Stacking it with Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp is entirely viable (do not worry if your Cobra Shot cast time is lower than your global cooldown). It is advised to stack it with any other procs, on-use trinkets, potions, and fight mechanics that cause you to deal increased damage.

It is also ideal to stack Rapid Fire with Stampede.

5.4.4. Rabid

Rabid increases your pet's attack speed by 70% for 20 seconds, with a 2-minute cooldown. You should use this ability as many times as possible during the encounter.

For maximum benefit, it is ideal to stack it with Bestial Wrath. Given the fact that Bestial Wrath has a 1-minute cooldown, every other Bestial Wrath should be stacked with Rabid.

5.4.5. Stampede

Stampede's 5-minute cooldown means that it will most likely only be used twice during the vast majority of encounters. Your only concern is to make sure that it is cast as many times as possible during the fight. If there are moments when the boss takes increased damage, or when burst damage is important to your raid's strategy, you should save Stampede for such a time.

Whenever possible, you should stack Stampede and Rapid Fire, since this increases the amount of attacks the pets from Stampede will do.

5.4.6. Readiness

Readiness should be used to reset the cooldown of your other DPS cooldowns. It does not work with Stampede, so its chief usage will have to do with Rapid Fire and the abilities granted to you by your talents.

For an example of proper Readiness usage, please refer to our opening sequence section.

We would like to mention that the more cooldowns you can reset with Readiness, the better, and this includes the cooldown of Kill Command and Glaive Toss.

5.4.7. Tier 4 Talents

Dire Beast usage is very simple. It should be used on cooldown, and ideally before using Bestial Wrath whenever this is applicable (since it will generate extra focus for you while Bestial Wrath is active).

Fervor should also be used on cooldown, with the mention that you should only use it when neither you, nor your pet, are at or above 50 Focus.

Thrill of the Hunt will sometimes provide you with a focus cost reduction for your next 3 Arcane Shots or Multi-Shots. You will simply benefit from this reduction passively, although you do have to be careful not to reach maximum focus.

5.4.8. Tier 5 Talents

A Murder of Crows should be used as many times as possible during the fight. The damage done by A Murder of Crows updates dynamically with your attack power, so there is no need to wait for trinket procs before using it.

Lynx Rush should be used on cooldown. It is beneficial to stack Lynx Rush with Bestial Wrath, but do not go out of your way to delay either of the two spells in order to accomplish this, as that would indeed be a DPS loss. There is no benefit in stacking Lynx Rush with anything else, but you should be mindful of using it in such a way that you can reset its cooldown with Readiness. When resetting Lynx Rush's cooldown with Readiness, make sure that you allow enough time (about 4 seconds) for the previous Lynx Rush to end, before re-casting it. Otherwise, the new Lynx Rush will clip the old one, reducing the number of attacks your pet makes.

Blink Strike is a passive ability, so it requires no explanations.

5.4.9. Tier 6 Talents

Glaive Toss should be used on cooldown. In case there are additional targets in the fight, you should position yourself in such a way that the glaives hit the other targets too.

Barrage should be used on cooldown, ideally with Focus Fire active. Moreover, using Barrage while there is a Stormlash Totem active is extremely beneficial.

Powershot should be used on cooldown.

In the case of Powershot, you should follow the same positional recommendation that we issued with regards to Glaive Toss.

It is interesting to note that you can change where Barrage is directed by turning your character while channeling the spell. This allows you to hit more targets than those you were initially facing.

5.5. Opening Sequence

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you possess a large number of cooldowns. We will provide you with an example of an opening sequence that maximises the gains from cooldowns.

1. Make sure that Hunter's Mark is applied to the target.
2. Cast Stampede and Rapid Fire.
3. Cast Bestial Wrath and Kill Command.
4. Cast A Murder of Crows.
5. Cast Serpent Sting.
6. Cast Dire Beast.
7. Cast Glaive Toss.
8. Cast Arcane Shot.
9. Cast Kill Command.
10. Cast Readiness and Kill Command.
11. Cast Glaive Toss.
12. Cast Arcane Shot twice.
13. Cast Dire Beast.
14. Cast Bestial Wrath and Arcane Shot.
15. Cast Kill Command.

After this point, things become fairly straightforward. You should delay your second Rapid Fire a bit so that you have enough focus to use A Murder of Crows without delay. During this opening sequence, you will inevitably reach maximum focus, but do not worry about that. Also, Serpent Sting should be reapplied manually, and not through Cobra Shot.

6. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update.
  • Mentioned that Blink Strike is now passive and does not require any kind of management.
  • Removed mention of Rabid's cooldown being lower (since this aspect was removed, and it is now on the same cooldown as for the other two Hunter specs). Added mentions that Rabid should be stacked with every other Bestial Wrath.
• 20 Apr. 2013: Corrected the innate focus regeneration rate from 6 to 4 per second.
• 13 Apr. 2013: Made several important updates.
  • Refined the single target and AoE rotations.
  • Improved the recommendations for cooldown usage in the case of almost every cooldown.
  • Added emphasis on focus management and using your shots without delay.
  • Added more details about how to best manage your pet's movement.
  • Added a mention that you can change the facing of your character while Barrage is being channeled, which affects where you are shooting.
  • Revamped the Opening Sequence section.