Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Guide — The War Within (11.1.0)

Beast Mastery Hunter received substantial changes in Patch 11.1, with several brand new talents, a totally reworked Pack Leader Hero Tree, and more. Below, I will list the most impactful changes, but it will not be an exhaustive list. For A FULL list of changes, check the Hunter Changes button below!

• There are several new AoE-related Talents, focused on giving Blizzard additional tuning dials to tune AoE and single-target independently. These include Poisoned Barbs, Thundering Hooves, and Dire Cleave.
• Solitary Companion is a new choice node Talent alongside Animal Companion, effectively letting you choose if you want to have one or two pets, with Solitary Companion empowering and increasing the size of your main pet. Currently, Solitary Companion is very uncompetitive numbers-wise, but Blizzard has explicitly stated that they only want it to be slightly, so expect changes in this regard.
• Basilisk Collar and Venom's Bite have been removed.
• The Talent Tree has been reshuffled slightly in places to accommodate these new and updated Talents.

Pack Leader has been redesigned from the ground up.

• Howl of the Pack Leader is the new core mechanic. Every so often, your Kill Command will summon either a Wyvern, Boar, or Bear, rotating between them in that order. Casting Kill Command and Cobra Shot reduces the cooldown of this effect (base 30s). When a Beast spawns, it grants you 10 seconds of Barbed Shot cooldown reduction.
• Each Beast confers different effects, aside from dealing damage; the Wyvern increases you and your pet's damage done globally, while the Boar and Bear deal heavy damage in general. The Bear will also grant you Kill Command reduction, while the Boar's attacks will stack up Hogstrider, buffing the damage and target count of your next Cobra Shot.
• Lead From the Front causes Bestial Wrath to summon a Beast.
• Horsehair Tether/ Slicked Shoes is a utility choice node that either grants Disengage cooldown reduction, or causes Binding Shot to pull affected mobs to its center - great for mobility and AoE crowd control, respectively.
• Shell Cover is a weak defensive node. It can, at most, grant 6 seconds of 10% damage reduction every 90 seconds, and you do not get to trigger it on your own. This is laughably bad, particularly compared against Dark Ranger's defensive nodes.

Withering Fire will no longer autofire Black Arrow procs, and it is now always active during Call of the Wild, granting a Black Arrow proc every 4 seconds.

Overall, these changes are significant enough to affect both our Talent Builds and Rotation in substantial ways.