Beast Mastery Hunter Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

In Battleground Blitz, Beast Mastery Hunter is a highly mobile ranged DPS that is able to overwhelm opponents with their army of pets. Once your damage is "ramped", it is difficult for an enemy team to stop or play around. Beast Mastery has heavy single-target damage, good crowd control, and a handful of niche talents that, while rarely played in Arena, can be incredibly impactful in battleground scenarios.

The strengths of a Beast Mastery Hunter in the Battleground Blitz format are the pressure during an extended team fight, the ability to continue using their whole rotation whilst running with flags, and their ability to interrupt base captures using pets.

Beast Mastery is also able to buff their whole raid with the 10-minute cooldown regular Heroism effect Primal Rage or use Kindred Beasts to apply their special Heroism effect, which is not affected by the 10-minute Sated debuff. This combination gives a 12% Haste-increase for 20 seconds to your raid on a 3-minute cooldown. You should be aware that the effects do not stack, though, and wait until the regular Heroism effect from your team fades before using Primal Rage with Kindred Beasts.

The new mobility and defensive tools in the Hunter talent tree give Beast Mastery the ability to defend or flag carry for a decent amount of time until it is able to pass the flag or base to a more durable DPS teammate. With the faster flag capture speed in Battleground Blitz, being able to interrupt enemies using a pet while crowd-controlled also gives Hunters an advantage when defending.

Beast Mastery is a good specialisation for hunting down flag carriers as well as defending them on flag carry maps and is able to contribute to longer team fights with its consistent damage and crowd control on resource race maps.

Unlike in Arena, all Hunter specialisations are able to dismiss their pet during Battleground Blitz. This means that you can swap pets at any time, depending on whether you need more mobility or survivability, or even just change to a Cunning pet whenever Fortitude of the Bear is on cooldown and swap back afterwards.

Because of the number of players in a Battleground Blitz, you should stay at a safe distance during team fights and let your melee DPS teammates take the enemies' focus. This will allow you to avoid crowd control while safely ramping your Frenzy stacks and other pets/buffs.

Where possible, you should ramp your damage before using crowd control combinations on healers. However, at the beginning of a game, when you know your whole team have their offensive cooldowns ready, it is better for you to crowd control early and let your team do the damage.

When you are able to, it is a good idea to pressure cloth-wearing targets such as Mages and Warlocks, as your damage is reduced based on your target's armor type, and these classes can be devastating to a teamfight when left unchecked.

When you are not carrying flags or defending bases, using a Ferocity pet is ideal because you can contribute your special Primal Rage/ Kindred Beasts buff, which is hugely impactful to any team fight and should be used immediately when your team's Heroism effect expires, and then whenever it is available for the rest of the game.

Unlike in Arenas, you are able to freely dismiss and re-summon pets in Battleground Blitz. This means you can swap pets whenever Primal Rage is on cooldown or whenever you particularly need the mobility or durability from Cunning and Tenacity pets, respectively.

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Beast Mastery has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Intimidation
• Binding Shot
• Freezing Trap
• Scatter Shot
• Entrapment
• Implosive Trap (to lock targets down) or
• High Explosive Trap (to keep targets away)

You should look to use your Intimidation and Freezing Trap combination on enemy healers whenever they are available and as early in the fight as possible. When Intimidation isn't available, you can also use Binding Shot or Scatter Shot to set up your own Freezing Traps. If your team is already dealing significant damage on a key target, you can choose to crowd-control both healers at once by using Intimidation into Freezing Trap on o ne while using Binding Shot into Scatter Shot on the other.

In The War Within, Hunters gained Kodo Tranquilizer, a powerful new utility talent that becomes very powerful when you are able to hit three targets with it. You should use Tranquilizing Shot on cooldown during team fights, particularly as it generates focus through Disruptive Rounds.

You should also be using Roar of Sacrifice on your teammates as early in the fight as possible. A macro is included at the bottom of this page, which should make this much less mechanically difficult.

Whenever you are supporting a flag carrier that is kiting enemies, you should also be using your Master's Call, Tar Trap and High Explosive Trap to support them.

Whenever you know that a Rogue or Feral Druid is in stealth and nearby, you should be dropping Flare to try to catch them out.

Beast Mastery has also received several significant boosts to its survivability in the War Within that will make it a far better defensive spec than it has been in previous expansions.

You have a number of defensive cooldowns which can be used to carry flags or stall while waiting for help from teammates.

• Survival Tactics (if you are flag-carrying, be aware that using Feign Death will drop the flag, and you will need to immediately pick it up again!)
• Survival of the Fittest (combined with Padded Armor and Lone Survivor)
• Fortitude of the Bear (comes with Endurance Training and is enhanced by Kindred Beasts)
• Roar of Sacrifice
• Exhilaration (combined with Rejuvenating Wind and Natural Mending)
• Smoke Screen/ Den Recovery
• Aspect of the Turtle (note that this is your only defensive that cannot be used while carrying flags)

As a general rule when rotating your cooldowns as Hunter, you want to use your first charge of Survival of the Fittest as soon as you start (or are about to start) taking damage. This is because you have two charges through Padded Armor and keeping a charge on cooldown at all times will allow you to use Survival of the Fittest more frequently.

Your second priority defensive is Exhilaration which you should use whenever it's available and you need health, because the cooldown is relatively short through Rejuvenating Wind. If you have the Smoke Screen Dark Ranger Hero Talent, you should avoid using Exhilaration while you already have Survival of the Fittest active. If you are not in combat, you can save Exhilaration and use Camouflage to heal between fights instead.

Feign Death should be used on cooldown either to interrupt casts or whenever you're anticipating a big hit of damage to activate the Survival Tactics damage reduction.

To get the most value from Aspect of the Turtle, you ideally want to use it when you wouldn't be able to do damage anyway (for example fighting a Rogue during Evasion, Havoc Demon Hunter during Blur, or Windwalker Monk during Touch of Karma), although, if you are going to die you should use Aspect of the Turtle regardless.

Remember that during Aspect of the Turtle, you aren't able to attack but are still able to contribute to the fight by throwing any available traps or other non-damaging abilities such as Flare.

Beast Mastery does have the option to get additional self-healing by using a Spirit Beast for Spirit Mend, although this heal is not very significant, and in almost all cases, it's better to bring a pet that has a Mortal Wounds ability.

Importantly, Hunters are not able to use Feign Death or Aspect of the Turtle while carrying a flag in Warsong Gulch/Twin Peaks, or carrying an orb in Temple of Kotmogu. On these maps you should be liberal with your defensive cooldown usage and where possible, pass the flag to teammates when you don't have usable defensive cooldowns available.

It is worth pointing out that Beast Mastery does have weak self-healing and struggles to survive a prolonged period without a healer available more than other DPS specialisations, so when you see enemies coming, you should call it out in the battleground chat!

Beast Mastery Hunters can be slippery flag carriers and have some niche mobility talents in the War Within that are not played often in Arena but can be excellent if you need to move a flag quickly or kite enemies away.

• Disengage (and Posthaste)
• Scout's Instincts
• Pathfinding
• Trailblazer
• Moment of Opportunity
• Born To Be Wild
• Master's Call (enhanced by Kindred Beasts)

An important advantage Hunters have over other classes in Battleground Blitz is the ability to immediately leave combat using Feign Death. This allows the Hunter to quickly move between objectives with their mount when they are no longer needed at an objective, or to quickly respond to a new objective. For example, if a flag carrier is running across the other side of the map from the teamfight you are in, you can immediately mount and catch the flag carrier whilst the enemy healers are still trapped in combat in the teamfight.

At the start of a Capture the Flag map, you should either:

1. Identify who the likely enemy flag carrier is and move to slow/crowd control/kill them to delay their push to your base for as long as possible
2. Join the team fight, crowd-controlling an enemy healer as soon as possible and getting your damage rolling

Beast Mastery is great at fulfilling both of these roles.

On both Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, if you are defending your own flag carrier, you should encourage them to take high ground on the upstairs ledges so you can protect them with High Explosive Trap (and Bursting Shot if you choose to take that as well).

Similarly, when attacking enemy bases, you should look to knock players off the high ground. You can do that either to make sure that your teammates can attack the enemy flag carrier or to separate the flag carrier from their healers.

When nobody is available to take the enemy flag, and it is nearby, you should take advantage of your mobility and defensive cooldowns to bring the enemy flag back to your team as soon as you can and, if possible, pass it to a more durable specialisation when it is safe to do so.

Whenever you are defending a flag and not already in combat, you should be pre-emptively placing traps on chokepoints so the enemy team is immediately crowd controlled when they arrive.

If you are running with a flag, you can use a Cunning Pet for additional speed and the Master's Call effect, but if you are still holding the flag in your own base, you may be better off swapping to a Tenacity pet to gain Fortitude of the Bear, which will make you more likely to survive stuns. In either case, if you are next to your teammates you should pass the flag to one of them where possible as you aren't able to use your most important defensive cooldown Feign Death or immunity Aspect of the Turtle while carrying a flag.

Resource Race Battlegrounds work differently in Battleground Blitz compared to regular Battlegrounds and this substantially changes the way they are played. The differences are as follows:

1. Assaulting a node takes six seconds of not being interrupted once you click the flag.
2. Once a node has been assaulted, the node will be contested for only 30 seconds (meaning, the enemy team only has 30 seconds to stop your team from capturing that node).
3. After that 30 second window, the base will be controlled by your team for 45 seconds and cannot be assaulted by the other team.
4. After this 45 seconds, the base is inactive for 5 seconds, at which point it can be assaulted again by either team.

Whenever you are in combat at a base in a Resource Race Battleground:

• If there is an enemy healer at the base you are assigned to, then you should crowd control them as soon as possible and use your burst cooldowns to kill their teammates.
• If there is no healer but there is more than one DPS enemy, you should use your crowd control on the one who your team is less likely to attack (as they would break your crowd control).
• If there is only one enemy and they are a DPS, you should use Bestial Wrath and stun them with Intimidation. If they use their trinket, you should immediately use Freezing Trap and attempt to capture the base. If they don't, proceed with your burst damage rotation.

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first to avoid having too many players at any node (or your team missing a node entirely).

In all 1v1 fights or combat where you do not have a healer with you, you should be very liberal with your defensive cooldowns to reduce the damage you take as much as possible, because the tools you have for recovering health are limited.

When you are defending a flag and use Camouflage, you should dismiss and re-summon your pet then position it near the flag (but away from you). This will allow you to attack with your pet while staying in Camouflage yourself. You will also be able to deal damage with Kill Command using the Kill Command macro at the bottom of this page while in Camouflage. This will help you lower an enemy's health before you decide to attack, and in the meantime prevent enemies from capturing the node. You can also heal your pet with Mend Pet while doing this and use Revive Pet if it dies, whilst still being in Camouflage.

You are also able to use Freezing, High Explosive and Tar Trap while in Camouflage without it breaking. An example of using this would be to interrupt a Rogue who is trying to capture your node, they will Kidney Shot your pet and try to capture it again, and you can throw a Freezing Trap at them to interrupt the cast while remaining in stealth and continuing to interrupt them with your pet when the Freezing Trap ends. This can be extremely effective to stall when defending a base solo against one or more players because you only need to defend for a short period of time before the base is captured. You don't actually need to win the fight, as long as you don't let the other team assault the flag for 30 seconds.

You should also remember that Bestial Wrath will break your pet out of any crowd control (for example, if a Mage uses Dragon's Breath into Ring of Frost to capture a flag, you can break your pet out of the crowd control to interrupt them).

Whenever a node has been captured by your team or is about to be captured by your team, (or if a base has been assaulted and you know that no players on the enemy team will be able to arrive in time to contest it) you should check whether are any other bases that you may be able to assault, and if so, leave combat with Feign Death and mount to get there as soon as possible, because the base does not need to be defended for 45 seconds once captured, and with the increased mount speed you can cross the map very quickly.

Whether defending or attacking, whenever you are in Arathi Basin at Lumber Mill, you should try to get value from your High Explosive Trap. Using Intimidation or Binding Shot beforehand will make it easier to land a good knockback on enemies.

Beast Mastery Hunters can excel at attacking and defending bases or controlling the fight in the centre map, and during the game, you can choose whichever your team needs most. Usually, you will aim to assault the opposing base as soon as possible, using your high damage to get an early kill, whilst crowd controlling any enemy healers. If nobody on your team is going to take and defend the base on your side when the Battleground starts, you should focus on that instead.

Bases are a lot more important than the centre flag in the Battleground Blitz version of Eye of the Storm because capturing a flag "resets" the bases. It is generally not worth capturing the flag unless your team only holds one base and is about to lose that base, or as a last resort when you are very close to losing a game. Capturing the flag is particularly risky for your team when you currently hold two bases. In that situation, both bases would be deactivated and your team would need to capture the opposite bases again, and it is more difficult to simultaneously attack two bases than to simultaneously defend two bases.

During any large teamfight, you want to always make sure that the whole of the enemy team is in front of you, as if you end up positioned between the enemy melee DPS and their ranged/healers, you will likely get isolated/focused and die.

When none of your team are attempting to pick up the flag at mid and you are able to, it can be worth picking up the flag yourself and carrying it near to a friendly base so you are able to capture it if the base is going to be lost. Be very cautious of Death Knights, who may deliberately Death Grip you into the base node to capture the flag and reset the bases at a bad time.

If your team controls both bases, it is usually better for your team to have more players at the base closer to the enemy respawn point, as that is the base that the enemy team will be likely to attack in greater numbers.

Ranged DPS specialisations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, and as Beast Mastery Hunter, you should pick up an orb as early in the fight as you can and then try to keep a safe distance from the team fight while contributing as much damage as you can. If it is dangerous to push a healer for crowd control while you're holding an orb, you shouldn't do it; staying alive is more important.

Once the team fight is won, you should move to the center of the map. Your team gains victory points faster when they are holding orbs towards the centre, and if you are standing away from your team, you will be line of sighting your healers and at risk of being isolated or killed by the enemy team.

Whenever you are holding an orb, your goal is to always have friendly players between yourself and wherever the opposing team is grouping up. This makes it more difficult for enemy players to reach you.

Remember that even if you aren't able to safely stand in the line of sight of an orb carrier, you can still pressure them with your pets while staying out of their line of sight and peeking into their line of sight only momentarily to refresh Barbed Shot or use other damage abilities.

Your default talents will be:

1. Survival Tactics (mandatory)
2. Kindred Beasts
3. Diamond Ice or Chimaeral Sting

When there are specialisations on your team that you expect to break Freezing Traps (such as Death Knights and Demon Hunters), or enemy Healers that are likely to be playing close to your team (Fistweaver Monks and Preservation Evokers), it's worth swapping either Kindred Beasts or Chimaeral Sting for Diamond Ice.

When you are defending or playing solo, Diamond Ice becomes less important and you may want to swap this for a talent that will be more helpful in 1v1 scenarios, such as Chimaeral Sting or Dire Beast: Basilisk.

If you are going to be either flag-carrying or supporting a flag carrier for a whole game, it can be worth taking Hunting Pack to boost the flag carrier's speed.

In Resource Race maps such as Gilneas, if you are likely to spend a lot of time defending, you can take Dire Beast: Hawk to prevent enemies from being able to take control of flags whenever it is available.

1. Versatility, to around 20%;
2. Haste, to 16%-20%;
3. Mastery/Vers/Haste;
4. Crit.

The stat priority for Beast Mastery Hunter is similar in Battleground Blitz to Arena, although as you are able to stand further back and get Aimed Shots off without as much risk of being crowd-controlled, you may want to play with slightly lower Haste and slightly higher Mastery. This is not essential, though, and if you prefer to play with higher Haste, it won't hold you back.

In Battleground Blitz, the strongest Embellished gear bonus is Elemental Focusing Lens. The increase to your throughput per embellishment in PvP is in the region of 1.5-2% per lens.

The Nerubian weapon embellishment Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension (and related embellishment Writhing Armor Banding) can be powerful in a very long duration fight for some classes, but with current tuning, even at 10 stacks this provides less overall damage than using two Elemental Focusing Lens's for all Hunter specializations.

You can also play the defensive Embellishment option for a slight defensive boost. This embellishment gives a small absorb shield when your health gets low (but has a relatively long cooldown):

• Captured Starlight

You should be aware that you can dismiss and swap Pets during Battleground Blitz, so whenever Primal Rage or Fortitude of the Bear are on cooldown, you can swap to a different Pet and swap back when that ability is ready again.

The most important consideration with pets is whether they have a Mortal Strike ability (also known as Mortal Wounds). You may have teammates with Mortal Strike effects, but they are not guaranteed to be with you at all times, and if they are, it's not guaranteed that they will apply Mortal Strike to your target.

The second consideration is whether your team has a Heroism effect. If there is nobody on your team that is able to provide Heroism, you should start the game using a Ferocity Pet so you are able to provide Primal Rage on the first fight.

Even if your team does have a Heroism effect, if you are talented into Kindred Beasts you are able to use a mini-version of Heroism to provide your team with 12% Haste for 20 seconds, every 3 minutes. If you are playing with this talent, you should make sure that you are summoning a Ferocity Pet and using this ability every 3 minutes when you are in a teamfight. This does not stack with the regular Heroism effect, so in the first fight of a Blitz you should use it after your team's regular Heroism effect fades.

There are no Exotic Pets with a Mortal Strike effect, so you will want a basic Pet with Mortal Strike.

The choice you have is in the Pet Family, you will want to have Pets with the Cunning, Tenacity, and Ferocity specialisations, from Families that provide the Mortal Strike effect. Suggested Pets for each of the three specialisations are below:

• Undead Raptor or Rodent (default)
• Riverbeast (when defending a base)
• Wasp (so that you can use Primal Rage)

If you are looking for further information on which Pets to use, there is a seperate page on this guide going over Pets in detail.

Macros are expanded on separately in this guide on the Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Useful Macros page, although here are some macros that are particularly useful in Blitz:

• #showtooltip Roar of Sacrifice
• /cast [help] [@targettarget] Roar of Sacrifice

This Macro will cast Roar of Sacrifice on your target if they are friendly, and if your target is hostile, it will cast Roar of Sacrifice on your target's target.

This is useful because when your teammate is being focused, you can use defensives on that teammate without having to change target or use a mouseover macro on their frame.

You should use this early in every fight when Roar of Sacrifice is available, especially at the start of the game, as the other team is likely to have already decided who their preferred target in the team fight is and will target them first.

Make sure you are targeting an enemy DPS player and that you are aware of who they are targeting when you use the Macro.

You can use a similar macro with Master's Call, and then whenever your target is focusing your team's flag carrier, use the Macro to help them escape.

• #showtooltip [known:scatter shot]scatter shot;[known:bursting shot]bursting shot
• /cancelqueuedspell
• /stopcasting
• /cancelaura aspect of the turtle
• /Cast [@mouseover, exists, harm] scatter shot; scatter shot
• /cast [known:bursting shot]bursting shot

This Macro will cast Scatter Shot at your mouseover if they exist, which is useful in BGs to crowd control healers without having to manually target them or set them as your focus.

The Macro will cast Scatter Shot at your target if you aren't mousing over an enemy.

If you have Bursting Shot talented instead of Scatter Shot, it will cast Bursting Shot.

This Macro is useful for Battleground Blitz specifically because mouseover macros make crowd controlling in battlegrounds a lot easier, and because you may swap between Scatter Shot and Bursting shot depending on whether you get a Capture the Flag map.

• #showtooltip Chimaeral Sting(PvP Talent)
• /cast [mod:alt,@focus,harm,nodead] [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [] Chimaeral Sting(PvP Talent)

This Macro will cast Chimaeral Sting on your mouseover if you are holding your mouse over an enemy unit or frame, your target if you don't have a mouseover, or your focus target if you press alt at the same time as the Macro.

I recommend also having a macro like this for utility spells such as Concussive Shot and Tranquilizing Shot. Using these macros, it is easy to swap between which targets you're using your utility spells on in Battlegrounds (for example, if you already have one healer on focus but want to silence the other without swapping focus targets).

• #showtooltip
• /cancelaura aspect of the turtle
• /cast [@mouseover,exists] Kill Command; Kill Command
• /stopattack [stealth]
• /petattack

This Macro allows you to use Kill Command whilst in Camouflage as long as you summoned your pet after entering Camouflage.

Use this macro to interrupt enemies assaulting your base or to lower an ememy's health using Kill Command without enabling your auto-attack (which would break Camouflage).

• /cancelaura Alliance Flag
• /cancelaura Horde Flag
• /cancelaura Netherstorm Flag
• /y FLAG DROPPED

This Macro will drop a flag if you are carrying one on a capture-the-flag map.