Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.0)

• Casting Kill Command as much as possible, both on single-target and AoE.
• Managing your Focus — Never capping it but also ensuring you have enough Focus to cast Kill Command off cooldown.
• Maximize Bestial Wrath uptime by using it on cooldown and maximizing the number of Barbed Shots we are firing, as each Barbed Shot is worth 12 seconds of Bestial Wrath cooldown reduction.

• All the same goals as the single-target Rotation.
• Maintaining Beast Cleave (by using Multi-Shot) at 100% uptime, ensuring that all your pet abilities are constantly dealing AoE damage.
• Being extra careful with Focus management to ensure that you can always refresh Beast Cleave as late as possible while simultaneously casting all your Kill Commands whenever possible.

Important Note: Because the in-game "auto-cast" system for Hunter pets is very slow, it is recommended to put these 3 lines into macros for all of your offensive spells.

• /cast [@pettarget]Claw
• /cast [@pettarget]Bite
• /cast [@pettarget]Smack

We recommend adding these 3 lines to the end of your macros.

This ensures that you will always cast your pet's Basic Attack whenever possible since Blizzard's automatic cast will delay each cast by up to 0.1 seconds. It is a very small but real DPS increase. There is no reason not to do this, even if Blizzard eventually fixes it. For more macros, please refer to our Beast Mastery Hunter macro page.

I recommend that you grab my Barbed Shot Helper WeakAura. It will pop up when it is time to cast Barbed Shot automatically, and it lets you focus on the rest of the Rotation.

In the Single-Target and AoE sections, you will find a highly detailed priority list breakdown of the Rotation, as well as optimal openers.

1. Ensure Hunter's Mark is active on the highest HP target from you or another Hunter in the group!
2. Use Barbed Shot.
3. Use Barbed Shot on a different target.
4. Use Multi-Shot to activate Beast Cleave.
5. Use Bestial Wrath.
6. Use Dire Beast.
7. Use Kill Command.
8. Use Multi-Shot to refresh Beast Cleave.
9. Use Barbed Shot, ideally on a third target.
10. Use Call of the Wild
11. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.
12. Thanks to Bloody Frenzy, we do not need to activate Beast Cleave with Multi-Shot.
13. Use 2x Barbed Shot on two different targets.
14. Use Bestial Wrath.
15. Use Call of the Wild. This activates Beast Cleave for 20 seconds! Now we can just do what is essentially a single-target rotation.
16. Use Bloodshed.
17. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.

This priority list describes the optimal AoE rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter

1. Use Bestial Wrath whenever possible.
2. Use Barbed Shot over Kill Command under either of the following conditions:
   • To refresh the Frenzy buff if it is about to fall off.
   • If Barbed Shot is at, or close to, 2 charges.
   • If Barbed Shot is closer to reaching 2 charges than Kill Command is.
   • If Call of the Wild is off cooldown, use all Barbed Shot before activating it.
   • If your next Kill Command has a Howl of the Pack Leader proc, and Barbed Shot is within 8 seconds of reaching 2 charges.
3. Do not use Barrage for DPS. It is only ever used to gather together mobs in solo-content.
4. Use Multi-Shot to apply and maintain the Beast Cleave buff on your pet. You should try to refresh it as late as possible, generally, but without wasting other globals. This is not an exact science — Sometimes it is sensible to refresh early if you know that another, urgent global is coming up like a Frenzy refresh. Typically, it is best to leave the refresh as late as possible and squeeze other globals in ahead of it. Remember that Multi-Shot's actual damage is quite pathetic, and its only use is to get Beast Cleave going.
5. Use Black Arrow whenever possible, provided that Beast Cleave is active.
6. Use Call of the Wild whenever possible. Use all of your Barbed Shots first.
7. Use Bloodshed whenever possible.
8. Use Dire Beast whenever possible.
9. Use Dire Beast whenever possible.
10. Cast Kill Command whenever possible. You should try to "snipe" targets below 35% HP with your Kill Commands, as they (and the resulting Kill Cleave) will deal 50% increased damage thanks to your Killer Instinct Talent. It is also technically optimal, but a very small gain, to cycle your A Murder of Crows debuffs on different targets, by ensuring that every 5th Kill Command is on a target that has no Crows active. The amount of brain-power required to do this optimally, considering its small gain, is probably not worth the effort.
11. Use Explosive Shot whenever possible.
12. Cast Cobra Shot to prevent yourself from Focus capping, or if you have 4+ Hogstrider stacks that causes it to hit more targets.
13. Use Dire Beast whenever possible.