Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Pet Talents — The War Within (11.1.0)

Note that these builds are generic recommendations for various content. Check out the dedicated pages below for more specific recommendations for the Raid and Mythic+.

2.

Best Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

Single-Target — Pack Leader Single-Target — Dark Ranger Mythic+/Delves — Pack Leader Mythic+/Delves — Dark Ranger Raid AoE — Pack Leader Raid AoE — Dark Ranger

3.

Best Pack Leader Single-Target Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

This build is by far the strongest single-target build that we have.

2.1.

"Hybrid" Build Variation

By swapping Wild Instincts to Bloody Frenzy, we lose very little single-target, but gain respectable burst AoE for the 20-second duration of Call of the Wild. This is a strong middle-ground used for several raid fights.

2.2.

Cooldown Variations

Beast Mastery Single-Target Builds have 2 "Cooldown Variants" of this build. Call of the Wild (my baseline recommendation) and Bloodshed (identical DPS). Use the Bloodshed Variant when you are not getting optimal use of your 2-minute cooldown, or if an encounter has burst timings that work better with a 1-minute cooldown cadence.

• To swap to Bloodshed (1-minute build), swap Call of the Wild, Wild Instincts, and 1 points of Killer Instinct over to Bloodshed, Venomous Bite, and Serpentine Rhythm.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

3.

Best Dark Ranger Single-Target Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within Season 2

This build is recommended if you want to play Dark Ranger on single-target. It performs massively worse than Pack Leader, upwards of 30%.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

3.

Best Pack Leader Mythic+ Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

This is my recommended build for Mythic+. It offers the best blend of single-target and AoE, sacrificing only very little DPS in both of these categories to find the best middle-ground.

2.3.

Beast Mastery Hunter Utility Talent Considerations in Mythic+

We cannot have everything we could possibly want for every single dungeon in a single build, unfortunately. Here are the recommended utility talents to swap to for different, specific Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within Season 2.

• For Cinderbrew Meadery, Darkflame Cleft, Theater of Pain, and The MOTHERLODE!!, swap Kodo Tranquilizer over to Devilsaur Tranquilizer.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

3.

Best Dark Ranger Mythic+ Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

Dark Ranger offers significantly lower performance Pack Leader, but we list the best build for completion.

2.4.

Beast Mastery Hunter Utility Talent Considerations in Mythic+

We cannot have everything we could possibly want for every single dungeon in a single build, unfortunately. Here are the recommended utility talents to swap to for different, specific Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within Season 2.

• For Cinderbrew Meadery, Darkflame Cleft, Theater of Pain, and The MOTHERLODE!!, swap Kodo Tranquilizer over to Devilsaur Tranquilizer.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

3.

Best Pack Leader Raid AoE Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

This build offers the best blend of single-target and AoE damage for single-target raid encounters with add spawns or intermittent AoE of any kind. Fortunately, we can get quite a bit of AoE with only a modest single-target loss.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

3.

Best Dark Ranger Raid AoE Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within

This build offers the best blend of single-target and AoE damage for single-target raid encounters with add spawns or intermittent AoE of any kind. Fortunately, we can get quite a bit of AoE with only a modest single-target loss.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

On this page, we generally offer three types of builds; Single-Target, Mythic+, and Raid AoE. Here is a brief explanation of what each build is optimized for and how they should be used.

Single-Target builds are straightforward — They do as much damage to single target as possible. Cleave and AoE are totally ignored here. Many raid fights are either wholly or predominantly single-target. In many cases, even if a fight has AoE moments like add spawns, if those add spawns are not especially important or dangerous, playing a single-target build can be optimal, even on such fights.

Mythic+ builds are optimized for completing Mythic+ dungeons as quickly as possible. To obtain them, thousands of builds are simulated across both single-target and AoE, and math is used to analyze this simulation data and arrive at the build that performs the best across both single-target and AoE, without disproportionately preferring AoE as many other methodologies tend to. Open-World and Delve Builds are often variants of this, as these disciplines also contain a healthy mixture of single-target and AoE, both of which ought to be optimized.

Raid AoE builds try to maximize single-target first, while also doing respectable AoE. While many raid encounters do have AoE in the form of add spawns and so on, the value of this AoE is often finite. Meaning, as long as they die within a certain, reasonable timeframe, extra damage done beyond this critical point is often worthless, and should not come at the cost of increased single-target damage, which tends to have infinite value, in that a faster-dying boss is nearly always easier. These builds pick up the bare minimum in terms of AoE proficiency, to not be completely useless for these add spawns, but are predominantly single-target optimized. If Mythic+ is weighed 50/50 on single-target and AoE, Raid AoE builds are weighed 75% in single-target's favour.

To better understand our Talent Builds and the Talents within them, it is helpful to understand all of Beast Mastery Hunter's spells and abilities in detail to get some context. For that, check out our dedicated Spells page:

The builds on this page only feature the recommended Hero Talent Trees for Beast Mastery Hunter. To learn more about Hero Talents in general, check out our dedicated page:

Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

We have made a dedicated page for Hunter Pets information that we recommend you check out!

War Mode offers several benefits for you in the open world.

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• At least 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will be available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of all PvP Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter

1. Dire Beast: Hawk causes a hawk to circle a target area, damaging all targets within. This greatly supplements your AoE damage when doing big pulls in the open world.
2. Dire Beast: Basilisk is a powerful choice for bursty single-target damage. It is useful for world PvP if you can keep your opponent slowed enough for the Basilisk, and it is potent for rare mobs and quest mobs with much health.
3. Chimaeral Sting offers a good amount of opening damage for single targets and is very useful against most enemy players.

You can consider the other options essentially down to preference.

For details on how to play in Beast Mastery Hunter PvP, please visit our Beast Mastery Hunter PvP page.