Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, Talents, and Pet Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Beast Mastery Hunter in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.0.5). We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Beast Mastery Hunter talents.
Best The War Within Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter
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+.
Best Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
Pack Leader
Single-Target — 
Dark Ranger
Mythic+ — Dark Ranger
Mythic+ — Pack Leader
Raid AoE — Dark Ranger
Raid AoE — Pack Leader
Delves — Pack Leader
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, used for bosses like Sikran, Nexus Princess Ky'veza, and other fights that have a single, important target that needs to die.
Wild Instincts vs 
Bloody Frenzy
Note that for single-target fights with relevant add spawns, you can simply swap 
Wild Instincts for 
Bloody Frenzy at a
negligible single-target DPS loss (less than 0.5% for most characters), and gain some AoE as a result.
If you are receiving 
Power Infusion, Wild Instincts extends its advantage by upwards of 0.5%.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best 
Dark Ranger Single-Target Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within Season 1
This build is recommended if you want to play Dark Ranger on single-target. This is a very viable alternative that performs theoretically identical to Pack Leader, but it does add some rotational complexity that can widen that gap in practice. Its Hero Talent also has a stronger defensive backbone in 
Smoke Screen.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Dark Ranger Mythic+ Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
Dark Ranger offers superior AoE and only slightly inferior single-target and priority-target damage to Pack Leader, on top of a stronger defensive profile.
The build is highly optimized for a good blend of single-target and AoE. You can sacrifice one to gain the other, but you would always
be sacrificing more than you are gaining in the other department, so I do not recommend deviating from this build, at least as far as the
Spec Tree goes. The only change worth considering would be swapping Master Handler to 
Training Expert for a small loss of
AoE, but less emphasis on multidotting/cycling 
Barbed Shots between different targets.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Pack Leader Mythic+ Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
Pack Leader offers strong single-target, but weak AoE, and is not generally worth picking for Mythic+.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
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.
For persistent AoE fights, like Silken Court, swap Training Expert for Master Handler and 
Killer Cobra for 
Brutal Companion, but only if you are comfortable multidotting Barbed Shot.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
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!
Best Delve Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
The Delves build is very similar to our Mythic+/AoE build, but is further optimized for short-lived mobs and pulls.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Spells Overview for Beast Mastery Hunter
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:
Hero Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter
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:
Rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter
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.
Best Pet for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
We have made a dedicated page for Hunter Pets information that we recommend you check out!
PvP Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within
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.
PvP Talents (War Mode) for Beast Mastery Hunter
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
Best PvP Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter
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.
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.
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.
Changelog
- 31 Oct. 2024: Updated note on what talents you could be flexible with for Beast Mastery Dark Ranger M+.
- 30 Oct. 2024: Added Dark Ranger Single-Target Build and re-tested all builds for latest hotfixes.
- 26 Oct. 2024: Updated Hero Talent Order.
- 25 Oct. 2024: Updated the single-target build slightly for a ~0.5% DPS gain.
- 22 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Oct. 2024: Further updated Talent Builds for the October 8th Hotfixes.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 30 Aug. 2024: Preliminary update pass in preparation for Season 1.
- 24 Aug. 2024: Added a recommended Delves build.
- 22 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated the M+ Talent Build.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
More Hunter Guides
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This guide has been written by Azortharion, a Hunter Guidewriter, Theorycrafter, and top player since 2014, who is widely considered one of the best PvE Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with hundreds of top parses across all Hunter specs. He is the Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the official Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own, personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!
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