Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle — The War Within (11.0.5)

The main role for a Beast Mastery Hunter is simple: deal the most damage that you can while taking the least damage that you can and taking any opportunity to set up crowd control on the enemy healer when you have your damage cooldowns and buffs rolling.

You should try to line up your crowd control combinations with the high points in your rotation ( Call of the Wild, Bloodshed and Bestial Wrath) for maximum effectiveness and coordinate with your teammates so there is always a stun available for the kill target during those windows.

You are the only ranged DPS specialization that is never required to stand still, and you should use that to your advantage by using pillars when facing other ranged DPS to interrupt their rotation or continuously kiting melee DPS into dangerous positions.

Important: On your minimap, there will be an icon for hunter tracking spells. You should always have Track Hidden enabled. The game does not communicate it, but having this enabled will vastly increase the range of your stealth detection.

Choose your talents. Talents and PvP Talents are expanded on separately in this guide, but as a baseline, these PvP talents are good in everything:

• Survival Tactics
• Diamond Ice (if you are worried about yourself or your team breaking Freezing Trap)
• Chimaeral Sting and/or Kindred Beasts

Choose your Pet. Pets are expanded on separately in this guide, but generally, you want a Cunning pet unless you expect the enemy team to burst you in a stun, in which case you are likely better off with a Tenacity pet.

Cunning pets make you mobile and help you to support your partner if they are the kill target. Tenacity pets make you more difficult to kill when you are the kill target.

If you don't feel that a Cunning or Tenacity pet gives you much benefit in a particular matchup, you can also use a Ferocity pet and have a mini-heroism effect every three minutes when playing Kindred Beasts ( Primal Rage will give your team 12% haste for 20 seconds) and a small amount of passive leech for you and your Pet.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, you will have an advantage over them for the next 90 seconds.

As Beast Mastery, you want to keep ahead on pressure by getting your damage rolling as soon as possible.

In a perfect world, the Healer will always be stunned before you throw your Freezing Trap. This makes the process a lot easier and more reliable. You have two stuns available to use on healers to set up your own traps ( Intimidation and Binding Shot).

If your team doesn't have many stuns for your kill target, you may want to save Binding Shot to lock the enemy DPS down. You should be careful doing this, though, because if you Binding Shot in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may accidentally refresh the diminishing returns on more than one player and delay the next go.

As Beast Mastery, it takes several global cooldowns to begin doing meaningful damage, so you will generally want to delay your first Intimidation into Freezing Trap until you have at least two stacks of Frenzy stacks from Barbed Shot, Call of the Wild and Bestial Wrath active. Ideally, when you begin the crowd control by using Intimidation, your kill target will also not be at full health.

What follows is a generic opener. In the actual game, there will be variations based on comp. For example, if you are playing with a Rogue or Feral Druid that will stun the kill target immediately when they break stealth, you may want to Intimidation into Freezing Trap immediately instead of ramping your own damage, so that the diminishing returns of the stun on kill target and Trap on healer reset remain in sync (reset around the same time), and because your teammate may have frontloaded damage to get value from your Trap with.

The Beast Mastery Hunter Arena Compositions page of this guide gives guidelines on the game plan for Beast Mastery Hunter comps in 2v2 and 3v3 arena.

• Use Camouflage

Being in stealth (Camouflage) will allow you to reliably open from a good position. If you are facing a melee specialization, you may want to wait in stealth before opening for a few moments as they are likely to dismount and will then have to use a gap-closing ability to reach you.

You want to open from a position near enough to the enemy healer for you to land your Freezing Trap but still with a decent distance between you and the DPS wherever possible.

As a general rule, whenever you are facing caster ranged DPS specializations, you should try to play close to a pillar, and when you are facing melee specializations, you should take a more open position.

Demon Hunters will be able to see through your Camouflage with Spectral Sight. A way that you can counter this is by summoning your Pet after using Camouflage. You will be in Camouflage, but you will be able to attack the Demon Hunter using your Pet to cancel their Spectral Sight. You will be able to cast Mend Pet to heal your Pet without breaking Camouflage (and can use Roar of Sacrifice, Masters Call and even Revive Pet as well).

• Cast Flare if any member of the enemy team is in stealth

If somebody is in stealth, it is also a good idea to Disengage towards the area you are expecting them to be in before firing the Flare to catch them off-guard and be able to throw the Flare further than they would expect.

• Cast Hunter's Mark on your kill target

This will give you a damage bonus on your opener, although it will also make it obvious the player you are going to open on, and they might move to a pillar. If they do move to a pillar, it is fine to open on their partner without the Hunter's Mark. You can also refresh it onto the same target if it's dispelled or apply it to different targets as much as you want; there is no cooldown on Hunter's Mark, as long as you are out of combat (in stealth).

• Cast Bestial Wrath (optional)

This will allow you to ramp your damage slightly faster for the strongest possible opener but does have downsides.

Bestial Wrath is also usable when crowd-controlled. If you are expecting to be crowd-controlled immediately when the fight begins (for example, by a Storm Bolt), you may be better off holding Bestial Wrath so you are able to spend a global cooldown continuing to build damage even when crowd-controlled.

Bestial Wrath also has a secondary effect of being able to break your Pet out of crowd control effects. If you are expecting your Pet to be crowd controlled (for example, feared or caught in a Dragon's Breath), you may want to save Bestial Wrath for when that crowd control lands. This is particularly relevant when facing a composition like Rogue Mage Priest, where being able to use Roar of Sacrifice when your team is crowd-controlled is crucial.

• Cast Barbed Shot

You are doing this to build a Frenzy and Thrill of the Hunt (if talented) stack to empower you and your Pet.

• Cast Black Arrow

Your target will be above 80% health so it should be available, note that throughout your rotation whenever Black Arrow is available, you should use it immediately unless the area of effect damage would break crowd control, or it would mean letting your Frenzy stacks fall.

• Cast Barbed Shot

You are doing this to build another Frenzy and Thrill of the Hunt (if talented) stack.

• Cast Dire Beast

To build up another pet for more damage.

• Cast Call of the Wild (then Bloodshed if talented)

Your damage is now fully rolling, and you should be looking to crowd-control the enemy healer as soon as you have an opportunity. If you didn't use Bestial Wrath already, you should use it now.

• Cast Kill Command

To dump excess focus and do damage.

• Cast Intimidation on the enemy healer

If you are standing very close to the enemy healer, you may be able to cast Kill Command or Barbed Shot before throwing the trap, and it will land before Intimidation fades (especially using the @cursor or @player Freezing Trap macro which you will find in the Macros section of this guide ), but if you are more than 5-10 yards from the enemy healer, do not risk this.

• Cast Freezing Trap on the enemy healer

If you are not playing Diamond Ice, be aware of the position of your Pet. If you use a Barbed Shot while your Pet is next to the enemy healer, then Stomp will break your crowd control.

Note that if you are playing with a class that is able to, they should stun your kill target immediately when the Trap lands.

• Proceed with your regular damage rotation, starting with Barbed Shot to build a third Frenzy stack.

In some situations, it's worth casting Scatter Shot and/or Tar Trap on the off-target to cross crowd control or stop them being able to deny your Trap, but this varies based on matchup.

If, for example, a shaman places a Grounding Totem when you use Intimidation or a Retribution Paladin dispels Intimidation with Blessing of Sanctuary, the easiest way to play around this is to immediately use Scatter Shot on the Healer and trap out of that, even if its duration is reduced by the diminishing returns.

Below is the priority list for your offensive rotation.

1. Maintain 3 stacks of Frenzy at all times by using Barbed Shot
2. Use Black Arrow/ Kill Shot when available
3. Use Kill Command if it is at or about to reach two charges
4. Use Dire Beast (outside of Bestial Wrath)
5. Use Kill Command on cooldown
6. Use Barbed Shot on cooldown
7. Use Dire Beast on cooldown
8. Use Cobra Shot when none of the above are available
9. If you are talented into Explosive Shot, use it when you feel area of effect damage would be useful, and avoid using it during Bestial Wrath as using Cobra Shot to reset Kill Command (through the Killer Cobra talent) will result in more single-target damage.

The above priority list is based on how to do the most damage, although you should be aware of how powerful Tranquilizing Shot is and weave this into your rotation whenever you can if the target has any magic buffs. When your Tranquilizing Shot can hit two players through Kodo Tranquilizer, you should be using it on cooldown unless casting Tranquilizing Shot would cause your Frenzy stacks to fall.

Call of the Wild and Bloodshed should be used on cooldown before your stun trap combinations, wherever possible (rather than using them while the enemy healer is in a trap). This will allow you to get more Kill Commands on the kill target while the healer is in crowd control.

You should try to maintain Concussive Shot on your target where possible if you are kiting or if your teammate needs it. Remember, Cobra Shot extends the Concussive Shot debuff.

To do maximum damage over a fight, you should try to use Bestial Wrath soon after it comes off cooldown, although there are a few occasions you may want to delay using Bestial Wrath:

If you expect that your Pet is about to be crowd-controlled, you should save Bestial Wrath to break the crowd control instantly. This will help your overall damage because a crowd-controlled Pet can't use Kill Command, but it is also defensively important in some niche situations. For example:

• When a Rogue Mage Priest crowd controls your Pet to prevent Roar of Sacrifice/ Fortitude of the Bear, or
• When a Balance Druid uses Cyclone on your pet to stop you from being able to use Master's Call to break your Healer out of a root during Solar Beam

If you are talented into The Beast Within, you should also prioritise using Bestial Wrath immediately before you are affected by a fear. The talent makes you immune to fear applications but will not break fears on yourself if you did not Bestial Wrath beforehand.

It is generally not worth making an effort to sync Bestial Wrath with Call of the Wild or your trap windows, as you will get less Bestial Wrath uptime and lose overall damage.

Hunter comps rely heavily on landing Freezing Trap on the enemy healer, and this requires some setup (and a lot of practice).

It is much harder (and much less reliable) to land traps during combat without a stun or crowd control already on your target.

I would recommend using the @player version of the Freezing Trap macro if you are not confident aiming traps yet. You can find this in the Macros section of this guide.

• Intimidation
• Binding Shot (this is a little less reliable/predictable than Intimidation because your target can stand still or do things like use Phase Shift to leave the Bind or Grounding Totem, or Blessing of Sacrifice before leaving the Bind to counter your Trap)
• Scatter Shot (the downside of using Scatter Shot into Freezing Trap is that they share a diminishing return, and the duration of the Trap will be halved, however, if you aren't able to stun the Healer and have damage rolling as Beast Mastery, it is good to keep momentum by just using Scatter Shot into Freezing Trap)
• Concussive Shot
• Tar Trap + Entrapment
• Disengage (If you are struggling to trap and aren't able to stun to set it up, I recommend that you use the @player Freezing Trap macro instead of aiming your Trap. Use Disengage or Concussive Shot as needed to move on top of them)
• Tranquilizing Shot (eg for Holy Ward or Nullifying Shroud)
• High Explosive Trap and Bursting Shot (if you miss a trap, you can always knock them into it!)

Every healing class has multiple ways to dodge or deny your Trap; below is a non-exhaustive list of what each healing specialization has to avoid traps and some tips specific to that Healer. Having an addon like Omnibar to track important enemy cooldowns and Gladiatorlossa2 to tell you when they are used will make your life a lot easier.

Remember that in all cases, healers can use mobility and erratic movement to make it difficult for you to trap them. Also, remember that when they are spending global cooldowns trying to outplay your Trap and moving instead of casting, you are still applying pressure even though the Healer is not caught in a trap because the Healer is spending their time trying to avoid you, rather than doing an optimal healing rotation.

A healer can counter your Binding Shot by standing still to avoid the stun. You should try to use Binding Shot when the healer is already running, and aim so that the reticle is on the healer so the stun procs immediately. Also remember that if a healer does stand still during Binding Shot, you can use High Explosive Trap to knock them into the stun.

When trapping Discipline Priest s you must be aware of:

• Shadow Word: Death
• Phase Shift
• Psychic Scream
• Mind Control (cast as you throw the Trap)
• Shadowmeld
• Ultimate Penitence

You may notice that almost all of the Discipline Priest abilities that can be used to avoid your traps are on the Shadow spell school. When you are standing near the Priest in the middle of the game by kicking them on the shadow spell school, they will not be able to use Shadow Word: Death or Fade to avoid your Trap.

You must always be aware of Psychic Scream, too. If you get too close to a Priest, when it is off cooldown, your plans will backfire, and you will be feared.

Other than that, trapping Discipline Priests is about tracking the cooldown of Shadow Word: Death and Fade and throwing the Trap when they are not able to use either (or stunning when they don't have Fade).

During Ultimate Penitence, a Discipline Priest is immune to interrupts and crowd control. You can trap the initial cast if you are quick, but if the channel begins, they will be immune to your Trap.

When trapping Holy Priests you must be aware of:

• Shadow Word: Death
• Phase Shift
• Holy Ward
• Spirit of the Redeemer
• Divine Ascension
• Mind Control (cast as you throw the Trap)
• Shadowmeld

Holy Priest is similar to Discipline with a few changes.

They have Holy Ward, which must be purged with Tranquilizing Shot (if you are unlucky and do not get the dispel, you will need to wait 15 seconds for it to expire unless your partner can take it off).

When a Holy Priest uses Spirit of the Redeemer, you can place a trap underneath the angel to trap them instantly when it ends. Be careful, though - if you do this too soon, their partners may try to eat the Trap, or the Priest may see you throw it and cancel the Spirit of the Redeemer into a Fade to immune the Trap.

Ideally, you would hold Chimaeral Sting into a Priest until they have used Spirit of the Redeemer, because otherwise, they can use this to be immune to your silence.

When trapping Holy Paladins you must be aware of:

• Blessing of Sacrifice
• Blessing of Protection (on the stun before trap)
• Hand of Reckoning
• Blessing of Freedom + Divine Steed
• Hammer of Justice
• Blinding Light
• Searing Glare

The main thing here is to be very aware of versus a Holy Paladin is Blessing of Sacrifice. When this is active you should not trap the Paladin as the trap will break instantly unless you are playing with Diamond Ice. A thing to be aware of is that during a Diamond Ice Freezing Trap, the damage reduction from Blessing of Sacrifice has no effect.

Remember that Holy Paladins are relatively squishy, so swapping to the Holy Paladin when they use Blessing of Sacrifice is always an option. If you are able to force their Divine Shield doing this, they will gain Forbearance and will not be able to use Blessing of Protection to escape the next stun into Freezing Trap combo.

When you are trapping out of Intimidation into a Holy Paladin, make sure you throw the Trap immediately, as otherwise, they can escape the Trap by removing the stun with Blessing of Protection.

Like with Priests and Psychic Scream, you need to be careful when standing next to a Holy Paladin to avoid Blinding Light.

An interesting quirk in this matchup is that if a Paladin gets Searing Glare of on you, you are still able to root them with the Entrapment effect from Tar Trap, which you should take advantage of to keep the Paladin standing still until the debuff fades.

Diamond Ice

When trapping Mistweaver Monks you must be aware of:

• Eminence
• Revival with Peaceweaver
• Paralysis
• Leg Sweep
• Ring of Peace
• Roll/ Chi Torpedo

Mistweaver Monks are difficult to trap when they know it is coming because of their high mobility. As another complication, they are able to teleport away when stunned using Eminence.

Fortunately, to be able to do high-output healing, Mistweaver Monks need to stand still. Either throw the Trap when you see them casting and do not think they will move, or follow them until they have no movement abilities left, and then throw your Trap.

Avoid trapping out of stuns into Mistweaver Monks unless you know they are out of range of their Transcendence: Transfer (40 yards) and have already used Revival (which can be used while stunned to immune your Trap).

If you are facing a "Fistweaver" (melee) Mistweaver Monk, it is easy to trap them when they chase you using the @player Freezing Trap macro and between your traps, you should try to slow (or High Explosive Trap them wherever possible, as they are unable to heal without being able to attack something in melee range).

When trapping Preservation Evokers you must be aware of:

• Nullifying Shroud
• Hover
• Deep Breath
• Dream Flight
• Stasis to dispel themself
• Dream Projection by hitting themself with it as trap lands

Nullifying Shroud is a big counter to Hunters. Unless somebody on your team is able to remove the Shroud, a lot of the time, it is easier to do your opener without using crowd control on the Healer just to build momentum. Remember, you can still kick the Evoker during Nullifying Shroud.

Avoid using Intimidation on an Evoker the moment that Nullifying Shroud ends because they will see the buff wearing off and use either Deep Breath or Dream Flight at that moment to immune your stun.

If an Evoker is casting Dream Projection, use Counter Shot before throwing your Freezing Trap if available, as they can otherwise use the Projection to dispel themself.

When trapping Restoration Druid you must be aware of:

• Wild Charge
• Dash
• Mighty Bash/ Rake/ Maim into Cyclone
• Tranquility with Preserve Nature
• Grove Guardians (spawning tree NPCs that may "eat" your traps)
• Growl on your pet
• Shadowmeld

Restoration Druids are one of the hardest targets to trap. They do not cast as much as other healers and, therefore, have no reason to stand still when you chase them.

With practice, you get used to their movement, and it gets easier to trap them, but do not allow the Druid to bait you into bad positions when chasing them.

Be careful of Grove Guardians. Restoration Druids will deliberately spawn these non player characters when you push for a trap to make it more difficult for you to aim. Take your time and be precise when you can see the trees spawn next to the Druid.

When facing Druids, remember to take Kodo Tranquilizer. This will greatly reduce the Druid's healing efficiency, and you can then win by maintaining pressure and surviving rather than relying on big crowd control setups.

When trapping Restoration Shamans you must be aware of:

• Grounding Totem
• Thunderstorm
• Lightning Lasso
• Earthen Wall Totem (does not stop the Trap but will stop you from being able to kill their teammates)
• Spirit Link Totem

The main thing to watch for here if you don't have a stun is Grounding Totem. Good Shamans will be very quick to use it. Stand near them, apply slows and roots, and wait it out. When the Shaman uses Grounding Totem, quickly Cobra Shot it and throw your Trap. A mouseover Cobra Shot macro will help with this a lot.

Earthen Wall Totem is mentioned above because even though it does not deny your Trap, it will stop you from being able to kill somebody with your burst. Whenever you see a Shaman drop Earthen Wall Totem, you should be looking to knock their partner out of it using High Explosive Trap. If you cannot get their partner out of the Earthen Wall Totem (or cannot kite them out of the totem), do not trap them until they are outside of it.

Even if there is a stun on the Healer before you aim your Trap, there are other complications. For example, you could be facing a shaman who will press Grounding Totem to deny your Trap, a warrior using War Banner, or a Retribution Paladin using Blessing of Sanctuary to cancel your Intimidation.

It is ideal for your team to cross-crowd control the off-target to prevent this, but if the enemy team uses something that prevents you from being able to trap out of a stun, the easiest and most reliable way to play around it is to immediately use Scatter Shot into Freezing Trap on the Healer.

Survival of the Fittest is an extremely powerful defensive ability. Use this when you expect to be stunned (for example, instantly use this if a rogue uses Blind on your Healer) or when you are taking heavy damage during your own offensive cooldowns and want to stay aggressive. With two charges (from Padded Armor), you should want to use the first charge early to mitigate as much damage as possible.

Fortitude of the Bear is available to you when you have a tenacity pet summoned. This not only increases your maximum health, as it says, but it also heals you for this same amount so that you are left with increased current HP after using it. Be aware that you can use this while you are in crowd control and stuns, but not when your Pet is crowd-controlled. If an area of effect crowd control is coming ( Ring of Frost, Leg Sweep, Blinding Sleet) you will want to move your Pet away beforehand or use Bestial Wrath so that you can still use this self heal.

Feign Death is your main defensive tool due to its short cooldown and the Survival Tactics PvP Talent. Use it whenever you are about to take damage to reduce the burst damage you take and to force the enemy to re-target you.

Against Assassination Rogues, you should take Emergency Salve every time. This will turn Feign Death into an excellent defensive and mobility tool as it removes Crippling Poison as well as other damaging poisons. Emergency Salve can also be good into Shadow Priests to dispel Devouring Plague and is decent into other Rogue specs to dispel the slow.

Aspect of the Turtle is our immunity cooldown. Use this when the enemy team is focusing you down, and your Healer can not heal you through the damage or is stuck in crowd control. Although you can not attack with this cooldown active, you still can use Traps, Flare, and other non-offensive spells. You will usually want to combine Aspect of the Turtle with your 2-minute cooldown PvP trinket when stunned for maximum value.

It is worth communicating with your Healer and deciding what enemy cooldown you will use your trinket and Aspect of the Turtle to counter.

Exhilaration is a strong instant heal. Try to use this early as the cooldown resets quickly via Natural Mending.

Roar of Sacrifice is a vital utility ability for you or your teammates. This makes the teammate you use this on immune to being Critical Strikes by spells but causes your Pet to take 10% of the damage that your teammate takes. Use this immediately when the enemy team uses their cooldowns on a teammate or yourself.

Do not rely on Roar of Sacrifice alone to save you from cooldowns. It will make the damage predictable because there are no critical strikes, but it is not a damage reduction cooldown, and most classes will be able to kill you with their cooldowns if you use Roar of Sacrifice and nothing else.

Master's Call is a utility cooldown to help you or your teammate kite or push for damage. Versus Balance Druids, it becomes an essential defensive cooldown. You must cast Master's Call on your Healer immediately when your Healer is rooted in a Solar Beam.

Interlope is a defensive cooldown that you may choose to use. It will allow you to either redirect damage off yourself or teammates or redirect crowd control off your Healer. An easy way to get value from this talent is to play it into Hunter teams and Interlope your Healer when they are stunned to redirect the Freezing Trap.