Beast Mastery Hunter Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Beast Mastery Hunter. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Beast Mastery Hunter spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Beast Mastery Hunter, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

The Hunter Class Tree has received a substantial rework, with the entirety of the Class Talent Tree as well as all Spec Trees having been redesigned. Below, I have listed some of the most central changes that will affect your gameplay, decision-making, and power in The War Within.

• Survival of the Fittest is now a 30% baseline damage reduction. Through other talents, it can get a 1.5-minute cooldown, 2 charges, and an 8-second duration. This is a huge boost to Hunter survivability!
• Counter Shot can now, via talents, get a 22-second cooldown, down from 24.
• Tranquilizing Shot can now, via Talents, either remove an additional Magic effect on cast, or have a 5s shorter cooldown if it only removes one Enrage effect.
• Intimidation can now, via Talents, be cast without a pet.
• Explosive Shot is now placed in the Class Tree in such a way that all Hunter specs will be using it, all the time.
• Feign Death and Aspect of the Turtle can now, via a Talent, remove all Poison and Disease effects from you. This is extremely powerful in some niche scenarios.
• Bursting Shot is now available in the Class Tree.
• Intimidation and Binding Shot can now, via Talents, have their cooldowns reduced significantly via Scrappy.
• Steel Trap and Death Chakram have been removed.
• The new talent, Implosive Trap (choice node with High Explosive Trap) is an AoE knock-up trap that can be used as an AoE stop.
• In additional, several Talents that used to be 2-pointers are now 1-pointers. This means that we can have all of the DPS-related Talents in the Class Tree, and most of the utility without having to choose. There are other changes too, but these are the most important ones.

The Beast Mastery Hunter Spec Tree has also been reworked from the ground up. Below, I will list all of the new talents and some interesting interactions and outcomes from the redesigned layout of the Tree.

• Hunter's Prey is now far more accessible and will likely lead us to using Kill Shot far more, at least on single-target.
• The new talent Venom's Bite lets us apply Serpent Sting with Kill Shots.
• A Murder of Crows is now a passive that causes every 5th Kill Command to apply a powerful DoT on its target for 15 seconds. This debuff does approximately three Kill Commands' worth of damage.
• Barrage is now available in the Spec Tree, and now also applies Beast Cleave. It can be used as an additional burst AoE button.
• The new talent Huntmaster's Call causes every 3 Dire Beast casts (or Dire Command summons) to trigger Hati or Fenryr, each offering powerful buffs. Hati increases all of your pet damage, while Fenryr increases your Haste and applies a powerful bleed to the target worth roughly 3 Kill Commands' worth of damage.
• Dire Beast now grants 20 Focus on cast. This includes Dire Command summons!
• Killer Instinct is now available in the Spec Tree, and gives Beast Mastery a substantial boost to execute damage on targets below 35% HP.
• The new talent Explosive Venom causes every 5 casts of Cobra Shot or Multi-Shot to apply Serpent Sting, offering us a way of spreading Serpent Stings on AoE.
• The new talent Basilisk Collar improves our pet damage for every DoT on a target. This only seems to work with DoTs that come from the Beast Mastery Hunter Tree, with the exception of the Fenryr Bleed.
• Bloodshed now has two new choice node talents below it. You can either choose for it to hit 2 additional targets, or double its damage increase while also increasing Kill Command's damage by 20% for the duration.
• Beast Cleave is now a 1-pointer instead of a 2-pointer, meaning we should lose less single-target DPS when going for AoE builds than before.

Aside from the changes to Beast Mastery Hunter's core features, The War Within also has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Beast Mastery Hunter gets to choose between the Pack Leader and Dark Ranger Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Beast Mastery Hunter in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Hunter Beast Mastery Season 1 2pc — Barbed Shot further increases your pet's attack speed by 5%. In other words, increases Frenzy's pet attack speed contribution to 35%, up from 30%, per stack. This basically means +15% attack speed most of the time.
• Hunter Beast Mastery Season 1 4pc — Your pet's attacks have a 10% chance to increase all pet damage you deal by 10% for 10 sec. This will basically have ~100% uptime, so this basically translates to 10% pet damage.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact.

The 2pc bonus is numerically very weak, with pet auto-attacks (the only thing this affects) rarely contributing more than 15%. The predicted DPS value of this bonus is around ~2-2.5%, as a very rough estimate.

The 4pc bonus is much stronger. With pet damage easily contributing upwards of 80% of our total damage, this set bonus can be worth as much as 8-9%.

The total expected value of the Tier Set is around 11-12%. Compared to previous tier sets, this is pretty good in terms of power.

Strengths

• Significantly more durable thanks to 1-minute, 2-charge Survival of the Fittest.
• More build hybridization opportunities thanks to Barrage granting Beast Cleave.
• Core gameplay remains similar, but with more flavor and procs that introduce rotational variety.
• Enhanced execute damage.

Weaknesses

• AoE Builds remain expensive in terms of single-target damage lost, due to Multi-Shot/Beast Cleave/Kill Cleave being 3 points of investment.
• Several mechanics cause hard-to-predict, powerful procs that may proc when you least want them. The damage can feel out of your hands at times.