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Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Starter Guide - Shadowlands 9.2.5
By Tarlo
Last Updated:
2022/11/28
Changelog
Patch: 10.2.6
Table of Contents
Rating: 4.7/5
(
19
Votes)
Guide Navigation
Rating: 4.7/5
(
19
Votes)
Welcome to our Beast Mastery Hunter starter guide, which covers everything you need to start playing a new character in Shadowlands. While our other guide pages go into more individual detail, this simple starter guide covers all the basics in one place, whether you're a new Beast Mastery Hunter, a returning player to Shadowlands, hardcore, or casual alike, it's the best place to get a beginners overview on the class. Included are basic talent builds, simplified rotations, stats, legendary recommendations, and more to get you started as quickly as possible.
Please keep in mind that this page is meant to get players started quickly as an introduction, and does not contain much in the way of detailed explanations, mechanics, competitive options, gearing, simulation comparisons, or nuance. For more in-depth information, including all those optimizations and more, check out the complete Beast Mastery Hunter Guide pages linked in the navigation on the left-hand side of the page, and if you're leveling up in Shadowlands, you can take a look at our
leveling tips
.
S4 Season 4
S4 Cheat Sheet
S4 Mythic+
S4 Vault Tips
S4 Aberrus Tips
S4 Amirdrassil Tips
S4 Talent Builds
S4 Rotation
S4 Support Buffs
S4 Gear
S4 Tier Set Bonus
Overview
Abilities & Talents
Advanced Concepts
Stats
Consumables
Macros & Addons
WeakAuras
Common Terms
Mythic+
Common Questions
Leveling
Simulations
Hotfixes
PvP Overview
PvP Builds
Mage Tower
About the Author
Hello! My name is Tarlo and I am the writer for the Beast Mastery Hunter guide here on Wowhead. I have mained Hunter since the Burning Crusade and currently do high-Level Mythic raiding. I also sometimes dabble in Mythic+. You can find me as a moderator in the
Trueshot Lodge
discord if you have any questions or other inquiries regarding the guide or anything else hunter-related.
Best Beast Mastery Hunter Covenant
In patch 9.2, covenants are freely swappable. The best covenant for Beast Mastery Hunters will be Night Fae by a fair margin. Venthyr will be competitive in pure single towards the start of the tier, but will quickly fall off once tier sets and the second legendary have been acquired. Night Fae is the best of both worlds, good in both single target and mid-range AoE, only falling off when 5 or more targets are consistently present.
Here is a table as a quick overview on the state of each Covenant for Raiding and Mythic+.
Best Marksmanship Hunter Covenants and Soulbinds for Raid
Single Legendary
Double Legendary
Night Fae
Venthyr
Dreamweaver
Nadjia
Night Fae
Dreamweaver
Best Beast Mastery Hunter Covenants and Soulbinds for Mythic+
Single Legendary
Double Legendary
Night Fae
Dreamweaver
Night Fae
Dreamweaver
Kyrian Beast Mastery Hunter GuideNecrolord Beast Mastery Hunter Guide
Night Fae Beast Mastery Hunter GuideVenthyr Beast Mastery Hunter Guide
Best Beast Mastery Hunter Legendaries
The legendary you'll be wearing in Raid is largely dependent on what covenant you are. Below I list out which legendary is best for which covenant.
Best Single Legendaries for Beast Mastery Hunters
Raid Legendary
:
Kyrian:
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Venthyr:
Pouch of Razor Fragments
Necrolord:
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Night Fae:
Fragments of the Elder Antlers
Mythic+ Legendary
:
Kyrian:
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Venthyr:
Pouch of Razor Fragments
Necrolord:
Bag of Munitions
Night Fae:
Fragments of the Elder Antlers
or
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Best Double Legendaries for Beast Mastery Hunters
Raid & Mythic+ Legendaries (With 4 piece)
:
Kyrian:
Pact of the Soulstalkers
&
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Venthyr:
Pouch of Razor Fragments
&
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Necrolord:
Bag of Munitions
&
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Night Fae:
Fragments of the Elder Antlers
&
Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs
Take a look at our legendary guide to learn more about the legendaries available to Beast Mastery Hunters, or our crafting guide to find all the materials you need to craft them.
Beast Mastery Hunter Legendaries Guide
Best Beast Mastery Hunter Talents
Use the tabs below to view different recommended builds for Beast Mastery based on the situation. Check out the talent details for simulations of all the DPS talents.
The best talents for Beast Mastery Hunter do not change with Covenant choice.
Standard Build
For any single target content, you'll be using the below build. If multiple adds are present, switch to
Aspect of the Beast
. For Mythic+, it's recommended to swap to
Camouflage
and
Binding Shot
for the additional stealth and crowd control power.
Recommended pet families for dungeons and raiding:
Spirit Beast
-- Tenacity pets give you extra survivability, plus
Spirit Mend
as a healing cooldown.
Clefthoof
-- Ferocity if your group needs
Primal Rage
.
Aqiri
-- Cunning for fights with a lot of movement and target switching, assuming you don't need the survivability benefits of a Tenacity pet. Silithids also bring
Dune Strider
for even more movement speed.
For more info on pets, see the Battle for Azeroth Hunter Pet Guide.
The Leveling Build
This build is ideal for leveling and doing other world content such as world quests. You can use
Misdirection
on your pet followed by
Barrage
to round up any enemies in range. Once they are gathered up, Beast Cleave them down and use
Dire Beast: Hawk
if you are playing in War Mode. While leveling, you won't reliably be able to maintain 3 Frenzy stacks, so talents such as
Chimaera Shot
and
A Murder of Crows
are great for instant damage. Use
Camouflage
to heal up or avoid enemies you don't want to deal with. It's highly recommended that you use a Ferocity pet while leveling, see the Hunter Pet Guide for more info.
Recommended pet families for leveling/world content:
Core Hound
-- The leech from
Predator's Thirst
provided by Ferocity pets makes your pet self-sustaining. Core Hounds also bring
Obsidian Skin
for extra defense and
Molten Hide
for a little extra damage.
Clefthoof
-- Also Ferocity, and brings
Thick Hide
plus
Blood of the Rhino
for extra tankiness.
For more info on pets, see the Battle for Azeroth Hunter Pet Guide.
Beast Mastery Hunter Talents Guide
Beast Mastery Hunter Stat Priority
Agility is by far your most important stat as a Beast Mastery Hunter, which generally means that you will want the highest item level pieces available to you. Besides Agility, you will mainly want to get pieces with Haste and Crit, but your own stat values might change slightly depending on your character's gear and talents. Because of this, we recommend using Raidbots to evaluate upgrades over relying on generic stat priorities to make gearing decisions. More in-depth information about stats can be found in the full Beast Mastery Gear and Stat Priority guides.
Agility > Haste >= Crit >= Versatility > Mastery
Agility
: Increases all damage done by native class spells, abilities, and auto shots. Previously one of the weakest stats, but now much more impactful, making raw item level much more important again.
Haste
: Haste increases your passive Focus regeneration and reduces the cooldown of
Barbed Shot
and
Kill Command
(plus the
Chimaera Shot
talent). Haste also reduces the global cooldown time. The more Haste you have, the smoother the rotation will be. All of your pets inherit your Haste for their attack speed.
Critical Strike
: In addition to extra damage, crit also interacts with the
Wild Call
mechanic, which resets your
Barbed Shot
cooldown. All of your pets inherit your crit chance.
Mastery
: A simple damage increase to all of your pets (including talents that summon any kind of beast). This also includes AoE damage that comes from your pets such as
Stomp
and
Beast Cleave
.
Versatility
: Increases all damage, and reduces damage taken.
Beast Mastery Hunter Stats Guide
Beast Mastery Hunter Enchants and Consumables
Weapon:
Optical Target Embiggener
,
Infra-green Reflex Sight
, or
Enchant Weapon - Celestial Guidance
Your weapon enchant will largely depend on your gear. It's best to sim yourself using
Raidbots
to know your own best setup.
Chest:
Single Target:
Eternal Skirmish
AoE:
Eternal Stats
Cloak:
Enchant Cloak - Fortified Avoidance
Rings:
Enchant Ring - Tenet of Critical Strike
or
Enchant Ring - Tenet of Versatility
Boots:
Eternal Agility
Beast Mastery Hunter Enchants Guide
Best Beast Mastery Hunter Rotation
This Beast Mastery Hunter rotation uses the talent build listed above to outline a basic priority. For the full rotation including talent variations, you can consult the Beast Mastery Rotation Guide.
Barbed Shot
only as needed to maintain Frenzy stacks on your pet, but do not let it sit at 2 full charges
Aspect of the Wild
Bestial Wrath
- make sure to spend all
Barbed Shot
charges first if you have
Scent of Blood
talented
Kill Command
Kill Shot
when the target is below 20% health.
Multi-Shot
if there is more than 1 target, just enough to keep
Beast Cleave
up
Cobra Shot
if there is 1 target, or to prevent Focus capping when you have nothing else to cast
Beast Mastery Hunter Rotation Guide
Back to Top
Our Beast Mastery Hunter guides are always updated with the latest information from in-game experience, simulations, and logs; make sure to check our changelog to this page, by clicking on
View Changelog
at the top of the page. If you are interested in more in-depth Beast Mastery Hunter guides for , make sure to browse the
Navigation Bar
below, and our list of
Related Guides
just beneath the
Table of Contents
.
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