- Author: Jamielolx
- Date: June 10, 2019
- Updated: October 16, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Welcome to our home page for the Beastmaster Hunter guide in Wrath of the Lich King! This guide aims to show you why it’s entirely possible to do well as a Beastmaster even though it is not viewed as a ”viable” spec by loads of players.
Beastmaster Hunter is often seen as an off-meta spec during Wrath of the lich king but with the right stats, rotation, and of course pet can still bring a lot of DPS even at high-end raiding level! There are not many BM Hunter mains around, but the ones that are show they are really passionate about their spec! It is still seen as a fan-favorite non-meta spec for those that want to try to do something different.
After this guide, no longer will it just be a role-playing spec to show off your spectral pet in Dalaran with — you and your pet will actually pump damage on the right fights too!
Beast Mastery Hunter Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
- Out of all 3 Hunter specs, Beastmaster has the most damage cooldowns at the start of an encounter, or during a coordinated damage nuke period, making it the best on-demand burst spec for Hunters in the game.
- Beastmaster Hunters have the most stackable cooldowns available.
While Marksmanship can use Rapid Fire twice, they cannot use two of them at the same time.
Beastmaster does not have the issue of needing to spread out cooldowns but instead can stack up more than double of them during a nuke phase. - Beastmaster Hunters can become Crowd Control immune if you spec into the talent the beast within
Given that this is more useful in PvP, having this ability on demand can prove very useful in PvE as well, especially if you know the correct time when Crowd Control comes your way!
Did you know, for example, you can skip every Kel’Thuzad mind control if you wanted to? - Unlike in TBC, pets in WotLK are pretty much immortal and have no big risks of dying, so they don’t have to be micromanaged as much as before.
- Beastmaster Hunter has a very low skill floor, meaning they are one of the easiest specs to pick up for new players!
Weaknesses
- The last specialization of talents is lackluster compared to Marksmanship and Survival, especially at the start of the expansion. While Marksmanship Hunters get Chimera shot and Survival gets Explosive Shot as their new toy, all Beastmaster gets are a couple of extra talent points to spend on their pet.
- Beastmaster Hunter has worse AoE damage than Marksmanship Hunter and Survival Hunter — this is because the amount of talent points they can allocate into improved traps and improved volley isn’t there. Beastmaster Hunters do get a faster volley channel due to their passive haste talent, serpent swiftness, but this sadly does not bring them on par with Survival Hunter or Marksmanship Hunter for AoE damage.
- Raid leaders may be biased and not want to bring you to their raid because you are not playing a ”meta” spec, which sucks, but it does happen. Take good care of your character and follow this guide, then you may be able to avoid this.
- Pets do not scale off some stats, such as Armor Penetration, Haste, and Hit Rating talents. this does not matter regarding stat priority in the early game, however, it may change things up later on and make the priority in stats shift around a bit. This will all be explained in the stat priority section, but if you are not sure on which stat is better at your current level to get I would advise using an up-to-date simulation program, or even several of them.
Beast Mastery Utility
Misdirection – Allocates the hunter’s threat to the target he’s misdirecting, pet threat does not count!
3% damage increase buff called https://www.wowclassicdb.com/wotlk/spell/34459 – This buff is unique for Beast Mastery hunters, but not for the whole game all classes in the game. It is also granted by Retribution Paladins and Arcane Mages.
Additionally, Beast Mastery Hunter can bring LITERALLY every missing debuff with their extended large variety of tamable pets Survival and Marksmanship are limited in this department. Don’t have a warrior? No problem. Tame a Worm, and he will sunder for you with Corrosive Acid Spit. No bleed? The raptors are here. If your party or raid already has all the necessary debuffs covered, you can bring out your Wolf for Furious Howl to do some big damage. When leveling, a Tenacity pet like a Bear will be your best bet for survivability.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has been able to help you decide if PvE Beast Mastery Hunter is the class/spec for you. Make sure to check out our other sections, such as talents, gear, gems, etc. To get more information on how to improve your performance as a Beast Master Hunter in WotLK!
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About the Author
Thanks homie! Still up in the air on how I have the most fun on hunter, but I’m definitely feeling like BM might have more functionality than people are playing it down as. Thanks!
BM is functional for new players especially since movement does not get punished as much as it would for other specs (your pet is still attacking).
So I would recommend it for any new player – until they get more comfortable with the other specs. I guarentee they will end up doing more ST damage as BM when first starting assuming guide is followed to a T
Really appreciate this guide!! Just got my BM hunter to LVL 80 on a private WOTLK server, again thanks!
Hi. About the weaknesses part of the guide, I think I have to disagree with you on BM Hunters having the worse AoE of the 3 Hunter Specs. Here’s an example:
https://youtu.be/EEJP5LPOaeU
This was on Warmane’s Icecrown server. To my knowledge, fairly close to the actual WotLK.
I probably should have showed my gear, glyphs and talents, but I just had random, some low level, some close to my level, greens and blues. No trinkets, I don’t even think I had neck piece at the time lol. My glyphs were 2 QoL ones. 1 was Mend Pet increaes pet happiness, and the other was Mend Pet healing for 40% more. And for Talent points, all was in BM at the time. So I didn’t even have the 30% increase Explosive Trap DoT talent yet. Which I do have planned to be added once I level up some more.
Anyways, I’m still leveling my hunter. So this whole build could just fall off completely later on, towards the end game. I don’t know. But the AoE feels really good. And the ST feels decent. Especially during Bestial Wrath and/or Orc Racial. The only people who could out DPS me in RDF was either a prot pally coked outta there mind, or someone in really good gear like full heirlooms and/or someone locking their level to 60 for example, in full purple gear. Happened once. Apparently they were in an old school guild where they only run classic wow content.
Ok I’m done.
I didn’t say they have bad aoe, just that the other specs have better aoe as they can afford points into trap mastery and such while also having more crit for this
I didn’t say you said they had bad AoE. I said you said they have worse AoE out of the 3 specs because that’s what you said, and thats what I disagree with. For cleaving, 2 to 3 mobs, I’m sure Marksmen or Survival are better. But for uncapped, 5+ targets. The Bears AoE, the Explo Trap with trap mastery and Glyth that makes Explo Trap DoT Crit. I think BMs have better AoE. As for Cleave, most likely not.
Again tho, you have much more experience than me. Could be totally wrong. But I’ve been in groups with hunters using volley. They couldn’t even pass my bear in dps. That’s not even counting my dps. Just my bear.
Just curious, have you tested it? To make sure. Using a Bear, swipe and thunder stomp. Explo trap, with trap mastery and the glyph that makes the DoT crit for it. If you have, and marksman and survival still do more aoe, then I’m wrong.
Yeah I have tried many different versions of the specs, the part that is true is BMs volley damage is surprisingly good, and if gemming AP is likely the best for a certain number of mobs, this doesn’t include the aoe cap however since crit gets more value then, gemming agi would be better there.
same goes for the trap – the DoT crit is something especially survival gets a lot more out of (due to having more crit that comes passively from having more agi) – and while they have the weakest volley in theory their increased agility that transfers over to crit makes it better at a semi-high value where you get enough of it, they also get all the trap talents for free and then some extra trap mastery and then (, resourcefulness,T&T and Point of no Escape are all explosive trap talents exclusive to survival)
MM can get T&T and Trap Mastery too but they have to give a lot up for it, but its not too hard to get if you’re going for a pure AoE spec, they also have increased volley damage.
BM likely has better aoe at low crit values but gets overtaken quickly with how fast hunters scales with the stat, so as a freshly dinged hunter it’s very possible the best aoe comes out of BM (esp if you’re only using volley) – but this won’t last very long esp for the case of survival, who at any mob values has both better volley damage and explosive trap damage assuming close to pre-bis gear.
TL;DR BM AoE is good, and competitive at low gear levels but gets outscaled by the other talents available by MM and Survival, especially the trap part. BM Volley alone actually stays superior for quite a while due to serpent swiftness and available dmg cooldowns but also gets outscaled eventually
https://gyazo.com/4e30d65c592a9ec013ee8565205b798f
some sims pulled from hunter discord (assumes perfect play, it’s harder to F that up with Survival)
BIS list for icc
Will be there when ICC is relevant, we don’t know if Blizzard will throw any curve balls so I don’t want to put any misinformation about ICC into the world before I’ve played the PTR for it.
Hey where range weapon enchant and gem guide for icc?
Ranged weapon is still Heartseeker scope – gems are the same but the epic versions
I’ve always been mm and normally struggling with mp5. Does bm have this issue as still lvling ATM
BM has less mana issues than MM
Just curious, we all know survival and mm are the kings of the next two phases, but can BM surprise and at least be middle of the pack? Any particular gearing or spec changes that can make it possible? Shorter fights BM always seems to do fine but longer fights it’s meh lol
It’s possible if you’re better than your raid of course, itemizing properly and keeping explosive trap up / combing it with bestial wrath is kind of the only edge you have, but they’re C-tier spec at best and do not scale as much as the other specs do. Armor pen helps a bit with this but that is about it (dont gem it tho).
If you’re looking to play BM only gemming AP gems may be an increase , tho not always the case you would have to sim for that
You can also spec it for utility if you notice a ret pala is missing, as you would be granting 3% damage increase to the whole raid, this is the only scenario I pick it in on my alt hunter.
hello, and thank you for sharing your experience on this great hunter spec. I’m disappointed to see that despite your article on the interesting abilities of the BM specialty, the rest of the site is once again treating this specialization like garbage without admitting that, well played and well equipped, it is entirely viable. too bad it’s so complicated to find nuance.