PvE Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Guide

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  • 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!

 

About the Author

Jamielolx

I played this expansion hardcore for 10 years
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FunkJesus
FunkJesus
1 year ago

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!

David Elton
David Elton
1 year ago

Really appreciate this guide!! Just got my BM hunter to LVL 80 on a private WOTLK server, again thanks!

Vydora
Vydora
1 year ago

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.

Vydora
Vydora
Reply to  Jamielolx
1 year ago

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.

jujalar
jujalar
1 year ago

BIS list for icc

qviv
qviv
1 year ago

Hey where range weapon enchant and gem guide for icc?

Miket
Miket
1 year ago

I’ve always been mm and normally struggling with mp5. Does bm have this issue as still lvling ATM

Jfap
Jfap
9 months ago

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

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