Beast Mastery Hunter Guide - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Level 30 Talents (21,0,0)

All in on the Beast Master Tree to buff you and your pets damage.

1. Grab Deadly Aspects to buff your damage when Aspect of the Hawk is up.
2. Focused Fire further buffs your damage. Pathfinding helps you move around the world faster and Revive pet is essential to getting your pet back up quickly after a death, without using your entire mana bar to do so.
3. Take Unleashed Fury next to buff your pets damage then get 1 point into Bestial Swiftness so they can get into combat even faster.
4. Get Summon Hawk so your pet has more help, Then put 2 points into Ferocity before finally putting your final point into Intimidation at level 30.

Level 60 Talents (31/20/0)

Here's a look at what we think the level 60 Beast Master Hunter Talent Tree will look like. Despite some changes to talents in Wow Forever, this tree has a lot of similarities to Wow Classic and the standard Beast Master Build holds up mostly the same. As mentioned above this guide will be updated as we go through the beta and during launch to include any other Endgame Beast Master Talent Trees along with all the other information you need to excel in the endgame and Raids as a Hunter.

Playable Races

Alliance - Human, Night Elf, Dwarf & Skyborn

Horde - Orc, Tauren, Troll & Skyborn

Recommended Races

Every race has strengths and great abilities for the hunter and you really can’t go wrong picking whatever one you are most interested in. If we had to recommend one for each faction it would be Night Elf for Alliance and Troll for Horde. 

Night Elf provides you their new ability Elune’s Light which provides 10% increased Critical Strike Chance for 15 seconds. They come with passive movement speed and dodge chance as well, making them great for moving through the world a bit faster and providing a bit more survivability when enemies start hitting you. Wisp Spirit grants you 75% movement speed which hopefully you don’t need often, but is great for getting back to your body and back into the action.

Troll is great since you’ll be fighting a lot of beasts in the early game and they have 5% increased damage to beasts. Their Berserking buff grants you 10% attack speed for 10 seconds and they also have Rapid Regeneration which allows you to restore 50% of your health every 3 minutes. Add in Regeneration which allows 10% of health regen to continue in combat and they’re the only race in the game that has 4 directly beneficial buffs for the leveling journey 1-30.

The primary Skills you’ll use are Auto Shot, Multishot, Hawk, Raptor Strike and Intimidation. The best pet to tame early on and through the beta is the Boar. Its Charge skill lets it get into combat quickly and build a good amount of threat right away. They can also eat almost any type of food making it easy to keep them happy.

1. Send your pet in to start the fight, apply Hunters Mark and be max range to start attacking with your ranged weapon.
2. Cast Hawk right away (once you obtain it). You can have 2 Hawks, so make sure to cast it again after the 6 second cooldown to keep 2 up at all times.
3. Auto Shoot then follow it up with a Serpent Sting/Aimed Shot early on & Multishot once you obtain it at level 18.
4. Keep your Pet and Hawks going and use your Abilities between Auto Shots to take down the enemies quickly.
5. If you pull threat, you simply finish them off with Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite and Melee Swings.
6. At level 30 you’ll unlock Intimidation, this can be used right away in combat to generate a lot of threat with your pet.

Hawk has an 18 Second duration and 6 second Cooldown. This means you can have both Hawks active for 6 seconds before having to cast another one. This is your chance to add Arcane Shot into your rotation if you desire, since they share a cooldown. We don’t know for sure but having the Hawk engaged is likely more DPS than Arcane Shotting, so we’ll only use it when we have both Hawks up and have downtime between having to recast our first one.

You can use Rapid Fire on harder encounters, but keep in mind It’s going to generate a lot of threat for you quickly, and might pull enemies off your pet. These skills are better used in group play or Dungeons since a tank is much harder to pull threat from.

You can “kite” enemies that you aggro off your pet by moving away after you take a shot. Shoot, move a little, repeat. You can use Concussive Shot or Wing Clip to further increase the gap between enemies when they’re coming after you.

Make sure to visit your Hunter Trainer at levels 10, 18 & 26 to acquire key skills like Tame Pet, Multishot & Rapid Fire!

A Hunters Favorite Stat is Agility, followed by Strength and Intellect. Agility increases your Attack Power and Critical Hit Chance, Strength is another Attack Power boost and Intellect helps quite a bit with your mana. Always look for items with Agility on them as the priority and take the other stats when they show up.

When playing in a party the gameplay mostly stays the same. You'll likely have someone tanking the enemies for you so you don't to worry about pulling threat as easily, and can unleash your power much more freely.

Make sure to keep Hunters mark up on the main target and allow your tank to get threat on a few mobs before you start Multi-Shotting on cooldown. Understanding the capabilities of your party's tank is important to make sure you aren't constantly pulling enemies off of them that they haven't build threat on yet.

Frost Trap and Immolation trap are great to use when fighting multiple mobs at once. You can slow the entire group down to help your tank kite and prevent the strays from reaching your ranged party members. Immolation trap is a great way to deal AOE damage to the group while you keep blasting them with projectiles.

See how Beast Mastery compares to Marksmanship and Survival on our WoW Forever tier list.

Auto Shot Macro

This macro allows you to spam a button as you change targets to keep shooting with no interruption.

#showtooltip Auto Shot
/cleartarget [dead]
/targetenemy [noharm]
/cast !Auto Shot

Melee Macro

This one button macro will go through you melee abilities to do maximum damage when being attacked.

/startattack
/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Mongoose Bite

Pet Attack

I love putting this on mouse wheel forward to send in my pet. You can also macro this into your auto shot macro, but I prefer to have more control of my pet at all times.

/petattack
/cast Charge
/cast Dash

Pet Passive/Follow

Great for mousewheel backwards. This will make your pet passive and come to you to get out of danger.

/petpassive

/petfollow