Beast Mastery Hunter | <Progress> Staedt

Consumables are yet to be properly explored, and to see what stacks with what. If we are to assume anything from Classic or Season of Discovery, we can expect a lot of different consumables that can help you in raid content, some a lot more than others. Stat Priority is a good way to see what consumables should be preferred.

Camping

WoW Forever introduces the Basic Campfire Kit allowing you and anyone else around you to get 3 powerful buffs depending on what professions people around them have. It is very good to optimize your camping buffs if you're with a group for leveling or even endgame dungeons. Later on, you also get access to Journeyman Campfire Kit and Expert Campfire Kit which allows for more profession items to be placed by the campfire. As a Hunter you will prefer Camp Chair, Fish Bowl and a Camp Tent while leveling.

Food Buff

Spiced Wolf Meat and a lot of other food buffs in all level ranges now have "Additionally, experience gained from kills is increased by 5%". It takes 10 seconds to get the buff, but that 5% experience increase from kills is worth the time spent. Flank au Poivre or Swiftstrike Steak are likely to be the best food buff available at level 60.

Professions are yet to be properly explored, so we can't tell what/if any professions are required to use different items or bombs from Engineering etc.

The 2 choices that I am leaning towards for endgame are Engineering and Leatherworking, where you're likely to get the most use if there is some exclusivity in the endgame.

For leveling, I recommend having 1 gathering and 1 crafting profession, as you can craft a lot of upgrades while you're leveling. For example Skinning and Leatherworking or Mining and Engineering.

First Aid, Cooking and Fishing can all be good to pick up as well, especially Cooking to have higher uptime on the new experience increase buff from food buffs.

Currently all races are very close to each other in terms of dps numbers. I would highly recommend choosing a race based on your personal preference.

Alliance

Night Elf

Elune's Light Quickness Shadowmeld Wisp Spirit

High Order Skyborne

Read Leyline Wind Blessed Elemental Insight

Human

Will to Survive Perception Ruthless The Human Spirit

Dwarf

Stoneform Find Treasure Big Game Hunter @artisan's

Horde

Orc

Blood Fury Shatter Curse Command Hardiness

Windshaper Skyborne

Walk on Air Skysight Wind Blessed Elemental Insight

Troll

Berserking Rapid Regeneration Beast Slaying Regeneration

Tauren

War Stomp Cultivation Plainsrunning Endurance

For Alliance Night Elf stands out the most with a strong damage cooldown Elune's Light and permanent +2% movespeed from Quickness.

While on the horde side Orc has a lot of potential with Blood Fury and Command.

Both High Order Skyborne & Windshaper Skyborne are also a very strong choice.

Auto Shot Mechanics

Here is a basic summary on how your normal ranged attack Auto Shot works.

Auto Shot is separated into two different parts:

Cast Time: the part where the shot fires and the player must remain stationary
Cooldown: the part before the Cast Time, during which you are free to move

• Cast Time
  • Auto Shot has a base cast time of 0.5 seconds.
  • You must be stationary during this cast for the shot to fire.
  • Cast Time is affected by your ranged haste.
    
• Cooldown
  • After Auto Shot fires it goes on a cooldown.
  • This cooldown is based on your ranged weapon speed and haste.
  • During this cooldown part you are free to move.
  • You only need to stop at the end of the cooldown part once a new cast time begins.

Most addon based ranged swing timers will indicate clearly when you're in the cooldown or cast time part of your Auto Shot.

Auto Shot & Melee Weaving

Your ranged and melee swing timers operate independently, allowing you to weave regular melee swings and Raptor Strike between Auto Shot without resetting your ranged swing timer.

Deadzone

The deadzone is the gap between your melee range and the minimum range of your ranged attacks. In WoW Forever, Hunter's can’t use ranged attacks on anything closer than 8 yards and melee attacks only reach 5 yards. That leaves a couple yards where you can’t use either, so that's what we call the deadzone, where you can’t attack at all.

Recommended Pets

Cat Prowl Bite Claw Dash
Carrion Bird Demoralizing Screech Bite Claw Dive
Tallstrider Dust Cloud Bite Dash
Wolf Furious Howl Bite Dash

Cat is the recommended pet for their high damage when you don't have to bring any utility.

Carrion Birds increases your tanks durability by reducing the attack power of the mobs you're fighting, allowing for bigger pulls and a faster pace. And when playing solo its screech will do aoe threat meaning it can hold multiple mobs on itself more easily which makes it a great leveling pet.

Tallstriders provides an armor debuff to its target, similar to a Druid's Faerie Fire

Wolves provides a group wide buff similar to a Warrior's Battle Shout.

How to choose your pet

Pet choice for leveling comes down to sustainability versus output. Some pets kill mobs faster but require more Mend Pet casts to keep it going. While others are more durable and can handle more incoming damage more easily.

For sustainability I would highly recommend a Carrion Bird. They have Demoralizing Screech which deals AoE threat around it while reducing the attack power of the mobs around it. This means your pet takes less damage and is able to hold aggro on multiple mobs easier. Some races might have a difficult time taming a Carrion Bird due to their limited availability in certain zones so a Bear with their new ability Swipe is a good alternative.

For output I would recommend getting a Cat, they're very low maintenance due to only requiring you to train Bite, Claw and Dash which are readily available in most leveling routes so you don't have to go out of your way to get new spell ranks for their special abilities. Cats are a bit weaker when it comes to survivability so you might end up having a bit more downtime.

Pet Training

After teaching your pet all its listed abilities such as Claw Dash etc.
Remaining Training points on should be used on relevant magic resistances for the content you're doing.

While leveling remaining points can be used on Natural Armor.

More detailed pet builds will be added in the guide once raids are released.

Pet Abilities

Check WoW Forever Petopia website where to upgrade your pets ability ranks.

Growl gets a new rank from the Pet Trainer every 10 levels, level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. These will greatly increase your pets ability to hold aggro so it's highly recommended to train these ASAP.

New Bite & Claw ranks can be obtained at levels 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56.

Dive & Dash ranks at levels 30, 40, and 50.

Demoralizing Screech ranks at levels 24, 48 and 56.

Furious Howl 24, 40 and 56.

Swipe 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60.

Dust Cloud 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60.

Pet Management

Pets have 3 different states Assist / Defensive / Passive.

Assist Pet will attack any target you are attacking automatically
Defensive Pet will attack anything that is attacking you automatically
Passive Pet will only obey manual controls

When playing solo it is recommended to have pet on Assist or Defensive as this will reduce the amount of pet micro you have to do.

In Group content it is recommended to have your pet on Passive. This means you will have to manually control your pet to attack each target, this reduces the chances for accidents where your pet runs to attack unintended targets pulling extra mobs.

WoW Forever also brings the Move To ability to your pet where you can manually move your pet to a specific spot using your mouse.

Pet Family Differences

All pet families come with different damage, health and armor multipliers. While the pets are categorized as Offensive, General and Defensive the types don't have fixed multipliers but instead its different for each pet family.

Here's a few examples:

Cats 1.10 Dmg / 0.98 Hp / 1.00 Armor
Wind Serpents 1.07 Dmg / 1.00 Hp / 1.00 Armor
Bears 0.91 Dmg / 1.08 Hp / 1.05 Armor

Pets also come with different attack speeds but in WoW Forever their damage has been normalized.

Notable WoW Forever Pet Changes:

Pet threat has been buffed significantly in WoW Forever.

Pet focus has been changed from tick based into smooth flow (100 focus / 10 sec)
This is pretty close to being double the focus we had in Classic.

Pets are no longer able to receive external stat buffs.
But instead pets now scale with the players stats:

• 1 Stamina = 2 Health
• Pet gains 30% of players Armor
• Pet gains 10% of the players highest Attack Power (Melee / Ranged AP)
• Pets gain 100% of highest Crit chance (Melee / Ranged Crit)

Pets also benefit from the racial Crit bonuses.

Use Eagle Eye to locate patrolling/variable spawn quest mobs/npcs.

Macros will be added soon