Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Guide

Beast Mastery Is the most aggressive of the three specializations. Most Hunter's will post to level as Beast Mastery given how powerful of a tool your pet is while leveling. Since WoW Forever is launching fresh, most PvP encounters will probably be as Beast Mastery since it is by far the best leveling spec for hunters in the open world. While Survival and Marksmanship both lack a large cooldown, Beast Mastery relies on Bestial Wrath to be truly powerful. The amount of pressure you are able to put out through your Summon Hawk and pet uptime overwhelms opponents and makes it impossible for them to find any sort of counter offensive. Your pet is your biggest strength, but it should come to no surprise that it's also your biggest weakness. In the event your pet dies, or is caught in CC without Bestial Wrath available, you are susceptible to many things given the lack of defensives at your disposal. This spec can double as both a leveling and a PvP spec on launch for the ultimate hybrid in the open world on your journey to 60.

Cat

Currently the highest dps pet in the game. While a cat has no direct qualitative utility, it has Faster Attack VII which provides things like spell push back against casters and currently has no penalty. This means that a pet which benefits from this passive attacks just as hard as a pet that attacks every 2.0 seconds but ends up attacking every 1.0 second instead. This ends up being a massive damage increase which is incredibly good against every class in the game. On top of all of this, since cats have access to Claw as well as Bite, you are able to utilize your Bestial Discipline better than any other pet and will do the most damage in your Bestial Wrath window. For this reason I would recommend using a Cat as BM.

Crocodile

Crocodile has a new ability in WoW forever called Dismember. Traditionally referred to as Mortal Strike, reducing the healing someone receives by a quarter is a massive benefit in PvP for most classes since they will look to use things like Major Discolored Healing Potion if they have no direct heals or Heavy Runecloth Bandage to recover their health. While it's not as strong as Mortal Strike, having some sort of healing debuff when you're by yourself still has its merits.

Bat

Similar to the crocodile, bats have a new ability in WoW forever called Sonic Blast. The casting debuff is not as potent as Curse of Tongues or Mind-numbing Poison III but it's still quite good when you tag a cater with the debuff. While also slowing their casting speed, it also makes their global cooldown longer and lasts for 30 seconds while being undispellable. The only way for this ability to be removed is with immunities such as Ice Block and Divine Shield.

Tallstrider

Tallstrider has a very unique spell called Dust Cloud. At max rank it reduces it's target's armor by 505 which provides a relatively large damage increase for you and anyone that's hitting the target your pet is on so long as they're doing physical damage.

Spider

A Spider is the definition of utility. If you like on demand spells when you can use to either get you to your target when you're far away, or get people off of you when they're on you then Web is the perfect spell for you. The only downside for abilities such as Web is they are countered by abilities such as Blessing of Freedom, and potions like Living Action Potion and Free Action Potion

Alliance vs Horde often makes little difference when it comes to the decision you make on full class optimization. Both factions are typically quite good and what matters more than the race you pick is how you end up piloting your character more than anything. With that being said, there are still races that shine over others on alliance and horde given those circumstances.

Alliance

• Night Elf: Night Elf is probably the best race you can pick as a hunter. Hunter has and always will be a critical strike based class. Given that, adding 10% increased critical chance via Elune's Light on things like Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot Raptor Strike gives you insane one shot potential if all of these abilities crit in the window that your racial is popped. Also, hunters typically struggle more against casters than anything else. WoW Forever has reworked Shadowmeld to be usable in combat and will function as a Feign Death when people are casting spells on you. The more options you have at your disposal to disrupt casters from doing what they want is incredibly useful as a hunter!
• Dwarf: While Dwarf is probably the least appealing from an offensive standpoint it's quite good from a defensive standpoint. While Hunters fair quite well into rogues in general things like Blind are extremely annoying for resetting fights between their stun DR's and gives you an opportunity to run them down when they have no ability to defend themselves. For this reason Stoneform is incredibly potent and shouldn't be undervalued.
• Human: I think people get a bit baited by the racial Will to Survive. While there's value out of getting out of stuns I think consumables like Living Action Potion and Free Action Potion make this racial a bit lackluster compared to its alternatives.
• Skybourne: I don't think this race is as good as any of the alternatives for PvP I wouldn't really consider it. Pretty much just roll it if you don't care about hyper min-maxing your racials and like how they look.

Horde

• Orc: A hunter's biggest weakness in PvP has always been Warlock. With the most recent update to Shatter Curse, the diminishing return you get from magic damage and the fact that you are no longer immune to Curses and Banes during the duration makes it a not very appealing racial by any means. Blood Fury On the other hand, is quite powerful from an offensive standpoint. You can do things like use Rapid Fire and Blood Fury together to land maximum damage on people with your Aimed Shot Arcane Shot Auto Shot burst window. Since your pet scales off your attack power, using Blood Fury in conjunction with Bestial Wrath is a great tool to overwhelm your opponents.
• Troll: Similar to Orc, troll is looking to cover your weaknesses by giving you things like health regeneration when you are low health. You will be able to do things like Freezing Trap someone use your Rapid Regeneration and be topped off to get back into the fight sooner. Similar to orc, Berserking is a good offensive tool which enables you to get more Auto Shot's off during it's window as well as reduce the cast time of Aimed Shot.
• Tauren: Tauren is an interesting race. As mentioned earlier Hunter is a critical strike based class and having 2% more damage on your critical strikes is a small increase to your burst windows. From a utility aspect, mount movement speed is quite good in the open world and battlegrounds especially given that it stacks with other mount speed items and shouldn't be looked over. Being able to quickly get across battlegrounds or chase down enemies in the open world is something people won't often think about when picking a race but can definitely be useful. Lastly, War Stomp being a 90 second cooldown and a way to help you guarantee traps can be quite enticing when players are on top of you.
• Skybourne: I don't think this race is as good as any of the alternatives for PvP I wouldn't really consider it. Pretty much just roll it if you don't care about hyper min-maxing your racials and like how they look.

Magic Dust

Magic Dust is potentially the single most overpowered consumable in World of Warcraft. It's a ranged CC that lasts for 30 seconds and shares a diminishing return with Freezing Trap. In the event you are ever outnumbered in the world you can use this to even the playing field by CCing someone from range in order to pick who you want to kill before dealing with anyone else. Keep in mind the CC that Magic Dust does is considered a sleep, which means that Undead players are able to use their Will of the Forsaken to break it

Free Action Potion

In terms of potions, Free Action Potion (FAP) are your best tool against most melee classes and things like mages. For mages in particular, their main goal is to get on top of you, Frost Nova you, and look to kill you while in your deadzone--the range window where you're unable to press any offensive actions on them except for Scatter Shot. The Free Action Potion will be incredibly useful when a mage blinks on top of you, making you immune to Frost Nova, Cone of Cold Frostbite and allowing you to save your Feign Death spell for their Polymorph.

Living Action Potion

The Living Action Potion or LAP as people often refer to them as is your main tool when you are stuck in something like a rogue Kidney Shot and you need to get out immediately. As you can tell, LAPS only last for 5 seconds, where FAPS last for 30 seconds. LAPS are more of a last resort consume, think of them as a get out of jail free card when you are stuck in a bad situation and you need to reset a fight.

Potion of Poison Cleansing

The best consume hands down against Rogue. Their goal is to stay on top of you with things like Crippling Poison II, which is the strongest slow in the game. This consumable has no cooldown so you are able to spam it and cleanse yourself from the rogue slow in order to get distance and shoot them from range.

Heavy Runecloth Bandage

One of two ways you're able to restore your health while fighting. For pure DPS classes like hunter who don't have access to any healing in their kit, First Aid is a mandatory profession. Keep in mind, if you're bandaging any damage you take will interrupt the effect. This means that if you have any sort of DOT on you i.e. Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption Rend you will effectively waste your bandage and not get any healing from it. In the event you are loaded with dots and you need to heal, your only options are things like healing potions, or trapping someone and feign death eating food

Flash Bomb

Druids will hat you for using this consume. If a druid is on you in form, you are able to instantly fear them for 10 seconds with Flash Bomb. Unlike traditional fears, this one functions more as a stun meaning it won't break to damage giving you a full 10 seconds to blast damage into them and kill them.

Thorium Grenade

Grenades are a super versatile tool that you should always carry on you. You can use them to guarantee Freezing Trap on players, you can use them on players who are in Freezing Trap after an Aimed Shot to stun them and deny them from using things like heals and time it with a more damage off.

Flask of Petrification

Realistically nobody is going to do this but it's something you are able to do. Flask of Petrification functions as a Divine Intervention. What that means is let's say you're overloaded with Warlock and Priest DOTS, you can use this flask to clear you of ALL debuffs and then either right click it off or have a macro /cancelaura flask of petrification to immediately start moving again as this flask will essentially turn your character into a statue for 60 seconds where you can't any spells or move. Typically an extremely expensive consumable, and an extremely niche one, but for those who want to be overly prepared for all scenarios it's worth having in your bag.

Engineering

Engineering, Engineering, Engineering. This profession gives you access to more utility, more crowd control, and more damage than any other alternative and is basically mandatory in WoW Forever. Things like Goblin Rocket Boots paired with Free Action Potion enable you to kite people while running significantly faster than them, or match their speed if they choose to do that as well. Also things like Goblin Land Mine Goblin Mortar and Thorium Grenade give you huge burst opportunities on players who are in freezing trap or at low hp.

First Aid

First Aid is a mandatory secondary profession in World of Warcraft. It gives you access to powerful utility tools such as Powerful Anti-Venom and Heavy Runecloth Bandage. As a non hybrid class, hunters lack the ability to heal themselves or remove things like poisons and diseases. First Aid functions as a band aid fix to one of the major flaws that pure dps classes suffer from--lack of utility.

/cast [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; [target=pet,exists] Mend Pet; Revive Pet

This is a one button macro to heal your pet if it's alive and revive your pet if it dies saving you keybinds long term.

#showtooltip

/stopcasting

/cast Feign Death

Feign Death is an incredibly useful tool to break up caster combos on you. Sometimes you will be in the middle of things like an Aimed Shot cast and notice someone is casting on you, in that case you're better off cancelling your Aimed Shot cast and repositioning since spacing is king as a hunter. This macro allows you to do that in 1 button

/cancelaura Aspect of the Cheetah

This is something you need to get used to using and have a good bind for. As mentioned above, you will often toggle Aspect of the Cheetah on and off in order to build distance from other players. This macro enabled you to quickly take Aspect of the Cheetah off WITHOUT incurring a global cooldown by pressing something like Improved Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Hawk.

#showtooltip

/cast !Eagle Eye

This one might seem a bit strange for a PvP guide but it's an incredibly powerful tool in the open world. This macro allows you to hop your Eagle Eye ability so you can scout zones from a safe space. Knowledge is power in PvP and knowing what you are getting yourself into allows you to pick people off or hide.

#showtooltip Scatter Shot

/stopattack

/stopcasting

/cast Scatter Shot

/stopattack

This is just a macro to ensure that you don't break your own scatter when you press it.

#showtooltip

/cast !Flare

This allows you to spam your flare bind without the reticle disappearing.

#showtooltip Rapid Fire

/cast Rapid Fire

/cast Blood Fury

/cast Elune's Light

/cast Berserking

A one button macro to maximize your damage when you're at range regardless of what race you are, assuming your race has a damage racial. For higher skill players you may want to stagger things like Rapid Fire and your racial but it's such a small min max that using this macro is fine 99% of the time.