Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Guide — 12.0.5

Midnight Season 1 has released, and with it came a lot of new content. It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season 1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided some dedicated hubs covering everything available!

Beast Mastery has received no changes in Patch 12.0.5.

However, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!

• The Voidforge Unlocks!
  The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our Gear page.
• Void Assaults are Unleashed
  Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
• Disrupt Ritual Sites
  Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.

Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes

March 17th brought significant buffs to Beast Mastery's performance particularly on single-target where it was buffed by around 13%. The buffs caused minor changes to our preferred single-target builds, shifting into Cobra Shot-damage-favoring Talents to fully leverage the 100% buff it got.

Midnight Class Tuning

When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available; these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on March 24.

Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas available the week of March 31. For these two passes we err on the side of caution with the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.

The Midnight Expansion brings huge changes for all Hunter specs, primarily focused on streamlining and simplifying aspects of the kit.

• No more Deathblow procs from Auto-Shots.
• Barbed Shot has a 50% chance to grant Deathblow.
• After you activate Bestial Wrath, the Bestial Wrath button itself turns into Wailing Arrow, a powerful cast that activates Deathblow and also kicks/silences all targets hit for 1 sec.

• Increased Focus regen with each auto-attack granting 2 Focus.
• The Bear has been nerfed by 40%, making it more balanced relative to the other Beasts. In the past, we often had to pay special attention to optimizing around the Bear. Now, Beasts are more balanced which means that you do not tend to worry too much about which one you have coming up.
• Our TWW S3 4PC mechanic, Stampede, is back, but it only triggers from your first Kill Command after activating Bestial Wrath. Which means that every 30 seconds, for around 8 seconds, you best hope that the mobs are not either moving, on a ledge, above you, below you, to the side of you, or behind you.

• Frenzy is entirely gone as a mechanic. Thrill of the Hunt is now just flat crit as well. In other words, no more buff maintenance using Barbed Shot.
• Wild Thrash is a new talented ability that deals heavy AoE damage and activates Beast Cleave for 8 seconds. This has an 8-second cooldown as well, which means that simply by pressing this ability on cooldown, you are maintaining Beast Cleave at near-100% uptime.
• Bestial Wrath is now a flat 30-second cooldown. Its initial damage is increased, while its damage buff component is lowered to 20% from 30%.
• Wild Instincts has been redesigned and can now use pet Stomps to help spread your Barbed Shot DoT on AoE.
• The new Apex Talents, not available until the full Midnight launch, Nature's Ally, Nature's Ally, and Nature's Ally (all three talents currently share a name), aside from some passive damage, cause Barbed Shot/ Cobra Shot, and Black Arrow to buff the damage of your next Kill Command, encouraging you to weave a "filler" between each KC.

Midnight introduces new Apex Talents, unlocked between Level 80 and 90. Beast Mastery gets:

1. Nature's Ally
2. Nature's Ally
3. Nature's Ally

They make Bestial Wrath do a significant chunk of damage, instead of just being a passive damage buff. The last point also incentivizes never using Kill Command twice in a row; you should always use a filler ability like Barbed Shot or Cobra Shot in between.

• Hunters have +2% higher max HP than previous.
• Exhilaration's cooldown is now a 1-minute flat, instead of variable (and often lower).
• Aspect of the Turtle's cooldown is now 2:00 with talents, down from 2:30.
• Aspect of the Turtle can now be a 50% damage reduction with talents, up from 30%.
• Roar of Sacrifice is now an external defensive that can be used on yourself or any friendly target to reduce their damage taken by 15% for 10 sec, but 50% of their damage taken will be taken by your pet. It will end prematurely if your pet drops below 25% health.
• Fortitude of the Bear is now 3% passive damage reduction, instead of being an active defensive cooldown.

• Hunter's Mark is now a universal 3% damage increase against a single-target. This essentially guarantees Hunter a raid spot in every raid. It is also a boost to the group in Mythic+, though it is much less potent there.
• Counter Shot now spell-locks the target for 5 seconds, up from 3.
• Freezing Trap can now slow the target by 70% for 4 sec after the trap breaks.
• Intimidation is now our sole stun/stop. A choice node either reduces its cooldown to 40 sec, or makes it a 1-second AoE stun. Implosive Trap, High Explosive Trap, and Bursting Shot are all gone.
• The slows from Wing Clip and Concussive Shot are 25% and 10% stronger, respectively.
• Horsehair Tether is now a Class Tree node and not attached to the Pack Leader Hero Talent. It is a choice node with Tar-Coated Bindings, which extends Binding Shot's stun by 1 sec.
• Ghillie Suit is gone.
• Scatter Shot is gone.
• Scrappy is gone.
• Binding Shackles is gone.

• Aspect of the Cheetah's initial "super" speed burst is now twice as long with talents.
• Kill Shot is gone and is a Marksmanship-tree exclusive.
• Successfully kicking with Counter Shot/ Muzzle now grants 30 Focus, up from 10, but soothing/purging with Tranquilizing Shot no longer grants Focus.

Overall, we are gaining defensiveness and mobility, while in the utility department, we are losing some things (like the ability to move mobs) but gaining others (stronger Mark, streamlined AoE stun, stronger kick and more Focus return on kicking). I think the changes are broadly positive!