Beast Mastery Hunter Guide (4.3)

[Blightarrow]

Actually, Dream Paragon has brought a BM hunter to raid ever since 4.0, so your comment just became invalid.

[Serj Tankian]

So whit all players at the top testing this and tell us they avrg dps over BM is like 2k i should belive a random hunter?

And another thing tell me why none of the top rated guilds done go whit any BM hunters.

It's true that MM is 2k higher than BM and SV, but that's only on a Patchwerk fight. On any fight with movement where a pet can have 100% uptime BM prevails. Fights with a lot of AoE SV and MM prevail unless BM uses a Worm and works in Burrow and BW timing and placement. Really the only thing hurting BM right now is a pet death or air phase.

I know of Paragon and Exodus that are running with BM Hunters, there are probably more but those are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.

[Renley]

The reason why BM are under represented is simply because they are under represented. WoW Insider did a piece about this. For DPS parses, Marksman has over 40k parses, SV has around 20k parses and BM had a whopping 2k parses. If not enough people are testing BM, the results will be skewed and misrepresented. I know serveral great hunters(Kripparrian for instance) who run BM and do very well with it.

[pencilclip]

link to armory plz

[Judai]

So whit all players at the top testing this and tell us they avrg dps over BM is like 2k i should belive a random hunter?

And another thing tell me why none of the top rated guilds done go whit any BM hunters.

Actually if you look some guilds had their hunter's go BM just for H Rag, as they needed the stun on the phase transitions, and now they have gotten better gear they can go back to their preferred spec as they do more dmg to compensate for the stun.

[timoseewho]

Nice guide, might try it out. My biggest reason for not going Beast Mastery is I'm not sure what's a good amount of haste to have, so this 9/13% you mention, is that haste rating?

[Serj Tankian]

Nice guide, might try it out. My biggest reason for not going Beast Mastery is I'm not sure what's a good amount of haste to have, so this 9/13% you mention, is that haste rating?

9% is around 1150 Haste and 16% Haste is around 1650 Haste Raiding.

[Bullettime]

From what I've read, Mastery isn't worth it. While it sounds good in practice, it only affects our pets DPS, where the other 2 affect both our pets and our dps. Ive also read that both haste and crit are also on par with each other. To be honest, I hear different stat priorities from so many different places. I dont know what to think now.

There's no math one way or the other. All theorycraft, math, simulations, etc have Mastery and Haste at dead even after hitting a Haste plateau. Until you have enough Haste to reach the next plateau, the 2 come out even.

Haste increases pet and personal attack speeds, however when BM spends more time firing instant shots (AS and KC,) it devalues it a bit. Mastery increases your DPS by the same amount as Haste but by only boosting your pet through attacks and Kill Command.

There's been no math one way or the other proving A > B. The only info out there is people posting anecotal evidence or Frostheim doing...w/e it is he does when he "theorycrafts."

Assuming you're raiding in T12 gear:

If able to hit the second Haste plateau, it's worth forgoing Mastery for which is one of the reasons for the misconception of Haste > Mastery. If you're able to reach the marker of a 1.33 second Cobra Shot (that's with Windfury and Focus Fire active,) Haste becomes extremely desired. It's a number that is in reach for Hunters running in 391 gear.

You see a lot of BM however stacking Haste over Mastery (after Crit) just because the stats are worth the same, gear flexibility with Marksmanship, and less thought needed for hitting those Haste plateaus later on.

[Deleted]

Well written wtb sticky.

[Veshanna]

Why would you put /startattack in every macro? Are you trying to put the hunters pull everything in range like retards back into the game?

[Serj Tankian]

Why would you put /startattack in every macro? Are you trying to put the hunters pull everything in range like retards back into the game?

I personally never had a problem with premature pulls and I'm sure there are many other Hunters out there that didn't either and find the new targeting system annoying, AoE especially comes to mind here.

So if you want, use the macro. Otherwise don't. I'm not saying you have to use these macros to play BM.

[Deleted]

If in doubt and you think BM sucks, just Spec it and try it, you shall be enlightened and find that BM is just as good as any other spec

[Veshanna]

Are you seeing 2x Cobra @ Haste 9% (1150 rating) and 3x Cobra @ 13% (1650 rating)? If that's the case, I'd suggest keeping haste @ 9% at most. Kill,Arcane,Cobra,Cobra is pretty much an infinite focus rotation with minimal focus capping. Unless you can hit Kill,Arcane,Arcane,Cobra,Cobra,Cobra (3x Cobra in 4 sec = 1.33 cobra cast time) you'd be focus capped a lot @ 13%. You're only choice @ higher haste would be to alter your rotation a lot. Dropping 1x Arcane for 1x Cobra every so many rotations. I think I do more dps with a constant rotation (Kill,Arcane,Cobrax2) and stacking the rest in crit.

Haste is such a pain. Thoughts?

[Wildshooter]

Pretty good guide overall. I think you missed the prime glyphs though.

Now, it has been said here, BM is under represented simply because people take simcraft too seriously, and most are used to MM. BM pulls ahead of MM on fights in which the hunter needs to move a lot, and is very useful situationally on fights where big burst damage is important (aka Ragnaros).

Since BM is played by less people overall, and escpecially less people that work hard on theorycrafting, it has less guides and maths stating which priority/build/etc. is the best. I play with Crit>Mastery>Haste (same I use for MM), and have great dps, being on par with both other hunters in my guild (they're playing MM), all 3 of us have equivalent gear. Also, quoting EJ, a build with 3/3 Pathing should be on par with having 1/3 pathing and 2/2 ISrS.

Not much room to change anything inthe BM tree. I have chosen to go for full Sic'Em in this sample build, and go for 1/3 Pathing as 2/2 ISrS. The 10% increased chance to crit for SrS is arguably more valuable than 2% haste, but is a matter of taste.

Imo this guide should be sticky'd

[Veshanna]

I play with Crit>Mastery>Haste (same I use for MM), and have great dps, being on par with both other hunters in my guild (they're playing MM), all 3 of us have equivalent gear.

One thing to be aware of is that the value of haste and mastery changes based on the fight. If your pet must change targets then haste is proven better. If your pet can stay on a constant target then either haste or mastery is generally fine, but mastery may be ahead in the end.

[kunn]

This is not true at all, a good BM Hunter can out DPS and keep up with MM and SV with ease.

Its partially true what u say. A good _BM_ hunter can keep up with a bad mm or sv hunter with ease. Equally geared/nonbraindead ...you wont be able to keep up.

Also -->

As BM we have the best burst of any spec due to Bestial Wrath because we can use our burst at any time we please; burn phases come to mind. Whereas MM only has its burst during the first 10% of the fight and SV relies on Lock & Load proc for their burst.

MMs burst is 2x rapid fire . Not the aimed shot phase. MM is using aimed shot hardcast with rapid fire, and thats its burst.
For SV there is no real burst phase at all.

All in all, just dont diss other speccs in ur guide. Sure, glad u have fun with bm, but its not really the flower atm, and u make it look like it is. Sorry, its just not.
Every hunter will have better dps in other speccs.
The only way bm comes as top is when the raid misses 3% dmg boost.

[Wildshooter]

Its partially true what u say. A good _BM_ hunter can keep up with a bad mm or sv hunter with ease. Equally geared/nonbraindead ...you wont be able to keep up.

Still, the difference is not enough that you should play a spec you don't like that much to get bosses down.

MMs burst is 2x rapid fire . Not the aimed shot phase. MM is using aimed shot hardcast with rapid fire, and thats its burst.
For SV there is no real burst phase at all.

MM burst is probably the highest from the three specs. BUT if a MM hunter doesn't use the RFs on cooldown, his dps suffers greatly, much more than a BM hunter delaying his BW.

[Serj Tankian]

Yes, but MM also use their Rapid Fires during the the CA phase.

MM Pull:
Prepot > Hunter's Mark > Aimed Shot > Rapid Fire > Steady Shot x2 > Aimed Shot x2 > etc... > Second Rapid Fire and back to the Steady x2 > Aimed Shots... Reaching burst of what... 40k - 50k right now? And then using their Rapid Fires every 3min getting Burst then.

BM Pull:
Prepot > Hunter's Mark > Bestial Wrath > Kill Command > Arcane Shot Spam > Kill Command > Arcane Shot x2 (or 3) > Rapid Fire > Cobra Shot x2 (or 3) > Kill Command > Arcane Shot x2 (or 3) > Cobra Shot x4 > Kill Command > Bleed off excess focus with Arcane Shot > Kill Command and go into your standard priority rotation. Reaching bursts of 35k - 45k on initial pull.

But after all that is done the DPS evens down and they're right in the same area on the damage meters, fluctuating back and forth with MM and BM on top depending on how smart each of the players are. I guess what I'm trying to say is that BM has the more reliable burst since it can be used more often.

[Risale]

Its partially true what u say. A good _BM_ hunter can keep up with a bad mm or sv hunter with ease. Equally geared/nonbraindead ...you wont be able to keep up.

.

Numbers from FD with BiS put BM into 2nd place.
Fact is like posted earlier there are not enough BM raid parses available to do BM justice.
The article mentioned earlier can be found at wow insider scattered shots yes beast mastery can raid dated August 4th.
Not allowed to post the actual link but you will find it.

[Serj Tankian]

Link for what Althalus is talking about here. --> Clicky

Pretty good guide overall. I think you missed the prime glyphs though.

I did include all the glyphs in a picture with the spec. But I'll put them in their own under "Glyphs" as well as adding gems/enchants right now too.