Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Season 4)
PvP requires you to perform various actions in the course of a duel, match, or battleground: interrupting/silencing enemies, damaging them, bursting them down, defending yourself, keeping yourself alive, etc.. It is a game mode that fully utilizes your kit, especially spells that are rarely used in PvE. On this page, we go through all the spells you need to use in PvP as a Beast Mastery Hunter, how you should use them, and we explain what your playstyle should be.
This page is part of our Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Guide.
Playstyle for Beast Mastery Hunters
The main role for a Beast Mastery Hunter is simple: use your mobility to land Freezing Traps on the enemy healer and use your strong single-target cooldowns to burst your enemies down. Beast Mastery Hunters are a very mobile specialization and some melee will struggle to connect to you. Because most of your damage comes from your pet, you can stay safely away from enemy teams and still do maximum damage.
Before Gates Open
Make sure to use Camouflage before the gates open if you are using this regular talent. This will guarantee an opener from you. If you are playing against a team with stealth, make sure to use Flare to try to reveal them.
The Opener/Burst Rotation
The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. Beast Mastery Hunters have Freezing Trap and Intimidation which can help to this end.
This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.
- Make sure to activate Camouflage, and to Flare out the enemy if one of them is stealthed.
- Use 2x Barbed Shot to engage your pet on your primary target.
- Use Bestial Wrath.
- Use Barbed Shot.
- Cast Dire Beast on cooldown.
- Spam Cobra Shot and Kill Command.
Sustained Damage/General Rotation
Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.
- Use Bestial Wrath mostly on cooldown, or save it for your burst if it is imminent. Always spend all your Barbed Shot charges immediately before pressing Bestial Wrath.
- Maintain 3 stacks of Frenzy by refreshing it with Barbed Shot as late as possible.
- Cast Kill Command on cooldown.
- Cast Cobra Shot whenever Kill Command is on cooldown.
- Cast Dire Beast on cooldown.
Defensive Techniques
Aspect of the Turtle is our main defensive cooldown. Use this when the enemy team is focusing you down and your healer can not heal you through the damage or is stuck in crowd control. Although you can not attack with this cooldown active, you still have the ability to trap. Using this to ignore incoming attacks and use Freezing Trap on an enemy healer could be crucial.
Exhilaration is a very strong instant heal. Try to stagger Aspect of the Turtle and Exhilaration and you will be very hard to kill.
Aspect of the Cheetah is a great way to kite away from enemy teams. If you are being focused or out of position on a map, use this to create distance between you and the enemy team.
Feign Death is also a good defensive when used correctly. This can stop any incoming crowd control on you and most importantly, it can buy you 1-2 seconds if an ability is almost off cooldown. After using Feign Death, you can quickly Disengage away and get away from the enemy team.
Scare Beast can be used on Feral Druids and other Hunter pets. If you find yourself in a situation where you are the primary target and need to keep yourself alive while your healer is in crowd control, this can stop some of the incoming damage.
Macros
It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.
Changelog
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 28 Feb. 2022: Restructured and updated the burst and general rotation.
- 10 Nov. 2021: Updated Burst Damage rotation.
- 16 Aug. 2021: Updated all damage rotations.
- 25 Jul. 2021: Updated damage rotations.
- 06 Jul. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.
- 25 Apr. 2021: Updated Burst and Sustained damage rotations.
- 23 Mar. 2021: Updated all damage rotations.
- 29 Nov. 2020: Removed outdated Traits and Essences.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Azortharion, a Hunter Theorycrafter and Guidewriter since 2014, and considered one of the best Hunters in the world. He is an accomplished player with dozen of top parses for all specs throughout the game's history. He is also the Founder/Owner/Head Admin of Trueshot Lodge, the Hunter Class Discord. You can find him on his stream on Twitch and his channel on YouTube. He also has his own personal Discord server where you can freely ask him any Hunter questions you may have!
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