Season of Discovery Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Talents and Runes

These are going to be the optimal talent points to take at level 50 in Season of Discovery, with little variation. If your goal is to do the most damage possible at level 50, this is your only real choice. Hunter does not have many alternative dps talents to take at this level, leaving these as the obvious choices. Improved Aspect of the Hawk is by far the most important, but as a Beast Mastery Hunter you will be locked into going down the tree and picking the only DPS increasing pet talents available. The full 31 points are required to pick up Bestial Wrath, which is an incredibly powerful cooldown.

Past the initial 31 points, you're going to want 10 points in Monster Slaying, Efficiency, and Lethal Shots. These are the highest DPS talents available outside of the BM tree. None of the other options provide any meaningful DPS benefit, and Monster Slaying is a higher point for point value than Lethal Shots.

• Pants — Kill Command
• Gloves — Beast Mastery
• Chest — Aspect of the Lion
• Belt — Expose Weakness
• Boots — Trap Launcher
• Helm — Lock and Load
• Wrists — Focus Fire

For the gloves rune, Beast Mastery is the only real choice since it will be the largest buff to your pet. In the current state of Season of Discovery, pets are more powerful than they've ever been in Classic WoW. Making your pet as strong as possible is the best choice, and Beast Mastery is currently the top Hunter spec for DPS output.

In the same argument, Kill Command is an excellent choice for the pants rune. However, Flanking Strike is also a competitive option if you're going to be melee-weaving.

For chest rune, Aspect of the Lion is the strongest option by far now that it is an aura. The additional stats scale the damage of both you and your pet, as well as providing an exceptionally powerful raid buff.

For your belt, Expose Weakness is going to be the obvious choice for the huge passive damage bonus it will provide.

Finally, for boots, you'll either use Trap Launcher for shorter or AoE based encounters where traps are going to have an impact or Invigoration for the Mana sustain that will be invaluable on longer encounters.

At level 50, your two new runes will be Lock and Load and Focus Fire. There are not many options to choose from, and while these aren't particularly stellar, the other options are designed specifically for melee. These will be your go-to runes in all situations, although Rapid Killing could prove to be useful on a fight that is under 3 minutes, allowing a second Rapid Fire. However, even then, it's still rather mediocre when you cannot proc its secondary effect at max level. Rapid Fire will be decent for leveling from 50-60 or for PvP.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Hunter.