Beast Mastery Hunter Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Shadowlands 9.0.5

This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:

• Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
• Hunter Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Hunters gain by joining each Covenant;
• How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
• General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
• Hunter Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Hunters.

For Beast Mastery, Night Fae is the best choice for all situations by a fairly substantial margin (upwards of 3%, and even more in Mythic+/AoE situations).

It also generally has the best defensive options of all the Covenants. For single-target, Kyrian is roughly 3% behind, Necrolord is 4% behind, and Venthyr is 4% behind. On AoE, this gap grows strongly in Night Fae's favor, leaving Necrolord and Venthyr very far behind.

Night Fae is the best Covenant for Beast Mastery Hunters, providing the best single-target, and by far the best AoE DPS output compared to the other Covenants. It also has some solid defensive capabilities in its different Soulbinds.

Kyrian is the second-best Covenant for Beast Mastery Hunters, providing competitive single-target with Night Fae. However, its AoE is much weaker than Night Fae, and so is its burst. It also only has one strong Soulbind in Pelagos, with nothing special in terms of defensive abilities.

Necrolord is the third-best Covenant for Beast Mastery Hunters. It does not have any particular strengths over Night Fae and Kyrian, so there is not much to say about it beyond this.

Venthyr's Flayed Shot ability is purely geared towards single-target, but despite this, it is the weakest of all the Covenant Abilities, even for single-target. For this reason, we do not recommend it for any scenario.

• Niya is the best choice for most situations because of Grove Invigoration being so powerful.
• Korayn is a tad worse than Niya, but an acceptable choice for single-target. Wild Hunt Tactics can also amplify your burst in Mythic+ scenarios.
• Dreamweaver is essentially equivalent to Korayn for pure single-target, but has a lot of defensive/survivability benefits, such as Podtender, so it is arguably a better Niya-alternative for this reason alone.

• Pelagos is the only truly competitive Kyrian Soulbind, offering Combat Meditation from the beginning and quickly leading into your first Potency Conduit.
• Kleia is extremely poor for Kyrian and should never be chosen.
• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is 2-3% worse than Pelagos, which is significant, but passable in most situations.

• Bonesmith Heirmir and Emeni are close to equal, with Bonesmith being slightly ahead, but Emeni's Lead by Example should be better in situations where you are stacked with allies, which is common in Raids.
• Plague Deviser Marileth is the worst Necrolord Soulbind and should not be chosen in pretty much any situation.

• Nadjia the Mistblade and Theotar the Mad Duke are equal, but you should pick Nadjia in most cases because Theotar's Soothing Shade requires you to stand still in its effect, which is inconvenient.
• General Draven is a terrible choice currently, being over 2% behind the others and having no major strengths otherwise.

This section only covers which Conduits you should pick. For detailed explanations on what all of the Hunter Conduits do, check out our Hunter Soulbinds and Conduits page below.

• You have several extremely close Conduit options. Your best choice generally is going to be Spirit Attunement, but with certain Legendaries such as Rylakstalker's Piercing Fangs, One With the Beast tends to be better. It is best to sim it for yourself on Raidbots.
• With low Haste (sub-13%), Bloodletting's value will also spike as it allows you to maintain 3 stacks of Frenzy for much longer.

Generally speaking, we recommend Marksman's Advantage or Resilience of the Hunter. Marksman's Advantage works on a lot of significant mechanics and is very trivial to use, as you simply apply Hunter's Mark to the boss when the encounter begins.

These Conduits are geared towards mobility and utility. None of them are particularly good, so we recommend picking what you feel suits your playstyle the most, and taking your situation into account.