Beast Mastery Hunter: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Beast Mastery Hunter. Ahead of the launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Beast Mastery Hunter spec in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit Midnight Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Beast Mastery Hunter but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

When announcing the changes that form the basis of this article, Blizzard offered a Developer's Note, a qualitative look and insight into their vision for Beast Mastery Hunter in the next expansion:

Developer notes: Beast Mastery Hunters have a fantasy of consistent, reliable, and powerful pet-sourced attacks, and that’s something we’re looking to lean into as we move into Midnight. We’re reducing the number of conditionals, auras, and modifiers on Barbed Shot to make it more easy to spend as its available. We’ve grown fond of Bestial Wrath’s shorter cooldown, and as such are removing Barbed Wrath’s dynamic cooldown reduction effect to instead give Bestial Wrath a flat cooldown of 30 seconds when fully talented. Multi-Shot has had an odd place in Beast Mastery’s kit, so we’re giving it an update, causing it to be replaced in the Beast Mastery spec tree with a new pet-sourced attack that deals substantial damage in AOE while also activating effects like Beast Cleave and Kill Cleave. We hope this new spell will feel powerful and contribute meaningfully to your area damage. Bloodshed and Call of the Wild felt like they were both competing for a similar role of a cooldown that summoned a few more units to fight for you. As such, we removed Call of the Wild and are focusing on Bloodshed as a cooldown to get a few extra beasts to attack your enemies. With the change to make Kill Shot a Marksmanship only ability, Dark Rangers will now learn Black Arrow as a separate ability if they choose that Hero Talent tree.

Pretty straightforward, but here are the cliff notes:

• Barbed Shot's usage and role in the rotation should be more simple. It previously did a lot of heavy lifting for other mechanics.
• Bestial Wrath is now designed as and intended to be a short cooldown, almost a rotational ability.
• Multi-Shot and its mechanical entanglement with Beast Cleave never really fit into the vibe of Beast Mastery, so it is being replaced by a unique, pet-sourced ability that activates our Beast Cleave.
• Bloodshed and Call of the Wild competed for similar roles in the rotation, and they are streamlining it to just Bloodshed.

These are the universal Hunter changes for the Midnight expansion. Some are baked-in while others come as a result of altered Class Talents. We are not particularly constrained in terms of the potent Class Talents we can pick, so for simplicity's sake, I will simply list Class Tree-contingent changes as if they are baseline.

• 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.
• 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, down from 2:30.
• Aspect of the Cheetah's initial "super" speed burst is now twice as long, and gives you 100% dodge chance for its duration. This can be used to cheese and evade several mechanics and is a nice mobility and defensive boost all in one.
• 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.
• Counter Shot now spell-locks the target for 5 seconds, up from 3.
• Aspect of the Turtle is now a 50% damage reduction, up from 30%.
• Survival of the Fittest's duration is now 14 seconds, up from 8.
• The slows from Wing Clip and Concussive Shot are 25% and 10% stronger, respectively.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Explosive Shot is gone along with all of its affecting talents.
• Ghillie Suit is gone.
• Scatter Shot is gone.
• Scrappy is gone.
• Binding Shackles is gone.
• Fortitude of the Bear is now 3% passive damage reduction, instead of being an active defensive cooldown.

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!

Next up are the specific changes for Beast Mastery Hunter. Once again, I will focus on changes that materially affect gameplay and character-building, while skipping Talents and changes I deem to be completely neutral in these departments, since the goal is to cut through the fluff and give you a real picture of how Beast Mastery Hunter feels going forward!

• 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.
• Thundering Hooves now causes Bestial Wrath to activate a 200%-power Stomps, and passively increases Stomp's damage by 30%.
• 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%.
• War Orders now grants 3 guaranteed seconds of Kill Command reduction, instead of being a 50% chance to grant a charge.
• Wild Instincts has been redesigned and can now use pet Stomps to help spread your Barbed Shot DoT on AoE.
• Other removed talents include Razor Fragments, Double Tap, Moving Target, and of course, Improved Streamline.

Note that there are no Apex Talents yet. Overall, Beast Mastery is being vastly simplified, with many of its variable cooldowns streamlined much more to make the rotation more predictable, Frenzy being eliminated as a mechanic (though we have not actively thought about it much for several seasons), and Beast Cleave "management" now simply being pressing Wild Thrash on cooldown.

Beast Mastery is perhaps simpler than it has ever been, with the rotation mostly reduced to pressing Bestial Wrath/ Kill Command/ Barbed Shot/ Wild Thrash on cooldown, and filling in with Cobra Shot otherwise. One form of skill expression on AoE may still be to multidot Barbed Shot. Even with Wild Instincts, some manual multidotting still seems prudent, though it remains a question if perhaps the "optimal" gameplay is to skip Wild Instincts and multidot manually, with the talent offering a way to simplify gameplay at a modest DPS loss.

• No more Deathblow procs from Auto-Shots.
• Barbed Shot has a 50% chance to grant Deathblow.
• Kill Command's chance of giving you a Deathblow proc is increased to 20%.
• Dark Hounds is replaced by Corpsecaller, which causes Dire Beast summons to instead have a 10% chance to summon a Dark Hound instead. Bloodshed also summons such a Hound.
• Phantom Pain is gone and instead, Kill Command has a chance to make your Dark Hounds do AoE damage.
• After you activate Bloodshed, the Bloodshed button itself turns into Wailing Arrow, a powerful instant cast that activates Deathblow and also kicks/silences all targets hit for 1 sec.

There are other changes to Dark Ranger's damage profile, but they are of a passive nature. The main thing here in terms of feel and gameplay is that Black Arrow procs are slightly less RNG, with one RNG element removed in the Auto-Shot change. Barbed Shot being a 50% chance does mean that a huge RNG element is retained, especially compared to Marksmanship which has guaranteed (but less frequent) Black Arrow procs from its Rapid Fire ability.

• 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... It is still by far the strongest, most likely, as another node causes all Bear summons to also summon two Dire Beasts.
• Shell Cover, our woefully weak defensive, has been changed to buff Survival of the Fittest's damage reduction from 30% to 40%.
• 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.

No major changes here in terms of gameplay, other than degenerate WeakAura-assisted double- Stampede! gameplay being eliminated. Still, we do need to regularly contend with Stampede!'s significant QoL problems related to aiming it in sensible directions and praying that the tank does not move the boss or trash pack when it rolls around, and such. The defensive boost is quite nice now that it actually does something, but it is still a lot weaker than Dark Ranger's Smoke Screen.