Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.1

Last updated on May 01, 2023 at 21:40 by Azortharion 100 comments
General Information

On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Beast Mastery Hunter in both single-target and multiple-target situations. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.1.

If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Beast Mastery Hunter rotation.

1.

Beast Mastery Hunter Rotation for Dragonflight

Welcome to our Rotation page for Beast Mastery Hunters. On this page you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

1.1.

Simplified Rotation for Beginners

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.

1.2.

PvP

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

Important Abilities, Procs and The General Rotation of Beast Mastery Hunter

The Beast Mastery rotation revolves around casting Kill Command Icon Kill Command on cooldown and maintaining the Frenzy Icon Frenzy buff on your pet, by using Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot, while regulating your Focus with Cobra Shot Icon Cobra Shot. On AoE, you need to Multi-Shot Icon Multi-Shot regularly to maintain the powerful Beast Cleave Icon Beast Cleave buff on your pet.

1.3.

Talent Switches

Use the buttons below to select your talents to see how that changes the rotation. This affects both the single-target and multi-target rotation. Note that a lot of them are ticked by default to account for our single-target and AoE builds.

Active Talents Passive Talents
A Murder of Crows Icon A Murder of Crows Beast Cleave Icon Beast Cleave
Aspect of the Wild Icon Aspect of the Wild Scent of Blood Icon Scent of Blood
Barrage Icon Barrage Wild Call Icon Wild Call
Bloodshed Icon Bloodshed Wild Instincts Icon Wild Instincts
Call of the Wild Icon Call of the Wild Alpha Predator Icon Alpha Predator
Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram Poison Injection Icon Poison Injection
Dire Beast Icon Dire Beast
Serpent Sting Icon Serpent Sting
Stampede Icon Stampede
Steel Trap Icon Steel Trap
Wailing Arrow Icon Wailing Arrow
2.

Rotation WeakAuras for Beast Mastery Hunter

If you are not a very experienced Beast Mastery Hunter, I recommend that you grab my Barbed Shot Helper WeakAura. It will pop up when it is time to cast Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot automatically, and it lets you focus on the rest of the rotation.

3.

Pre-Combat Checklist for Maximum DPS

4.

Best Dragonflight Beast Mastery Hunter Single-Target Rotation

The single target rotation for a Beast Mastery Hunter is based on the following priority system.

  1. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot to refresh Frenzy Icon Frenzy when it is about to fall off. If Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath is off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot charges before pressing it, if Frenzy Icon Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks.
  2. Cast Kill Command Icon Kill Command if it is on 2 charges, so that its cooldown is always rolling.
  3. Use Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram on cooldown.
  4. Use Bloodshed Icon Bloodshed on cooldown.
  5. Use Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
  6. Use Kill Shot Icon Kill Shot on cooldown.
  7. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command on cooldown.
  8. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot when it has more than "1.4" charges, meaning whenever its second charge is about halfway off its cooldown. You should also cast Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot if doing so would reset the cooldown of Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath. 1 Barbed will take off 12 seconds, and 2 of them will take off 24 seconds.
  9. Use Cobra Shot Icon Cobra Shot when you have nothing else to do.

There are a few rules you should keep in mind when trying to play Beast Mastery optimally. If you keep these things in mind, it will make it much easier to achieve a perfect rotation:

Refreshing Frenzy Icon Frenzy as late as possible is almost always preferable. You should be careful not to overdo it, however, or you risk letting the buff drop completely. It is okay to sit and wait for the duration to reach 0.1s before refreshing it. There is no pressure to always be casting as Beast Mastery.

Keep in mind that you will most likely not be able to keep up 3 stacks of Frenzy Icon Frenzy at all times, no matter how perfectly you play. You should strive towards it, but it is impossible to always have it up. Dropping it sometimes is fine and expected.

Important Note: Because the in-game "auto-cast" system for Hunter pets is very slow, it is recommended to put these 3 lines into macros for all of your offensive spells.

  • /cast [@pettarget]Claw
  • /cast [@pettarget]Bite
  • /cast [@pettarget]Smack

We recommend adding these 3 lines to the end of your macros, in order for the #showtooltip part of your macros to work properly. Functionally, it makes no difference where you put them in the macro.

This ensures that you will always cast your pet's Basic Attack on cooldown, since Blizzard's automatic cast will delay each cast by up to 0.1 seconds. It is a very subtle, but real DPS increase. For more macros, please refer to our Beast Mastery Hunter macro page.

5.

Best Single-Target Opener for Beast Mastery Hunter in Dragonflight

This Opener assumes that you are using the recommended Single-Target Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter, which you can find on our Talents page.

  1. Use 2x Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shots
  2. Use Bloodshed Icon Bloodshed
  3. Use Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath
  4. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command
  5. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot
  6. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command
  7. Use Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram
  8. Use Dire Beast Icon Dire Beast
  9. Proceed with your normal rotation, according to the priority list above.
6.

Best AoE Rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter in Dragonflight

  1. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot to refresh Frenzy Icon Frenzy when it is about to fall off. Spread the DoT on as many targets as you can, using the mouseover macro in our Addons Page. If Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath is off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot charges before pressing it.
  2. Use Multi-Shot Icon Multi-Shot to apply and maintain the Beast Cleave Icon Beast Cleave buff on your pet. You should try to refresh it as late as possible, generally, but without wasting other globals.
  3. Cast Kill Command Icon Kill Command if it is on 2 charges, so that its cooldown is always rolling.
  4. Use Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram on cooldown.
  5. Use Bloodshed Icon Bloodshed on cooldown.
  6. Use Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
  7. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot when it has more than "1.2" charges, meaning shortly after its first charge has come off cooldown. You should also cast Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot if doing so would reset the cooldown of Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath. 1 Barbed will take off 12 seconds, and 2 of them will take off 24 seconds.
  8. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command on cooldown.
  9. Use Kill Shot Icon Kill Shot on cooldown.
  10. Use Cobra Shot Icon Cobra Shot when you have more than 80 Focus.
7.

Best Dragonflight AoE Opener for Beast Mastery Hunter

This Opener assumes that you are using the recommended Mythic+/AoE Talents for Beast Mastery Hunter, which you can find on our Talents page.

  1. Use Multi-Shot Icon Multi-Shot to get Beast Cleave Icon Beast Cleave going on your pet early.
  2. Use 2x Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot, on different targets.
  3. Use Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath
  4. Use Multi-Shot Icon Multi-Shot
  5. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command
  6. Use Barbed Shot Icon Barbed Shot, ideally on a third target.
  7. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command
  8. Use Multi-Shot Icon Multi-Shot
  9. Use Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram
  10. Use Kill Command Icon Kill Command
  11. Use Dire Beast Icon Dire Beast
  12. Proceed with your normal rotation, according to the priority list above.
8.

Best Cooldown Usage for Beast Mastery Hunter

We do not have a lot of cooldowns as Beast Mastery Hunters, and the ones we do have, are used on cooldown with no special efforts to synchronize them. If you see an opportunity to delay a cooldown like Death Chakram Icon Death Chakram for a few seconds in order to line it up with Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath, then you should do so, but this is not all-important, and even optimized simulations do not bother with this.

The same goes for your potion. The ideal way to use your Potion for DPS is to identify the highest DPS points of a fight via log analysis, and committing your potions there. However, you may want to prioritize using your Potion for moments in a fight that are important to make the fight as easy as possible, rather than your overall DPS.

9.

Beast Mastery Hunter Tips and Tricks for Mythic+

For information about Mythic+ as a Beast Mastery Hunter, please refer to our Mythic+ page.

10.

Best WeakAuras for Beast Mastery Hunters in Dragonflight

WeakAuras can have a tremendously positive effect on your performance. Since this is a broad topic, we made a page dedicated to it.

11.

Rotation Help for Beast Mastery Hunter

Thanks for reading my Rotation Guide for Beast Mastery Hunter. If you have any questions about it that you would like to ask me directly, feel free to drop into my Discord Server and drop me (Azortharion) a ping at any time.

12.

Changelog

  • 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
  • 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
  • 24 Jan. 2023: Clarified that you should Barbed Shot Multidot with the mouseover macro offered on the guide.
  • 08 Jan. 2023: Added a checkbox for the Neltharax Bow and appropriate rotational changes.
  • 11 Dec. 2022: Fixed an issue where Dire Beast was missing from the opener.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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