Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.1
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
- 2. Rotation WeakAuras for Beast Mastery Hunter
- 3. Pre-Combat Checklist for Maximum DPS
- 4. Best Dragonflight Beast Mastery Hunter Single-Target Rotation
- 5. Best Single-Target Opener for Beast Mastery Hunter in Dragonflight
- 6. Best AoE Rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter in Dragonflight
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.
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.
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 on cooldown and maintaining the
Frenzy buff on your pet, by using
Barbed Shot, while
regulating your Focus with
Cobra Shot. On AoE, you
need to
Multi-Shot regularly to maintain the powerful
Beast Cleave buff on your pet.
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.
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 automatically, and it
lets you focus on the rest of the rotation.
Pre-Combat Checklist for Maximum DPS
- Ensure that you have eaten appropriate Food, according to our Consumables page
- Ensure your correct pet is summoned and awake. Use this WeakAura to keep you alerted.
- Ensure you have your Flask buff active. See our Consumables page).
- Activate your
Draconic Augment Rune.
Best Dragonflight Beast Mastery Hunter Single-Target Rotation
The single target rotation for a Beast Mastery Hunter is based on the following priority system.
-
Use
Barbed Shot to refresh
Frenzy when it is about to fall off. If
Bestial Wrath is off cooldown, spend all of your
Barbed Shot charges before pressing it, if
Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks.
-
Cast
Kill Command if it is on 2 charges, so that its cooldown is always rolling.
-
Use
Death Chakram on cooldown.
-
Use
Bloodshed on cooldown.
- Use
Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
- Use
Kill Shot on cooldown.
- Use
Kill Command on cooldown.
-
Use
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 if doing so would reset the cooldown of
Bestial Wrath. 1 Barbed will take off 12 seconds, and 2 of them will take off 24 seconds.
- Use
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 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 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.
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.
- Use 2x
Barbed Shots
- Use
Bloodshed
- Use
Bestial Wrath
- Use
Kill Command
- Use
Barbed Shot
- Use
Kill Command
- Use
Death Chakram
- Use
Dire Beast
- Proceed with your normal rotation, according to the priority list above.
Best AoE Rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter in Dragonflight
-
Use
Barbed Shot to refresh
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 is off cooldown, spend all of your
Barbed Shot charges before pressing it.
-
Use
Multi-Shot to apply and maintain the
Beast Cleave buff on your pet. You should try to refresh it as late as possible, generally, but without wasting other globals.
-
Cast
Kill Command if it is on 2 charges, so that its cooldown is always rolling.
-
Use
Death Chakram on cooldown.
-
Use
Bloodshed on cooldown.
- Use
Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
-
Use
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 if doing so would reset the cooldown of
Bestial Wrath. 1 Barbed will take off 12 seconds, and 2 of them will take off 24 seconds.
- Use
Kill Command on cooldown.
- Use
Kill Shot on cooldown.
-
Use
Cobra Shot when you have more than 80 Focus.
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.
-
Use
Multi-Shot to get
Beast Cleave going on your pet early.
- Use 2x
Barbed Shot, on different targets.
- Use
Bestial Wrath
- Use
Multi-Shot
- Use
Kill Command
- Use
Barbed Shot, ideally on a third target.
- Use
Kill Command
- Use
Multi-Shot
- Use
Death Chakram
- Use
Kill Command
- Use
Dire Beast
- Proceed with your normal rotation, according to the priority list above.
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
for a few seconds in order to line it up with
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.
Beast Mastery Hunter Tips and Tricks for Mythic+
For information about Mythic+ as a Beast Mastery Hunter, please refer to our Mythic+ page.
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.
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.
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.
More Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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