Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (Season 1)

• Casting Kill Command as much as possible, both on single-target and AoE.
• Managing your Focus — Never capping it but also ensuring you have enough Focus to cast Kill Command off cooldown.

• All the same goals as the single-target Rotation.
• Maintaining Beast Cleave (by using Multi-Shot) at 100% uptime, ensuring that all your pet abilities are constantly dealing AoE damage.
• Being extra careful with Focus management to ensure that you can always refresh Beast Cleave as late as possible while simultaneously casting all your Kill Commands on cooldown.

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.

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 small but real DPS increase. There is no reason not to do this, even if Blizzard eventually fixes it. For more macros, please refer to our Beast Mastery Hunter macro page.

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.

In the Single-Target and AoE sections, you will find a highly detailed priority list breakdown of the Rotation, as well as optimal openers.

1. Ensure Hunter's Mark is active on the target from you or another Hunter in the group!
2. Pre-cast Bestial Wrath around 1s before the fight begins, ideally without targeting the boss.
3. Use Barbed Shot — Gets our pet sent in and gets Frenzy rolling.
4. Use Dire Beast
5. Use all of your Kill Commands and Barbed Shots in alternating order, until you run out of both of them.
6. Use Black Arrow
7. Use Call of the Wild alongside your Potion and stat-granting on-use Trinkets.
8. Use Bloodshed
9. Use Kill Command
10. Use your Kill Shot proc from Black Arrow.
11. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.
12. Use Explosive Shot as a filler when Bestial Wrath is over.

This priority list describes the optimal single-target Rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter

1. 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. If Bestial Wrath or Call of the Wild are off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot charges before pressing them, if Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks. If Call of the Wild is off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot charges before pressing it, if Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks.
2. Use Dire Beast on cooldown.
3. Use Black Arrow on cooldown.
4. Use Kill Shot if Serpent Sting has less than 6 seconds remaining.
5. Use Call of the Wild on cooldown. Make sure to dump all of your Kill Commands first.
6. Use Bloodshed on cooldown.
7. Use Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
8. Use Kill Command on cooldown.
9. Use Kill Shot if Serpent Sting has less than 6 seconds remaining.
10. Use Barbed Shot on cooldown. If your Haste is well below 20%, which is the threshold at which full Frenzy uptime becomes a matter of course, you may want to take care not to refresh it too early.
11. Barbed Shot to prevent it from reaching 2 charges. With Wild Call specced, cast Barbed Shot at just "1.4" charges, meaning when its second charge is about halfway towards coming off cooldown. You should simply use it on cooldown when Call of the Wild is active. 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.
12. Cast Cobra Shot during Bestial Wrath to generate Kill Command resets.
13. Use Explosive Shot on cooldown. Do not cast it during Bestial Wrath, we want the Focus to generate Kill Command resets with Cobra Shot instead.
14. Use Kill Shot on cooldown.
15. Use Cobra Shot when you have nothing else to do.

1. Ensure Hunter's Mark is active on the highest HP target from you or another Hunter in the group!
2. Use 2 Barbed Shots on two different targets.
3. Use Multi-Shot to activate Beast Cleave
4. Use Black Arrow
5. Use Dire Beast
6. Use Call of the Wild
7. Use Bloodshed
8. Use Bestial Wrath
9. Use Multi-Shot to refresh Beast Cleave
10. Use Kill Command
11. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.
12. Try to fill in with Explosive Shot and your Kill Shot proc when it is not going to cost you any of Kill Command's cooldown.

This priority list describes the optimal AoE rotation for Beast Mastery Hunter

1. Use Barbed Shot to refresh Frenzy if it is about to fall off. You should always multidot it, as this is a huge DPS increase, particularly with Master Handler specced. If Bestial Wrath's cooldown is less than 12 seconds, you should also use a Barbed Shot to bring it off cooldown as a high priority. If Bestial Wrath is off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot charges before pressing it, if Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks. If Bestial Wrath or Call of the Wild are off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot charges before pressing them, if Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks. If Call of the Wild is off cooldown, spend all of your Barbed Shot charges before pressing it, if Frenzy has fewer than 3 stacks.
2. Use Barrage to.. Actually, do not use Barrage at all. You should only be specced into this for pulling mobs in the open world while leveling. It is not worth pressing for damage over even Multi-Shot
3. 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. This is not an exact science — Sometimes it is sensible to refresh early if you know that another, urgent global is coming up like a Frenzy refresh. Typically, it is best to leave the refresh as late as possible and squeeze other globals in ahead of it. Remember that Multi-Shot's actual damage is quite pathetic, and its only use is to get Beast Cleave going.
4. Use Black Arrow on cooldown.
5. Use Call of the Wild on cooldown.
6. Use Bestial Wrath on cooldown.
7. Use Bloodshed on cooldown.
8. Cast Kill Command on cooldown. You should try to "snipe" targets below 35% HP with your Kill Commands, as they (and the resulting Kill Cleave) will deal 50% increased damage thanks to your Killer Instinct Talent. It is also technically optimal, but a very small gain, to cycle your A Murder of Crows debuffs on different targets, by ensuring that every 5th Kill Command is on a target that has no Crows active. The amount of brain-power required to do this optimally, considering its small gain, is probably not worth the effort.
9. Cast Barbed Shot on cooldown.
10. Barbed Shot to prevent it from reaching 2 charges. With Wild Call specced, cast Barbed Shot at just "1.2" charges, meaning when its first charge has recently come off cooldown. You should simply use it on cooldown when Call of the Wild is active. 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.
11. Cast Cobra Shot during Bestial Wrath to generate Kill Command resets.
12. Use Kill Shot to apply and refresh Serpent Sting. You should try to multidot Serpent Stings using the Kill Shots.
13. Use Dire Beast on cooldown.
14. Use Explosive Shot on cooldown.
15. Use Cobra Shot when you have more than 80 Focus.