Beast Mastery Hunter PvP Talents and Builds (The War Within Pre-Patch)

Note that builds here are generic recommendations for Arena. There are tweaks that are effective in certain matchups. A description of suggested alterations or options is included with each build.

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies and matchups than others.

Survival Tactics is the best overall PvP Talent. It turns Feign Death into your best defensive ability by negating damage for three seconds. This talent is very powerful into burst specializations when timed correctly.

When facing matchups where you are guaranteed to not be attacked, there are occasionally better options, but it is safer to just always play this talent.

Kindred Beasts is a default pick for Beast Mastery Hunters in most cases. Usually you will use this with a Cunning pet for the additional mobility for you as well as your pet, but it is also very powerful with a Tenacity pet when you expect to be the kill target, and the Ferocity effect is situationally decent.

• Cunning pets: The reduced cooldown on Master's Call is great for countering one of Beast Mastery's biggest weaknesses: pets being prone to getting slowed or rooted. Often, you will want to use Master's Call to break your pet out of a Frost Nova or Earthgrab Totem, and with the reduced cooldown, the opportunity cost of using Master's Call to break your pet out of slows is greatly reduced. It is also very helpful for your own mobility (and the rest of your team, as the freedom effect does not affect nearby allies).
• Tenacity: Your Fortitude of the Bear (which is usable while you are in crowd control as long as your pet is not in crowd control) now has a one minute cooldown and increases the health of nearby allies by 10% for 10 seconds
• Ferocity: Your Primal Rage is now usable in Arena and grants 12% haste for 20 seconds to your team.

Chimaeral Sting is a versatile ability that can be used in many ways, for example:

• To silence an enemy healer while bursting their partner (note that it does damage on application and the silence only applies after 3 seconds, so you cannot chimaeral sting during or immediately after a trap)
• To silence a healer before swapping to them (particularly good against priests as they cannot use Pain Suppression when silenced, when they would have been able to if you swapped with Intimidation)
• To peel a DPS on their go (for example, use Chimaeral Sting on a Mage when they cast Dragon's Breath; they will still be able to Polymorph your healer, but will be silenced immediately afterward and not be able to capitalize on the Polymorph, or cancel a Shaman's Lightning Lasso when you know it is coming)
• To cancel a Restoration Druid's Tranquility by casting Chimaeral Sting before they use it
• To deny a healer's trinket by casting Chimaeral Sting when they are stunned (when they trinket the stun, they are instantly silenced)
• To apply a powerful slow to a melee DPS when you have no other options

The Beast Within will give a slight damage bonus to all of your pets but will also make you and your pet immune to fear and horror effects for 8 seconds after using Bestial Wrath. It is important to note that you can use Bestial Wrath during crowd control, but even with this talent, Bestial Wrath will not break fears on yourself. You must use Bestial Wrath before the fear hits you to be immune to it.

Dire Beast: Basilisk is a powerful, damaging ability against unaware players. Usually, this is used when playing with a Death Knight, who is able to lock down targets into one area and heavily slow them. The spawned Basilisk does a surprising amount of damage when a player does not move away from it. This is easily countered, though, so it is not played often.

Tranquilizing Darts is a very powerful talent into Restoration Druids specifically (especially if they are playing with caster DPS or Demon Hunters who you can interrupt Counter Shot for the maximum benefit) but has little value in other specializations. You should press Tranquilizing Shot after Restoration Druids press Overgrowth or Swiftmend when using this talent.

Diamond Ice makes your Freezing Trap undispellable but reduces the duration and makes the target immune to all spells while active. This is useful:

• Against Shadow Priests, Demon Hunters, and Affliction/Destruction Warlocks that are otherwise able to dispel your Freezing Trap
• To crowd control DPS players without the healer being able to dispel the trap
• To keep a target at low health (you can trap a target at low health and swap to another enemy, and their healer will not be able to recover the target's health during the trap).
• When you are playing with a specialization like Unholy Death Knight, which has area of effect built into a lot of its spells and would otherwise break traps if a healer was near your kill target.

Interlope is powerful into casters and hunters. You can Interlope your healer when they are stunned, to eat an enemy Hunter's Freezing Trap or use it on yourself/your team to absorb spell casts. The pet positioning requirement of this spell can make it awkward to use, but when used properly, it is a very powerful defensive talent. (Remember that you need to talent into Misdirection to use this!)

Hunting Pack is a mobility talent that vastly reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Cheetah and applies its buff to your teammates but requires your teammates to be within 15 yards. There are better talents available to you in most cases, but this is occasionally worth taking.

Wild Kingdom will help you keep your pet alive. With proper positioning of your pet and using Mend Pet and Exhilaration properly, your pet should not die often. Remember that if your team already has a Mortal Strike effect, you can use a Mechanical family pet, which will be significantly more tanky than a regular pet anyway.

Dire Beast: Hawk does some area of effect damage in a 10-yard radius, but the damage isn't significant, and in Arena, where you want damage to be focused more on one target, Dire Beast: Basilisk is more valuable against a target that isn't moving.

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you have access to "Exotic" pet families through your Exotic Beasts passive. The benefit of Exotic pets over regular pets is that they have an extra Exotic ability. This is the only benefit, and their damage is not tuned higher than regular pets.

Counterintuitively, you will not use Exotic pets often in PvP. This is because there is only one Exotic pet type which has the Mortal Strike effect, which is Devilsaurs.

Unfortunately, Devilsaurs belong to the Ferocity family, which is the least useful pet family, and their exotic ability Feast has no meaningful benefit over regular pets.

You will always play with the talent Animal Companion, though, which will give you a second pet at all times. The pet you choose to summon with Animal Companion is purely cosmetic, and it does not use special abilities or grant bonuses based on the type of pet.

The pet category of your Animal Companion may make it vulnerable to certain crowd control spells, but this will rarely make a difference in Arena an enemy casting crowd control on a secondary pet is unlikely to get any value from it. It may be worth avoiding using an Undead Animal Companion, though, so Retribution Paladins cannot accidentally stun it with Wake of Ashes

The explanation of pet choices in this guide goes into a lot of detail, but the following pet Families have Mortal Strike (also known as Mortal Wounds) and are your default choices.

• Undead Raptor (default)
• Rodent (if facing a Retribution Paladin).
• Riverbeast (if you are worried about dying in a stun)

You can use other pets when your team already has a Mortal Wounds effect, but doing this does risk your team having slightly lower uptime on the Mortal Strike debuff (e.g., when your partner isn't able to connect or when you switch targets).

Pets do not have talent trees and instead have their own types of specialization (Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity).

Each pet specialization gives an active ability and a passive ability.

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, your active pet specialisation ability will be enhanced when you play the Kindred Beasts PvP talent.

• Cunning pets provide Pathfinding and Master's Call
• Tenacity pets provide Fortitude of the Bear and Endurance Training
• Ferocity pets provide Primal Rage (which is not usable in arena unless you have the Kindred Beasts talent!) and Predator's Thirst

Usually, your default pet should be of the Cunning specialization. This specialization will keep you the most mobile and help you avoid sustained damage by making it easier to kite enemies.

Importantly, choosing a Cunning pet will also increase your pet's movement speed and Master's Call will give you the ability to dispel slows or roots from your pet to keep them on target. You should be aware of when your pet is rooted and use Master's Call whenever it is to maintain their damage and allow you to use your core rotational ability Kill Command.

When you are facing a composition that can only kill you by bursting during stun windows, kiting becomes less important, and Tenacity pets become very powerful. The very common examples of matchups where you would use a tenacity pet are RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) in 3v3 or Subtlety Rogue + Mage or Priest teams in 2v2. Be aware that you cannot use Fortitude of the Bear while your pet is in crowd control (which is particularly relevant when you are facing RMP and the Mage uses Ring of Frost on your pet).

There are situations when you can also save your teammate using Fortitude of the Bear when using the Kindred Beasts talent, as it will temporarily the health of nearby allies by 10%.

The leech effect from Ferocity pets has little value as Beast Mastery, as the bulk of your damage is done by pets, and you will not receive much healing to yourself. Without Kindred Beasts, you also will not be able to use Primal Rage in Arena.

Occasionally, you may encounter a situation in the Arena where neither the Cunning or Tenacity effects are useful to you, and in those situations, you can use a Ferocity pet with Kindred Beasts, as it will make Primal Rage usable in Arena and reduce the cooldown to three minutes (although the haste increase is reduced to 12% and the duration reduced to 20 seconds).

However, combining a Ferocity pet with Kindred Beasts is an exceptionally powerful tactic in Battlegrounds, when the effect will hit many allies at once at the start of a fight and give your team a noticeable advantage.

• Raptor Family (choose an undead raptor)

Use an Undead Raptor against teams that have a Mage, Shaman, Druid, or Hunter (so your pet is immune to Polymorph, Hex, Hibernate and Scare Beast).

• Rodent Family

Use a Rodent against a team that has a Priest or Paladin (so your pet is immune to Wake of Ashes, Turn Evil and Shackle Undead).

• Aqiri Family

Use an Aqiri pet because it has the Exotic passive ability Dune Strider, this will lead to your pet having higher uptime (and therefore damage) on your targets. Aqiri Pets also provide Tendon Rip, which will not always be active as the cooldown is longer than the duration, but is a nice crowd control on your target that will sometimes save you from using a global cooldown on Concussive Shot.

• Mechanical Family

Use a mechanical pet when you think your pet is likely to take damage and require maintenance with Mend Pet. Mechanical pets are immune to all category-specific crowd control and have the automatic Defense Matrix to boost its survivability.

• Riverbeast Family

Use a Riverbeast because it is a Tenacity pet with Mortal Wounds.

Use a Spirit Beast, which has the Spirit Mend ability to provide additional healing to your team. This can be used whilst you are in crowd control as long as your pet is not crowd-controlled, which can help you survive stuns. I recommend that you include Spirit Mend in your Fortitude of the Bear and Roar of Sacrifice macros rather than leaving it on auto-cast. This saves you a keybind and ensures that the heal is only used when a teammate actually needs it (rather than potentially being wasted when a friendly target who is not going to die reaches low health). Even if Fortitude of the Bear or Roar of Sacrifice are on cooldown, you can use the macros to cast Spirit Mend when Spirit Mend is off cooldown.

• Beetle Family

Use a Beetle pet when you think your pet is likely to take damage and require maintenance with Mend Pet because it has the automatic defensive Harden Carapace to boost its survivability.

• Wasp Family

Use a Wasp because it is a Ferocity pet with Mortal Wounds and the smaller model makes it less visible than a Devilsaur.

Use a Clefthoof if you expect your pet to take consistent damage throughout an arena game, as it has increased armor and healing received through Blood of the Rhino.

• Scalehide Family

Use a Scalehide pet if you expect your pet to take burst damage during an arena game because it has the automatic defensive Scale Shield to boost its survivability.

Pets have their own ability based on their pet family. Some families have the same ability with a different name, but they all have the same effect as the categories below.

• Defence: eg. Bristle
• Dodge: eg. Agile Reflexes
• Magic Defence: eg. Shimmering Scales
• Mortal Wounds: eg. Infected Bite
• Pet Cure / Dispel: eg. Serenity Dust
• Slow: eg. Tendon Rip
• Triggered Defence: eg. Hardy

If your team does not have a Mortal Wounds effect, you should always use a pet that has mortal wounds.

If your team already has a mortal wounds effect, you're free to pick from families with the other abilities. When that is the case, you almost always want to use a pet with the defense family ability, which makes it much harder for the enemy team to kill your pet. You can set the ability to auto-cast, and it will automatically use the defense ability (e.g., Bristle) when it gets to low health.

The advantage of Exotic Pets is that they each have a special Family ability which is unique to that family of pets and is in addition to their Specialisation abilities and pet abilities.

The Exotic Ability of each Exotic Pet Family is listed below with the Specialisation of that Pet Family.

• Molten Hide (Core Hound: Ferocity)
• Froststorm Breath (Chimaera: Ferocity)
• Feast (Devilsaur: Ferocity)
• Blood of the Rhino (Clefthoof: Ferocity)
• Calcified Carapace (Carapid: Tenacity)
• Eternal Guardian (Stone Hound: Tenacity)
• Spirit Mend, Spirit Walk (Spirit Beast: Tenacity)
• Burrow Attack (Worm: Tenacity)
• Calcified Carapace (Krolusk: Tenacity)
• Shimmering Shale (Shale Beast: Tenacity)
• Dune Strider (Aqiri: Tenacity)
• Surface Trot (Water Strider: Tenacity)
• Ancient Hide (Pterrordax: Tenacity)

Unfortunately, the only Exotic Pet with Mortal Wounds is a Devilsaur, which has a relatively useless Exotic Ability, so does not have a power advantage over regular pets, and is of the Ferocity Specialisation, so is not used often in Arena either way.

The most noteworthy Exotic pets in Arena are:

Spirit Beasts that will give you a small amount of bonus healing that can be used whilst you are crowd-controlled (you can either have Spirit Mend set to auto-cast, and it will heal any friendly target who is low health, or you can macro it with abilities such as Fortitude of the Bear, Exhilaration, or Roar of Sacrifice if you want it to only be used when you or a teammate are in danger).

Aqiri, who have greatly increased movement speed and will therefore be more difficult for enemies to avoid in Arena.

All NPCs in World of Warcraft have a category (e.g., humanoid, beast, undead, demon, or mechanical). Certain crowd control abilities will only be able to affect certain categories.

For example:

• Polymorph can only be cast on humanoids and beasts
• Scare Beast and Hibernate can only be cast on beasts
• Shackle Undead can only be cast on undeads
• Turn Evil can only be cast on undead and demons

Pets can be of the categories Beast, Undead, Demon, Mechanical, or Dragonkin.

Ideally, if you are facing a team that can only use a crowd control ability on certain categories of pets, you would use a pet with a different category. This is because the other team can potentially crowd-control your pet before a setup, and you will not be able to use important pet abilities and utility (eg. Roar of Sacrifice, Master's Call, Fortitude of the Bear or Intimidation).

For example:

• To avoid Polymorph Hibernate, or Scare Beast, you would use an Undead/Demon/Mechanical pet
• To avoid Wake of Ashes, Turn Evil, or Shackle Undead, you would use a Beast/Mechanical pet

The main moment that this is relevant is against Retribution Paladins. When a Retribution Paladin is bursting; they will use Wake of Ashes, and if you are using an Undead pet, you will not be able to use Roar of Sacrifice on the burst.

The other time it may be relevant is into Mages, who may Polymorph your pet before bursting, so you are unable to use Roar of Sacrifice. Note that if a Mage uses Polymorph on your pet, they are unable to also Polymorph your healer, so it is not vital to avoid running Beast pets into Mages if it means that you lose a more important pet bonus (e.g., not being able to use a Tenacity pet into a setup comp like Rogue Mage Priest, where you need to survive burst while stunned).