3/2/31 – Best Hunter DPS Build Patch 4.0.3a

This is going to be your best build as a Survival Hunter.  Tweaks to this build can include things like removing 2 points from Efficiency and choosing Point of No Escape for enemies that can be effected by your traps.

If you’re looking for AoE dmg you’re definitely going to want to max out Point of No Escape plus Serpent Spread.

Then the same rules apply, you can nerf out all of those points and just go ahead and get Go for the Throat and Bestial Discipline if for some reason you want your pet to do more dps, but honestly, just stick to the script here bro and use this talent build.

These are the most popular glyphs used by Marksmanship Hunters in Patch 4.0.3a

Prime Glyphs

Glyph of Steady Shot, Glyph of Kill Shot, Glyph of Arcane Shot

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Disengage, Glyph of Misdirection, Glyph of Trap Launcher

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Feign Death, Glyph of Mend Pet, Glyph of Revive Pet

3/31/2 – Best Marksmanship DPS Build

There aren’t really any alternatives to this build that are worth a crap, some minor modifications we can make to it.  For example, instead of Improved Serpent Sting you can pick Pathing which increases your haste, you may find this more beneficial, I don’t know you’d have to try it.

You could also drop the 3 points in One with Nature and put that into Pathing and if for some reason you want to enhance your pets you can move the points out of Improved Serpent Sting and One With Nature and move those points into Bestial Discipline and Improved Kill Command, but really…this one is probably the best.  But do test out for yourself!

Here is a list of the most popular Beast Mastery Hunter Glyphs for Patch 4.0.3a

Prime Glyphs

Glyph of Steady Shot, Glyph of Kill Shot, Glyph of Arcane Shot

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Bestial Wrath, Glyph of Disengage, Glyph of Misdirection

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Mend Pet, Glyph of Feign Death, Glyph of Revive Pet

31/5/0 - Best Hunter DPS Build for Beast Mastery

A 31/5/0 talent build is currently the best dps for a Hunter in Beast Mastery spec.

Having Go for the Throat from the Marksmanship tree is a great compliment to your pet dps and choosing Improved Kill Command over Bestial Discipline is questionable but you’d have to test it yourself for your setup on a target dummy or in a real instance.

Swap the two points from Improved Kill Command to finish off Bestial Discipline and see how that does.  Some players have suggested going with a 32/2/2 build instead.

Alternative Beast Mastery Raiding Build 32/2/2

With this build you get to max out Improved Kill Command and Bestial Discipline at the cost of losing Efficiency, but also picking up Improved Serpent Sting.  So between those variations see which one works best for you.

Hunter

• All special attacks based on weapon damage (except Scattershot) are now normalized.
• Scare Beast is now available at level 36, up from level 14, and has had its training cost updated.
• Deterrence is now available at level 78, up from level 36, and has had its training cost updated.
• Disengage is now available at level 14, down from level 78, and has had its training cost updated.

  Glyphs

  • The level requirements for glyphs that affect Scare Beast, Deterrence, and Disengage have been altered to correspond with the level changes of these abilities.

  Bug Fixes

  • The Core Hound pet ability Ancient Hysteria now places its own unique debuff on affected players that has the same effect as Sated and Exhaustion.
  • Certain pets should no longer forget how to Dash.

Hunters

• Five pets can now be stored with the hunter at all times. Any one of these five pets can be summoned via the [Call Pet] ability.
• Focus has replaced mana as a new resource.
• Hunters now start with a pet at level 1.
• The Stable will now store 20 pets. If a pet is moved into the Stable, its talents are wiped.

In the upcoming patch 3.3.3 there are not many Hunter changes.  Some modifications to pets mainly and how some of their skills work.

Ferocious Inspiration is being changed to an Aura with 100 yd radius that gives a 1/2/3% damage buff to party members and a 3/6/9% increase to steady shot damage.

The changes to steady shot damage from Ferocious Inspiration will probably do little to enhance BM Hunters for raiding again, but every bit helps.

Playing a Beast Mastery Hunter for raids is probably one of the easiest things to do.  The rotation is simple and there’s not all that much to it, besides the fact, that the typical Beast Mastery Hunter is not capable of doing as much DPS as a Survival/Marksmanship Hunter; it can still put out an okay amount of DPS.  Even Shandra’s sheet at Elitistjerks has Beast Mastery lagging way behind in DPS.  If you still want to play Beast Mastery on raids for whatever reason, this is one of the better ways you’re going to want to do it.

In the older days, when you could easily lead raid DPS with a Beast Mastery Hunter, (this was even possible toward the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King), the challenge was in keeping your pet alive.  Now they’ve standardized all the pets, gave them some buffs, made the game really easy, it’s really rare that your pet dies unless it gets direct aggro, and it’s can be really easy to get your pet back into combat with instant resurrection abilities you can take inside the pet talent tree.

There are many variations of the Beast Mastery Build you are going to use for raiding.  The best one that’s been tested is 53/14/4 but the one that I use and have had the most luck and best results with is this 53/18/0 talent build.  Yes, I actually weave in Aimed Shot, for the gear I had at the time it netted the best DPS results, infact, my DPS was as much as 500 higher in most cases just from Aimed Shot being in the rotation.

So then that gives us a Beast Mastery Shot Rotation Priority of:

Kill Shot > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot

Always make sure serpent sting is up.

The glyph choice then puts us at:

Bestial Wrath, Steady Shot, Serpent Sting; and you could put in Kill Shot instead of Serpent Sting if you wanted.

For Beast Mastery Macros I actually have a one button Macro I spam, this is the only tree that you can kind of get away with this and be efficient at the moment, although I’ve created some pretty efficient, and I am still working on macros for the other trees.