Breaking Down Beast Mastery

While certainly not getting as much of an overhaul as Survival (no existing spec is getting as much of an overhaul as Survival,) Beast Mastery is also getting some changes to how it works. BM is, in a way, going to be the only really traditional Hunter spec, now that Marksmanship is going to be pet-less (and we'll be going over that in a later post) and Survival's going to be melee.

Beast Mastery has been pretty pet-focused for a while, but they're getting more of a focus on that than before.

Also notable is that Focus for all Hunters is going to be regenerating at a faster baseline rate. I actually think it's going to be 10 Focus per second, which I think is just the same as Energy, but I could be wrong. Still, even if it's functionally identical, Hunters will still get their unique brown-orange bar.

Actually, something I haven't talked about is that all players are actually going to start off with a spec at level 1, but they'll then be able to respec and choose a "primary spec" at level 10 (though what that actually means I don't know.) Given that BM is the only Hunter spec that's still ranged and has a pet, it shouldn't be surprising that it's the starting spec.

As always, this is Alpha, so things are subject to change.

Cobra Shot is now instant and costs 30 Focus, rather than generating Focus. It deals physical damage and appears to be your filler Focus dump. It's also the level 1 attack all Hunters will begin with.

Kill Command still has a 6-second cooldown, but now only costs 20 Focus, which, especially with the faster regen rate, should make it easy to use this on cooldown.

Dire Beast is now a baseline BM ability, summoning a beast to attack the target for 8 seconds, generating 4 Focus each time it hits the target. Summoning it will also reduce your Bestial Wrath cooldown by 15 seconds. This ability is on a 10-second cooldown, giving you a high uptime if used on cooldown.

Aspect of the Wild is a new 2-min cooldown, increasing you and your pet's crit chance by 10% and giving you 10 Focus per second for 10 seconds.

Go For the Throat causes your auto-shot crits to give your pet 15 Focus.

Wild Call gives your critical strikes a 30% chance to reset the cooldown on Dire Beast

Multi-Shot costs 40 Focus and seems to work largely the same, dealing damage to the target and everything within 8 yards.

Beast Cleave is a passive that makes your Multi-Shot cause your pet's attacks to hit all nearby enemies for 4 seconds.

Bestial Wrath has a 1.5 minute cooldown, increasing damage of you and your pet by 20% for 10 seconds.

Kindred Spirits is a passive that increases you and your pet's max Focus by 20.

Mastery: Master of Beasts continues to increase your pet's damage.

So the rotation is pretty straightforward, though remember that this is before we incorporate talents or artifact traits.

1. Dire Beast on cooldown, which is of course variable thanks to Wild Call.
2. Kill Command
3. Cobra Shot if you're going to have enough Focus to do your next Kill Command on its cooldown.

Bestial Wrath is also on a short enough cooldown that you probably just want to use it whenever it's up. In multi-target situations, it might be as simple as using Multi-Shot instead of Cobra Shot.