Beast Mastery Hunter in Shadowlands - DPS Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries

geposted 09.11.2020 um 19:33 von Impakt

IntroductionState of Beast MasteryBM Hunter Guide

Hello! I'm Impakt, the range DPS officer for BDGG, the #2 North American guild. I have been playing WoW for over a decade, and have been a high-end raider since MoP. I currently play Hunter and Warlock for BDGG, but I have played many other classes and specs competitively in past tiers. My primary focus in-game is progression raiding. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to chat, the best way to get ahold of me is through Twitter @Impaktx.

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Vengeance Demon Hunter

Demonology Warlock

Restoration Druid

What has Changed for Beast Mastery Hunter?TalentsShadowlands Leveling Perks (52) - Makes your heal 15% more of your pet's health, which is a ~42% increase. This is a significant increase, which just means your pet can tank more enemies at once while leveling. This is not exactly a problem to begin with though, and will only be really noticeable if you are doing huge pulls while leveling.

(54) - You get 10 focus back from successfully dispelling.

(56) - Reduces the cooldown of your and by 5 seconds.

(58) - Increases 's crit damage by 25%. This is a nice DPS upgrade, but just means Kill Shot will hit harder sometimes.

Hunter Covenant Abilities
Kyrian

is the Kyrian Covenant Hunter Class Ability. Currently, this is performing the best out of any Covenant ability, and for good reason. Combined with the Conduit, Resonating Arrow is a powerful 1-minute cooldown that gives a solid damage amp and 30% crit chance to all targets in an area, which usually can be lined up with and for some solid burst damage. Resonating Arrow is great on both AoE and single target, making it a solid all-around option and the best choice for damage output going into Shadowlands. There is also the added benefit that while Resonating Arrow is active, your attacks will ignore line of sight on anyone affected, which means you can be hitting targets from around a corner during a particularly dangerous pull.
is the Kyrian-specific Conduit for Hunters that buffs . As I mentioned above, this is part of the reason that Resonating Arrow is so potent, and is one of the best Conduit options if you are Kyrian. The damage amplification from the Conduit scales nicely, and you can expect an ~11% damage buff from a rank 6 or 7 version of the Conduit while Resonating Arrow is active.
provides , which is a potion that can be used to clear some debuffs and heal you slightly. This potion is on its own separate cooldown and can be used once per encounter. This is the strongest defensive ability out of any Covenant, specifically for dungeons. Frequently going in and out of combat in dungeons means you get frequent resets on the Phials, which means you can use them regularly. Most importantly though, there are several poisons, bleeds, and other debuffs in dungeons where being able to clear them on demand is invaluable. This is not quite as useful inside the raid since the debuffs in the raid are designed to not be removable by Phials, but it still is just another on demand heal and a great defensive tool.

Venthyr

is the Venthyr Covenant Hunter Class Ability. Flayed Shot is a purely single target ability that does decent damage itself and makes your freely usable sometimes for a nice damage bonus. There are a couple of downsides to this ability though, the biggest being that it provides no extra benefit when you are attacking multiple targets, meaning it loses value on a majority of the content in raids and dungeons. Flayed Shot does not have any real interaction the Beast Mastery as a spec and does not change anything about how you play, so whether you use this ability or not purely comes down to tuning. At the moment, Flayed Shot is weaker than other Covenant options on single target, which is where it should be the strongest, meaning there is no reason to choose Venthyr if you want to maximize damage.
is the Venthyr-specific Conduit for Hunters that buffs . Unlike its Kyrian counterpart, this is a weak Conduit that adds very little to Flayed Shot. You do not get enough procs, nor do they do enough damage to make this worth a Potency Conduit slot when you only have two available at most. There are better Conduit options.
is my personal favorite signature Covenant ability. Door of Shadows lets you target a location up to 35 yards away, teleporting there after a short 1.5 second cast. This is an powerful mobility tool in any raid encounter or dungeon, and can be used freely out in the world for some very cool pathing options. It will take some getting used to, but once you are comfortable with it you will never want to be without it. To be fair, this is much less important for Hunters since we are so mobile as-is with and , but it's still a great tool to have.

Necrolord

is the Necrolord Covenant Hunter Class Ability. Essentially this is a button that you press on cooldown every 45 seconds, and it does damage and gives you a bit of focus back. The focus is not that important, so it mostly comes down to how much damage this does. At one point Death Chakram was the best option for Hunters, but had been nerfed substantially since then and is now one of the worse performing choices.
is the Necrolord-specific Conduit for Hunters that buffs . Much like its Venthyr counterpart, Necrotic Barrage does not add enough to make this worth taking. The extra focus and damage is relatively minimal on an already weak ability, and there are just better options.
is a 4-second channel that generates an absorb shield equal to 20% of your max health, or 50% if you can absorb a nearby corpse. This is a decent defensive tool to have, but has some very real downsides to it as well. The long channel means you cannot DPS during this time, which makes this not a viable choice on most raid encounters since you would much rather use something else so you can keeping DPSing instead. Most of your time using this will be pre-pull, which makes this only truly useful in dungeons. There are some decent Soulbinds that modify this to give it some extra benefits, but it still is one of the weakest signature Covenant spells available.

Night Fae

is the Night Fae Covenant Hunter Class Ability. This is a powerful 2-minute cooldown that lets you do incredible AoE damage to up to 5 targets at once. This is the next best option behind Kyrian at the moment, and has some real power behind it. The downsides to Wild Spirits are that it is not quite as strong on single target, and it is a longer cooldown which can be either good or bad, depending on what you are doing. For dungeons where you are doing bigger, less frequent pulls this might be an excellent option, but if you are doing more frequent smaller pulls this might be worse. Overall it is less damage than , but is definitely a close second.
is the Night Fae-specific Conduit for Hunters that buffs . Much like its Kyrian counterpart, this is an excellent Conduit and a strong choice if you are Night Fae. Spirit Attunement adds both damage and duration onto what is already an excellent cooldown, which makes the ability even stronger.
is a decent mobility cooldown that, for 15 seconds, gives you 50% movement speed and lets you blink forward 15 yards at a time on a shorter cooldown. This would be quite strong, except once you activate it using any other ability will take you out of the form, ending the buff. This means you have to give up damage to use it, which is a very real downside given that one of Beast Mastery's biggest strengths is its ability to DPS while moving.

Choosing a CovenantKyrianNight FaeHunter Covenant AbilitiesBest Soulbinds for Beast Mastery HunterBeast Mastery Hunter LegendariesGeneral Hunter Legendary Powers

- Unfortunate, is not as important of a DPS cooldown as it was during BFA now that we do not have Azerite Traits anymore. This is a weak throughput legendary, but does have some potentially important utility uses. Historically, some raid encounters have put heavy emphasis on immunities, and being able to significantly lower 's cooldown could be extremely useful on a future raid fight. For now though, this will not see much use.
- This is a particularly weak choice and serves no real purpose. None of our traps do damage themselves, meaning you are wasting a global to proc a trap every time, which presents a real downside against the focus gain.
- Soulforge Embers is one of my favorite legendary powers thematically, but in practice it unfortunately feels akward to use. It takes two globals to set up the combination every time, which feels slow to use. That being said, this is currently the top performing legendary, both on single target and for AoE. Soulforge Embers is an excellent all-around choice, and really shines in dungeons when you can use it every pull on multiple targets.
- Purely a utility legendary. There potentially are some niche uses in dungeons or raids where this might pop up as being useful, but it will only be useful in very specific circumstances.

Beast Mastery Legendary Powers

- is not particularly strong, which makes this a rather weak legendary. The Dire Beasts also only proc from using , which means it is not useful on AoE. This needs something more before it would be worth considering.
- Beast Mastery has a very high base Focus regeneration, which means Focus is not a big concern. Even if it was, this will save you very little focus on average. There is no reason to use this legendary at the moment.
- This is one of our better single target options. This essentially gives you an extra every time you use , which is decent, but is still a bit under tuned. It is also worth noting that as soon as you start using for AoE, this quickly becomes worse. Using this also means significantly changing your rotation since you will always need to plan for using a Kill Command after a Barbed Shot, which is very doable but is something to consider.
- Rylakstalker's is an excellent legendary that basically makes a better cooldown. This is a great choice for any situation, both single target and AoE, and synergizes well with if you decide to go Kyrian. As you get better gear you will get more and more value from this, making it a stronger choice as you get more and more gear.

Picking a LegendaryConduits for Beast Mastery HuntersHunter ConduitsPotency Conduits

(Potency Conduit) - If you played in BFA, this works very similar to how worked before. Also just like in BFA, this is an excellent option at the start of an expansion when stats will be low, and we might be struggling to keep up. Currently Bloodletting is one of the best Conduits, but it might lose a bit of value later on with better gear. For now though, it is an excellent choice.
(Potency Conduit) - This is another decent Conduit choice, but will scale in the opposite direction of . scales extremely well with crit and haste, so as you get better gear and more stats this Conduit will gain more and more value. You will almost certainly swap to this eventually, even if its in a later tier, but for now it is a bit worse since you just will not have the stats to proc Wild Call as much as you would want.
(Potency Conduit) - Since we no longer have Azerite traits, is not nearly as strong of a cooldown as it previously was. The cooldown reduction is pretty mediocre, and the ability itself is not that important, making this a rather weak Conduit compared to other options.
(Potency Conduit) - This is another excellent Conduit choice. is our most important and frequent cooldown, and this just makes it better. As you get more gear you will see higher uptimes on Bestial Wrath, which means this Conduit gains value. A strong all-around option.
(Kyrian Potency Conduit) - Very strong. If you are Kyrian, this is a must-have to pair with , giving it both a damage amplification and crit chance.
(Venthyr Potency Conduit) - Sadly is already a pretty weak ability, and this does not help it in a meaningful way. You do not get nearly enough procs for this to be substantial, which makes this a poor Conduit choice.
(Necrolord Potency Conduit) - If was better, this might be worth considering, but currently it just is not good enough. Death Chakram does pretty low damage at the moment, so increasing it by a small amount is a poor use of a Potency Conduit.
(Night Fae Potency Conduit) - Very strong. is an excellent cooldown, and this buffs both its damage and duration by a decent amount. If you are Night Fae, this is a great choice.

Endurance Conduits

(Endurance Conduit) - is a Hunter's most important defensive cooldown, but is only truly important to avoid specific pre-determined mechanics on some fights. It is possible that there will be a specific encounter where being able to use Turtle more than once every 3 minutes would let you avoid key mechanics, but this would be determined on a fight by fight basis. There are better choices for a general-use Endurance Conduit.
(Endurance Conduit) - This is a great defensive choice, especially for raid encounters. You can keep on a boss, and his abilities will just do less damage to you. For dungeons or fights with frequent target swapping this is worse since you would need to waste a global using Hunter's Mark on any new target, but it is still a very strong choice in raids.
(Endurance Conduit) - This gives you a bit more healing out of , but it is not as strong as the other Endurance Conduits. Damage reduction will be more valuable than a bit more healing in most PvE situations.
(Endurance Conduit) - This is another strong Endurance Conduit option. Instead of having permanent damage reduction against one target, this gives you on-demand, temporary damage reduction against all damage.

Finesse Conduits

(Finesse Conduit) - Relatively useless. Taking a couple of seconds off is not going to make any real difference in most situations.
(Finesse Conduit) - Decent choice. The extra duration and movement speed is a nice benefit, so if you ever have to take a Finesse Conduit slot, this is a great option.
(Finesse Conduit) - At most you are getting the focus ever 24 seconds, meaning this is pretty minimal. However, this is the only Finesse Conduit that provides any DPS benefit, meaning it is a solid choice if you will be doing content where you can interrupt frequently, specifically in dungeons or PvP.
(Finesse Conduit) - The slow could potentially have some use in dungeons when you need to kite enemies, but it will be rare. This is probably the best choice if you are forced into a second Finesse Conduit.

ConcernsConclusion

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Kommentar von Sielinthinteresting, having played all 4 covenant I rather enjoyed Venthyr for torghast

it's good to at least see a lot of the issues is just numbers as opposed to mechanically clunkyKommentar von TOMRUSBlizzard should scrap that AoE target cap nonsense. And i'm really not a fan of such clunky legendaries such as Soulforge Embers...Kommentar von Dixa1there is no way i'm using the resonating arrow conduit over the barbed arrow and BW conduits especially with how little haste we will have for a while and with stomp being the spec's only uncapped aoeKommentar von KryplixxTake Flare off GCD and set cap to 8. Done.Kommentar von kingganonAnd with tonights hotfixes, BM hunters just got nerfed by 5% to all abilities except Cobra Shot & Barbed Shot :(Kommentar von LichdemonzI like how they used the Legion SV hunter promo art for this page.Kommentar von Zyrtec1Unless it was fixed in a recent update, soulforge ember is bugged. it does not work on elites/bosses. Additionally, when you move away the dot falls off. Until the bugs are fixed, and they may have already been, this legendary is not the best in practiceKommentar von manna222Does this account for the Pelagos nerfs from last week?Kommentar von WepstarSeams to hard. I guess many players will choose wrong item, and will be kicked out from a guild...
Also I don't like those blue humans. To hell this system.
btw what about arcane shot? Any info why in the hell we need it?Kommentar von PerpantaqAnother issue that isn't mentioned here is the nerf to pets themselves. BM lost blood of the rhino (this i'm a bit unsure about) and spirit mend lost 66% of it's effectiveness. and from what I've read, the pets are a lot more squishy and so prone to die.Kommentar von MightylorddkBlizzard should scrap that AoE target cap nonsense. And i'm really not a fan of such clunky legendaries such as Soulforge Embers...Kommentar von s0515033Blizzard should scrap that AoE target cap nonsense. And i'm really not a fan of such clunky legendaries such as Soulforge Embers...Kommentar von spankyhunterso with the 5% nerf across the board & the 30 volley nerf, how will they effect all this?Kommentar von reqzWhat do you think of Wasteland propriety (venthyr, theotar soulbind) for MM+ ? I feel like uptime that hunt can bring in the group makes it a pretty interesting buff for the groupKommentar von patandpetI am truly concerned about the target cap for BM. On live servers it feels pretty bad. Would have loved to see a "Stomp" related legendary to compensate on it later on in shadowlands, maybe something that works similar to the T19 setbonus we had in Legion. Really enjoyed the "bomb-companion" playstyle!Kommentar von Ukja0132You'll have the clefthoof blood of the rhino ability by lvl 60, not sure which actually level it is nowKommentar von daughterofhornsThey bring up the issue with Animal Companion's -35% aura, but still say spitting cobra is the best option, which is contrary to every source I've read. I suppose I'll be spending some time testing today. Hm.

I also really wish they'd update the cobra model for it. BfA brought a really lovely model, and the talent still uses the vanilla cobra with jaggy edges ;;Kommentar von patandpet@ daughterofhorns
i think u got in a muddle with killer cobra and spitting cobra! ;) currently killer cobra is best for single target while aspect of the beast is best for aoe... in the 35 talent row the best option is still thrill of the hunt not spitting cobra... and that is exactly whats recommended in the guide above ;)Kommentar von MightyBunnyKingI play BM how I like it.
That means Night Fae. That means using Dire Command legendary. That means using the talents I enjoy.

I hate articles such as these. People should play what they LIKE. Not what is supposedly 'best'.Kommentar von MacaconesI'm kinda sad that you guys used the Survival Hunter picture at the thumbnail. :(

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Beast Mastery Hunter in Shadowlands - DPS Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries

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