Beastmaster 5 man

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Rankings are based on the following ability priority:

IcyVeinsGuide

The 5 Man Guide

Hunter Macros

1)  Hunter’s Mark is applied to target before encounter
2)  Serpent Sting is applied and maintained by  Cobra Shot
3)  Focus Fire at 5 stacks of  Frenzy
4)  Kill Command
5)  Kill Shot when boss is under 20%
6)  Glaive Toss
7)  Arcane Shot
8)  Cobra Shot when you need more focus

5.5. Opening Sequence

As a Beast Mastery Hunter, you possess a large number of cooldowns. We will provide you with an example of an opening sequence that maximises the gains from cooldowns:

  1. Make sure that Hunter's Mark Icon Hunter’s Mark is applied to the target.
  2. Cast Rabid Icon Rabid.
  3. Cast Lynx Rush Icon Lynx Rush, Dire Beast Icon Dire Beast, Stampede Icon Stampede, Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath, and Rapid Fire Icon Rapid Fire (the order only matters insofar as Rapid Fire Icon Rapid Fire is used last).
  4. Cast Kill Command Icon Kill Command.
  5. Cast Glaive Toss Icon Glaive Toss.
  6. Cast Readiness Icon Readiness to reset the cooldowns of all your abilities (except for Stampede).
  7. Cast Kill Command Icon Kill Command.
  8. Cast Dire Beast Icon Dire Beast.
  9. Cast Lynx Rush Icon Lynx Rush (make sure that the previous Lynx Rush is over before re-casting it; it should take about 4 seconds from the previous cast for Lynx Rush to end).
  10. Cast Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath.
  11. Cast Glaive Toss Icon Glaive Toss.
  12. As soon as the second Bestial Wrath fades, cast the second Rapid Fire.

You will notice that we recommended stacking the first Rapid Fire with Bestial Wrath, contrary to what we advise earlier in the guide. This is an exception, because the cooldown of your Bestial Wrath will be reset right away by Readiness. So, even if the benefit of using it then is greatly diminished, it is still an improvement.

Hunter’s Mark and Focus Fire are your highest priorities. You do not want to lose these buffs. The only exception to this rule is to not cast Focus Fire if you’re going to use Bestial Wrath. It is better to let your pet keep its Frenzy stacks during Bestial Wrath. Maintain Serpent Sting by refreshing it with Cobra Shot. Also, you should only activate Focus Fire when you pet has 5 Frenzy for optimal uptime on Focus Fire.

Kill Command and Glaive Toss should be used on cooldown. Use Kill Shot when the mob is at or below 20% Health. Beyond that, use Arcane Shot to avoid hitting the Focus Cap, but do not use all of your Focus on Arcane Shot. Always keep at least 40 Focus so that you can Kill Command when it comes up. Use Cobra Shot when low on focus (0-50) and Kill Command is on cooldown.

Cooldowns:

1)  Beastial Wrath
2)  Rapid Fire
3)  Readiness
4)  Rabid
5)  Stampede
6)  Dire Beast
7)  Lynx Rush

Effective Cooldowns – 5.0.5

Bestial Wrath

Our shortest length “big” cooldown, it lasts for 10 seconds and has a 1 minute cooldown. The primary benefit of Bestial Wrath is that it reduces the focus cost of all our focus costing abilities by 50% via  The Beast Within. In addition it increases the pets damage done by 20% and hunters damage done by 10% for the duration.
During Bestial Wrath you do not want to use Cobra Shot to regenerate focus, since the only benefit to Cobra Shot is 10% more damage, you do, however want to use 1 or 2 CoS to keep up your Serpent Sting over the course of a dual BW through Readiness.

Stampede

Stampede is our long, big, cooldown. It summons all 5 pets you have ready to summon. Stampede pets work exactly like normal pets except they can’t proc frenzy or invigoration, and do not benefit from Go for the Throat procs. Your summoned pets have all their abilities set as if you had summoned them yourself individually. Make sure your pets have Rabid and their specials and basic attacks on autocast, make sure they have growl off autocast and make sure they are ferocity specced.
Due to the Stampede pets working like normal, including focus use, you will ideally want to have them out while under focus regeneration effects like Rapid Fire and Focus Fire.
(TBD testing to see if Stampede pets benefit from BW)

Frenzy / Focus Fire

Our pets have a 40% chance on each Basic Attack (claw, bite etc) to gain a stack of Frenzy. Frenzy stacks on us, but affects the pet, and grants 4% increased attack speed for the pet, and stacks to 5 for a total of 20% increased attack speed for the pet. Frenzy lasts 30 seconds.
Focus Fire is a personal haste boost that lasts 20 seconds and consumes all frenzy stacks. We gain 6% haste per stack of frenzy consumed for 30% total when at 5 stacks, including increased focus regeneration for us and our pet. The pet gains 6 focus per frenzy stack consumed immediately.
Focus Fire should be used when we have 5 stacks of Frenzy, preferably just before a BW if one is coming up, for the immediate focus boost to the pet, as well as the increased focus regen during BW.
Focus Fire is on the GCD so it is important to note that you will sometimes delay it to avoid delaying KC, and then casting it right after KC. When casting immediately after a KC in a cycle with 2 CoS, FF is in essence free, as the increased casting speed will let you shave off around half a second from a CoS, so you can cast FF and 2 CoS in the same time as you can normally cast 2 CoS.

Rapid Fire

A 3 minute cooldown that increases our ranged attack speed by 40% for 15 seconds. RF also increses focus regen while active. Rapid Fire does not change the priority of our shots, so follow the normal priority. As haste is not very good for us RF is not a major DPS cooldown, and the primary benefit (apart from faster autoshots) is the increased focus regen for both us and our pet. For this reason RF should be used during or just before BW and/or Stampede. Macroing RF with BW will likely be optimal and will give us RF every 3rd BW (excluding the extra BW+RF every 5 minutes from Readiness)

Readiness

Readiness, previously a MM talent, is now baseline. Readiness is a 5 minute CD resets all our CDs under 5 minutes (thus excluding Stampede). Readiness should be used as often as possible with the most gain possible. In practice this means that we will want to use Readiness right after the first BW, RF, Stampede combination, with KC and our T90, T75 and T60 on CD (more on this in the priority section), so we get 2 full BWs right after eachother, a nota bene here is that we will want to get off at least one, maybe 2 CoS between, regardless of whether we have enough focus, to keep up SrS in between.

Ancient Hysteria / Bloodlust

Ancient Hysteria / Bloodlust / Heroism / Time Warp.
As BM hunters we can provide this otherwise external haste buff by bringing a Core Hound. Ancient Hysteria (or one of the other names) buffs the haste of the entire party or raid by 30% for 40 seconds. Under AH maintain your regular priority, as above under RF.

These effective cooldowns are available if you chose them in your talent build.

These are effective cooldowns to try and incorporate into most all encounters.

  • Bestial Wrath Use on cooldown. Let your pet keep Frenzy.
  • Rabid Use on cooldown. Stack with Lynx Rush or Bestial Wrath.
  • Rapid Fire Use on every cooldown. Do not stack with Bloodlust.
  • Readiness Resets all cooldowns except Stampede. Use to chain DPS cooldowns.
  • Stampede Use as often as possible. Usually on pull and mid fight.

  • 5.4. Detailed Cooldown Usage

    5.4.1. Focus Fire

    Focus Fire Icon Focus Fire should be used as soon as your pet’s Frenzy Icon Frenzy reaches 5 stacks. When that happens, your pet’s buff of 20% increased attack speed will be transformed into a 30% ranged haste buff for you. The duration of the buff is 20 seconds, and it takes between 10 and 30 seconds for Frenzy Icon Frenzy to reach 5 stacks on your pet again. This means that while you can sometimes maintain 100% uptime on Focus Fire, it is not always the case.

    There is, however, one exception where you should not use Focus Fire Icon Focus Fire at all, and instead allow your pet to retain its 5 stacks of Frenzy Icon Frenzy: during Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath. Because your pet’s damage done is so great, and because it receives double the damage increase from Bestial Wrath that you do, you should allow it to retain the attack speed increase. As soon as Bestial Wrath wears off, you should use Focus Fire.

    5.4.2. Bestial Wrath

    Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath should, as well, be used as many times as possible during an encounter. In addition to the aforementioned interaction with Focus Fire, it’s also advisable to delay your Bestial Wrath so that its duration lines up with Kill Command Icon Kill Command cooldowns in such a way that you can use two Kill Commands during Bestial Wrath. You should ensure that you have a fair amount of focus when casting Bestial Wrath, and you should spend its 10 second duration casting Kill Command and Arcane Shot Icon Arcane Shot, and as few Cobra Shot Icon Cobra Shots as possible.

    You should not stack Rapid Fire with Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath, because the increased focus regeneration granted by Rapid Fire will be useless as Bestial Wrath (thanks to The Beast Within Icon The Beast Within) reduces the focus cost of all your abilities by 50%. The only exception to this is when you are going to reset Rapid Fire’s cooldown with Readiness Icon Readiness, in which case it is safe to stack the cooldowns, because Bestial Wrath’s cooldown will be reset anyway.

    5.4.3. Rapid Fire

    Rapid Fire Icon Rapid Fire should be used as many times as possible during the encounter. It is not recommended to stack this cooldown with Heroism Icon Heroism/Bloodlust Icon Bloodlust/Time Warp Icon Time Warp. It is, however, advised to stack it with any other procs, on-use trinkets, potions, and fight mechanics that cause you to deal increased damage.

    5.4.4. Rabid

    Rabid Icon Rabid increases your pet’s attack power by 50% for 20 seconds, with an 84-second cooldown. You should use this ability as many times as possible during the encounter.

    For maximum benefit, it is ideal to stack it with other cooldowns such as Lynx Rush Icon Lynx Rush and Bestial Wrath Icon Bestial Wrath. This is not always possible, due to the differences in their cooldowns, but you should try.

    5.4.5. Stampede

    Stampede Icon Stampede‘s 5-minute cooldown means that it will most likely only be used twice during the vast majority of encounters. Your only concern is to make sure that it is cast as many times as possible during the fight. If there are moments when the boss takes increased damage, or when burst damage is important to your raid’s strategy, you should save Stampede for such a time.

    5.4.6. Readiness

    Readiness Icon Readiness should be used to reset the cooldown of your other DPS cooldowns. It does not work with Stampede Icon Stampede, so its chief usage will have to do with Rapid Fire Icon Rapid Fire and the abilities granted to you by your talents.

    For an example of proper Readiness usage, please refer to our opening sequence section.

    5.4.7. Tier 4 Talents

Talents

15  Your Choice
30  Your Choice
45  Your Choice
60  Dire Beast
75  Lynx Rush
90  Glaive Toss

Major Glyphs

 Your Choice
 Your Choice
 Your Choice

Minor Glyphs

 Your Choice
 Your Choice
 Your Choice

Stat Importance

Agility > Expertise (to 7.5%) >= Hit (to 7.5%) > Crit > Haste >= Mastery

Reforging

1) Reforge your weakest stats until you’ve reached 7.5% Expertise and then Hit
2) Reforge to Crit from Haste and Mastery

Stat Summaries

AgilityIncreases all damage dealt and slightly increases critical chance.

Ranged Hit (7.5%)Hit Rating increases your chance to hit, and at 7.5% Ranged Hit (2550 Rating) your special abilities can no longer miss on bosses. Special abilities getting missed is the easiest way to lose DPS, so be sure to be capped at 7.5%. To check your hit percentage, open your character panel and then check under the Ranged tab for “Hit Chance.” Make sure it is at or slightly above 7.5%.

Expertise (7.5%)The Expertise cap of 7.5% (2550 Rating) will eliminate your attacks from being dodged. To check your expertise, open your character panel and then check for “Expertise.” Make sure it is at exactly 7.5% for your weapon(s).

CritIncreases the chance for your attacks to critically hit for 200% damage. Also increases pet Focus generation thanks to Go for the Throat.

HasteDecreases cast time for abilities such as Cobra Shot, causes you to shoot faster, and increases Focus regeneration speeds.

MasteryMastery: Master of Beasts increases the damage done by your pets.

5.0.5 Gems

5.0.5 Enchants

Pets:

  • Ferocity: Highest DPS pet and provides Rabid. Default PvE choice.
  • Cunning: Mix of DPS and survivability.
  • Tenacity: Low DPS pet with high survivability.

Hunter PVP

Here’s an intermediate to expert tip on how to use hunters: [all hunters]kite a lot cc a lot time your shots and traps correspondingly its wise to use your abilities in two stacks: trap disengage, trap masters call, scatter trap, etc you get the point. [all hunters]The main concept for a hunter is to keep at range and make it difficult for the opponent to get near you and attack. [MM](for example when a warrior stuns you with shockwave use monkey blind that way he can’t hit you when your stunned. another example is when a frost dk grips you and you are rotted the best thing to do is to web him since he will be trapped as well and can’t hit you) [mm] For aimed shot no its the worst mistake for a hunter to begin an attack with it takes too much time and has a high chance of failing. Aimed shot is only good against cloth and leather armor wearers use it only when your sure you can pull it off you shouldn’t use it very often. when you hit 69 Chimera shot is your primary attack as mm not Arcane. [mm]As for pets you’d want a cunning class pet if your gonna go mm either a spider or monkey as your main pets. [mm]For battling other hunters you can occasionally use a hawk to disarm but be very careful when you switch pets during combat(best time to do so is when your in det or if your opponent is frozen and can’t get out and you have the time to switch) [BM] same concept as above but the bm pet talent replaces the monkey stun and spider web you can still switch to hawk to disarm but make sure its a spirit hawk. Speaking about spirit beasts your main pet should be a spirit beast as they offer ridiculous healing. Your main attack as bm is kill command cobra shot replaces steady shot. The difference between bm and mm is that mm focuses exclusively on shots while bm focuses heavily on your pet(if your bm and your pet gets ccd or kited you can be at a disadvantage) There are many ways you can play the hunter class be creative and explore your skills.