Review of the Beast Mastery Hunter Changes in Patch 11.0.5 - Guide Writer Feedback

Although performing well in the War Within, Beast Mastery Hunters are looking to get some polish to help with Hero Talent spec integration in the 11.0.5 Patch. Our Beast Mastery Hunter Writer, Tarlo, discusses the changes in Patch 11.0.5 including base talent changes, Hero Talents, AoE, and more.

Beast Mastery Hunter Guide

Our Class Writers share their expert opinions based on rigorous testing and theorycrafting in hopes of contextualizing the changes coming in future patches of the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials in our new Editorial Section.

Wowhead Editorials

Hello! The goal of this article is to analyze the wide breadth of changes to the Beast Mastery Hunter spec in the coming 11.0.5 patch, mainly focused on the main rotation, spec tree and Dark Ranger Hero Tree. In summary, these changes aim to mix up the formula for the base spec rotation, remove a couple of useless talent choices and vastly improve Dark Ranger, which has largely been a disappointment in terms of theme and rotational integration up until this point (although it has been doing decent output on single-target). Without further ado:

Base Spec Changes

Animal Companion

Animal Companion no longer reduces all pet damage by 35%. To compensate for this, they have nerfed all relevant pet abilities by 35%. This keeps overall damage similar but has three noticeable effects.

• Animal Companion is now extremely mandatory, rather than just very strong. It is now intended to be a baseline pick in every situation.
• The bug where Call of the Wild pets also get nerfed by 35% is no longer in effect.
• Pet melees now do more damage as they weren't nerfed.

Most Hunters will notice a small damage gain from this change. Everyone was running Animal Companion already. If you dislike playing with two pets you are now taking a massive loss not to. Kill Command has also not been nerfed as of writing despite the initial bluepost claiming it would be.

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