A Step Forward – Reactions to Beast Mastery Talent Changes on the 10.2 PTR.
Hello! The purpose of this article will be to go over all the changes made to Beast Mastery Hunter Talents on the 10.2 PTR, and discuss where they have gone right, where they have gone wrong, and what”s left to be done. Let’s get to it:
Point Deductions
- Thrill of the Hunt is now a 2-rank talent (was 3). Each point grants 2% critical strike chance, stacking up to 2/4 times (was 3%, stacking 1/2/3 times).
- Dire Command is now a 2-rank talent (was 3). Each point grants 15/30% chance to trigger (was 10/20/30%).
3-point talent nodes is something blizzard have gradually have moved away from, as they’ve generally been fairly restrictive on talent builds and more people would prefer more different effects rather than more investment into the same effect. For Beast Mastery in particular these talents were often quite restrictive on your build choices, as they were in quite central positions in the talent tree. Thrill of the Hunt is effectively nerfed a little bit with with this change but other changes more than make up for this. It is however a little awkward having Thrill of the Hunt stack to 4 while Frenzy stacks to 3.
One remaining concern in regards to talent costs is our AoE talents. Beast Cleave + Multi-Shot + Kill Cleave means we effectively have to spend four talent points to get usable AoE, which means that our current tradeoff in single-target to get some AoE damage is quite high.
New Talents
Aspect of the Wild was a sacrifice that had to be made to give room to new choices, as it had been very weak for the entirety of Dragonflight. Savagery is a decent new option that is fairly powerful. It extends both Barbed Shot and Frenzy, but not Thrill of the Hunt. This is a little awkward since the two effects are now easily de-synced, whereas they’d previously been the same duration. This means you’d have to arbitrarily swap your buff tracking from Frenzy to Thrill of the Hunt.
Master Handler is a cool new talent which incentivizes “multi-dotting” for Beast Mastery Hunters, resulting in a pretty significant increase in Kill Commands when you apply Barbed Shot to more than one target.This means we can “funnel” Kill Commands into one target. This sort of gameplay allows for greater skill expression, which the spec could use. I am fully aboard with this new talent.
A Cooldown!
Call of the Wild has been a talent since the start of this expansion, but it’s always been quite weak. This is in part due to other talents leading up to it being quite weak as well. Now with the other talents being redesigned and the added cooldown reduction in the base spell, it’s a fairly potent cooldown. A proper cooldown is something Beast Mastery Hunters have been asking for since the start of Dragonflight, so we’re happy to finally get it.
Wild Instincts adds to this cooldown, making it more potent, especially while combined with our new tier set. Bloody Frenzy, on the other hand, lets us use Call of the Wild on AoE, while also possibly being an option for doing AoE without having to spend points into regular Beast Cleave (This is somewhat limited by pets not also gaining Kill Cleave without it being talented.) Bloody Frenzy is unfortunately quite buggy at the moment so it’s difficult to assess how powerful it could be, but it certainly has some potential. Wild Instincts is a bit easier to assess and looks like it could see play on encounters which suit it, possibly being slightly worse than Dire Pack in terms of overall damage over a 5 minute encounter but a good amount better on shorter encounters or burst windows.
Everything other than Kill Command
These new talents all carry the common theme of making Kill Command more of a centerpiece of your rotation. While this seems to be a good direction for the spec to take, it also means that talents that do not interact with Kill Command are left somewhat behind. These fall under a few categories:
Firstly you have the ones that are simply under-powered. This includes the talents related to Kill Shot, the talents related to Serpent Sting, Barrage, A Murder of Crows, and Kindred Spirits (which is a whooping 0.2% damage increase). These get worse as Kill Command gets better.
Then there’s a group of talents that do not function well with the current rotation. This is mainly the talents related to Cobra Shot, which we barely cast at the moment. This means talents such as Killer Cobra struggle to gain much value. Killer Instinct is also in a bad spot due to how important Alpha Predator has become to the gameplay and flow of the spec. Stampede is too narrow and will miss its target frequently at random to be reliable. Arctic Bola is an AoE talent which requires us to use a Cobra Shot spell to activate it, which we very rarely wanna cast on AoE.
Thirdly there are the talents that struggle due to their position in the talent tree. Wailing Arrow would like to not be in the spec tree. Hunter’s Prey and Cobra Senses are mixed in with talents that do not play well with them. Explosive Shot is locked behind the aforementioned Arctic Bola. One with the Pack is a relatively weak talent in the now very competitive bottom third of the Beast Mastery tree.
Lastly there’s Steel Trap, nobody likes Steel Trap.
Bugs
There are currently a few bugs still affecting the Beast Mastery talents, some of which has appeared with the new ptr changes. These include:
Conclusions
Overall, the changes to Beast Mastery have been a step in the right direction, giving us a reasonable cooldown and more talent options. The changes have almost exclusively been positive. However, what this article has shown, is that there are still a fair bit of changes that could be done to the talent trees, and still a few annoying bugs that plague them.
About the Author
Hello! My name is Tarlo and I am the writer for the Beast Mastery Hunter guide here on Wowhead. I have mained Hunter since the Burning Crusade and currently do high-Level Mythic raiding. I also sometimes dabble in Mythic+. You can find me as a moderator in the Trueshot Lodge discord if you have any questions or other inquiries regarding the guide or anything else hunter-related.
