Hi folks, I hope you’re all well!
I just started trying to do mythic+ dungeons and raids, and a few people with DPS trackers complained to me that my damage was low. I’m a Beast Master Hunter with an ilvl of 442, my pets being geared to be my biggest weapon. I thought I was putting in decent damage, and don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
Also do any of you recommend a particular damage-tracking add-on so I can see if I improve?
Thanks so much!
Well for one thing for most places anything under 460 in current Mythic+ is going to be low in general, but other than that I’d need tray loadout information like do you have aspect of the beast/bestial wrath selected? bestial wrath into barbed shot into multi-shot for maximized beast cleave damage? etc. Overall I think it’s mostly being under geared in general but that’s all I can say without further info.
Scent of Blood is a bad talent to stick with right now, so use Chimaera Shot or One with the Pack. And some of your talents choices are debatable if they’re better than others, but I recommend using Icy Veins as a general guide for talents, gear and rotation.
Gear up a little would be the first suggestion I’d give, especially the chest piece:: wanna have some azurite traits there.
I’m about a month back now and have seen my dps shoot through the roof as I’ve geared up - still a bit to go. I don’t have a lot of play time but here’s what’s working for me.
1: Faction assaults and chests with Warmode on + Call to Arms quests. This fills my Conquest bar pretty quickly, getting me 2-4 pieces of ilvl 445 a week. Also get trinkets, rings, and weapons here. Soon this will reward me ilvl 460.
2: Weekly outdoor raid boss in Uldum/Vale. Fast and a chance for another piece of ilvl 445.
3: NZoth assaults Uldum/Vale. 3 chests a week, chance at gear. Fuels my horrific vision runs.
4: Horrific Visions: this quickly leveled up my cloak and has been a great gear source. I just hit cloak rank 15 and this week saw gear drop at ilvl’s 465, 460, 455, and 450.
Some quick advice for you here:
For rotation advice, I’d recommend looking at Icy Veins.
I would reccomend my talents.
Also you want to try and get 3 x Dance of death traits for thr agi gain, at least 1-2 Primal instincts and 1 rapid reload. Stack crit (im currently sitting on 50% crit with talent stacked and food.
If you raid try and get the bow off Skitra, auto shota reduce one of your cd’s by 2 seconds.
As far as essences go there is an argument for Focusing Iris or VISION OF perfection + 3 x Primal instincts traits buuut i play it safe and just use Iris
BM suffers however with too many GCD’s before dmg really starts
I recommend taking chimaera shot until you get better crit rating and the correct azerite traits. It helps with focus regeneration and flow to the rotation.
What icy veins says doesnt mean one size fits all. I still run chimaera and crows because i like the spells and find them fun. Learning to execute on the talents you like will do more dps than cookie cutter builds in my experience.
Most of us are not mythic raiding, so choose what you like best. The more you play the better your dps will be. Prob not what you wanted to hear but the truth.
Grab weakauras addon and take ipsa’s and frenzy tracker.
Read through the Icy Veins Beast Mastery guide.
https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/beast-mastery-hunter-pve-dps-guide
It is up-to-date and extremely accurate. I’ll put some important points here.
First thing’s first: talents. This is the easiest thing to change.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/sQo3PAdrEb78WpR8PRfiEa
You could gain 2.5k single target DPS just by visiting a rested area and changing talents.
Get an azerite chest ASAP. Even a crappy one. Any azerite piece is going to be a giant upgrade over what you have. The best option is the chestpiece from N’zoth. Since most LFR groups are incapable of doing that boss, another option is the chestpiece from Il’gynoth. Here are the comparisons for those:
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/6RaAmp1Pe8vL74sfKY1TU7
As for the rest of your azerite, you need to focus on Primal Instincts and Dance of Death. Our best single-target option is to take 3x PI and 3x DoD. The DoD is especially important and its DPS gain will be magnified by other things such as talents, gear, essence, and corruption.
Keep a piece with Rapid Reload on it. It’s extremely good for AoE situations. It takes 1 second off your Aspect cooldowns (Wild, Cheetah, Turtle) for every target hit by Multi-Shot.
You will want to aim for 3 DoD 3 PI for single-target situations. For AoE you take one from either DoD or PI to gain Rapid Reload. Technically it’s better to go 3 DoD 2 PI 1 RR but it’s harder to get an azerite set for that v.s. 2 DoD 3 PI 1 RR (one of the pieces is from PvP) and the difference is not that big. Generally the best choice is to go for the chest and helm from the N’zoth fights in Ny’alothah and then get shoulders using Titan Residuum; there are 2 pairs of shoulders there that give both DoD and PI and then there’s a pair that has PI and RR, so it’s ideal to have both of those and switch between them for different fights depending on single target or AoE.
Never purify the Skitra bow. I don’t know if you actually did it or if it’s a tooltip error, but your armory shows the effect missing. The unique corrupted effect on the bow is extremely valuable.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/xt6DNgEcJPy7zpxGEuPBhz
It’s 600 DPS just by itself and its value only improves when you get more Primal Instincts traits.
Azerite Essences: this one is hard because it takes a long time to get the essences. Focus on getting the following essences to rank 3:
I bolded Vision of Perfection because it’s by far our best essence. You’ll always be using it either as a major or a minor. It’s our best major essence for single target and for AoE you’ll use it as a minor, switching to either Blood of the Enemy or Focusing Iris major.
Conflict and Strife is very difficult to get to rank 3. You need to get to at least 1000 arena rating to get rank 2 and then the time it takes to get to rank 3 depends on your arena rating; 15 weeks at 1000, 5 weeks at 1400, 3 weeks at 1600, and so on. If you really don’t want to do rated PvP and you don’t have someone to carry you can just pick another good minor such as Formless Void or Blood of the Enemy.
Worldvein Resonance is also decent but it depends on standing in one place and how many others are using it.
Gearing: Generally focus on Crit and then Haste. Crit is our most valuable stat due to Wild Call (the Barbed Shot reset proc) and the azerite trait Dance of Death. For Corruption you want to be on the lookout for Severe (more crit from gear) and Expedient (more haste from gear); Twisted Appendage, Infinite Stars, and Twilight Devastation can also be very valuable. Keep your corruption below 40 when you want to be safe. You can go beyond 40 but you need to get good at handling Thing from Beyond spawns; Hunters have a lot of tools to help handle them including Feign Death, Freezing Trap, and Intimidation. I would never go above 80 for any content as a Hunter, and only go above 60 for easy content.
Make sure to enchant your gear. Put Gale Force Striking on your weapon (faster weapon speed = more chances at Wild Call) and crit enchants on your rings. Also put crit gems in any socket; they are even better than the agility gem once you get the right talents and azerite traits. Haste might become more valuable once you get beyond 43% crit or so but you’ll need Raidbots to determine that.
Eventually you’ll want to start using Raidbots to figure out what pieces are upgrades. Gearing is VERY complex in 8.3 especially with things like Corruption thrown in.
Gameplay: The core priority is relatively simple.
Keep Kill Command on cooldown at all times.
Cobra Shot reduces the CD of Kill Command by 1 seconds and does decent damage so you want to be getting plenty of those out but not so many that you don’t have enough focus to use Kill Command (also, if Kill Command has 1 second or less to go it’s worth waiting for it instead of using Cobra Shot because Cobra Shot will incur a global cooldown of around 1.3 secs depending on your haste).
Barbed Shot: you can get away with just using it on cooldown but it’s better to be smart with it. It gives your pet Frenzy which stacks up to 3 times and its cooldown is greater than Frenzy’s duration so you depend on both Wild Call procs and deliberately delaying your Barbed Shots so as to extend the duration (but not so much that you’re wasting Wild Call procs). When you get Dance of Death traits that buff becomes much more important than Frenzy so you want to prioritise uptime for that instead. I would recommend making use of weakauras to track these mechanics. Using BS also takes 12 seconds off Bestial Wrath. If it’s not going to cost you your Frenzy stacks it’s worth holding off Barbed Shot if Bestial Wrath has only 1-5 secs remaining on its cooldown.
Multi-Shot: only use it when 3 or more targets are close together and only use it enough to keep Beast Cleave up on your pet; any more than that is a big waste of focus. You want to still weave in your single-target abilities in AoE situations. Keeping Frenzy at 3 stacks is really important during AoE situations.
Bestial Wrath: Maximise uptime on this ability. Keep the CDR mechanic in mind like I said for Barbed Shot. Hold off it if for some reason you’re going to be out of action during much of its duration (e.g. Mindgrasp on N’zoth) but never leave it unused for long. Try to go into Bestial Wrath with high focus and 3 stacks of Frenzy. When you spec into Killer Cobra for single-target situations you’ll need to alternate Cobra Shot and Kill Command as much as possible during BW.
Aspect of the Wild: a weak cooldown on its own but it becomes very strong when you get Primal Instincts traits. Try to pair it with Bestial Wrath as much as possible; usually you use it before Bestial Wrath because they are both on the GCD and Bestial Wrath has a shorter duration (however, on your opener you will start with Bestial Wrath first so as not to waste the Barbed Shot charge you get from AotW).
Pick good, easy-to-reach keybinds for these abilities. If you’re clicking your abilities, stop that. It is always worse than keybinding and mouse-turning. Every ability you use in combat should be keybound and there are good guides on how to pick sensible keybinds (e.g. don’t pick far away keys like L or P or anything to the far right).
Macro your pet’s basic abilities (Bite, Claw, Smack) to your abilities, along with /petattack for good measure. The guide talks about this; it’s to compensate for problems with pet AI.
Use a Spirit Beast for group PvE and a Clefthoof for solo content and/or if you need Bloodlust. Don’t put Spirit Mend on autocast; learn to be efficient with it manually. Make good use of Spirit Shock; offensive dispells are very valuable.
P.S. I linked some simulations here to show DPS gains individually. Do note that just adding these together won’t give you a clear picture of what your final DPS will be. All these things depend on one another. For example, Vision of Perfection is good because it reduces your Aspect of the Wild CD, as does the Skitra bow, which plays into your Primal Instincts and Rapid Reload traits. Crit is good because it plays into your Barbed Shot procs and Dance of Death proc chance; more Barbed Shot procs means more Stomps which makes that talent really good. So as you combine these things your DPS increases by a lot more than if you just added each contribution individually.
This sounds nice and all but it’s wrong. Especially for BM. There isn’t much playstyle variance from the different talent choices and right now the passive talents are actually the better ones so even if you like them less you will absolutely perform better. No amount of getting used to Crows and Chimera Shot can make up for that.
Taking Chimera Shot is also bad advice in general. Even at low crit levels. Look at this talent simulation on OP’s toon:
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/6bLXCTXPQdnVxCzGtHZKoi
Chimera Shot would be an upgrade over their current build but only because they’re using Barrage instead of Stomp and Murder of Crows instead of Thrill of the Hunt. If they fixed those talents it would be almost 2k DPS over the Chimera Shot build. I ignored the level 100 row for this as it’s mostly an ST focus v.s. AoE focus deal.
“Details” is the damage meter of choice these days.
I checked this. You’re right that it would be a significant DPS upgrade for him despite being 40 ilvl lower than what he’s wearing.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/5SWBHsHgZBFL9B4DECfKf8
1.5k DPS gain! Also he should be able to upgrade it a few times depending on how many manapearls he has.