My “New” 53/18/0 Beast Mastery Hunter Build

Prior to my guild’s 10 man Naxxramas run last week, I decided to respec ever so slightly. Normally I’m opposed to forsaking PvP talents for PvE ones, but in the crazily imbalanced and burst-happy world of Arena Season 5, I figured… eh, so what. I also thought it’d be nice to put out a little more damage when I get invited into 25 mans. Not to mention, our “new” Death Knight is getting cocky and I need to re-establish who “the man” is. 😉

My New 53/18/0 BM Build

Yes, I’m still 53/18/0, but I shifted some stuff around. The following are changes I made to my previous spec:

Beast Mastery Talents

• 5/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk – I pulled 4 points out of Endurance Training for this. The additional haste isn’t as much of a benefit for BM Hunters, but it is still a DPS boost no matter how you look at it. Secondly, it can lessen time spent in Viper if you time things right or get lucky with the procs. Either way, 5/5 IAotH = DPS gains over 5/5 Endurance Training.
• 2/2 Improved Revive Pet – This skill is really invaluable for raiding BM Hunters, but most of the time I went without it. I preferred a hardier pet who could withstand a beatdown in arena over the ability to quickly bring my pet back into a boss fight. I’d usually put these points into Thick Hide, but I’m changing my tune for the time being. The funny thing is, I used this talent maybe once during our Naxxramas run, but several times in Wintergrasp after the raid. This does beg the question, would my pet have died as often had I’d kept the 5/5 in Endurance Training and 3/3 in Thick Hide..? I’m inclined to say no.
• 1/2 Spirit Bond – I miss 2/2 in this talent, but 1/2 is still better than nothing. I needed to borrow a point from here for Cobra Strikes.
• 3/5 Frenzy – I subtracted one point from this talent in order to go…
• 3/3 Cobra Strikes – This gives my pet a 60% chance to gain two guaranteed back to back crits from his specials. This is also going to ensure that Frenzy will be constantly refreshed.

Marksman Talents

• Unchanged

I won’t get a very accurate assessment of the gains I’ve realized from this spec until I see Patchwerk next, but I imagine it should be about a 10% improvement. I’m hoping for somewhere in the 3400-3500 neighborhood. Our group the other night did not lend itself well to mana regen, so I was resorting to Viper quite a bit which hurt some. This was also probably the first 10 man I’d been on without a Death Knight in the group, so no Horn of Winter either.

Of the four bosses we fought, Grand Widow Faerlina was probably the most accurate for straight DPS. The other fights involved too much movement and/or interruptions. At 3360, this last run had me a little over 200 DPS above my previous best. While not as noticeable of an increase as if I were to say… go Survival, it’s still nice to be able to post those numbers as BM.

My shot rotation has changed slightly with this build. I no longer include Aimed Shot on boss fights. I still use it for short bursty pulls, but I have been ignoring it for long boss fights. Cobra Strikes does not proc off of Aimed crits, so with 3/3 in the talent, I want to make sure it’s proccing as much as possible. Removing Aimed from the rotation saves me some mana, as well as removing another GCD, thus resulting in a slightly tighter rotation.

For everything outside of 5-minute-plus boss fights I’m still firing off Aimed Shots, but for the long fights it’s: Arcane Shot > Serpent Sting > Steady Shot and so on.