Playstyle & Rotation
General Priority Rotation
- Cast Barbed Shot when the Frenzy buff on your pet is about to expire (on ~1.5s left) or when you're not at 3 stacks of Frenzy, and Bestial Wrath or Call of the Wild is coming off cooldown soon
- Cast Call of the Wild on cooldown
- Cast Kill Command on or close to 2 charges
- Cast Bestial Wrath on cooldown
- Cast Bloodshed on cooldown (if talented)
- Cast Death Chakram on cooldown
- Cast Kill Command on cooldown
- Cast Barbed Shot
- Cast Dire Beast on cooldown
- Cast Kill Shot on cooldown if the target is below 20% health
- Cast Cobra Shot when you have more than 55 Focus
Opener
- Pre combat, use Hunter’s Mark on your main target.
- Barbed Shot
- Barbed Shot
- Kill Command
- Call of the Wild
- Bloodshed
- Bestial Wrath
- Kill Command
- Barbed Shot
- Kill Command
- Death Chakram
- Dire Beast
- Proceed with general rotation
Multi Target
- On 2+ targets keep up Beast Cleave by pressing Multi-Shot
- In Multi Target you wanna open with a Multi-Shot before entering Bestial Wrath. Keeping up Beast Cleave is your second highest priority, right after keeping up Frenzy.
- Proceed with general rotation
- The 4-Set Beast Cleave is being applied dynamically on your summoned Dire Beast, meaning that you don't need to separately track it.
Remember that you are pressing Multi-Shot just for your pets to gain the Beast Cleave ability, not for its damage. You shouldn’t spam it and push it ONLY if Beast Cleave is about to fade or is not already active.
Heavily reduce the amount of Cobra Shots cast during AoE scenarios, to avoid running out of Focus!
In a Multi-Target situation, you want to use Barbed Shot on as many different targets as possible to spread the DoT and profit from as many Master Handler cooldown ticks as possible. Don’t forget that with Blood Frenzy you do not need to reapply Beast Cleave as long as Call of the Wild is still running.
Multi Target Opener
- Pre combat, use Hunter’s Mark on your main target.
- Cast Multi-Shot
- Cast 2 Barbed Shots on different targets.
- Cast Call of the Wild
- Cast Bestial Wrath
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast Barbed Shot on a third target (if possible)
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast Death Chakram
- Cast Kill Command
- Proceed with general rotation
Playstyle
Cooldown usage
To break it down. Your goal is to fit as many Kill Commands as possible into your Bestial Wrath window. Achieving that can be more complicated than simply following a “priority list”.
You have to factor in a lot of different talents and account for resets of your Kill Command ability.
The most basic thing to keep in mind is that you want you start your Bestial Wrath with at least 1 charge of Kill Command. IF Bestial Wrath is not proccing you into Dire Pack. If your Bestial Wrath is coming off cooldown in the next 15 seconds you might wanna delay your next Kill Command until your Bestial Wrath is running again.
Bestial Wrath procs Dire Pack: Try to start with 0 Kill Command charges.
Bestial Wrath doesn’t proc Dire Pack: Try to start with at least 1 Kill Command charges.
Frenzy Stacks
Frenzy management in 10.2 got a lot easier due to the fact that our new talent Savagery is increasing Frenzy duration, as well as Thrill of the Hunt duration to 10 seconds. With the Haste rating you can achieve this season you should have no problem keeping up Frenzy
I still recommend using weakauras to help you out. The best option is to go to https://wago.io/search/Frenzy and find a fitting WeakAura for your UI. Some WeakAuras show you how many GCDs you can do before losing your stacks, depending on your haste. You can find a Barbed Shot WeakAura in my package, linked in the WeakAura section of the guide.
Pet Management
In AoE situations, try to have your pets hit targets in the middle of the pack to maximize the number of targets hit by Beast Cleave since it has a short range.
Try to have a /pet attack macro so your pet can switch targets and start hitting instantly. You should also keybind your Follow, Passive, and Assist ability as your pet can get blocked by something. Spamming Pet Follow can solve the issue. It's also sometimes needed to ask your pet to follow you and not hit the useless mobs at the back (remember Sylvannas Phase 2).
One extra thing you can bind is the "Move To" ability. It can be used to order your pet to go where you want or to stay somewhere (it was used in Mechagon Junkyard on the last boss, so your pet is ready to hit the machine as soon as it lands, for example).
While mounted, you can summon your pet, and it doesn't aggro.
Pet Choices
In most fights, you want to have a spirit beast with Spirit Mend ability and Tenacity as a Pet Family for the 8% bonus hp and the Fortitude of the Bear ability (replaces Survival of the Fittest that was the Tenacity ability in Shadowland, and that is now baseline in Dragonflight).
Be sure to have at least one pet from the 3 families. You might need to use Primal Rage in Mythic + if no one else can Blood lust or in raid if the others are dead. Master's Call is a niche ability and can be used to remove or prevent the application of impairing movement debuffs (works like a paladin's freedom). There are other niche second abilities that your pet can have, like the wounds to reduce enemies' healing done.
I highly recommend the WoW Petopia site to find your new pet!
Hunter's Survivability
Hunters have a really solid kit of healing effects and defensive cooldowns.
In Dragonflight, we have gained Survival of the Fittest baseline and Fortitude of the Bear if we have a Tenacity pet. Survival of the Fittest gets an extra 20% damage reduction with Nature's Endurance. We can now have Born To Be Wild and Posthaste simultaneously, which is really nice and allows you to use Survival of the Fittest and Aspect of the Turtle more often! We also have baseline avoidance with Hunter's Avoidance talent, and we are keeping Exhilaration with additional healing on it.
In conclusion, we have more cooldowns reducing for spike damage but are weaker on fights with damage taken over time.
Advanced Rotation
In this section, I want to go over some min-maxing strategies, involving the Dire Pack talent
Your burst windows outside of Call of the Wild are determined by the correct build up and usage of your Dire Pack buff.
This lets you virtually spam your Kill Command for 8 seconds. Dire Pack is triggered by spawning 5 Dire Beasts, either through the actual Dire Beast ability, pressing Bestial Wrath, or by proccing it from your Dire Command passive.
The second your fifth Dire Beast spawns, you trigger the 8 second buff and refresh charges on Kill Command.
To track the buff, simply refer to the WeakAura section of the guide, where I linked a WeakAura to track the buff.
In the sections below, I want to give you an overview on how to prepare and play out your buff. I will give several examples for rotational changes and adaptations, to get the maximum value out of your Buff windows.
Step 1 - Pre combat
Before you start a Boss encounter, you want to set your Dire Pack stacks to 3 out of 5. This allows you to instantly force proc the buff during your opening sequence through Bestial Wrath and Dire Beast.
This can be done by tracking the buff with a WeakAura linked further below, and simply stop pressing Kill Command + Dire Beast on trash packs, once you’ve hit 3 stacks.
What you have to remember is, whenever you proc your Dire Pack, you want to immediately cast your Kill Commands to get them on cooldown.
Step 2 - General rotation during Dire Pack
Once you’ve managed to go into your Dire Pack buff, you want to alter your rotation in a certain way. Since Dire Pack reduces the cooldown of Kill Command you want to press Kill Command at least every second global, sometimes twice, depending on your War Orders procs.
To put it simple, I will give an example rotation, this example expects that you’ve just procced Dire Pack directly after using Bestial Wrath:
- Cast Dire Beast -> procs Dire Pack
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast a second Kill Command
- Cast Barbed Shot (War Orders proc)
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast a second Kill Command
- Cast Cobra Shot
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast Cobra Shot
- Cast Kill Command
- Cast Barbed Shot (no War Orders proc)
- Cast Kill Command
This means, you want to alternate between (preferably) Barbed Shot or Cobra Shot, directly followed by 1 or 2 Kill Commands (if War Orders procs or your Kill Command gets off cooldown) until your Dire Pack window is over.
Step 3 - In combat preparation
This is where it can get a bit elevated and confusing, but try to replicate your Dire Pack windows as close to the opening sequence as possible. Meaning that you want to overlap it with as many DPS Cooldowns as possible, most importantly your Bestial Wrath. Always try to go into Dire Pack, right after you refreshed your Frenzy buff, to make it less worrisome during the actual buff rotation. You have to do all this while not overcapping on Kill Commands or Barbed Shots!
This can be tricky sometimes, and comes down to some form of RNG, but try to do this as best as you can.
The real MVP for these kinds of preparations is your Dire Beast ability, which allows you to force proc the buff at certain timings.
If you see your buff nearing 3 stacks, your Dire Beast is ready, and you come close to reactivating Bestial Wrath, try to delay your Dire Beast until your Bestial Wrath is running, to proc the Buff as soon as you got rid of all your initial Kill Commands.
Remember, Dire Pack resets both charges of Kill Command, so proccing it while sitting on charges, immediately puts them to waste.