Class Talents
The Class tree Talents contain essential spells and passives that are mandatory for any situation, as a BM hunter, other situational talents, and others that are just not good enough to be picked.
Mandatory Talents
- Kill Command and Kill Shot: core spells of the spec
- Improved Kill Shot: a talent that gives you more damage on Kill Shot's critical strikes. There's just no reason not to take it because most of the upper tree's talents don't increase DPS
- Posthaste and Pathfinding: two talents that give you movement speed, which is needed for pretty much every situation. Posthaste can also dispel you from some movement-impairing debuffs
- Counter Shot: Hunter's kick is needed for pretty much every situation
- Survival of the Fittest paired with Lone Survivor or Nature's Endurance (fight dependent), Born To Be Wild, and Hunter's Avoidance: talents that give the Hunter mandatory decent survival skills.
- Beast Master, Improved Kill Command, and Alpha Predator: this branch at the bottom of the tree is essential. It will give you pet damage and 2 charges + more damage on Kill Command.
- Serrated Shots: more damage on bleeds and stronger execute.
- Keen Eyesight and Death Chakram: flat critical strike chances and a strong cooldown that is good in pretty much every situation.
- Master Marksman is a strong talent due to the fact that critical strike is our main stat.
Situational Talents
- Misdirection, Camouflage, Tar Trap, Tranquilizing Shot, Intimidation, and Binding Shot: most likely used in Mythic + content or if needed on some boss encounters. They provide you with a threat redirection (although very minor), a stealth, AoE slow, offensive magic and enrage dispel, Single target long stun, and a 3s AoE stun (Binding Shot does not root anymore)
- Sentinel Owl and Sentinel's Protection: the latter being a “go to - choice” for most raid encounters. It provides you with a field that lets you ignore Line of Sight for several seconds, similar to the Kyrian-Covenant ability from Shadowlands. It also buffs your party’s leech for that duration. Your healers will love you for this.
- Entrapment: a niche ability, that enhances your Tar Trap, to root enemies in place. Very useful for the Spiteful affix, or keeping mobs in place in general.
- Scare Beast and Improved Tranquilizing Shot have their uses for certain Mythic+ affixes. Not necessary by any means. Still decent options to pick up in those weeks.
Bad Talents
- Trailblazer: does not provide any combat benefit. It is a solid choice for farming world content and leveling.
- Wilderness Medicine: we basically never need to heal our pets, and if we do, we have Mend Pet and Exhilaration
- High Explosive Trap: is a super niche talent that will probably never be used outside of open world PvP.
- Killer Instinct: Having 2 charges of Kill Command with Alpha Predator is way better, so this talent won’t be used
- Steel Trap and Improved Traps: Not good enough in any situations
- Arctic Bola, Explosive Shot, Barrage: while the last two talents are decent in AoE situations, it requires you to spend 2 useless points into Arctic Bola. The fact that it’s Cobra Shot that triggers the talent is really bad because we barely use it in AoE
- Serpent Sting, Hydra’s Bite, and Poison Injection: these talents are not that bad. It’s just that with the Alpha Predator and Death Chakram branches that overall have stronger talents, you don’t have enough points to spend
Talent Builds
Single Target Burst
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In this Build, the main focus is on our 2 minute cooldown Call of the Wild, and enhancing it with Wild Instincts, while getting rid of Dire Beast and Dire Pack. That way you get rid of an active button, and a major passive you no longer need to manage. When picking Wild Instincts, we change the cooldowns duration from 20 seconds, to roughly 28-29 seconds. This is generally the highest simming build right now, even though it doesn't fit every boss's kill timing or fight style.
If you need more damage outside of your cooldowns, you’re better off playing the “Classic” Single Target build.
Classic Single Target
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If your Raid encounter does not need any single target burst damage, you want to go for a slightly different build that focuses more on Bestial Wrath with Dire Pack and less on Call of the Wild.
The main difference to the “burst” variant is, that we take away points from Wild Call and Wild Instincts, to invest them into Dire Beast and Dire Pack. This way, your Call of the Wild becomes a less important cooldown to play around, and instead you will get procced damage windows from Dire Pack, increasing your overall damage outside of your cooldowns.
AoE Raid Encounters
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In AoE fights, we are dropping Dire Beast, Dire Frenzy and Dire Pack entirely.
Instead we will pick up Multi-Shot, Beast Cleave, and Kill Cleave, three massive AoE talents that will allow our pets to cleave.
We obviously pick up Blood Frenzy as well to further enhance our burst AoE potential.
Mythic+
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For Mythic+, we change a bunch of utility points in the Class-side of the tree.
We take Tar Trap, Tranquilizing Shot, Intimidation, and Binding Shot which are essential for M+. We also add Camouflage for a nice and easy way to skip past mob packs.
Depending on the Key you can switch around a few points, to get access to talents like Entrapment for Spiteful weeks, Scare Beast for the Incorporeal affix, or switch the choice node on Binding Shot to Scatter Shot for an additional interrupt. Take away the point from Pathfinding to achieve that.