In this in-depth look at the World of Warcraft Hunter Talents (Beast Mastery) for Wrath of the Lich King we’ll be looking at the changes to the talent tree published by Blizzard on its official site. We’ll see how they’ll affect your class and the game overall and point out where the major changes are and try to shed some light on just what the new skills should do and their usefulness.

As of writing this the talents are in no way finalized so things may (and probably will) change as Blizzard continues the balance the game before launch.

So let’s begin with the Beast Mastery tree!

Ferocious Inspiration is a talent that many Hunters skip out on. The 3% damage increase is pretty major in high-end PvE play but when damage numbers are low the increase isn’t as much as it could be. For instance, 3% damage of 100 damage is only 3 damage whereas 3% of 1,000 damage is 30 damage. So there is room for it in the higher forms of play but overall it’s not the best use of a talent point. Except in Wrath when it opens up an interesting talent called Invigoration.

Invigoration reads currently as, “When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you instantly regenerate 1% mana.” With an ability like claw and a high crit rate then you could be regenerating a ton of mana. It has 2 ranks so one is to assume you’ll have a 2% regeneration rate each time your pet scores a critical hit. That could make Beast Mastery’s famous mana conversation even more famous.

What’s even better is that Longevity reduces the cooldown of Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, and all of your pet special abilities by up to 30% (3 ranks of 10%). So you’re looking at your pet using even more abilities faster. While some abilities like Claw have no cooldown, others like Bite and Lightening Breath will fire off even faster. Not to mention Growl for solo play!

It gets EVEN better though. So we’ve got special abilities that return 2% mana and an ability to makes them fire off even faster. Cobra Strikes (which requires 5/5 of Serpant’s Swiftness but who wouldn’t have that already?) gives you a 20% (3 ranks so up to 60%) chance to make your pet’s next three special attacks crit whenever you get a critical strike on Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, or Kill Shot. That’s an instant 6% free mana per crit! Running out of mana on Beast Mastery is going to be incredibly tough.

Aspect Mastery is an interesting ability that many players may be skipping. It powers up Aspect of the Viper/Monkey/Hawk by a little bit. At rank five it’ll give 50% additional attack power from Hawk, 10% damage reduction with Monkey, and 10% mana returned with Viper. The viper one is interesting because with the previous three skill combo you can add in even more mana regeneration.

Beast Mastery is the new 51 point talent. It allows you to tame “Exotic Pets” and gives you a free 5 pet skill points. This is a strange one since we don’t know exactly what “Exotic Pets” are. My best guess would be pets that are “better” than others and probably contain unique skins that make them very desirable. It could turn out to be an interesting 51 point talent.

Master’s Call is another new talent early in the tree. The description reads, “Your pet attempts to remove all stune and movement impairing effects on the target, and cause them to be immune to all effects for 4 sec.” which seems to be a major talent.

Overall the changes to Beast Mastery seem to focus on one thing: mana. Currently Beast Mastery spec’d Hunters have little to no problem with mana. With the new expansion and the new skills we’ll probably see some things to make more skills viable than just Steady Shot and Auto-Shoot which will require more mana. So it all makes a lot of sense and seems to be a well balanced and well thought out tree.

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