Specs in Brief: Beast Master

After about thirty odd levels of Marksman, I became highly touchy about it's lack of staying power and the dread "achilles heel" of things being too close. At this point I had started going into some battlegrounds and accepted a duel or two. I decided it was time to find a work around. Lo and behold, I discovered the Beast Mastery spec. I spent so much time on it that I actually persuaded the guy who made me go Marksman to try it- and he hasn't looked back since. I think my most memorable moment as a BM was taming King Banglash and ripping through the battlegrounds with a Hurricane bow.

The Benefits

Quite simply put, Beast Mastery allows for the essence of a hunter to come out and shine- by divying up power between the hunter and his companion. One of the first things I fell in love with about the spec is that it allowed for increased attack speed (IAS). Essentially, you deal more damage by firing faster. Working in tandem with a pet made up for the lack of special shots needed- your pet becomes a viable source of damage! While this spec has the potential to pull aggro from the pet onto the hunter (albeit a little less frequently than MM), Intimidate (which taunts and stuns the enemy) makes a very good quick fix and allows the hunter to retreat out of melee range. Beast Within makes the hunter and pet both immune to all methods of crowd control.

The Drawbacks

Much like Marksman, Beast Mastery is still subject to that dead zone under 8 yards. They burn through arrows alot faster than other specs and don't have the mana pool or resources that a Marksman does for special shots, and wind up leaving Aspect of the Hawk for Viper as the situation requires. Beast Masters have a very hard time in heroics and raids because mobs can and will kill a pet with relative ease, leaving a good portion of their DPS out of the fight for losing both their partner and the associated bonuses for keeping it alive.

Overall

Beast Mastery is still very much a ranged reliant class. Bowspeed becomes important, as does the pet one choose to partner with, because that affects their total increased attack speed- and in turn affects damage output. It's allows for a constant stream of steady damage without relying entirely on mana driven shots. The big downside is needing a pet out on a constant basis.

Personal Thoughts

I loved Beast Mastery when I created my PVP build and up until my mid fifties. It allowed for decent farming, less downtime than my Marksman, and I enjoyed having a "pocket tank" as a pet. In PVP, the pet was invaluable as a second damage dealer, since only one of us could be polymorphed at a time, and with an attack speed of .99( hitting once a second essentially) it made a great caster killer. Beast Within for anti-crowd control made me a happy hunter.