The Beastmaster is a melee damage class built around a single persistent animal companion. The official archetype phrase is Animal-Taming Primal Brawler, and the emphasis on taming rather than summoning is deliberate: the companion is an animal you acquire, level and look after, not a construct you conjure at the start of every fight. It fights without magic, and after the rework its spellbook is going away while its mana bar stays.
Field | Detail |
|---|---|
Archetype | Animal-Taming Primal Brawler |
Roles | Melee DPS, Pet |
Playable races | |
Armor and weapons | A leather-armored melee brawler who fights without magic, wielding two-handed weapons or double-fisted claws. |
Rework status | Detailed rework published and shipped to the closed beta servers in update 0.26.0.0 on July 3 2026 |
Identity and role
The class is leaving behind its hybrid roots. The spirit world connection, the shamanistic abilities and the swarm pets are going away entirely, which separates it cleanly from the Shaman. What remains is a brawler with a pet that carries a real share of the damage or the tanking, plus survivalist self-heals and companion heals, bestial stances for combat and utility, and short summons of hawks, rats and other creatures inside specific abilities.
Mana survives the loss of the spellbook with a new meaning. Mana now represents the shared bond with your chosen beast and, for the most part, is only used for abilities that interact with it.
Playable races
The Beastmaster is open to Deep Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Human, Ogre, Troll and Wood Elf.
That list covers the full designed race roster. The Troll is designed but is not among the races playable at Early Access launch on October 1 2026, so the practical choice at launch is the remainder of the list.
The companion
Pets are obtained with Bestial Bond, levelled through their own experience system, and fed according to a specific diet. The companion must be healed, cared for and revived if it dies. The rework lowered the experience needed to level a pet, which supports swapping between several of them through the Kennel Master.
Pet role | Beasts | What the role does |
|---|---|---|
DPS | Jackal, Snake, Wasp, Wolf | Deals increased damage. The stated target is comparable damage to other DPS classes, with the pet making up a little less than half of your total damage. |
Tank | Bear, Beetle, Crocodile | Increased armor class and health. With Guardian Spirit active, the pet is meant to tank solo and small-group encounters. |
Balanced | Bat, Rat, Spider | Slightly more damage and slightly increased health. Bat pets are one of only two things in the game that negate Stealth. |
Each pet family is intended to get a unique utility ability, with Spider pets rooting opponents in a web given as the example. Sharks are currently tameable, but that is going away: the plan is to make them unlockable through a quest during Early Access, with more mythical beasts following as future quest unlocks.
Companion abilities
Ability | Effect |
|---|---|
Bestial Bond | Obtains your companion. |
Revive Companion | Brings a dead companion back. |
Mend Companion | Changed to a heal over time, restoring Health over 12 seconds. Significantly more powerful than before, at a higher mana cost. |
Cleanse Companion | New. Removes Disease and Poison from the companion. |
Invigorate Companion | New. Resets the pet's abilities along with your Command: Kill and Command: Protect. |
Shrink Companion | Reduces the companion's size. |
Command: Kill | Sends the pet at a target. Shares a cooldown with Command: Protect. |
Command: Protect | Formerly Resource Guarding. Shares a cooldown with Command: Kill. |
Call of the Faithful | A late-game ability that swaps your pet without needing a Kennel Master. |
Bestial Glimpse | Lets you see through a beast's eyes. |
A pet can only have one Spirit buff active at a time, which makes the choice between the two a real decision rather than a checklist.
Spirit buff | Effect |
|---|---|
Savage Spirit | Offensive. Attack Speed, Agility, and a chance to activate Rip on melee attacks, which is how a Beastmaster pet applies Bleed. |
Guardian Spirit | New and defensive. Reduces Physical Damage the pet receives and reduces the pet's Provoke cooldown. |
Auras and buffs
Ability | Effect |
|---|---|
Predatory Instinct | Formerly Pack of the Predator. Group Offense and Agility. |
Prowler's Instinct | New. Group Movement Speed plus being undetectable to targets from behind. It works indoors, unlike the Speed of the Wild line the class lost. |
Sight of the Beast | New. The Infravision equivalent. |
Sight of the Predator | New. The Ultravision equivalent. |
Hunter's Chase | Formerly Speed of the Predator. |
Aquatic Affinity | New. Swimming skill plus greatly decreased air consumption. |
Prowler's Instinct working indoors matters more than it sounds. Most group speed buffs in the game are outdoor-only, so a Beastmaster is one of the few ways a party keeps its movement bonus underground. See Travel.
Melee abilities
The old Strike line was replaced by five abilities split across two shared cooldowns, so you are choosing within each cooldown rather than firing everything.
Ability | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|
Enraging Strike | Might | Baseline damage strike. |
Savage Strike | Might | Bonus damage if the target is bleeding. |
Chop | Martial | Requires a two-handed weapon. Creates an opening that causes the pet to land Critical Hits. |
Maul | Martial | Weapon Ratio Damage per equipped weapon and reduces the target's Physical Damage dealt. |
Mangle | Martial | Requires a two-handed weapon. Reduces incoming healing on the target. |
Other abilities include Pounce, Howl of Dominance, and Lick Wounds, a channelled self-heal that trades Mana per second for Health.
Kinship
Kinship abilities replace the old swarm pets and briefly call a second creature without disturbing your primary companion. Kinship: Bat summons a bat to blind the target, and is described as a placeholder until a proper bird model exists in the game. Kinship: Rat, a controllable stealthy rat for scouting, did not make the initial rework patch, so as of September 2026 it is announced but not in the beta build.
Shared lines and group value
Class details below come from the ability rework that rolled onto the closed beta servers through 2026. The developers state plainly that there is a high probability some aspects will change before they reach the beta servers, so treat specific ability behaviour as a snapshot of the beta build rather than a settled launch state.
Beastmasters share the Lull Beast and Preservation spell lines with the Druid. Preservation is described as reviving a target beast corpse and returning it to life.
In a group the class offers melee damage split between you and the pet, two group auras, a set of vision and swimming buffs that solve specific world problems, and a pet that can be specialised into a small-group tank. Bleed from Savage Spirit ties into the cross-class bleed mechanics shared with the Archer and Rogue. See Combat for the combat basics, Grouping for shared experience and loot, and Classes for the rest of the roster.