zoo build without t19

[shadowd]

hey guys i have just switched back on my hunter, and now i want to know if zoo build is viable without the 2 x t19? i have the t20 4 set + every bm legendary items , even the chest and new ring.

[nToxik]

It is sort of mentioned here on IV: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/beast-...ds-pet-talents

You would be best to sim though.

[Khallid]

Viable? Yes

Optimal? No

Tier 19 2-piece is very strong for the zoo build, especially if you have high crit.

[Shareel]

T19 2-piece alone is around 30-40k DPS and this is a lot. I can go from 930 to 935 ilvl and T19 2piece wins still by 20k.

[Dracodraco]

Yes and no. If you only have 890 (standard heroic) NH tier items, there will be a point where the stats of a higher item level piece WILL be superior. IIRC, the consensus was that the 2 piece is worth a combined ~60 item levels; That means, if you're wearing 890 standard heroic NH tier, you will get an equal/higher amount of DPS by wearing two 925 items instead (as they'd total up 70 item levels), due to the sheer agility / secondary stat increase. I likely won't ever change my 925 NH legs and 915+socket cloak for anything in tomb, because it straight up requires me to get two 955 items in their places for it to be even considered an upgrade.

[Marrilaife]

I simmed my hunter with the standard zoo build (no huntmaster ring though) with 2p t19 both 890 and 915+930 items I have for the slots, and it simmed higher without the NH tier but with the higher ilvl items. So I'm really wondering now what's the best course of action without access to M NH (not feeling like trying to pug the place)?

Also no idea why haste sims for me so high when most guides recommend crit > mastery > haste > vers for zoo.

[chrewm]

So I'm really wondering now what's the best course of action without access to M NH (not feeling like trying to pug the place)?

What are you wondering about? you simmed and got your answer, use the off-pieces instead of the 890 T19 2p

Also no idea why haste sims for me so high when most guides recommend crit > mastery > haste > vers for zoo.

There exists (and has existed for a long time) a bit of a problem with SimCraft that is inherent to the tool where the behaviour of the APL can cause Haste to have incredibly high values at certain intervals, or "breakpoints" that will allow an unrealistic amount of extra spellcasts. One of these exist for BM (without Haste trinkets) somewhere between 7000-8000 Hasterating (roughly 20%, that's right, the 20% hastepoint is not a real thing).

The TL;DR is that if you're simming your stat weights and Haste has an incredibly high value, firstly try and enable "Center Scale Delta" in the scaling options. If that doesn't work, turn it off and go to your profile under Simulate, scroll down to the gear section, add ",enchant=100haste" to the end of any item, and increase this Haste number in increments of 100 until the Haste weight goes down to something more normal. This will increase your DPS artifically, but it will not matter much to the stat weight result, and that's what you're after, not accurate DPS numbers.

Unless your Haste is extremely low, it should never really be above Mastery unless there's shenanigans going on.

copy/pasted from Azortharion's pin on hunter discord

[Dracodraco]

I simmed my hunter with the standard zoo build (no huntmaster ring though) with 2p t19 both 890 and 915+930 items I have for the slots, and it simmed higher without the NH tier but with the higher ilvl items. So I'm really wondering now what's the best course of action without access to M NH (not feeling like trying to pug the place)?

Also no idea why haste sims for me so high when most guides recommend crit > mastery > haste > vers for zoo.

890+890 = 1780. 915+930 = 1845. 1845-1780 = 65. It's expected to be worth more using the offset, as I already pointed out. Especially if you're using suboptimal NH pieces (EG; Cloak+Gloves are your best choices for NH items, as they have the smallest impact on stat budget, and the best stats relative to the new tier [Cloak has mastery while the new tier doesn't, for example]), and the new pieces you have are better itemised.

[Mavick]

What are you wondering about? you simmed and got your answer, use the off-pieces instead of the 890 T19 2p




copy/pasted from Azortharion's pin on hunter discord

That pin is outdated and was posted back when Direfrenzy builds were the norm. Haste is actually very high value for the "zoo builds" as it does rely more on dire beast resets, of which autoattack speed being increased by haste has an important role. Mastery, on the other hand, is pretty meh, it has no interaction with your stomp damage. Again, the pin is talking about a different build, you WILL want to stack crit AND haste with this build. I've been sitting around 20% haste for awhile now, and nothing about haste seems out of the ordinary, usually right below crit and right above mastery.

[Illana]

That pin is outdated and was posted back when Direfrenzy builds were the norm. Haste is actually very high value for the "zoo builds" as it does rely more on dire beast resets, of which autoattack speed being increased by haste has an important role. Mastery, on the other hand, is pretty meh, it has no interaction with your stomp damage. Again, the pin is talking about a different build, you WILL want to stack crit AND haste with this build. I've been sitting around 20% haste for awhile now, and nothing about haste seems out of the ordinary, usually right below crit and right above mastery.

Mastery doesn't increase stomp damage?

[Dracodraco]

That pin is outdated and was posted back when Direfrenzy builds were the norm. Haste is actually very high value for the "zoo builds" as it does rely more on dire beast resets, of which autoattack speed being increased by haste has an important role. Mastery, on the other hand, is pretty meh, it has no interaction with your stomp damage. Again, the pin is talking about a different build, you WILL want to stack crit AND haste with this build. I've been sitting around 20% haste for awhile now, and nothing about haste seems out of the ordinary, usually right below crit and right above mastery.

The info isn't out of date. Just because it hasn't been restated recently does not mean it does not hold true anymore. And while I am at work and can't actually test it right now, I'd be very surprised if Stomp / Dire beast does NOT scale with mastery.
That being said, auto attack increase by haste is such a minimal increase in stomp procs that it's not worth gearing for. Think about it;

Your base speed is 3.00; Say you've got a setup similiar to mine:
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/ch...ull/dracodraco
12K Crit rating, 3K haste rating, 12.5K mastery rating.

Ratings clock in at 400 per 1 point for crit and mastery, and 375 for 1 for haste. Let's say we want to convert 4K mastery rating to haste; That'll give us 10.66% more haste, and put me up to 19%. It'll lower my auto attack speed from 2.76, to 2.43. It'll also lower my mastery by 20% (BM's mastery gives 2% per 1 mastery point, and I lose 10 points by trading in 4K rating).

So at the base, we're looking at 10.6% haste for 20% pet damage. Course, some of this is offset by pets swinging 10.6% quicker (and for DB, the reduced cooldown), but a large part of the damage still lies in things not specifically affected by haste to a great extent. About 75% of your damage should be from pet sources, IIRC, which means a 20% loss is 15% less damage, on a single target (multi target may be less affected due to AOE scaling with haste - beast cleave, stomp proc frequency etc), but considering there's next to no consistent AOE in Tomb, and whatever there is like Mistress we're better off focusing on single target due to passive cleave / other classes with better, less intrusive AOE than keeping up beast cleave).

Now, lets calculate a bit on dire beast -
With a 40% crit rate, and a 50% OWTP rate with huntsmaster, 20% of my autoshots (on average) will trigger a reset. That means I get a DB reset every 2.76*5 = 13.8 seconds, on average. With 19% haste, that becomes 2.43*5 = 12.15 seconds; Lets pick one of the biggest DPS checks this tier like Mistress, with an 8 minute enrage. That's 480 seconds. With perfect proc usage, you get 34.8 DB procs with my haste, and 39.5 procs with 19%.

You now have to ask yourself - is a difference of 5 stomps and dire beasts, 10% faster pet swings and a slight focus regen buff realistically, going to be better than 15% more raw damage? I'd wager not really, atleast at my gear levels; I often run into periods where procs are so frequent that I have a hard time just not focus capping (or using KC on CD), so you have to keep that in mind as well. There is such a thing as "too many" procs.

[Marrilaife]

What are you wondering about? you simmed and got your answer, use the off-pieces instead of the 890 T19 2p

Well as you said just after, the sims aren't always 100% trustworthy (the whole argument about haste value), and second I was wondering if in that case (can't slot NH 2-set) is it better to play direfrenzy or anything different than standard setup.

Also as I checked in logs, top BM hunters have big variety of trinkets and quite numerous deviations from the "belt + ring" legendary combo (people using everything from boots to sephuz and prydaz), but there are next to none without NH 2p, so that's why I farmed it up only to find it's not a sim dps increase - surprising.

(EG; Cloak+Gloves are your best choices for NH items, as they have the smallest impact on stat budget, and the best stats relative to the new tier [Cloak has mastery while the new tier doesn't, for example]), and the new pieces you have are better itemised.

I had cloak + helmet.

The info isn't out of date. Just because it hasn't been restated recently does not mean it does not hold true anymore. And while I am at work and can't actually test it right now, I'd be very surprised if Stomp / Dire beast does NOT scale with mastery.
That being said, auto attack increase by haste is such a minimal increase in stomp procs that it's not worth gearing for.

Yeah, also checking from logs I don't see anyone gearing for haste or any haste breakpoints, so I assumed I shouldn't either.

Also for some reason a 900 convergence sims for me higher than 915 owl (the trinket from sisters), again wondering can I trust the sim since I heard convergence is mostly used for MM?

[Illana]

Well as you said just after, the sims aren't always 100% trustworthy (the whole argument about haste value), and second I was wondering if in that case (can't slot NH 2-set) is it better to play direfrenzy or anything different than standard setup.

Also as I checked in logs, top BM hunters have big variety of trinkets and quite numerous deviations from the "belt + ring" legendary combo (people using everything from boots to sephuz and prydaz), but there are next to none without NH 2p, so that's why I farmed it up only to find it's not a sim dps increase - surprising.

I had cloak + helmet.

Yeah, also checking from logs I don't see anyone gearing for haste or any haste breakpoints, so I assumed I shouldn't either.

Also for some reason a 900 convergence sims for me higher than 915 owl (the trinket from sisters), again wondering can I trust the sim since I heard convergence is mostly used for MM?

convergence is very strong when paired with bracers.

[Holovik]

Also as I checked in logs, top BM hunters have big variety of trinkets and quite numerous deviations from the "belt + ring" legendary combo (people using everything from boots to sephuz and prydaz), but there are next to none without NH 2p, so that's why I farmed it up only to find it's not a sim dps increase - surprising.

This is because many of the BM legendaries sim very closely to each other. You see sephuz a lot because there are a number of fights in TOS where you can reliably proc it.

[Illana]

This is because many of the BM legendaries sim very closely to each other. You see sephuz a lot because there are a number of fights in TOS where you can reliably proc it.

sephz sims highest with no proc for a lot of people as well.

[Holovik]

sephz sims highest with no proc for a lot of people as well.

Yeah for sure. The insane amount of crit makes it pretty ridiculous for zoo build. For me it sims within 5k to prydaz so for DI, Harj, and Mistress I equip it because I can reliably proc it. Just equipping it gives me 44% crit which pretty much overloads me with procs, on top of the mini lust every 30 seconds.

[Dracodraco]

I had cloak + helmet.

Yeah, also checking from logs I don't see anyone gearing for haste or any haste breakpoints, so I assumed I shouldn't either.

Also for some reason a 900 convergence sims for me higher than 915 owl (the trinket from sisters), again wondering can I trust the sim since I heard convergence is mostly used for MM?

Helmet is a "bad" slot - it's highest stat budget possible (goes legs+helm+chest > shoulder+gloves > cloak), and the new tier helm has the best stats (mastery+crit) versus old one having haste+mastery, so that's not a HUGE surprise to me.

As for convergence, it's a very powerful trinket, even for BM, because with 7.2.5 Aspect of the wild was buffed to also reduce your GBC by .2 seconds when active, which in turn buffs things like the 2/4 piece, because when paired with BW, it lets you get off more shots in the same timeframe (thus stacking the buff higher/hitting more hard-hitting abilities). If you're also wearing wrists, it becomes even better. I wouldn't trade my 915+socket one for anything below a mythic+some sort of augmentation-trinket (be it owl or engine), and even then it's a toss-up.

sephz sims highest with no proc for a lot of people as well.

As I told a friend of mine when he said it was simming best for him without proc - "I'd be very surprised if that's actually correct". Remember that part of this rings power (when not triggering the effect, of course) relies on the fact that it basically gives 750 free haste rating at all times. That's a decent amount, by all means, but compare it to Apex Predator (I assume Huntsmaster is already equipped, so that leaves Apex+Sephuz) and you've got a ring that, granted, will give about .8% less crit than Sephuz, but on the other hand, has mastery and +5% pet damage (plus other smaller benefits like the charge thing). I quite simply don't see it; You're relying on 2K haste and 320 crit being a better deal than 1.6K mastery and +5% pet damage. Unless there's haste-breakpoint shenanigans going on, that's not logical in any way, shape or form.


Now, on the fights where it can reliably be proc'd (like Harjatan, Mistress and DI) it's the bee's knees. There's no doubt. It is literally THE strongest legendary when it can be proc'd on cooldown.

[Illana]

I'd be very surprised if that's actually correct, though. Remember that part of this rings power (when not triggering the effect, of course) relies on the fact that it basically gives 750 free haste rating at all times. That's a decent amount, by all means, but compare it to Apex Predator (I assume Huntsmaster is already equipped, so that leaves Apex+Sephuz) and you've got a ring that, granted, will give about .8% less crit than Sephuz, but on the other hand, has mastery and +5% pet damage (plus other smaller benefits like the charge thing). I quite simply don't see it; You're relying on 2K haste and 320 crit being a better deal than 1.6K mastery and +5% pet damage. Unless there's haste-breakpoint shenanigans going on, that's not logical in any way, shape or form.

With the aotb build and qa'pla it's most likely bis legendary assuming 0 procs.

Some people using standard killer cobra setup also has seen seph as bis even assuming 0 procs

[Dracodraco]

With the aotb build and qa'pla it's most likely bis legendary assuming 0 procs.

Some people using standard killer cobra setup also has seen seph as bis even assuming 0 procs

Again - is that sims stating that, and if so, have those people doing those sims accounted for the fact that it's giving *haste*, a stat that is notoriously hard to put a value on (but usually ends up being worth far less than expected for hunters)?

I don't doubt that sims might show it as bis, but I'll repeat what I stated above: You're banking on 2K haste 320 crit beating 1.6K mastery +5% pet damage.

[Illana]

Again - is that sims stating that, and if so, have those people doing those sims accounted for the fact that it's giving *haste*, a stat that is notoriously hard to put a value on (but usually ends up being worth far less than expected for hunters)?

I don't doubt that sims might show it as bis, but I'll repeat what I stated above: You're banking on 2K haste 320 crit beating 1.6K mastery +5% pet damage.

Of course it depends on your current gear as well. Sephuz won't always be the best in all situations. However stats go up or down in value relative to the amount of the others.

So it may be that losing 1.6k mastery and 5% pet damage isn't a big deal because the gain in crit and haste give you more dps. Haste is still a great stat for BM as it synergises with a lot of the abilities:

Reduced cd on KC
Reduced cd on dire beast
pet attack speed
autoshot speed
focus regeneration