Beast Mastery Hunter DPS Azerite Traits/Powers and Armor — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5
This page will guide you through the process of understanding what the best
Azerite traits and items are for your Beast Mastery Hunter in the current
(8.2.5) patch of the Battle for Azeroth World of Warcraft expansion. You will have to equip the Heart of Azeroth to access these traits,
but our Heart of Azeroth guide can tell you everything you need to know.
For more information about how the new Essence system introduced in Patch 8.2 affects you, please refer to our Beast Mastery Hunter essence page.
New Patch 8.2 Azerite Traits
The new traits from Operation: Mechagon and Nazjatar/Eternal Palace are not particularly good, and so we are not mentioning them on this page.
Choosing Azerite Gear as a Beast Mastery Hunter
Your choice of Azerite Gear pieces will almost always come down to the item level first, and the traits that it has second. Note that the traits you will look at when choosing gear are the Outer Ring traits, as these are the ones with the biggest impact on your gameplay.
The general rule is that if an item is a 15+ item level upgrade over another
item, you should use it. If the difference between the two items is less than
15 item levels, then you should choose the one with the better Outer Ring
trait. As we said, though, this is a general rule and there are exceptions; for
example, if you are comparing an extremely bad trait ( Blood Rite)
to an extremely good one (
Primal Instincts). It is nearly
impossible to take every single variable into account without using a tool like
Raidbots to simulate the
difference for yourself.
It is worth noting that if the difference between the traits is very small, then the higher item level pick will be more desirable. Azerite pieces have a high amount of Stamina, increasing your maximum health. A tiny difference in that regard can be the difference between dying and surviving, so item level is almost always king.
Choosing Azerite Traits as a Beast Mastery Hunter
In the sections that follow, we will look at the best traits to choose. While the traits are ordered by power, this order is not a very strict priority, but more of a guideline.
Outer Ring
The Outer Ring traits are the first ones you unlock, and they are by far the most important from a DPS perspective. You can see the simulation comparison of these traits below.
Dance of Death is generally the strongest raiding trait for
Beast Mastery Hunters. It is particularly powerful when you also have a high
Critical Strike rating from your gear.
Primal Instincts is the other "must-have" raiding and Mythic+
Trait for Beast Mastery Hunters. It is particularly powerful for bursty scenarios, and having
at least one is almost essential to a good Azerite setup.
Haze of Rage does not simulate very well, but it is very
good for being tied to your main cooldown,
Bestial Wrath. This cooldown
is often saved for and used on large add spawns or other important timings in a
fight or Mythic+ dungeon. The Agility proc on top of it will help you burst
more and can make a big difference in your short-term burst DPS.
Rapid Reload is essentially a mandatory trait for anything
like Mythic+, and raid fights with sustained multi-target. For every target
that
Multi-Shot hits (with a minimum of 3), your
Aspect of the Wild's
cooldown is reduced by 1 second. The larger the pulls, the greater the reduction.
On fights where there are multiple targets for significant portions of the
fight, you can abuse this to get more Aspects off in important stages of the fight.
Middle Ring
The Middle Ring traits are all fairly close, and they will rarely affect your choice of Azerite Gear. You can see the simulation comparison of these traits below.
Overwhelming Power has the highest DPS potential of the traits
in this ring, but it will lose efficiency whenever you take damage, which can
be very often in some raid encounters.
Unstable Flames starts to pull ahead of Overwhelming Power
in high Crit situations where you are also using
Dance of Death. When
using Dance of Death, a lot of your rotation and gearing starts to revolve
around maximizing your Critical Strike, and this Trait helps this a lot.
Inner Ring
The Inner Ring consists mostly of defensive or utility traits.
Duck and Cover reduces
Feign Death's cooldown to 25
seconds, and it causes Feign Death to give you a small absorb shield. Because
this one is actually entirely in your control, it can be a lifesaver at the
right moment. Being able to Feign Death more often can allow you to negate
certain spells in Mythic+ more often as well, so it is definitely the best
trait in this tier.
Resounding Protection is an absorb shield that automatically
gets applied every 30 seconds. This is one of the best defensive traits to
have, as you will always be able to benefit from it.
Impassive Visage is one of the stronger self-healing traits,
and since it is triggered whenever you take damage, there is no chance of it
overhealing you or being wasted.
Azerite Traits Rotation Changes and Details for Beast Mastery Hunter
Some of your Azerite Traits in Battle For Azeroth can have a small effect on your rotation. They generally do not change the fundamentals, but they allow you to use their effects to squeeze just a little bit more damage out than your competition.
Primal Instincts causes you to not want to use
Aspect of the Wild unless you have 0 charges of
Barbed Shot remaining. This is usually just the case right after using a Barbed Shot.
Primal Instincts influences your opener very slightly. We have listed the alternative opener on the Rotation Page.
Rapid Reload makes Multi-Shot preferable to Cobra Shot in all 3+ target situations.
Relative Strength of Azerite Traits for Beast Mastery Hunter
Below we have listed the relative strength of the most relevant Azerite Traits, as far as they are implemented in our simulation tools at the moment.
Because you can have the same trait multiple times, and because some traits can change the rotation if you stack it multiple times, we have listed the relative strength of the traits depending on how many of them you have.
We are not including different item levels of Azerite pieces, because in most situations you are going to want the highest item level piece regardless. As with any rule, there are exceptions and you should always sim your own character's traits with Raidbots to be sure.
Outer Rings
The Outer Ring traits are the first ones you unlock, and they are the most important from a DPS perspective.
Here we have listed a ranking for the Outer Ring traits in terms of single-target DPS. Because of the sheer amount of Azerite traits, we have only listed the best 25.
Middle Ring
The Middle Ring traits are shared for all classes and specs. For any DPS spec, you should always pick among the DPS options and ignore the defensive or heal options for PvE.
Here we have listed a ranking for Middle Ring traits in terms of DPS for single-target situations.
AoE/Cleave Azerite Traits Comparison for Beast Mastery Hunter
Outer Ring
Here we have listed a ranking for the Outer Ring traits in terms of DPS for AoE/Cleave situations. Because of the sheer amount of Azerite traits, we have only listed the best 10.
Middle Ring
Here we have listed a ranking for Middle Ring traits in terms of DPS for AoE/Cleave situations.
Find Azerite Armor By Trait/Power
In the table below, you can see all of the Azerite gear available to your Beast Mastery Hunter. By using the + button located next to each item, you can expand the list of Azerite powers that this item possesses (to collapse the list, simply click the - button).
If you want to filter items according to the powers that they offer, you can use the filters below.
Head Items | Shoulders Items | Chest Items |
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