Wowhead says it’s Agility, but Icy veins says it’s mastery. Both pages say they are for Dragonflight. Which stat does Blizzard say is the primary stat?
Agility is a primary stat. Mastery is a secondary stat.
Agility will always give you the biggest boost, but you can’t really adjust gear for more agility. Secondary stats are where you choose what you stack. Now that our pets do so much of our damage, Mastery has become a much stronger secondary stat, but you need to balance it with Haste, Crit and Vers as well.
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Primary stats - Strength, Agility, Intellect
Secondary stats - Crit, Haste, Mastery, Versatility
(Tertiary stats - Speed, Leech, Avoidance, etc)
Specs have a set primary stat. A hunter will ALWAYS want agility, a mage will ALWAYS want intellect, etc. When guides talk about stat priority they’re almost always talking about secondary stats. Those are the ones you may have to actually make a choice regarding.
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Echoing Cognition, mastery is indeed a secondary. Agility, the primary stat, and ilvl go hand-in-hand and agility gains usually trump secondary gains (I don’t like speaking in absolutes when it comes to gear, though)
Simming your gear is the best bet. The stat prio is honestly looser than most people think, and things like covenant can influence this (I get away with relatively low crit by being Kyrian, which means I gem/enchant mastery as the sim recommends).
You have to read with a little nuance. Here’s what Icy Veins says:
The general stat priority for a Beast Mastery Hunter is:
- Mastery;
- Critical Strike;
- Haste;
- Versatility.
Notice what’s missing from that list? Agility. Now, unless you think it’s plausible that Agility is such a bad stat for BM that it’s not even worth listing, then you have to conclude that what the author meant was “Secondary Stat Priority.” Agility is better than any secondary stat.
I’m kind of surprised that Mastery is the top secondary stat. I’ve never seen that before for Beast Mastery.
He’s clearly new, so being condescending isn’t really helpful. Especially when the answer to his question has already been provided.
This is because with DF talents, our pets do a larger percentage of our damage. Previously, they were about 50% of our damage - give or take a few percent. Now they’re between 70-80% - depending on talent choices. That makes Mastery a much stronger stat.
Mastery doesn’t affect your pet’s basic attacks only kill command. I’ve never trusted Icy Veins because their info always seems to be off
BM Mastery affects all damage our pets do, not just Kill Command. Right in the tooltip, it says…
Master: Master of Beasts
- Increases the damage done by your pets by X.X%.
Even in the spell data, it’s listed as “Apply Aura: Mod Pet Damage %”.
It’s misleading. The tooltip says one thing but if you stack mastery you’ll see your pet’s basic attacks the damage doesn’t go up but the damage on Kill command does. It’s always been like this which is why mastery has always taken a back seat to haste and crit
Edit: I just tested this out with some mastery gear just to make sure my information wasn’t out dated and it still stands. Mastery affects Kill command not pet basic attacks. The tooltip has always been misleading.
Vers on the other hand does affect your pet’s basic attacks.
Weird, because I just tested and got different results.
36.32% Mastery
15.65% Versatility
487 - 976 : White Damage
1667 - 3335 : Bite Damage
41.31% Mastery
15.65% Versatility
511 - 1026 : White Damage
1748 - 3501 : Bite Damage
Two Legendary chests with the same item level, but one is Crit/Haste and the other Haste/Mastery.
As you can see, white damage and bite damage are both about 5% higher when I have 4.99% more Mastery.
Just sim yourself. BM likes all stats, just need to find the balance that works for your setup.