Zekvir Strats / Builds / theory - Hunter

Classes Hunter
1

I’m working on downing Zekvir on ? and later ?? while solo. I haven’t gotten there yet but one thing I’m noticing is that my pet just can’t survive since mend pet doesn’t keep up with the damage. It is close though and switching Brann to a healer helped a fair bit but not enough.

I recently went out and tamed a tenacity pet - a bear since they have more health and mend pet heals for a fair bit more on tenacity pets because of the extra health. Bears also have a good damage reduction ability and all tenacity pets have an extra health/heal ability. Though dps suffers but Zekvir seems less like a DPS race and more of an endurance fight. The exception is the egg but I can burst that down already before it hatches at ? tier. ?? tier will be more of a challenge to burst it down but hopefully not too bad.

I’m also tweaking my talents for this fight only. Single target damage of course but also pet focused abilities. I’m a marks hunter so that limits my pet focused talents but still some like the boost to mend pet and the damage reduction on MD.

I’m also working on boosting my stam to boost my pet’s health. Mostly by improving my gear but also a few gems/enchants and consumables such as food.

My hunter is up to 5.3 mil and my tenacity pet is over 4 mil life. I’m at 603 item level average. Mend pet is ticking for almost 620k and I’m hoping to get that to 700k ticks as I continue to improve my gear. Hopefully, my hunter can hit 6 mil health as I upgrade my gear more.

My plan is to let the pet tank Zekvir with mend pet keeping it alive along with some help from Brann. I will do steady dps and try to avoid taking damage and then use cooldowns to burst the eggs down.

I think this will work eventually once I get the mechanics down on ? tier. But on ?? tier I’m less certain. Better gear will help of course but at most I can probably only get to 610 maybe 616 if I get really lucky with vaults unless the items needed to upgrade gear starts to drop more readily from delve chests. To get higher would probably require raiding and/or mythic+ which doesn’t really work for me.

For the ?? tier I have a different tenacity pet that has a mortal strike ability. My hope is that it will reduce Zekvir’s healing enough that I won’t have to worry about interrupting it. The fight will be slower, but potentially that won’t matter depending on dps vs hps with mortal strike on Zekvir. This is just a theory right now that I haven’t tested yet.

Using a tenacity pet is a dps loss of course and in the past the extra leech healing from ferocity pets was worth it from a survival perspective. But since leech got reduced across the board, I’m thinking the extra health from tenacity pets and higher mend pet ticks might be better now for pure pet survival. I’m not sure but that is why I want to test this approach out.

Anyways, I just thought I would share what I’m working on to tackle Zekvir. This approach might not work or be necessary but I’m hoping it will help. I really want that void zep :slight_smile:

Any feedback (constructive) would be appreciated and I’m also curious to hear what you all are doing to try to beat Zekvir while solo. How is it for BM and survival hunters?

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As a BM Hunter, I watched a Blood DK friend try it for the first time at ilevel 580 something and one shot it about 3 days before reset. It was in the middle of all the weird tuning stuff. He’s really good and I thought, I can do this….pet dead in 15 seconds

Last night at ilevel 601 I tried a bunch of different things.

Healer Brann was better for me but would still die at some point in the fight but lasted longer than dps Brann

If Brann helped with interrupts, I was able to get the ones he missed. Post haste to remove the dot if I missed it was a helpful suggestion from someone else.

Used both a spirit beast and a core hound and as much as I love having a spirit beast, the lust and durability was better with the core hound and I’ll probably switch to a scale hound. Clefthoof is best but it’s such a small room that I prefer something smaller.

Growl off and MD to pet with associated talents to help them.

Ultimately I used a DR single target build even though I personally like Pack Leader.

With amazing RNG, I made it consistently to 40-50% and once to sub 30% but Brann would always die and then my pet and I’m kiting him around the room like mad trying to find a moment to rez my pet. Was able to Rez pet but the egg was up and didn’t get it down in time and used Intimidation for one stun and then ultimately got a massive melee hit from the boss and died.

I’m sure someone will tell me the first level is easy but I am struggling too. I’ll come back with a little more gear and continue to try until I get it.

Brann dying as both dps and heals is so very frustrating.

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3

DPS brann and nothing but speed. You can kite him infinitely. The only thing you have to kill is the cocoon.

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4

I did try that but Brann ultimately dies and my pet, as well. I have to wait until I can stop moving to Rez my pet and it seems the egg always spawns during this time and either I can’t get it down fast enough or the boss starts to get close enough to melee me if my movement CDs aren’t up.

I’d love to have a bit more detail from you because I am clearly struggling and would like to improve myself.

5

Don’t growl on your pet. Make sure you start with shots so you get aggro. I am okay until DPS CDs are down and brann and I can’t take down the cocoon. The add kills me I was going to wait until ilvl 615 to go again.

As for the kiting, zevrik don’t attack fast and he pauses to cast his frontals. Even if you find yourself close to zevrik or in a frontal, just disengage.

I have already beaten ? And just need ?? to finish.

He phases in ?? I am in no way done on the fight yet. The speed was my take on the fight because your pet will get 1 shotted. As brann and I lvl, I hope the cocoons will become a non-issue.

6

Better off using the pet just for Growl from a distance to support kiting. Move To is useful. Find a kiting loop, and move pet away from where you’d otherwise need to loop near Zekvir; growl then, and keep pet away. It’ll give some free mitigation and enough time to safely get back to where you wanted. Neither you nor your pet should take any hits.

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7

Tundra Rhino from the Azure Span. It looks like a scalehide, but for some reason it’s classified as a clefthoof and is WAY smaller than all other clefthoofs.

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8

Thank you for your responses. I will continuing to work on my kiting skills, which are apparent lacking at the moment.

9

Kiting could work but for now I’m going to keep playing with the pet as a tank. I haven’t tried it again since switching to tenacity pets. Been testing the pet in tier 8s to see how it compares with my scalehide ferocity pet. So far it goes really smoothly–never even get close to my pet being killed. Makes tier 8s a breeze though it’s also fairly smooth with a scalehide. But I do notice the difference.

Edit - I got Zekvir down solo this morning using a tenacity pet and Brann as a healer. Brann was 33 and my item level is 605 and I’m a marks hunter. The biggest hangup was just me getting use to the mechanics and stop being afraid of getting hit by Zekvir. It took a few tries to get that all down but the last run was fairly clean and Brann being a healer helps since he can remove the dot from you giving you another way to deal with it plus the extra healing is nice.

My bear pet was able to tank fairly well though I still did need to rez it a couple of times. At this point I’m going to switch back to focusing on bountiful delves, upgrade my gear, and complete tier 10 and 11 delves. Once that is all done then I will see about trying the ?? version of Zekvir.

But I’m glad to have gotten him down! :slight_smile:

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