MM hunter - Mastery vs. Versatility

[Grox-dun-modr]

Hi fellow hunters,

I recently started playing again with this little hunter since WoD, and am currently enjoying MM spec. I noticed that Versatility and Mastery both provide straight dmg % increase, so the question is:

Why is Versa even a thing when Mastery’s dmg bonus scales better and also provides increased cast range?

I checked some top MM raiders and they tend to keep a balance between these stats, which doesn’t really make sense according to the basic maths I did myself (for this character):

• 115 versa points mean 1,35% damage increase
• 115 mastery points mean 2,3% damage increase + extra range

According to the Versa/Mastery tooltips displayed on my character menu, at secondary stats.

On a side note, I simulated myself and got the following stat weighs on patchwerk, which again don’t make sense to me:

• Mastery: 2.77
• Versa: 2.61

I tend to assume I must be wrong or misunderstanding how these stats work. It would be nice if a more experienced hunter could enlighten me up.

Good hunting

[Skye-terokkar (Skye)]

Actually the answer is very simple: most people these days blindly believe what simcraft tells them.

My calculations are following:

115 mast rating => 1% mast => +2.24% dmg (*)
 85 vers rating => 1% vers => +1.00% dmg

-> 51 mast => +1% dmg (*)
-> 85 vers => +1% dmg

(*) dmg of abilities only (not from trinkets, azerite powers etc.)

So. If your damage 60% OR LESS from your abilities, versatility is better. But that is not a case even for people who uses mecha-trinket, focused azerite beam and fire poution.

Its about 25% of dmg from NON abilities (30% max).
So mastery is a king.

[Terapeuten-daggerspine (Terapeuten)]

Everything else that does damage benefit from versa, i.e. trinkets, azerite traits etc.

[Maud-stormreaver]

Mastery and versa are compounding, 1500 mastery and 500 versa will likely net you a better end result than 2000 mastery 0 versa. What exact ratio you should aim for is impossible to say, but particularly in this tier when a lot of your damage is unaffected by mastery (30% thereabout), if you are close to zero versa with a crapton of mastery you should at least gem and enchant versa. Don’t go stacking versatility tho, in a vacuum mastery is still stronger. Sim yo self.