Straddling Viridium

There's a good chance you are here checking on this to see how Straddling Viridium can work for increasing speed for old content. As such please take a moment to read up on my overall speed guide.

I am no longer updating each specific page for items that increase speed, I have created a WoWhead guide, "How to Create A Battle For Azerite Speed Set", my current base speed is just over 208%.

This is a guide aimed more for beast mastery hunters, however there are parts of this that are beneficial for any class.

You will want to get the [spell=268594] azerite trait. This trait stacks, and I have 3 pieces specifically set aside as part of a speed set for running old content.
385 head item [item=167770] with [spell=268594] = 5.228% increase in speed.
420 chest item [item=167314] with [spell=268594] = 5.751% increase in speed.
435 shoulder item [item=168354] with [spell=268594] = 6.273% increase in speed.
All 3 pieces worn together increase speed to 117.252% - they do in fact stack. This is with no other items having a "speed" stat, because using items with the speed attribute lowers the overall effect of some additional speed increasers, more on that in a moment.

An important thing to remember though, you'll have to have your [item=158075] leveled high enough to use the [spell=268594] skill on each piece of gear, so even if the gear is easy to get (Benthic), brand new 120 toons/alts will not be able to take advantage of this right away.

It is very easy, at least for hunters, to get 2 items that have the [spell=268594] trait, because the [item=169479] and [item=169480] both have it. These items can be purchased for 5 [currency=1721] from [npc=153512] (Horde)/[npc=153509] (Alliance), both located in Nazjatar. I don't know if [spell=268594] is available on the same Benthic items for other classes, hopefully people can respond with that information.

While the Benthic shoulder piece [item=167772] for hunters does not have [spell=268594], you can often times find an Azerite shoulder piece that has it by using Blizzard's item restoration page. Don't worry so much about item level, if your intent is running old content, even the lower level gear is good enough for most older content.

One of the key components to building a speed set is to collect as many pieces as you can that have the tertiary (minor) attribute "Speed". You can build your speed up to 20% above normal (120% total) using gear pieces that have the speed attribute. Unfortunately with each "stat squish" that Blizzard does during the last few expansions, your set will also see the speed attribute drop significantly, meaning that it is important to try and get speed on current gear items. If you have reached 20%, you don't have to worry about getting more items, or you can replace speed items with higher item level gear, provided you can switch out gear to keep your speed capped at 20%.

I currently have a speed set at 115.37%, or 15.37% above normal. I have "speed" on every item, but I have not been able to cap at 20%, due to having a mix of BfA and Legion gear items (Legion items having the "squished" stats).

To add the [spell=268594] items to a speed set, you have to remove head, shoulder, and chest gear (or however many items you have with the [spell=268594] trait). This also involves removing the neck piece, in order to activate your Azerite items with the BfA [item=158075] neck piece. Removing these speed gear items lowered my overall speed to 115.007% (or a 0.363% reduction), not much overall because each of the pieces I removed were Legion items.

Putting on the [item=158075] by itself does not increase speed. Adding the three Azerite gear pieces with my speed gear resulted in an overall speed of 127.726%. Speed gear 15.007% + [spell=268594] gear 17.252% = 32.259%, but there is a 4.533% reduction, which shows the diminishing effect of using gear with the tertiary speed attribute on them.

Now we get to the hunter specific area. Selecting the [spell=199921] talent gives a 30% speed increase "anytime you have not attacked for 3 seconds" for a total speed of 157.726%. An important note about this. Notice this doesn't say "out of combat" meaning this speed is maintained even if someone attacks you (not counting snares/slows/stuns obviously). As long as you have not attacked, even if you aggro, or someone jumps you in pvp, this speed increase remains intact.

Then select a cunning pet to get the 8% speed increase [spell=264656], and select talent [spell=191384] to increase the effect to a 12% speed increase. A little side note, the [spell=264656] buff icon will show 8% even with [spell=191384], but it is in fact 12%.

My total speed buff is now 169.726%. (See bottom of page for edit updates) Obviously your individual speed total will depend on tertiary speed stats on your gear, and the item level of your Azerite gear pieces. A 175% speed total should be feasible, provided you have the full 20% speed buff from your tertiary speed stats on the individual gear pieces you are wearing. Remember, my set was only at 15%.

Using Disengage with the [spell=109215] selected on your talent tree will increase this speed to 219.726% when you disengage. [spell=109215] will increase your speed by 50%, but only as a portion of your 100% baseline speed, for 4 seconds after you land. Still an excellent speed buff.

UsingAspect of the Cheetahincreases speed by 90% for 3 seconds, for a total of 259.726%, followed by a 30% speed increase for 9 seconds, at 199.726%.

[spell=109215] and Aspect of the Cheetah do NOT stack, the speed buff will default to whatever is individually highest. The best way to use them for the longest sustained increase is to cast Disengage, then as it expires use Aspect of the Cheetah, as it expires Disengage should be coming off cooldown, so you can use it again. This can allow you a speed boost for 20 seconds straight, from 199.726% to 259.726% total speed. Of course you can continue to use Disengage every 20 seconds after that on cooldown.

You can use Bear Tartare to get a 5 second increase in speed after each kill. With a baseline of 100% speed, Bear Tartare has an 8.735% speed increase. This is with no tertiary speed gear worn. Unfortunately Bear Tartare has a significant diminishing return depending upon how much tertiary speed you are benefiting from. For instance, with my ~15% tertiary speed increase, Bear Tartare's effect is lowered to 2.345%. Still though every little bit counts, and it is worth using the Bear Tartare speed buff. All the other speed buffs listed above do not seem to affect this buff, only the tertiary speed percentage.

There are other items that can also give a speed buff.

[item=165541] give a 30% buff for 6 seconds each time you loot gold from a kill. Much more useful against humanoid trash than creature trash, due to the gold loot requirement. There will be some dungeons this will be far beneficial than others. At the point when I'm testing, my base speed before I loot gold is 180.665%. Looting gold takes my speed to 210.665% for 6 seconds.

[item=136975] is a speed trinket that increases speed by 30% for kills that offer experience or honor. This will not work with low level content (WoD and below), however this does work in Legion and BfA. I also killed a level 81 player in world PVP in Mount Hyjal and it proc'ed for me (I'm level 120). When the item does work, with my above speed set, and with Bear Tartare the total is 202.9%. This trinket is certainly worth using for farming Legion content, and is still useful for some BfA content, provided your overall gear isn't too underpowered.

[item=159288] is a cloak that increases speed by 140 for 4 seconds, provided you have been standing still for 4 seconds. I found that, the easier the content, the less useful this cloak is. Your entire reason for having a speed set is to be moving non stop, as much as you can. Therefore most any dungeon/raid/world content that you can one shot with one ability makes this cloak useless because you will be moving constantly. Now, in raids/dungeons/world content where it takes you more than 4 seconds to down whatever you are fighting, this cloak has more potential. Just remember, if you are looting bosses, hunters are usually moving to get the loot, which starts the speed buff. You'll be looting, usually looking at the content, that can potentially take longer than 4 seconds and cancel out the benefit. Melee may have better luck.

Unfortunately I never had all 3 of these items at one time, so I wasn't able to do a comparison to see what stacks, and what does not. There are certainly other items that could potentially benefit with speed buffs, please feel free to reply with any you know of that I have not stated. If they are items that have no ability for a 120 to use, or they are below Legion level, I didn't put them on here. This includes the obvious legendaries like [item=146668], which will not work above level 115. For hunters, from what I've seen, these items do not stack with [spell=109215] or Aspect of the Cheetah

Having nearly 170% speed constant uptime can lead to some interesting PVP interactions. I was farming in Burning Steppes, and had a 120 warrior chase me for several minutes. Because my speed gear item level is 335, taking on a fully geared 400+ item level toon in pvp won't work out too well for me. But, due to my speed, I kept outrunning him. Later on he logged in on a same faction toon, and messaged me to inquire "How in the world were you able to continually outrun me like that?". Helps to have nearly mounted speed constant while on foot. That warrior has a speed set of his own now.

Quick tip - Using the following macro is exceptionally helpful when figuring out your speed totals:

/script base = BASE_MOVEMENT_SPEED
/script cur, run, fly, swim = GetUnitSpeed("player")
/script ChatFrame1:AddMessage(string.format("Your current maximal speeds are: running %g%%, flying %g%%, swimming %g%%.", run/base*100, fly/base*100, swim/base*100))

We'll have to see if they allow [spell=268594] to work in future expansions. The general path Blizzard takes is to nerf items like this heavily (see legendaries for evidence of that), so don't keep your hopes up on that.

EDIT: My total speed buff is now 180.976%.

Made a few updates. While researching, I found out the [azerite-essence-power=59] Rank 3 adds 5% movement speed to your base 100%.

While researching gems, I found the Straddling Viridium. This gem has to be used on an item above level 200, with a socket of course. I went on the auction house and got lucky. Found a BfA socketed set of speed bracers (to replace my Legion speed bracers). This added another 3.543% speed (3% for the gem, 0.543% for tertiary speed on the bracers).

I wanted to make use of the Enchant Cloak - Gift of Critical Strike, so I purchased a WoD cloak. I am taking a chance by sacrificing item level for speed, but again, farming old content is the goal, and my overall item level, even without having all BfA items, is 338. This added 2% speed to my overall total.

I also replaced a Legion speed trinket with a BFA speed trinket received from a world quest for another slight chunk (around 1% increase).

Replacing my 420 Azerite helm with a 435 Azerite helm (both with [spell=268594] of course) resulted in a 0.404% increase in speed. Not much but it improves overall gear level also. Every little bit helps.

I tried to use the Blurred Speed, but with my other speed enhancements, it actually lowered my overall speed compared to using BfA boots with tertiary speed, not to mention the item level is limited to 151, that's a significant downgrade. Won't matter in most old concent, but it might if you are trying raids from WoD/Legion. But more significant here: this does NOT stack with Enchant Cloak - Gift of Critical Strike. Blurred Speed used by itself, on a toon with the base level 100 speed, will buff you 10% (110% total). But once you start adding tertiary speed, the buff is drastically reduced, where as Enchant Cloak - Gift of Critical Strike is an overall 2% buff to your speed regardless of tertiary speed stats.

I am not going to update the entire page, because the changes in percentages would require redoing all of the calculations, and because you still get the basic general guideline for creating this set. Obviously you'll want to continue to upgrade as I just did, when you find new ways to be faster.

Please reply with any suggestions!

This has been changed in one of the later patches and now gives a flat 3%.

Also can only equip 1 at a time.