Mists of Pandaria Classic Beast Mastery Hunter Stat Priority
On this page, you will find out the optimal PvE stat priority for your Beast Mastery Hunter in Mists of Pandaria Classic. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations.
Stat Priority for Beast Mastery Hunter
The stat priority for Beast Mastery
Hunter is as follows:
- Agility
- Hit Rating to cap (7.5%)
- Expertise Rating to cap (7.5%)
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
Agility
Agility is your primary source of Attack Power which all of your damaging abilities scale off of. This is your Primary stat and should be on every piece of gear. There are other sources of scaling for Agility as well, but ultimately, more Agility is the best and most important way to scale your damage.
Hit Rating
Hit Rating is another great way to deal damage and more importantly land our abilities.
In Mists of Pandaria it is especially important to hit your Cobra Shot
abilities, as missed shots will not generate focus and
will not extend your
Serpent Sting. In shot, hit cap is extremely important
both numerically and for easier game play. As a Beast Mastery Hunter we are aiming to achieve 7.5% Hit rating to be hit capped.
In terms of rating, this is exactly 2550 hit rating total.
Expertise
A new change in Mists of Pandaria is that Hunters now require expertise rating, as our shots can now be dodged. This is effectively identical to hit rating in how it functions, just with a different name. The expertise cap is also 7.5%, or 2550 rating.
Haste Rating
Overall, Haster, Mastery, and Crit are all very close together in terms of effectiveness for Beast Mastery Hunters. Generally any ilvl difference (and thus difference in Agility) will be what determines whether a piece of gear is better or not.
Haste rating is a strong stat for Beast Mastery Hunters. In Mists of Pandaria, some classes have specific interactions with haste where certain breakpoints with DoTs can actually result in an additional tick of damage from the DoT. For Hunters, haste just increases the Focus regeneration rate and attack speed of both you and your pet. This is the best way to increase your damage overall, as it also will affects several passive interactions due to more frequent attacks.
Mastery
For Beast Mastery Hunters, Mastery
increases all of the damage your pets deal, which includes abilities such as
Kill Command
and
Dire Beast. This is the majority of Beast Mastery's damage, making it a strong
secondary choice.
Critical Strike
In Mists of Pandaria, there are not many additional ways that crits will affect your rotation
besides just doing more damage. For Beast Mastery Hunters this is even more true, as you have
ways to guarentee crits for some of your pet attacks already through certain passives such as
Cobra Strikes. This makes crit our worst performing stat, but only slightly worse
than Haste and Mastery.
Changelog
- 21 Jun. 2025: Guide created.
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This guide has been written by Impakt, an Officer in BDGG, the #2 North American guild on retail. In addition to live WoW, he has also been a classic theorycrafter and enthusiast for many years. You can watch him stream on Twitch, or follow him on Twitter.