Mists of Pandaria Classic Marksmanship Hunter Stat Priority

The stat priority for Marksmanship Hunter is as follows:

1. Agility
2. Hit Rating to cap (7.5%)
3. Expertise Rating to cap (7.5%)
4. Critical Strike
5. Haste
6. Mastery

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 is another great way to deal damage and more importantly land our abilities. In Mists of Pandaria it is especially important to hit your Steady Shot abilities, as missed shots will not generate focus in addition to not dealing damage. In short, hit cap is extremely important both numerically and for easier game play. As a Marksmanship 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.

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.

In Mists of Pandaria, Marksmanship Hunters make incredible use of critical strikes thanks to the Piercing Shots talent. Your critical hits will deal additional damage over time, making crit an incredibly powerful stat.

Haste rating is a solid, mildly important stat for Marksmanship 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 our Focus regeneration rate and attack speed. As you progress through the expansion and get more gear haste will become slightly less meaningful due to an abundance of focus, but especially in phase 1 it will still be important.

For Marksmanship Hunters, Mastery gives all of your ranged attacks a chance to shoot another basic attack. This effectively is like proccing additional auto-shots occasionally. Unfortunately, these extra shots are not able to affect your rotation in any meaningful way, so they are just a small amount of passive damage. Mastery is an incredibly weak stat for Marksmanship Hunters and should be avoided.