Stat Priorities
Stat Ranking
ST: Weapon Damage > Crit > Haste > Mastery > Agility > Versatility
AoE: Weapon Damage > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Agility > Versatility
Stat Outline
Agility: Increases the magnitude of your attacks and abilities. Three secondary stats are currently better than Agility. In general you want high item level pieces with the correct stats. But you might want to use lower item level gear with the correct stats until you reach your best in slot gear.
Mastery: Your mastery is called Mastery: Master of Beasts, increasing the damage done by all the pets and creatures you summon. This includes your main pet, Dire Beast, and more. It generally gains more value in AoE situations because you have more pet damage in your DPS breakdown compared to pure single target scenarios (Beast Cleave, Kill Cleave, Stomp, etc.)
Haste: Increases your auto attack speed, increases focus regeneration, and reduces the cooldown of Kill Command and Barbed Shot.
Critical Strike: Increasing your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities, aswell as increasing the critical strike damage of Kill Command with Go for the Throat. BM Hunters have another passive interaction with Crit called Wild Call. If your auto-attack crits, it has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Barbed Shot.
Versatility: Increasing all your damage and healing done also decreases all damage taken. This can provide a bit of survivability that is sometimes needed for hunters.
As for tertiary stats, Avoidance is the best one, since it reduces your damage taken from a lot of different abilities.Speed is a neat stat to have on your gear, making you move a bit faster.
Leech can be avoided, since most of the Leech value will go on to our pets.
Races
Horde:
- Tauren: Since your main stat priority is catered around critical striking, Tauren’s 2% critical strike damage is really strong in every scenario. War Stomp also provides a casted AoE stun, which can be useful in a lot of content.
- Orc can be a strong contender (especially in AoE) thanks to Command passive, which gives you pet damage and Blood Fury that can be lined up with your cooldowns.
Alliance:
- Dwarf is the best race for Alliance for the same reasons as Tauren, the difference being the active ability Stoneform providing a 10% physical damage reduction with an added omni-self dispel on a 2 minute cooldown. Dwarf is definitely the best overall option, and I highly recommend it!
- Night Elf is another option, granting 1% Haste during night time, and 1% critical strike chance during the day. The active ability is Shadowmeld, which lets you drop threat from all targets instantly. You can use that ability a lot in Mythic + and even on certain raid mechanics, to completely interrupt or ignore them.
Enchants
Cloak: Chant of Winged Grace
Chest: Crystalline Radiance
Bracers: Chant of Armored Avoidance
Boots: Defender’s March
Rings: Radiant Critical Strike, Radiant Haste, Radiant Mastery
Weapon: Authority of the Depths (ST), Stonebound Artistry (AOE)
Gems
Sockets on Neck and Rings: Magnificent Jeweler's Setting is used to create up to 2 sockets on your neck and each of your rings.
Primary Stat Gem: (you can only have one of those on your gear)
Culminating Blasphemite Agility + Critical strike damage per unique Gem color.
Combination Stat Gems:
Deadly Emerald, Quick Ruby, Quick Onyx
Any of the other Combination Stat Gems can also work. Sim your Character and figure out which Gem combination is the best for your gear!
Consumables
Food: Hearty Deepfin Patty, Beledar's Bounty, The Sushi Special
Phials: Flask of Alchemical Chaos (ST), Flask of Tempered Mastery (AOE)
Potions: Tempered Potion
Health Potions: Algari Healing Potion
Oil: Algari Mana Oil
Runes: Crystallized Augment Rune