Stat Priorities
Stat Ranking
Crit > Mastery > Agility > Versatility > Haste
Stat Outline
Agility: Increases the magnitude of your attacks and abilities. This is your most important stat, which is why you want to look at the item level of each item rather than the stats on it. A higher item level is usually better because it gives more agility.
Mastery: Your mastery is called Mastery: Sniper Training, increasing the range and damage of all abilities.
Haste: Increases your auto attack speed, increases focus regeneration, reduces the cast time, and the cooldown of Aimed Shot.
Critical Strike: Increasing your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. It synergizes really well with Penetrating Shots and Improved Kill Shot talents.
Versatility: Increasing all your damage and healing done and 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 movement a bit less punishing.
Leech can provide a good chunk of self healing.
Races
Horde:
- Tauren: Since your main stat priority is catered around critical striking, Tauren’s 2% critical strike is really strong in every scenario. War Stomp also provides a casted AoE stun, which can be useful in a lot of content.
- Blood Elf: comes with a passive 1% critical strike chance that could be very beneficial with all the critical strike chance and critical strike damage stacking.Arcane Torrent is a 2 minute cooldown that regenerates some focus. Very minor benefit.
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.
- Worgen: comes with a passive 1% critical strike chance that could be very beneficial with all the critical strike chance and critical strike damage stacking. Darkflight is a 2 minute cooldown that provides 40% movement speed for 10 seconds. Very minor benefit.
Enchants
Cloak: Chant of Winged Grace, Chant of Leeching Fangs
Chest: Crystalline Radiance
Bracers: Chant of Armored Avoidance, Chant of Armored Leech
Boots: Defender’s March
Rings: Radiant Critical Strike, Radiant Mastery
Weapon: Authority of Radiant Power
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.
Meta Gem: Culminating Blasphemite Agility + Critical strike damage per unique Gem color (you can only have one of those on your gear).
Combination Stat Gems: Quick Ruby
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: Feast of the Midnight Masquerade, Beledar's Bounty, The Sushi Special
Phials: Flask of Alchemical Chaos
Potions: Tempered Potion
Health Potions: Algari Healing Potion
Oil: Algari Mana Oil
Runes: Crystallized Augment Rune