PvE Enhancement Shaman Stat Priority & Reforging

The stat priority in Mists of Pandaria is going to be similar to Cataclysm with making sure that you hit your accuracy caps first and foremost, then prioritize Mastery and Haste.

Stat Priority

1. Agility
2. Hit/Expertise Caps (7.5% for both)
3. Mastery
4. Haste
5. Critical Strike

Agility is your primary stat and is going to contribute to Attack Power, Spell Power, and Critical Strike Chance. This scales all of our damage and is going to have the highest weight out of all potential stats on gear. Since this is a primary stat it cannot be reforged, so make sure to prioritize any buffs, enchants, gems, etc that give us more.

Hit is a stat that makes both our spells and white attacks less likely to miss. You’ll want to aim for 7.5% so that abilities cannot miss against lv 93 mobs.

Expertise is similar to Hit, but instead affects the chance for your attacks to be parried or dodged. You’ll want to hit 7.5% again so your attacks cannot be dodged against a lv 93 mob. Parry is a higher threshold at 15%, but shouldn’t be focused as enemies can only parry you if you’re attacking them from the front – which should be avoided regardless. Keep in mind that certain racial traits will offer a 1% bonus to Expertise if using certain weapons like Axes for Orcs or Maces for Dwarves.

Mastery is going to be extremely important and through the Mastery: Enhanced Elements passive directly translates into a flat % increase to all elemental damage. All of our hardest hitting spells are either fire, frost, or nature damage so this is going to scale our damage up nicely.

Haste is another extremely important stat for us as it increases our auto-attack swings which generates more Maelstrom and increases the proc chance of our weapon enhancements. More Maelstrom and more procs equals less downtime in our rotation. At a certain Haste threshold you’ll also see a reduction in the GCD time which is useful as we fill every second of combat with a button press optimally.

Critical Strike is not a stat that we hate, but it’s not going to be a priority compared to the rest. This will likely be the stat you wind up reforging off of your gear where you can. As its name implies, it increases your chance to get critical strikes.

Reforging

Reforging is going to be a crucial tool to manage hitting our accuracy caps while also making our gear more potent with aggressive stats when possible. You can only reforge secondary stats, so no Agility or Stamina. You can also only reforge one stat into a stat that is not present on the piece of gear.

Stats to prioritize reforging into other stats:

1. Expertise (When over 7.5%)
2. Hit (When over 7.5%)
3. Critical Strike

When choosing which stats to reforge the worse stats into, make sure to keep the priority list in the first section in mind. Keep both Hit and Expertise capped at 7.5% number one. Then Mastery > Haste >>> Crit.