- Author: Jamielolx
- Date: July 14, 2022
- Updated: February 19, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Compared to Marksmanship and Survival, BM has quite a different priority system. Mostly this is because secondary stats don’t scale with your pet (Crit/Haste/Armor Pen) while primary stats do (Attack Power/Agility), making them a lot more valuable than the secondary stats.
- Hit Rating – Priority #1 until the cap
- Attack Power (x2) – Stat that scales most with your pet
- Agility – Stat that scales most with your shots
- Armor Penetration – Crit becomes better under 435 Armor Penetration
- Crit – Scales well with mortal shots
- Haste – Only scales with auto shot — so does every other stat by default
Hit Rating
The following calculations are what is required to hit the cap. Note that these calculations are based on Focused Aim/Draenei Racial:
0/3 = 263 Hit Rating – 8%
1/3 = 230 Hit Rating -7%
2/3 = 197 Hit Rating -6%
3/3 = 164 Hit Rating -5%
3/3 + Draenei = 131 Hit Rating – 4%
Keep in mind that Hit Rating from talents and Draenei racial do not give it to your pet, which is the primary reason most BM Hunters don’t like to spec into Focused Aim as much as Survival or Marksmanship would. It’s still a good talent to take, but it’s not your priority.
Some extra info on Crit from gear and gems is that your pet does not benefit from any of it, the same goes for Haste and Armor Penetration rating.
Attack Power and Agility + Hit however do scale with for pet, this makes them by far your best stats. Sadly, they are both primary stats, meaning they will always be attached to a secondary stat that is seen as ”lesser”.
Attack Power
Attack Power is a stat that is very easy to get, and also very useful for Beast Mastery Hunters. It scales with your pet as well as one of your two useful AoE abilities, Volley. it’s not as useful for your actual shots as for example Agility would be, however. Attack Power is what we refer to as a ”cheap stat” meaning there’s a whole bunch on gear and enchants (usually double the amount of other enchants to be exact) for example, an Agility gem will have +16 Agility while an Attack Power gem with the same value has +32 Attack Power. The same is often true for enchants, flasks and pretty much every other stat modifier you can think of.
Agility
Agility is another primary stat that is easy to get and is almost as good for Beast Mastery Hunters as Attack Power x2 is. Agility is better for personal DPS from the Hunter shots itself, while it’s worse for pet damage; in the end, the two stats are about equal in power.
Crit
Crit is a bit of a confusing stat for BM hunters, outside of talents it does not scale with your pet. However. Due to mortal shots Crit remains a good stat for Hunters because it still gives your shots an increased Crit damage effect. Beast Mastery also doesn’t have a lot of Crit chance compared to the other specs, making some extra Crit very welcome.
Armor Penetration
Armor Penetration isn’t really for any spec until later phases. This is because Armor Penetration is a stat that grows in power exponentially, meaning the more of it you have, the more you gain from getting extra, but right now we barely have any therefor the stat is not that high up for Phase 1 + Pre-phase. It will climb higher as the raids come by and by the later phases will overtake crit as the best secondary stat for Beast Master.
Haste
Just like the other Hunter specs Haste is the weakest stat of them all, this comes due to global cooldowns being reached early, which is especially the case for Beast Mastery. Hunters have a global cooldown of 1.5 seconds, and due to the serpent swiftness talent Beast Master has, this is already reached with 0 haste. This results in the only thing haste effecting being: auto attack speed and Volley channeling speed.
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About the Author
”Keep in mind that hit rating from talents and Draenei racial do not give it to your pet, which is the primary reason most BM Hunters don’t like to spec into it as much as Survival or Marksmanship would.”
This is false I meant to say expertise,