WotLK Classic Beast Mastery Hunter Stat Priority

The stat priority for Beast Mastery Hunter is as follows:

1. Hit to cap;
2. Attack Power;
3. Agility;
4. Critical Strike;
5. Armor Penetration;
6. Haste.

In general, the hit cap should be very easy to obtain with raid gear. You may even reach the point where you have too much hit. You will want to gear mostly with agility pieces that have crit and armor penetration on them. Keep in mind that attack power is strong for Beast Mastery as well, so pay attention the the agility and attack power ratios on your gear.

In a raid environment, you will need 9% Hit to cap, or 8% as Alliance with a Draenei in your group. Both numerically and for your quality of life, capping Hit should always be your top priority. Missing abilities can be bad at critical times, is the worst outcome numerically compared to other stats, and just feels terrible.

Whenever we are comparing Attack Power (AP) to other stats, it will always be at a 2:1 ratio since items and gems are generally budgeted at that ratio. For Beast Mastery Hunter, AP is your best stat due to your pet damage scaling. Pets gain a portion of your AP, making it the best way to increase your pet damage, and thus overall damage.

Agility is the primary stat for Hunter, and is one of your most valuable stats. Each point of Agility gives 1 AP, some dodge, 0.55 crit rating, and some Armor. The AP and crit is of course the most valuable, making Agility point for point one of the best stats for every Hunter spec. It is also important to note that Agility scales extremely well due to tons of raid buffs and talents giving you a percent increase to your primary stats.

While crits deal more damage on their own, Hunter have the added benefit that Go for the Throat causes your crits to generate Focus for your pet. However, for Beast Mastery, it is important to note that your pet does not benefit from your crit chance; pets have their own crit chance.

Armor Penetration (ArP) increases the Physical damage you deal to targets by negating a percent of the target's Armor. For any classes that deal most Physical damage, this is going to be a valuable stat. Because of how Armor calculates Physical damage reduction, ArP specifically becomes extraordinarily valuable during the later patches of Wrath where it is possible to reach 100% ArP, meaning you ignore all of the target's Armor. However, it is possible to reach the ArP "soft-cap" much earlier, where you only achieve 100% ArP during high ArP procs such as from Grim Toll.

For Beast Mastery specifically, ArP does not transfer to our pet, making it not nearly as valuable as other stats.

Haste increases the frequency with which you attack by increasing your auto-shot speed and reducing your global cooldown. Pets and your normal ability cooldowns do not benefit from your Haste, which makes this the least valuable stat for Hunter.