WotLK Classic Survival Hunter Stat Priority

The stat priority for Survival Hunter is as follows:

1. Hit to cap;
2. Agility;
3. Critical Strike;
4. Attack Power;
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.

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.

Agility is the primary stat for Hunter, and is one of your most valuable stats. Each point of Agility gives 1 Attack Power (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, Hunters have the added benefit that Go for the Throat causes your crits to generate focus for your pet. Survival Hunters also get the added bonus of Expose Weakness, which will gain a larger up-time with more crit.

Whenever we are comparing AP to other stats, it will always be at a 2:1 ratio since items and gems are generally budgeted at that ratio. For Survival, AP does not scale as well as Agility and crit, but is still more valuable than ArP and Haste. AP is still a solid way to scale your damage.

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 Survival however, most of your damage is not Physical. This makes ArP not nearly as valuable of a stat, and significantly reduces your scaling potential.

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.