The Burning Crusade Hunter Stats

1.4 Stats

Balancing stats is a tricky issue with hunters since almost all but a few stats (spell damage, spell crit, strength, spirit, etc.) are helpful for us in PvE.

1.4.1 DPS stats
Agility, +crit, and ranged attack power are our core DPS stats. Of those, the typical conversion is 2AP == 1agi == 1crit. For example, you may have a choice between a +35agi vs. +70AP enchant for your 2Her. How you balance between these three stats is largely a matter of personal preference, although there are two relevant factors to consider:
1. Blessing of Kings has no effect on RAP and crit, but does increase our agility by a percentage. Thus, we will see more improvement from choosing agility over crit/RAP when we have a BoK available.
2. PvP tends to rely on burst damage since it is unpredictable and thus hard to heal through or react to. Thus, crit tends to have a higher importance in PvP.

The following are formulas for each stat at level 70:
40 agility = +1% crit.
1 agility = 1 RAP.
14 RAP = +1 DPS.
22 crit rating = +1% crit.
16 hit rating = +1% hit.

1.4.2 +hit
Maximum +hit needed at lvl70 PvP is +5%, which means absent any other conditions, we will not miss if we are at +5% hit. It is generally a very good idea to make sure we are at max hit (including speccing into surefooted if we're short) since a missed silencing shot or scatter shot will usually have severely bad consequences.

1.4.3 Survivability stats

Stamina is typically given increased priority in PvP and particularly arenas for all classes because "glass cannons" do not tend to fare well. This is because once opposing players figure out that some particular hunter has a ton of agility but relatively little health, they will gun for him repeatedly since they know he is easily killed and does too much damage to ignore.

In arenas, hunters are usually the "tank" of the team since we are typically the first target to be burned down. This is because we do not have immunities (vanish, ice block, etc.) and our mail only gives us limited damage reduction. Our survivability in arenas is heavily gear dependent, and thus it is generally a good idea to stack stamina/resilience at the expense of almost all other stats. In BGs, this is less of an issue since if we play properly, we can avoid most damage by just staying behind other classes when we engage. But in arenas, we have limited space to hide and kite.

1.4.4 Mana/intellect

Intellect and mana regen are fairly important stats in PvP but are generally prioritized lower than other stats. We have very limited mana pools and thus are vulnerable to mana draining abilities, and often will be targeted with such abilities to render us useless. Our ability to feign and drink somewhat compensates for this, but this can only safely be done between battles. Thus, MP5/intellect can provide us with a cushion where we are not so easily mana drained down.

1.4.5 Spirit
Spirit is useful for mana/health regen outside of combat, making it less important to us. We can always eat/drink between engagements, and our ability to track humanoids means we can do so aggressively without worry about being sniped while we are seated.

1.4.6 Strength
Strength only affects melee attack power, and as such is fairly useless to us.