PvE Survival Hunter Stat Priority – WoW Classic
Nevermore • Updated June 7, 2025
WoW Classic Survival Hunters have a very similar stat priority to Marksmanship and Beast Mastery. We will showcase each stat in order of importance and explain every stat in detail, along with any possible stat caps that may be involved.
Stat Priority
- Hit Chance
- Critical Strike Chance
- Agility
- Attack Power
- Intellect
- Haste (Attack Speed)
- Stamina
- Strength
- Spirit
Hit Chance is the most important stat for almost any character in WoW Classic and that includes Survival Hunters! The cap for Hit Chance in WoW Classic is 9% but Hunters can function with 6% Hit Chance. Survival Hunters have even more of an advantage over other Hunter specializations due to the Surefooted talent, granting them a flat 3% Hit Chance. Furthermore, certain races such as Trolls and Dwarves also have innate Hit Chance when using certain weapons through their Gun Specialization and Bow Specialization racials.
Critical Strike Chance is an extremely important stat for Hunters in general, with Survival Hunters making extraordinary use of it! It increases the overall chance of all your Auto-Attacks and Abilities to deal Critical Strikes! Since Hunters have many talents that improve Critical Strike Chance, with Survival being able to benefit from Killer Instinct and Mortal Shots, players should aim to stack as much of this stat as possible. There is a hard cap for Critical Strike Chance, however, in WoW Classic it is so hard to achieve the cap, that players shouldn’t bother worrying about it.
Agility is one of the primary stats for Survival Hunters, increasing their overall Critical Strike Chance, Attack Power with both Melee and Ranged Weapons, Armor, and Dodge Chance. This is the primary stat that you will want to stack as much as possible besides Intellect, to increase your Attack Power and Critical Strike Chance as much as possible! Since every bit of Attack Power increases all of your damage while Critical Strike Chance simply scales amazingly, you will want to grab as much Agility as possible. Furthermore, every bit of Agility you gain is automatically increased by the Lightning Reflexes talent, meaning u want to get as much as possible.
Attack Power, just as mentioned previously, is a stat that increases the entirety of your Damage Output, boosting both your Auto-Shots and your Abilities. You should never aim to get items that directly grant raw Attack Power unless there is no other better option or if the item itself grants a mix of stats among which you can find both Agility and Attack Power. You should ideally get Attack Power and Ranged Attack Power from special items such as your Quiver or from Enchants only. Some Ranged Weapons in the game also provide raw Attack Power being a great pick until you can get something better (Agility/Critical Strike Chance).
Intellect is a primary stat that increases the overall Mana Pool of Survival Hunters along with the chance to score a Critical Strike Chance with spells. You will want to stack a considerable amount of Intellect to acquire a large Mana Pool but also to empower the abilities which are tagged as spells since you also benefit from Spell Critical Strike Chance. Some examples of Hunter abilities that are considered spells are Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, and Volley. However, Serpent Sting and Volley can’t crit, so only Arcane Shot truly benefits.
Haste (Attack Speed) is a stat that increases the frequency of your attacks! This stat is somewhat rare, being available only from a few sources such as specific enchants or quivers. Hunters can also gain this stat from the Improved Aspect of the Hawk talent, but a considerable amount of RNG is involved. You should get this stat whenever you have the chance!
Stamina is a stat that increases the overall Health Pool of a Survival Hunter! The stat is mainly found on your core items so you shouldn’t go out of your way to acquire it. You will basically want it to avoid becoming a Glass Cannon and dying to a random Raid mechanic. Furthermore, Survival Hunters benefit more from this stat than any other Hunter specialization due to the Survivalist talent.
Strength is a stat that increases Melee Attack Power for Hunters. Unless you’re playing the Melee Variant of Survival Hunters, which is not portrayed in this guide, you should stay far away from any item that grants Strength!
Spirit is a stat that increases Health and Manar regeneration. Sadly, Survival Hunters have no access to in-combat regeneration, meaning that Spirit will only help while out of combat. Some of your BiS items will have Spirit on them but you should not proactively attempt to get any Spirit!
PvE Survival Hunter Stat Priority
The stat priority for PvE Survival Hunters is extremely straightforward. Agility makes the world go round for Survival, prioritize it over everything but Hit Rating. Essentially, there’s a huge gap between Agility and the rest.
This spec has a unique gimmick in its talents which allows us to gain Attack Power from Stamina, This ultimately doesn’t change things all that much, however, it is worth noting.
- Hit Rating – Your cap depends on how many points in Focused aim you have, the total is 8%. Three points in FA makes it 5% + a Draenei in your party makes it 4%.
- Agility
- Crit
- Attack Power x2
- 2 attack power counts as 1 of another stat because that’s how it is itemized on gear and gems etc.
- Armor Penetration
- Not a good stat early on as it scales exponentially — avoid it when possible early game
- Haste
- Fairly worthless in all tiers — avoid it when possible, you will never reach 0 Haste Rating, except for Phase 3 (but this would be ideal). The reason for this is that it does not increase the damage of your important high-hitting shots and traps but rather only auto-shot and steady shot slightly.
Hit Rating Requirement
Hit Rating will be your most important stat — if you can’t hit your targets, you’re not dealing damage. The hit cap versus level 83 (boss) enemies is 8% this means that Hunters need 263 Hit Rating in order to reach the hit cap — but there are ways to reduce that.
Hunters have access to the Focused Aim talent, which means that we only need 5% hit chance, or 164 Hit Rating. Furthermore, having a Draenei in your party (not raid) gives you the Heroic Presence aura, which offers an extra 1% hit chance, meaning you need 4% hit chance to cap or 131 rating.
With the talent Focused Aim in mind, it would look like this:
0/3 = 263 Hit Rating (8%) required to cap 1/3 = 230 Hit Rating (7%) requipred to cap 2/3 = 197 Hit Rating (6%) required to cap 3/3 = 164 Hit Rating (5%) required to cap 3/3 + Draenei Heroic Presence = 131 Hit Rating (4%) required to cap
Agility
Survival Hunter’s best stat by a mile, it scales with everything and then scales with that, it scales best with literally all of your abilities including volley and traps. Stack it wherever and whenever you can.
Crit Rating
After you’ve got your hit cap maxed out, Crit is the only secondary stat you should care about for Phase 1, simply because the other secondary stats either have to scale first or hardly scale at all in the first place.
Attack Power
Attack Power makes your attacks hit harder — it is the core stat of all physical damage dealers, melee, or ranged. For hunters specifically, you’ll get the bulk of your Attack Power from Agility (1 Attack Power per); it’s not a bad stat, but you have to realize the stat weight on gear is x2 for Attack Power, so you have to compare 1 Haste to 2 Attack Power.
Armor Penetration Rating
Armor Penetration is famously the strongest stat for physical damage dealers in Wrath of the Lich King. Take this knowledge and forget about it during Phase 1 though because it’s not going to be applicable until late Phase 2/Early Phase 3. Armor Penetration is one of the most “math-y” stats out there, and it’s generally pretty difficult to understand, so we won’t go into details about how it works here. The only thing you really need to know is that it takes 1400 armor penetration rating in order to reach 100% armor penetration in raids — that’s not going to happen for a very long while.
Haste Rating
Very bad for Hunters in general, only effects auto shot and steady shots, which is not a large part of your damage – avoid when possible.
there is not a bis list for phase1 ?
It’s at the BiS section mate
PvE Survival Hunter Stat Priority
Kurathis • Updated June 2, 2025
In this section, we will be covering a Survival Hunter’s Stat Priority List and an explanation of each stat and why it’s placed where it is on the Priority List.
- Hit Rating
- Agility
- Critical Strike Rating
- Attack Power
While Surefooted provides us with a free 3% increase to our Hit Chance, it’s important to not rely on external factors such as Improved Faerie Fire or racial benefits to reach and maintain Hit Cap. With Surefooted, we will need a total of 6% Hit Chance, which is equivalent to roughly 95 Hit Rating.
Because Agility provides both Attack Power and Critical Strike Chance, it’s highly beneficial to increase this prior to focusing solely on Critical Strike Rating. Thanks to Expose Weakness, we want to increase our Agility so that will provide more of a benefit to all players attacking a target.
Because of Expose Weakness, it is important to be on the lookout for Critical Strike Rating since the requirement for Expose Weakness to trigger is you dealing a critical hit.
Attack Power directly increases the amount of damage we deal. The reason it falls below Agility in this case is because Agility increases both Attack Power and Critical Strike Rating.