Crit and hit top the Threat bear's list, at 18.9 and 17.6 Agility for each percent on a one-minute single-boss fight, with haste behind them at 11.8. Among the stats that come in points, a point of expertise rating is worth 1.76 Agility, Strength 1.23 and attack power 0.56. The weights describe one more step of a stat from the benchmark set, so they shift as your gear moves away from it.

Crit

Crit pays twice for a bear. Every melee crit in Bear Form gives 5 Rage through Blood Frenzy, a crit white swing pays 75 % more Rage, and an ability crit deals 2.2 times its damage with Natural Instinct. Sharpened Claws, Leader of the Pack and Elune's Light all add to it, and the set sits at 35.8 % on the character sheet. Your white swings share one roll with misses, dodges and glancing blows, but a bear's table is far from full, so more crit still lands.

Hit and expertise

Against a level-63 boss your attacks miss 8 % of the time, and the first 1 % of hit on your gear is lost to its three extra levels, so the cap is 9 %. Bears swing one weapon, so that one cap covers paw swings and abilities alike. Below it, a miss costs an ability's whole threat.

Expertise works on the boss's dodge, 6.5 % from behind: each 10 rating takes 1 % of it away, at 1.76 Agility a point. The sim keeps every tank behind the boss, so dodge is the only avoidance your attacks meet. In a raid the boss turns to you and parries as well, which makes expertise and hit more valuable on a real pull than these weights say.

This set has 6.0 % hit, under the cap, so each percent still saves Mauls and Primal Bites from missing. Its expertise comes from one trinket, Adaptive Combat Assistant.

Strength, Agility and attack power

In Bear Form a point of Strength is 2 attack power, 2.2 with Blessing of Kings. Agility gives a bear no attack power at all: 20 points buy 1 % crit and 1 % dodge, plus 40 armor. For threat only the crit matters, and that keeps the two close, with Strength at 1.23 Agility.

Stamina, defense and dodge

For a threat bear the survival stats come out negative: Stamina -0.16, defense rating -0.11, dodge rating -0.06. In our engine a hit's Rage shrinks as your health bar grows, and an avoided swing pays nothing. Blizzard's 8 October notes took health out of that formula, so in game extra Stamina costs you no Rage. Wear as much health as your healers want.

Weapon damage

The paw swings every 2.5 seconds for your weapon's damage per second, and Primal Bite and Maul are built on that swing. So a weapon's damage per second is a bear stat and its speed isn't: two weapons of equal damage per second hit the same in form, whatever their speed. The Gear page prices the weapons.

On every fight

Crit is the top percent stat against one boss. Against three, hit catches up with it or passes it, and haste drops back. Three bosses hitting you pay so much Rage that the extra from crits and quick swings matters less, but a miss still throws away a Maul's or a Swipe's threat.