I've been thinking a lot about Hit rating lately. Basically, once you hit level 80, hit rating is one of the best ways to increase your damage. If you get enough of it, in fact, you can reach a point where your attacks never miss (the hit cap). Wowwiki has a good discussion of it here.
(Don't confuse this with spell hit, which still functions off of the general hit rating, but at very different formulas. Spell hit is the only hit Adam needs to worry about and is also important for shamans. Is it important for pallies and DK's?... I'm not sure)
At lvl 80, every 32.79 hit rating increases your chance to hit by 1%. Base miss rate against bosses is 8% and 27% when dual wielding. This can sometimes be modified by talents. Even if you're dual wielding, all special attacks (yellow hits) miss at the 8% rate.
At lvl 80, if we're looking to hit cap against "boss" mobs, (effective level 83), here's what our classes need.
DK and Pally, 2handed weapon, or one 1hander; all attacks: 8%, or 263 hit rating.
Shaman dual wielding (with talents), special attacks only: 2%, or 66 hit rating. DK dual wielding (with talents), special attacks only: 5%, or 164 hit rating
Shaman dual wielding(with talents), normal attacks: 21% or 689 hit rating DK dual wielding (with talents), normal attacks: 24% or 787 hit rating
Getting 263 hit rating takes some work, but it's totally possible. If you're a dual-wielding class, though, it's probably not worth it to try and hit the hit cap for normal auto-attacks, just try and hit the special attack cap. And yes, that means I'm playing the easiest class to hit cap for specials.
I'm new to all this, so take it with a grain of salt, and feel free to tell me that I'm full of ****.
Back on-topic. Those sound solid to me. Every thread I read about end-game dps as DK said you sacrifice your crit to gain hit at first. Even when you get "hit-capped," you don't go right back for crit, you probably want to go for expertise. And don't let armor penetration lure you in just yet - that's probably for farther down the road.
For those that don't know the difference, here are the basics for hit, expertise and armor penetration:
Hit: This reduces your chance to miss the target. Expertise: This reduces the target's chance to dodge or parry. Armor Penetration: This allows your attacks to ignore an amount of the target's armor.
That's also the priority I give them for DK's (and probably all melee classes). You want to make sure you never miss, and then you want to make sure they can't dodge or parry, and THEN you can start making your hits do more dmg.
As a tank, my defense was priority, but once I hit that cap (with new gear, gems and enchants), I was able to swap out old +def gems with +dodge or +str or +sta or +hit gems. It's a little harder to prioritize as tank, since I STILL need to be able to hit the target, but I also need to be able to dodge and parry attacks, and i need to also stack lots of stamina for health. Fun? Yes ... if you like details and juggling.
Spell Hit rating works in the same way as melee hit, but all the numbers are different.
Base miss rate against a boss mob (3 lvls above you) is 17% At lvl 80, 26.23 hit rating is needed to increase spell hit chance by 1%. Again, talents can increase your spell hit %. The three that concern our guild at the moment are: Virulence for death knights and Shadow Focus and Misery for shadow priests. Misery is a debuff on the mob that increases the spell hit of everyone in the group (yay!).
The hit rating we're looking for to hit the cap, at lvl 80 vs. bosses:
All classes, no talents or bonuses: 17% spell hit, 446 hit rating All classes vs. Boss with Misery debuff: 14%, 368 hit rating DK's w/ Virulence or Spriest w/ Shadow Focus: 14%, 368 hit rating DK's w/ Virulence, Spriest w/ shadow focus vs. Boss w/ Misery debuff: 11%, 289 hit rating
So, while my shaman is the easiest to gear for melee hit, I'm the hardest to gear for spell hit. I'll be shooting for a hit rating of at least 368, eventually.
There are some other issues with spell resistance that I didn't get into and don't fully understand.
Monk wrote: Hit: This reduces your chance to miss the target. Expertise: This reduces the target's chance to dodge or parry. Armor Penetration: This allows your attacks to ignore an amount of the target's armor.
If we're talking about offensive stats, I'd add: Crit Rating: Increases your chance to get a critical hit.
I'm not sure about DK's, but I'd prioritize crit over armor pen. That's just my gut feeling.
If we're talking about offensive stats, I'd add: Crit Rating: Increases your chance to get a critical hit.
I'm not sure about DK's, but I'd prioritize crit over armor pen. That's just my gut feeling.
Me too. I guess I didn't include it because I assumed everyone knew what that meant, but I can totally see how it might seem like it wasn't in my priority list.
on wowinsider, (pretty much agrees with what we said) about DK DPS priorities:
Hit to 8%>Strength>Expertise to dodge cap>critical strike rating>Everything else This is probably more for Blood than Unholy and Frost, as Blood is more reliant on melee than the other two. Unholy and Frost use a decent amount of spell dmg and might want to swap expertise and crit a bit to test it out.
Regardless, this should help you out with your gems and enchants, too. Everything will be +Hit (if possible) until you get the cap, then you can work on the rest. You'll see a slight decrease in dmg while questing or doing dailies, since you probably sacrificed some str, ap or crit to get that hit, but your dmg/dps will be higher against bosses and any mob above lvl 80. You'll be happy you did it.