IS hit REALLY worth it?

[HeatM1ser]

I'm asking this because I have spent the last 2 hours using simcraft, reforging, regemming, and changing out gear....and the results that produce the highest DPS scores is when I have higher crit and lower hit. I reforged for 16.11% hit and 12.16% crit(and had 2300 haste), and was consistently producing 23200-23300DPS in Simcraft. When I reforged to 12.76% hit and 14.03% crit (with 2269 haste) I was consistently producing between 23425 and 23455 DPS in Simcraft.

So, what should I make of these results? Is hit overvalued...or at least when you hit a certain haste number?

Also...I was wondering...the first set of numbers--where my haste is at 3200....how would I be able to see what the DPS increase would be if I had 3202 haste ( to get an extra tick out of Imp. DP)?

[Tyraeus]

Despite the hard number Simcraft unfortuanately cannot account for how a miss effects a user. Sure it can set an arbitrary fake reaction time but this can't simulate the actual effect a miss has; the player must realise this miss, and effortlessly seam it back into the rotation. Ralistically they'll probably already be queuing up their next cast.
Point being, it's not entirely necessary to be hit-capped anymore but it really erks you if you do miss.

[HeatM1ser]

Well, in the last few raid my miss percent has been around 1.7%, despite only being at 10.35% hit during those raids. Another thing I noticed was that the lock who put DI on my had an uptime of between 82%-98% during boss fights(probably averaging about 87% uptime). Maybe I;ve been lucky to have such a low miss percentage...IDK

[heriana]

Until someone can explain to me exactly how simcraft is calculating the pp for hit, I'm going to assume its wrong and go for the hit cap. What do you do if you miss a mind blast, empowered shadows falls off, and your dots need refreshing. Not only do you have to react quickly to misses, you have to alter your priority drastically.

[Deleted]

It's like, I wouldn't want to cast combust and have it miss.

[shiryo]

Until someone can explain to me exactly how simcraft is calculating the pp for hit, I'm going to assume its wrong and go for the hit cap. What do you do if you miss a mind blast, empowered shadows falls off, and your dots need refreshing. Not only do you have to react quickly to misses, you have to alter your priority drastically.

This.

Also when you miss you will already be casting something else when you realise you have missed. Say you cast a VT followed by MF. The VT misses and then what? Will you clip the MF or will you cast the VT after the MF? Either way the dps loss is not calculated in simcraft since it has 0 reaction time and any misses will be corrected instantly

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

you can have 30% crit chance and still go on a 10spell attack noncrit streak. the less hit you have the bigger chance it is to fail an attack.
Not being hitcapped is like having a "proc" to miss on all your attacks.
Hitcap> (expertice melee) > pure stat > secondary stat
^will allways be the proper way to gear up, wont change ever.

[Shadowspawn115]

Shadow does not need hit cap. At a certain point other stats start to benefit more then hit.

---------- Post added 2011-03-07 at 06:46 PM ----------

you can have 30% crit chance and still go on a 10spell attack noncrit streak. the less hit you have the bigger chance it is to fail an attack.
Not being hitcapped is like having a "proc" to miss on all your attacks.
Hitcap> (expertice melee) > pure stat > secondary stat
^will allways be the proper way to gear up, wont change ever.

Please, do not post when you don't know what you're talking about.

[Szoltomi]

It actually already changed.

For many classes, intellect is more overall dps than hit when you are gemming or enchanting.

[Deleted]

As people have said, flat number wise, yes its true hit cap is not needed, though still a big dps increase other stats can increase it more. But also like others have said, what happens if you miss something important, a flame shock for a shaman, a VT for a Shadow Priest, a Howling Blast with KM up for a DK? Simcrafts take into account you correcting this instantly, but in the case of things with cooldowns like flame shock, you can't correct this instantly, even if you could (which you can't without paying 100% attention to your target rather than your surroundings) instantly correct failures on abilities without cooldowns.

Mathematically on average it CAN work out to be a DPS increase, but it can also work out to be a very, very big DPS loss if you get unlucky. Think how painful it is if you don't crit for ages? Get no procs for a long time? Now throw in the ability as someone else said, to 'proc' a miss. On a patchwerk fight you could get away with it and have a dps increase, on any other fight, you may get really lucky and get a big dps increase, but you could get super unlucky and get a huge dps loss. You can't get 100% crit chance, so your always going to have a chance to not crit, you CAN get 100% hit chance, its better to have an average better (and easier to play, easier to play = less concentration needed = react better to other things instead) DPS, than spikey hard to control DPS

[Shadowspawn115]

I was strictly referring to SP. Most classes still need hit cap as their top priority. SP is the exception, not the rule.

From EJ:

Int: 1.0000
SP: 0.7841
Haste: 0.5844
Crit: 0.4480
Mastery: 0.4366
Hit: 0.3930
Spirit: 0.3923
The one take home message you can take from this though is that being hit capped is no longer as crucial as it used to be.And again, PLEASE be sure to run SimulationCraft for your current gear! You may get different weightings!

As for reaching it, this is more of a matter of personal opinion. However, there are certain decisions that are clear cut -- you should never gem or enchant for spirit/hit if an INT gem/enchant is available in the same spot. INT is by far our strongest stat, and we should stack that over anything else.

Beyond that, the value of being hit capped relates to how quickly you can react and realize that you missed the spell. Missing a SWD doesn't change your casting in any appreciable way. If you miss a DP/VT cast, you have to recognize that and recast it.

[crazyb]

I was strictly referring to SP. Most classes still need hit cap as their top priority. SP is the exception, not the rule.

From EJ:
Hit: 0.3930
Spirit: 0.3923

but, but, but... Spirit = hit, so how can it be worth less than hit? I know a lot of people know a heck of a lot more than I do, but damn, there is definitely something wacky going on there even it is only a .0007 difference.

OT: The concept matches everything I've seen as well. In a theoretical situation hit is not worth as much. I'm wondering why it is so significantly lower for an SP vs. others possibly. Do we have less CD based attacks than other DPS so that a miss can easily be "fixed"?

[Shadowspawn115]

but, but, but... Spirit = hit, so how can it be worth less than hit? I know a lot of people know a heck of a lot more than I do, but damn, there is definitely something wacky going on there even it is only a .0007 difference.

OT: The concept matches everything I've seen as well. In a theoretical situation hit is not worth as much. I'm wondering why it is so significantly lower for an SP vs. others possibly. Do we have less CD based attacks than other DPS so that a miss can easily be "fixed"?

Yah I don't really get that either. I mean, spirit is mana regen and hit. Dunno why its rated lower. /shrug

[Katchii]

Theorcrafting can never account for how a miss can affect your rotation/ priority system and therefore your DPS. Reason being, the timing of when a miss happens can have such a profound effect that one miss can have arguable zero affacte on your DPS whereas another miss 2-3 seconds later could destroy your rotation and therefore you DPS.

Example, I'll use Frost DK cuz that's what I know.

1) You start attacking your target and load up your diseases using either Outbreak or Plague Strike and Icy Touch. The next thing you should be doing is using your BS to create Death Runes.
-in this scenario a few things can happen, you can miss your initial strikes that put your diseases on the target, therefore making you try again which will obviously increase your ramp up time and therefore lower your DPS. The other thing that can happen is that you miss on your Blood Strikes, don't create your Death Runes which means either you try again or you miss out on your third Obliterate in your next rune cycle either way you miss out on DPS.

2) It's time to refresh your diseases and when you attempt to, your abilities that apply them miss. Essentially meaning you have to start your priority system from ground zero, but you also have the problem that you probably don't have all of your runes available like you do at the beginning of the fight so the reapplication of diseases and getting back into your priority system takes longer than it did at the start. Dropping your DPS significantly.

3) You have your diseases up, it's not time to reapply and you are just using your abilities to cause damage and you miss an attack....no big deal, your DPS suffers a little bit, but because you missed, the ability isn't on CD and you can just try again.

Being hit capped means that you will never end up in any situation similar to the ones above that are caused because you missed one single attack. Obviously situations 1 and 2 are more detrimental to your DPS than number 3, but a miss is a miss, regardless of how small it can be it affects your DPS negatively whereas a slightly lower crit chance only keeps you from being MORE positive.

I think of DPS and stats like this..... Your base DPS is say 20k....if you're hit capped, it stays at 20k.....if your not hit capped it drops to maybe 18 or 19k...if you have a good crit rate it rises by 2-3k (or more, these are arbitrary numbers)...but this essentially means that without hit, crit is just trying to make up for your lost DPS. It also means that unless your hit capped every point of haste and crit are worth LESS because you won't be taking full advantage of what those stats can do for you. You can't crit if you miss and more haste just means you'll miss more.

[DeltrusDisc]

Let me tell you that being a hit-capped shadow priest, I never have to worry about having empowered shadows fall off because a mind blast missed, or having to reapply VT or DP because they missed.

Yeah, I might be losing a little bit of dps to some, I could also be gaining some dps. You can't be 100% sure, but I know I happily never miss.

[Whitcher]

I'm not a priest but my opinion on it falls in the same lines: I HATE seeing spells miss. A hit/crit means more damage from the dot procs on essentially all my toons. And on my hunter, if I have to tranq shot something, I'm not risking having to tranq multiple times because the first one missed.

[Aica]

I'll dispel some myths first. SimC takes spell queuing into account when misses happen. It assumes that any casted spell will have another spell queued after it. If it misses the first spell, it will cast the second spell before casting the first one again (assuming it has priority now). If the missed spell is instant cast, then there will be no second spell queued, and it will recast the first one immediately. It is assumed that 1 GCD is enough reaction time for the player to notice that his spell missed.

The reason why SimC values hit so low in Patchwerk style fights is because missing any of our spells just consumes 1 GCD. In addition, the closest we have to a high-cooldown nuke like Combustion is Mind Blast. Mind Blast doesn't need to hit the target to consume shadow orbs. Therefore, missing any of our spells isn't as detrimental to our play as other classes.

However, this is only on Patchwerk fights with zero movement involved. As soon as you have to move, then missing spells becomes extremely detrimental. If you have to move for some period of time right after VT is cast, or you're counting on MF to hit so that Dark Evangelism or SW:P is refreshed, and the spell misses, then you're going to lose a large amount of uptime on your dots/buffs. The movement issue is exacerbated when multi-dotting due to the use of more high DPET spells.

This is where the default SimC does not simulate encounters properly. There is not a single encounter in the game (aside from Patchwerk) that doesn't require some amount of movement (or timing requirements, like in the case of Chimaeron), and hit is extremely valuable in these cases.

[Arlee]

Until someone can explain to me exactly how simcraft is calculating the pp for hit, I'm going to assume its wrong and go for the hit cap. What do you do if you miss a mind blast, empowered shadows falls off, and your dots need refreshing. Not only do you have to react quickly to misses, you have to alter your priority drastically.

Well not entirely... as someone pointed out in a similar thread before if you cast MB you get es regardless of if you miss or not because es is based on the casting of MB not the MB actually doing damage. That being said, missing a mindblast hurts your dps because it is a nice chunck of damage you missed out on.

However, the basic assumption of "most" of the arguments is that a person will still stay above 10% hit because going below that starts to make the amount you are going to miss much more likely. This is a good longer explanation of it though.

This goes for all casters too, and its relatively straight forward.

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TLDR: Int > Hit > Everything else, spec dependant. You still want the hit cap, but you need to get there by gearing, not by gemming. If you can't reach the cap even with reforging, go get better gear.

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Hit is the best of the "Rating" stats. You still want it, you still want to cap it, but you no longer want to gem it. Intellect is the best stat you have and all efforts should be made to get as much of it as possible regardless of your capability to hit the Hit Rating Cap. When you have exhausted all other options for getting more Intellect, you then focus on your Hit Rating at the exclusion of all other "Rating" stats.

I want to make sure you guys understand - this is not a comparison between sub-10% hit rating and hit cap. That's just stupid and exaggerated. This is a comparison between gemming Intellect vs Hit Rating when you are not at the hit cap. In other words, this is a comparsion between X% Hit and X+2% Hit, or however much extra hit you might get from the gems. Making this gap any larger just shows you have no concept of how gearing works and should really not post in this thread.

The reason for change in Cataclysim is rating conversion and itemization, not because some program worked it out and thinks its good. It's not because some yahoo who moderates a forum thought out that if has a fight where he never missed then hit rating was worthless. There is a reason, and here it is.

Lets start with a basic assumption: I think we can all agree that reducing your chance to miss by 1% results in an approximate 1% dps increase. Yes, I'm aware that there are numbers after the decimal place, but for simplicity's sake lets just say 1% is close enough. (There are people who can prove that 1% Hit is sometimes 1.2% DPS. The following conclusions are still correct in this case.)

At level 70, Blizzard created gear with the following rule: 1 Int = 1 Hit = 1.17 Spell Power
It took just under 15 Hit Rating to get 1% Hit.
15 Int OR 17.55 Spell Power did not result in a 1% dps increase. It was closer to 30 Spell Power to get 1% dps.
Therefore, at level 70, Hit Rating was a better stat because it increased your dps more than any other stat, point for point.

At level 80 (Patch 4.0.1), Blizzard created gear with the following rule: 1 Int = 1 Hit, and made 1 Int grant 1 Spell Power
It took just over 26 Hit Rating to get 1% Hit.
26 Int did not result in a 1% dps increase. (It was closer to 60 Int)
Therefore, at level 80, Hit Rating was a better stat because it increased your dps more than any other stat, point for point.

HOWEVER

At level 85, Blizzard created gear with the following rule: 1 Int = 1 Hit, and has 1 Int granting 1 Spell Power
It takes just over 102 Hit Rating to get 1% Hit.
102 Intellect does result in more than a 1% dps increase (70 Intellect grants around 1% dps, 102 intellect is around 1.45% dps)
Therefore, at level 85, INTELLECT is a better stat.

To explain further, even with base damage increases, spell coefficients did not change so drastically as to complete revamp the way we play. Intellect is still being given to us at a 1:1 ratio and it still scales just as good as it did in WOTLK. However, Hit Rating is now being given to us at a 1/4th its WOTLK value, which also reduces its dps value by 1/4th. This is enough to drop it below Intellect.

For you Shamans or other classes saying "This doesn't apply to me because of <spell name vomit>" - the only way this doesn't apply to you is if Hit Rating was valued at 4x Spell Power in WOTLK. I.E. Warlocks had 2.0 dps per Spell Power, so for Hit to be better than Intellect it would have to be 8 dps per point of Hit rating (it wasn't, it was 3.5). I have yet to see any proof that Hit was valued so highly so please post it including links to 3.3.5 Scale Factors before you claim otherwise.

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This is how I would gear, in a semi-real life example
1) I got 333 in every slot and started collecting 346's and getting BOE/Rep epics.
2) I looked at what I had and realized I could only hit 15.5% Hit Rating - I still gemmed Intellect.
3) I went out and farmed 3 instances that drop a side grade to replace a Crit/Mastery item with Hit/Crit.
4) I reforged and hit 17.2% Hit Rating - I still gemmed Intellect.

A few things:
1) If I were a Shaman who might be asked to interrupt, then obviously maximum dps is no longer my primary concern and I would hit the cap at the expense of my dps. As Andromalia said, this is a MAX DPS discussion, not a raid survival discussion.
2) Hit cap is more important that Haste, Crit, and Mastery Rating, but since I just didn't have enough of it due to luck with drops, I was under cap and still gemmed intellect.
3) If I had a fight where I missed with any spec-defining ability w/ a cooldown, such as Conflagrate, Haunt, Lava Burst, Mind Blast, Hand of Gul'dan, Deep Freeze, Flame Shock, etc, I would chalk that up as a bump in the road on my way to getting proper gear.


There are lots of people who are saying "Gem and enchant for hit until capped, its the best dps stat" and they are wrong. Intellect is the best dps stat as I have shown you. Sometimes missing will cause your dps to go down, and the amount is dependant on what misses. I get it, you do not need to post it over and over and over again. If you choose to get hit capped at the expense of intellect, you are trading sometimes higher dps and rarely lower dps for consistently average dps. The difference is under or around 500 dps, and is not so significant that you will be called a terrible player. It's personal choice. All I ask is that you stop regurgitating "HIT IS DA BEST U MUST BE DUM" all over the damn place - this proves that you are terrible rather than just having a personal preference.

PS: Try to get runspeed to boots instead of Hit Rating, as the healer mana/attention gains it potentially provides far outweighs any dps discussion.

[Galith]

If a haunt misses for affliction warlocks they are screwed, VERY screwed. Idk what shadow priests have, but I'm sure you have something similar.

[cruxxy]

The difference in the values between hit and spirit fall under the error of Sim. Everytime you run it the exact numbers are slightly different. Sim does take into account mana regen also. If you run it solo, crit will come out ahead of haste due to the mana return from SF. In raids, haste will move ahead again due to the lower mana regen demands.

Here is my understanding on why the hit cap is no longer mandatory in theorycrafting:
1) Int is a far more superior stat than spell power was pre-cata. This puts it so far ahead of every other stat
2) Dot duration no longer is shortened. Previously, the more haste we had, the more often we had to recast dots. Since haste no longer impacts our recast frequency, a missed GCD has less impact on DPS.
3) A missed MB will still consume orbs and buff ES

Most people who compare their dummy DPS at and below the hit cap find their dps higher below the hit cap because in that setting, you can easily minimize the impact of a missed GCD. Same goes for Algaloth or any other straightforward single target fight. And this is a similar ideal scenario to what Sim uses to calculate the impact of being below the hit cap.

This will remain forever controversial because this is a case where there can be a significant divergence from theorycrafting and reality. Surveying shadowpriests in top end guilds, the majority do run at the hit cap. Recognize also that at that level of gear, there is less reforging necessary to reach the hit cap.

Ultimately, to those of you who want to blame your subpar DPS on the fact that you're sacrificing stats to reach the hit cap OR you're staying below the hit cap, you're probably wrong. It's likely something else related to your gameplay. I don't believe that anywhere between 14-17% hit will have a significant impact on your DPS; it's just a fun challenge for hardcore min/max-ers.