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  1. #1
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    Hit isn't king anymore - how and why

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

    *************************************************

    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.

    *************************************************

    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.

    *************************************************

    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.
    Last edited by gherkin; 2011-01-06 at 05:36 PM.

    R.I.P. YARG

  2. #2
    Good post. I too was going under this misconception until about a week ago. Lucky for me I had already managed to get the hit cap without sacrificing any int besides a couple of gems. Thanks to reforging we can generally just sacrifice other secondary stats in order to get our hit.

    You already eluded to this in your main post, but I'd just like to reiterate that a Miss will absolutely cause a bigger DPS reduction in practice than it will on paper. The reason for this is that for many abilities a Miss requires a quick reaction to alleviate. If I miss an immolate, I might already be casting an Incinerate (or mashing my conflagrate button) before I realize what happened. If I miss a Fear, I might not necessarily immediately realize it which could cause problems for the group.

    I'm not saying these are reasons to prioritize Hit over Int. I'm simply emphasizing that Hit is really important, and it's REALLY nice to be hit capped.

  3. #3
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    Yep! And if you happen to miss an important spell, such as Haunt or Immolate, going back and recasting it is a dps loss but providing you only do this a couple times per fight, then for that fight Hit might have been a better stat. However, over the long term Int will result in more damage.

    The question is, do you want the hassle of recasting a missed spell or do you want bigger numbers ~most~ of the time?

    The point of this post is to illustrate that you have a choice and that the better choice is bigger numbers, but that you still have the choice.

    R.I.P. YARG

  4. #4
    Well I'm not sure about this one. As an Elemental Shaman I'd rather see my lava burst hit less than miss, as it always crit.
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  5. #5
    Mmmmmm, big numbers.

  6. #6
    Very good post imo, myself Im still gonna go for hit cap. When I most want my spells to hit, thats when they usualy miss if im not capped.
    Last edited by Spoonman; 2011-01-04 at 10:14 PM.

  7. #7
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    I think I missed something in my original post. I'll add it here and there.

    While missing a spell is a bad thing, the chance should be low enough as to almost never happen. You can't NOT gear for hit, that's impossible. But rather, you should focus on Intellect gems and enchants before you think about your hit rating. If you happen to end up a whole percentage or two away from the hit cap, this does not mean you should regem intellect to hit, as that would still be a dps loss. It means you need more hit gear.

    R.I.P. YARG

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by gherkin View Post
    I think I missed something in my original post. I'll add it here and there.

    While missing a spell is a bad thing, the chance should be low enough as to almost never happen. You can't NOT gear for hit, that's impossible. But rather, you should focus on Intellect gems and enchants before you think about your hit rating. If you happen to end up a whole percentage or two away from the hit cap, this does not mean you should regem intellect to hit, as that would still be a dps loss. It means you need more hit gear.
    I'm not a Lock, and I don't know your exact stat weights, but there's also the question of how much of a given stat you get from a particular choice. Particularly this is the case with gem bonuses, but it can also be a lesser factor in other choices. If you have an item with a "+10 Int" gem bonus and a blue slot, then you have two essential choices. Put a "+40 Int" gem in it, or put a "+20 Int, +20 Hit" gem in it. The former gives you more Int, but the latter gives you almost as much Int, +10 "bonus" Hit. Essentially Int has to be worth twice (or more) as much as hit for the +40 Int gem to be better. Make it a "+15 Int" gem bonus and the math shifts even more.

  9. #9
    Is it as simple as that? If intellect vs. hit is out of the question, is hit always better than say haste/crit or mastery depending on spec? That is to say, if I am far away from the hit cap (ie. more than 1%) should I always reforge/gem for hit? Or would gemming, reforging for another secondary stat be smarter? Or, should you wait til you are hit capped to focus on the other secondary stats? At what level of hit do you start focusing on haste/crit if being hit-capped is not mandatory?

  10. #10
    Brewmaster link064's Avatar
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    Well written and quite informative. Thank you gherkin. I'd been seeing this idea thrown around but hadn't done enough research to really understand why. Now I can go pewpew like the pros (or at least pretend to).


    Also, this made me laugh:
    Quote Originally Posted by gherkin View Post
    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.

    Edit:
    Quote Originally Posted by Telmisartan View Post
    Is it as simple as that? If intellect vs. hit is out of the question, is hit always better than say haste/crit or mastery depending on spec? That is to say, if I am far away from the hit cap (ie. more than 1%) should I always reforge/gem for hit? Or would gemming, reforging for another secondary stat be smarter? Or, should you wait til you are hit capped to focus on the other secondary stats? At what level of hit do you start focusing on haste/crit if being hit-capped is not mandatory?
    That's not what he's saying at all. Being hit capped is still very, very important. He is explaining that you shouldn't ever gem/enchant hit over int. That's not to say that hit is unimportant, but rather that it is less important that it has been in the past. You'll find that for casters, hit is usually twice as effective for dps than haste/crit/mastery (with some variation). There is no magical point at which the other secondary stats become better than hit (except for being hit-capped).

    TLDR: Gem/enchant for int. Reforge for hit to cap.
    Last edited by link064; 2011-01-04 at 11:04 PM.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    1% hit is more than 1% dps, it also provides perfect rotations and no 3 sec GCD locks through miss chains.

  12. #12
    This statement is fundamentally incorrect. Increasing your hit chance by 1% is never going to be a 1% DPS increase, it will always be more than this. Your first 1% hit in fact is worth 1/83 or 1.2%, and that is without factoring in potentially massive loss in DPS from missing an important spell in your rotation. Even assuming that you play perfectly and always notice when a key spell misses and recast immediately, if any of your spells have a cooldown you are increasing the minimum ~1% DPS loss by a potentially massive figure.

    As an elemental shaman, missing a Lava Burst or Flame Shock has a potentially massive flow on effect on our DPS as these spells can't be recast immediately. The same is true for most other casters.

    What is important to note now is that with the advent of reforging, hit will almost never be chosen in favor of int except perhaps in gemming. However in these situations usually socket bonuses further dilute the difference between Int and Hit as a stat.

    Short version: You're wrong

  13. #13
    Correct me if I'm wrong but....

    Even if 1 hit = 1 int was still true, you still wouldn't socket hit.... you'd just reforge haste/mastery/crit anyways no?

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Pineau View Post
    Well I'm not sure about this one. As an Elemental Shaman I'd rather see my lava burst hit less than miss, as it always crit.
    This tbh...

  15. #15
    Personally I have a minimum acceptable hit rating at 16.85%. This is my own personal preference and I pulled it straight out of my ass. Seems to be working though.

    ---------- Post added 2011-01-04 at 06:13 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by MdREV View Post
    This statement is fundamentally incorrect. Increasing your hit chance by 1% is never going to be a 1% DPS increase, it will always be more than this. Your first 1% hit in fact is worth 1/83 or 1.2%, and that is without factoring in potentially massive loss in DPS from missing an important spell in your rotation. Even assuming that you play perfectly and always notice when a key spell misses and recast immediately, if any of your spells have a cooldown you are increasing the minimum ~1% DPS loss by a potentially massive figure.

    As an elemental shaman, missing a Lava Burst or Flame Shock has a potentially massive flow on effect on our DPS as these spells can't be recast immediately. The same is true for most other casters.

    What is important to note now is that with the advent of reforging, hit will almost never be chosen in favor of int except perhaps in gemming. However in these situations usually socket bonuses further dilute the difference between Int and Hit as a stat.

    Short version: You're wrong
    Short version, you're not in the elemental shaman forum now are you?

  16. #16
    I thought it was common knowledge that all sockets go to Intellect... And in cases of trying to obtain good socket bonuses, Int + Stat...
    As you can't reforge int... Then Int vs. Hit is meaningless outside the realm of sockets... and sockets are basically already covered by above statement.

    Sooooo.. Since Int is basically static (outside of sockets)... Hit is a valid and common argument.. as Most people who know the basics of WOW 101 are not arguing over Int vs. Hit, they are arguing (or they should be arguing) over Hit vs. Everything else that is a reforgable stat
    Last edited by Kewi; 2011-01-04 at 11:21 PM.

  17. #17
    The difference is that we can't control the rng with the hit we're lacking. While logically the Int > hit rule makes sense, this really comes down to your class and spec. If you only have about a 1-3% chance to hit, obviously it you won't want to sacrifice INT for hit. However, if you miss with a pyroblast or combustion as a fire mage, or lava burst as an ele shaman then you are going to be sad, or even worse, deep freeze as a frost mage.

    I'm missing about 3% hit on my fire mage after reforging and gemming for hit, and I missed a combustion and 3 pyroblasts (Out of only the 12 procs) in a raid fight the other night and I feel like hurt my DPS more than it would have had I more hit. I have been unable to get the hit trinket from heroics, so I was using an INT trinket in it's place. From a numbers standpoint, the Int trinket is better overall DPS but the hit trinket would have prevented all of those misses and may have resulted in higher DPS.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by gherkin View Post
    This goes for all casters too, and its relatively straight forward.

    TLDR: Int > Hit > Everything else, spec dependant.

    Hit is not the best dps stat any more. This is apparently hard for people to grasp, or maybe the information is just not out there enough, so here is the post you can refer all your friends and peers to.

    The reason for this 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.

    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)
    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.

    ********************************************

    It is ok to drop your maximum dps to be consistent in your numbers. It is ok for you to want to gem Hit instead of Int when its obviously a dps loss to do so. These are your personal choices and you're not screwing yourself out of so much dps that you're suddenly a terrible player. 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.

    While missing a spell is a bad thing, the chance should be low enough as to almost never happen. You can't NOT gear for hit, that's impossible. But rather, you should focus on Intellect gems and enchants before you think about your hit rating. If you happen to end up a whole percentage or two away from the hit cap (even after full reforging), this does not mean you should regem intellect to hit, as that would still be a dps loss. It means you need more hit gear and should actively pursue it before thinking about haste, crit, or mastery.

    And lastly, yes you will have bad luck and chain misses on your Haunt/Conflagrate with 16.99% hit rating, but this will be so rare it doesn't matter. Based on probability Intellect will work out to be the stronger stat. Stop paying attention to your misses (human nature to focus on the bad and fix it, regardless of rarity).
    Thus why you aren't a "king pin".
    All the information you gave is correct however.
    Everyone who raids endgame hardcore knows that hitting is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more important than a spreadsheet full of DPS numbers.
    "So em... you were last alive and boss had 1k hp left... you cast then died... how haven't we gotten world first???"
    "well apprently int is worth more than hit"
    ITS A TEAM GAME PEOPLE

  19. #19
    You should still be hit capped, there's no excuse not to with reforging. Hit normalizes for a large sample size to be worse than intellect, but a small sample size (IE, a short fight) could result in more misses and an inflated value for hit thanks to RNG.

    Long story short, it's the best secondary stat, don't gem it unless you have an absurd socket bonus or need them to flip on a meta (like chaotic after the change) and reforge it everywhere to meet cap.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Kewi View Post
    I thought it was common knowledge that all sockets go to Intellect... And in cases of trying to obtain good socket bonuses, Int + Stat...
    As you can't reforge int... Then Int vs. Hit is meaningless outside the realm of sockets... and sockets are basically already covered by above statement.

    Sooooo.. Since Int is basically static (outside of sockets)... Hit is a valid and common argument.. as Most people who know the basics of WOW 101 are not arguing over Int vs. Hit, they are arguing (or they should be arguing) over Hit vs. Everything else that is a reforgable stat
    Common Sense isn't that common, Internet 101 should've told you that ages ago.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bahumut5
    I don't want to call Boubouille and wake her up for something like this.

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