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  1. #1

    [Priest] Hit Cap FAQ

    First, this is not intended to be a discussion about if people should hit cap or not, so please don't bother with that as that sort of discussion is as pointless as someone trying to convince you that your favorite color isn't your favorite color. (also let me know if I am a tard and edit poorly. I try but you know... writing a bunch it doesn't always workout.)

    Second, this is a listing of things people need to be aware of/consider when they are deciding if getting hit cap is good for them or not. There is a lot of information about this spread all over a billion threads and I thought it might be helpful to have a listing in one place a person can easily look at. This is not meant to be an endorsement of either method though. If you think I left something important off my list PLEASE post and let me know

    Ok, now to the fun stuff. Also note... this list is in no particular order just as I thought of things/they were suggested. So don't assume that the first thing is the biggest deal thing and the last thing is moot.


    What is Hit cap?

    17% or 1742 hit/spirit (1639 for Draenei)

    What hit rating equals 1% hit?

    102.446 rating = 1% hit
    10.2446 rating = 0.1% hit

    Also if you want an easy way in game to tell how much your will gain/drop in hit (and any other stat) without having to calculate the math RatingBuster is a great addon for that.

    Hit cap is a hard cap.

    Basically once you get to 17% if you go over 17% you get no further benefit.In some ways being at 17.01% is bad in the sense that you probably are not maximizing your stats somewhere. That extra 0.01% does absolutely nothing for you. Because of this some people prefer to be just under the cap instead of over it.

    How's your Latency/FPS?


    The whole being under hit cap works because with the exception of one spell (leaving sw: death out for the moment) all of our spells can immediately be recast if we miss on it. This limits the affects we feel from missed spells and is the biggest reason why there is any discussion about not getting hit cap now. If you have high latency and/or you have low FPS you ability to react to misses will be affected since you won't be reacting as quickly.

    Even if you miss on MB you still get the ES buff.

    One thing people say as a reason to not go under hit cap is that ES might fall off. This is simply not true since you get the ES buff from casting MB not from MB doing damage.

    What about the fact that MB does a lot of damage and after 4.2 it does a larger % of our damage than before?

    Yes missing a 3 orb crit MB would seriously fail. However, the things to know about that is a 3 orbs and a crit is a best case situation which doesn't happen with frequency. Also, if you are making use of your buffs properly and paying attention to your priorities you will be casting MB far less often than your other spells so you would be less likely to have a miss occur on a MB as opposed to happening on other spells.

    Also MB does do a little bit more of our damage than before, however it's not a huge percent more; basically the majority of our damage is not coming from MB yet. However, when you get the T12 4pc bonus missing MB becomes a bit more of a deal, so you should always be keeping an eye one what you are missing and if you find you often are missing a MB you might want to try adding some more hit and seeing if that helps.

    Misses are calculated on the cast not on the ticks.

    Just wanted to mention this because I saw someone say that even if you hit with the spell the ticks could miss... which is completely not true.

    Even if you hit with DP you can miss with Imp DP.

    Hit is calculated separately for DP and Imp DP so one can hit and the other can miss. This is mostly important because above boss health of 25% some people spam DP on movement or at the end of fights because the dps increase from the Imp DP part is worthwhile. Being under hit cap would make this potentially less effective.

    Missing SW: Death is awful.

    If you need to use sw: death for mana regen yea, missing it would hurt. Also, missing a sw: death under 25% boss health would also hurt because it does a good amount of damage and if you miss the first one the CD doesn't reset and you can't recast it immediately. However, similar to MB you cast far fewer sw: deaths so it is less likely a miss will occur on the sw: death instead of on something else. This gets skewed a bit at the end of fights when we spam sw: death as much as we can.

    Missing VT you might not be able to recast immediately due to movement.

    On some fights missing a VT absolutely can cause problems because there might be a second or two where you might not be able to recast it. Much like best case scenarios, worst case scenarios don't often happen. It is something to be aware of though.

    What's the lowest hit rating I can use and still do great dps?

    Kilee did a good explaination of this so I am just going to copy it here.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kilee
    As far as what simcraft tells you, you don't start noticing negative dps effects until somewhere below 14%. I've seen sims go as low as 11% with no negative effects.

    The higher your gear level, more important hit affects you. At 346 ilevel, you can almost ignore it if you're doing everything else right. Once you start hitting 372, the misses hurt more and affect your potential dps in more profound ways.
    Also, it can not be said enough but the point at which you personally see a reduction of dps is not something anyone else can tell you. You really have to try different things and see what works.

    How good are you at following mechanics, changing targets, and noticing misses?

    There is a lot going on in raids at one time. If you are going to drop below hit cap you are adding another thing to your plate here. In this case you might see a drop in dps at first because you might have to practice to make the most of being under hit cap. How long you need to practice and how long your raid leader is willing to wait for you to get it together might vary (some raid leaders might even say they won't take you if you are under hit cap). For this reason some people prefer to be at hit cap for all progression fights and only go under for farm content.

    Addons that are used to track DoT durations can be fooled by a miss.

    Sometimes when you cast a spell the addon you use might assume because you cast it that it hit and will show you that the DoT is on the target, only to randomly disappear a few seconds later. The upshot of this is if you are using an addon to track your misses it can slow down how soon you recast the spell and can result in a loss of dps.

    Lower ilvl gear with hit is almost always a worse choice than higher ilvl gear without hit.

    Often during raiding because loot is random, we are put in positions where we have to compare a higher ilvl piece without hit to a lower ilvl item with hit. The reason the higher ilvl piece will almost always be a better choice is that the higher ilvl piece will have more int. Int is by far our most important stat (normalized values int at 1 and any other stat at 0.4 something). For this reason having the mentality of "I will never go below hit cap ever" can cost you.

    This point gets slightly murky depending on your abilities and if you start dropping too low on hit cap. A good idea is to figure out a range you are comfortable with having your hit at. If you are less that 1% under hit cap though, most fights you won't have any misses at all. It is a numbers game though.

    This will get a bit interesting in the current tier because the majority of our spirit/hit gear is going to be coming from craftables/vendors. What this works out to is once you get get the ilvl 378 gear and you are still seeing ilvl 378 gear drop, you won't have to deal with this issue. However, going from ilvl 372/359 gear to ilvl 378 gear you will probably face this issue often while you wait to get enough valor to but your spirit/hit pieces and to get the other pieces crafted. You will also see this issue once you have ilvl 378 and ilvl 391 starts dropping and you are working on collecting enough shards to upgrade plus craftable gear can't be upgraded.

    The more under hit cap you are the more likely misses will happen.

    Obvious, but doesn't hurt to say it

    If I sim it and it says I should go haste over hit, but in game I do more dps with more hit I am doing it wrong?

    Well no... not exactly. Basically, running a sim cannot account for all the things about you personally which might affect your personal relationship with hit. Sure it has different settings for different skill levels, but as in real life some people aren't good at honestly accessing their own skill level. If you run a sim and it tells you hit is not at all important, but when you do this in game and your dps goes down, then it would be sort of dumb to keep doing it. Sure it does probably mean you have some things you need to work on (like noticing misses, keeping dots up etc) and it sometimes takes awhile to get that worked out. You have to be honest with yourself and realize if you do or do not have the time/patience/forgiving raid leader to let you work that stuff out.

    I am new to shadow, so I heard I don't need hit right?

    Personally I would say get hit cap at least until you feel comfortable with how we play. Not being hit capped further complicates our playstyle which is already a little complicated. However, if you want to not worry about hit cap from the start that's cool. You just really need to be willing to adjust what you are doing if things aren't working out for you. Actually that last part is true for anyone no matter how long they have been playing a spriest
    Last edited by Arlee; 2011-07-04 at 11:08 AM.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Now I can just refer to this write-up when people complain I raid with 4%! Thanks Arlee!

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Thank you for this very informative post, but please clarify this one:

    Quote Originally Posted by Arlee View Post
    Missing SW: Death is awful.
    If you need to use sw: death for mana regen yea, missing it would hurt. Also, missing a sw: death under 25% boss health would also hurt because it does a good amount of damage. However, similar to MB you count far fewer sw: deaths so it is less likely you will miss on it.
    It is in not less likely that you miss one, the chances are allways the same only totals are different: ie 100 cast 10 misses, 10 casts 1 miss - chances are the same but not the totals.

  4. #4
    The Lightbringer Kouki's Avatar
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    Destro Warlock here, I raided @ 3.65% under the 17% cap.

    I Tied or beat the main lock in the guild, and then when i reforged to hit, i saw no real change.

    His internet latency, and his fps are worse by alot to mine, my machine is custom his is store bought.
    He lives in a rural area far out from the city, i live in a city with isp's that have 100/100 mbps lines.

    So id agree hit is overrated for some people.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Drood View Post
    It is in not less likely that you miss one, the chances are allways the same only totals are different: ie 100 cast 10 misses, 10 casts 1 miss - chances are the same but not the totals.
    Hmm I probably worded it badly but what I meant was something like this (super simplified example):

    Say you cast 100 VT times, and sw: death only 10 times; even though on each individual cast the % chance you have to miss is the same, due to the fact you are casting so many more VT's it is more likely that any misses would happen on the VT. Does that make more sense?

  6. #6
    The Patient allaiva's Avatar
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    I've run both under hit cap and at hit cap, preferably I stick to being hit capped but that's my preference. To me, being under hit cap made my damage in a fight vary to a large degree. The fights I got lucky and missed less the meters would be dominated by me but on the fights where it seemed every other cast missed I was right down near the bottom and frustrated by mana problems and burning Dispersion at inopportune times.

    As such, I agree that it's totally possible and ok to raid below hit cap, but I just found it a nuisance to do so. Being hit capped I can worry less on enemy debuffs and more on mechanics and multi-dotting all available targets and to my knowledge the damage doesn't change all that much (though mana problems are much fewer... except H maloriak)

    edit: my RL raided a long time under hit cap and both of us averaged about the same regardless of where our hit rating stood so I'll repeat again that, just as the OP said, this is purely a player preference as opposed to a necessity atm.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Arlee View Post
    Say you cast 100 VT times, and sw: death only 10 times; even though on each individual cast the % chance you have to miss is the same, due to the fact you are casting so many more VT's it is more likely that any misses would happen on the VT. Does that make more sense?
    This still sounds like Gambler's Logic. You will, on average, miss the same exact % of VT and SW:Smiley casts. If you cast 10 times as many VTs, you will miss 10 times as many VTs.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by CaseyTheRetard View Post
    This still sounds like Gambler's Logic. You will, on average, miss the same exact % of VT and SW:Smiley casts. If you cast 10 times as many VTs, you will miss 10 times as many VTs.
    Not getting hit capped is a game of numbers... so good job on recognizing that fact Also, yes if you look at every fight you ever fight under hit cap it will "eventually" work out like that... sort of. In individual fights you don't generally see that play out. Spend some time cruising WoL parses and see what the miss %'s are compared to how much under hit cap people are. Basically just because you are 1% under hit cap does not mean you will miss 1% of your spells on every fright. This is another reason that being at or below hit cap is a personal preference.

  9. #9
    Field Marshal Grizzlehorn's Avatar
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    I'm actually pretty happy that this post came about. Another Priest and I were having a conversation on a new Shadow Priest's application and we butted heads a bit on the topic. I didn't realize how heated this debate had become. I feel like it may be stubbornness that is keeping me from wanting to go under hit cap, but I guess plenty of people are reforging for straight Haste and doing really well.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Arlee View Post
    Not getting hit capped is a game of numbers...just because you are 1% under hit cap does not mean you will miss 1% of your spells on every fight
    Yes, I understand the Law of Large Numbers. That was not the point of my post. I'll be clearer this time.

    The statement in the OP: "However, similar to MB you count far fewer sw: deaths so it is less likely you will miss on it." is patently false, and could be confusing and misleading to the non-theorycrafters for whom the post is intended.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by CaseyTheRetard View Post
    The statement in the OP: "However, similar to MB you count far fewer sw: deaths so it is less likely you will miss on it." is patently false, and could be confusing and misleading to the non-theorycrafters for whom the post is intended.
    Except it isn't patently false. I didn't say the chance of a miss on sw: death casts is lower, I said that the likely hood of a miss happening on the one spell as opposed to happening on anything else you cast is lower. Which is an actual fact. Granted I accidentally typed "count" instead of "cast" but that seems obvious considering I reference my previous discussion of MB.
    Last edited by Arlee; 2011-05-25 at 08:21 PM.

  12. #12
    In mathematical terms, the statement "...is less likely you will miss on it" implies that the probably of a miss is less. Since the probability of missing is the same, the statement is false. I don't know what you meant to say, but what you did say is wrong.

    Edit: I see you made the same statement in the MB section "if you are making use of your buffs properly and paying attention to your priorities [then] you will be casting MB far less often than your other spells so you would be less likely to miss on MB than on your other spells" ; it's wrong there also.

    I think what you are trying to say is that the proportion of misses that are Mind Blasts will be small since the proportion of casts that are Mind Blasts is small. That would be a true statement. They way you have it worded now "...you would be less likely to miss on MB than on your other spells" is not.
    Last edited by CaseyTheRetard; 2011-05-25 at 08:51 PM. Reason: Clarification.

  13. #13
    downfall to missing a SWD < 25% is if its your first the CD doesnt reset via the glyph

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by CaseyTheRetard View Post
    I think what you are trying to say is that the proportion of misses that are Mind Blasts will be small since the proportion of casts that are Mind Blasts is small. That would be a true statement. They way you have it worded now "...you would be less likely to miss on MB than on your other spells" is not.
    Ah that makes sense and I can definitely reword that.

    Quote Originally Posted by scandalis View Post
    downfall to missing a SWD < 25% is if its your first the CD doesnt reset via the glyph
    I was actually wondering about that. I haven't actually ever missed on a sw: death and I haven't seen anything about it happening like that. So I was hoping someone who knows for sure might post about it

  15. #15
    I think a couple of facts would make good additions to this guide:
    1. The only possible benefit of being below hitcap is to increase intellect or haste. If you can get closer to hitcap by reforging crit or mastery, it's a DPS increase to do so.
    2. The DPS difference between haste rating and hit rating is small. From the SimulationCraft 4.10 BiS 372 Shadow numbers, 1 haste rating provides 1.75 DPS and 1 hit rating provides 1.51 DPS. If you drop 300 rating below hitcap to add 300 haste rating, you could expect to see a 300 * (1.75 - 1.51) = 72 DPS increase.

      Simulating this scenario (Priest_Shadow_T11_372 vs. same profile - 300 hit + 300 haste) I get a 26181 - 26117 = 61 DPS difference, well within the margin of error of our expected 72. Simulating the same 2 priests under Simulationcraft's "HelterSkelter" high mobility scenario, I get 22889 - 22841 = 48 DPS in favor of the hitcapped setup.

    The DPS differences between hitcapping and not hitcapping are small enough (<0.25% DPS difference trading about 3% hit for a bit less haste) as to be insignificant. Even from a heavy min-maxing point-of-view, it makes no difference.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Helter Skelter is not like any fight in the current tier, incidentally.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Priestlyone View Post
    Helter Skelter is not like any fight in the current tier, incidentally.
    Depends on what you mean by "like." It certainly doesn't model any fight exactly, neither does "Patchwerk" for that matter, since every fight this tier requires you to spend some time moving. It is reasonable to expect our DPS for a fight that includes some movement to be somewhere between simulated DPS of a fight with no movement and simulated DPS of a fight with lots of movement.

    In any case, modeling any/every/some particular fight wasn't my goal: I was trying to support the OP's statements that (a) hitcapping or not is personal preference and not a minmax decision, and (b) that high mobility doesn't greatly alter the truth of statement (a).

  18. #18
    Definitely a worthwhile read, but I just get hit capped and leave it at that. Makes my life so much easier, and since I'm not doing Heroics, I don't have to squeeze out every bit of DPS I can besides, with reforging it's not hard to be hit capped. Sure, I'm over the cap, so it's a DPS loss...but I'm over the cap by 2 rating. I'm pretty sure that DPS I lose from 2 rating is negligible :P

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by CaseyTheRetard View Post
    I think a couple of facts would make good additions to this guide:
    1. The only possible benefit of being below hitcap is to increase intellect or haste. If you can get closer to hitcap by reforging crit or mastery, it's a DPS increase to do so.
    2. The DPS difference between haste rating and hit rating is small. From the SimulationCraft 4.10 BiS 372 Shadow numbers, 1 haste rating provides 1.75 DPS and 1 hit rating provides 1.51 DPS. If you drop 300 rating below hitcap to add 300 haste rating, you could expect to see a 300 * (1.75 - 1.51) = 72 DPS increase.

      Simulating this scenario (Priest_Shadow_T11_372 vs. same profile - 300 hit + 300 haste) I get a 26181 - 26117 = 61 DPS difference, well within the margin of error of our expected 72. Simulating the same 2 priests under Simulationcraft's "HelterSkelter" high mobility scenario, I get 22889 - 22841 = 48 DPS in favor of the hitcapped setup.

    The DPS differences between hitcapping and not hitcapping are small enough (<0.25% DPS difference trading about 3% hit for a bit less haste) as to be insignificant. Even from a heavy min-maxing point-of-view, it makes no difference.
    If everyone had the same abilities, computers, gear, and internet connection then you are correct. However, the whole reason this is a "debate" at all is because how much these things affect people is different for each person. Also, unless a person has 372 gear those stat weights for them will vary. Also, SimC is great for getting a feel for the way things should play out, however actual results in game can vary. The only way for a person to know how much hit cap or not will affect them is to try it.

  20. #20
    Very nice post that gives us a reference every time someone comes around to ask about this. =)

    You may want to include a short note that spirit = hit with talents for new spriests, so they don't misunderstand why we bring up spirit.

    I think a note about switching Hit for other secondary stats should be added after you mention the ilvl comparison for Int priority. For this tier, and likely later tiers, haste will scale better than hit, which is why the hit cap is such a big issue to begin with. We wouldn't consider going under hit cap if it was the secondary stat that scaled best (unless it was a choice of about 16.97% or 17.03%). However, newer priests may misunderstand and interpret this issue as hit scaling less well than crit or mastery at some special magic numbers, or that the haste "bumps" (not plateaus) we get mean hit will be way more valuable at certain levels of haste.

    Basically, at least for now, spriests that go under hit cap should only be doing so to increase haste and Int/SP. While this is a more confusing choice between items with spirit and crit & items with haste and mastery, it makes a much more straightforward decision for items that have haste or spirit and those that don't. It's also important to know to reforge for haste and spirit and never out of them.

    Just wanted to make sure that was included. I saw someone else mentioned the scaling already, just figured a less mathy way of saying it would be easier for newer priests to understand.

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