Hit rating changed in WotLK. Because Windfury is no longer a proc, and due to poison scaling and critting, hit rating is no longer as desirable as it once was. The "white hit cap" that many rogues worshiped in BC is not only effectively unattainable, but it's likely not desirable to even try to gear to hit it.

There are three milestones for hit: yellow hit, poison (spell) hit, and white hit. Only the first two are of practical concern to raiding rogues in WotLK.

First: Hit rating converts at the rate of 32.79 rating/1% melee hit, and at the rate of 26.232 rating/1% spell hit. Additionally, a draenei in your party grants 1% spell/melee hit.

Yellow hit: You have a 8% chance to miss against level 83 bosses. This is down from 9% in Burning Crusade, and has been exhaustively tested. All of our specials are melee attacks. You need:

• 66 hit rating with a Draenei party member and precision


• 99 hit rating with precision, or


• 263 hit rating without precision

This is a minimum hit that must be maintained at all times for PVE. If you are under this hit cap, you are severely damaging your DPS potential.

Poison hit: Poisons are spells. Spells have a 17% chance to miss versus a boss. Additionally, a shadow priest/moonkin provides 3% spell hit to your raid. Precision also increases your chance to hit with spells by 5%. You need:

• 210 hit rating to poison cap with a moonkin/shadow priest in the raid and a Draenei in the party.


• 237 hit rating to poison cap with a moonkin/shadow priest in the raid without a Draenei in the party.


• 315 hit rating to poison cap without a moonkin/shadow priest/Draenei


• 446 hit rating to poison cap without a moonkin/shadow priestDraenei/precision

The poison cap should be ideally reached for raiding by slotting agi/hit gems in yellow sockets, provided that the piece has an offensive socket bonus, up to the poison hit cap. It is quite easy to hit this cap if you have a +spell hit debuff in the raid. Most any 25-man raid should assume the presence of that debuff, making your 25-man poison hit cap either 210 or 237 depending on group composition. This is a general target cap, but this is not a hard cap. You can go over it and still get benefit (albeit diminished) from hit. In general, gem agi/hit or ap/hit in your token yellow socket for the meta, until you reach 9% spell hit, and then gem agi/crit or ap/crit. You should never gem hit in red or blue sockets unless you're under the 8% melee special hit cap (refer to the previous list for melee special cap ratings!). If you already have a yellow gem for the meta, gem agi or AP in the socket, even if you're under the poison hit cap.


White hit: White hit refers to autoattacks. Autoattacks have the base 8% chance to miss, plus a 19% dual-wield penalty, requiring 27% hit to fully eliminate them. You need:

• 689 hit rating with precision, and with a Draenei


• 722 hit rating with precision, but without a Draenei


• 886 hit rating without precision or a Draenei

You absolutely do not need to hit this cap. In fact, it's not possible to do so without utterly gimping yourself.

There is a single caveat: If you are Mutilate, and are running best-in-slot gear, then hit rating becomes one of your more valuable stats, due to poison scaling. If you have to worry about that, though, you probably know your hit rating stuff already, though!

Additionally, expertise and hit do not interact. They have similar functions, but accomplish it in different ways.

You need 26 expertise (not rating) to eliminate boss dodges.Weapon Expertise and racials will count towards this value on your character sheet. Anything past 26 expertise is completely wasted for raid DPS, and should be avoided.

sweet, cheers- good write up!!

Reported for sticky-ness.

Good post.

Awesome post and very informative. :)

Maybe a stick...

TY!
Reported for sticky

It's not "ideal" to reach the poison cap, because hit rating is inferior to AP/agility when you are above the specials cap. You should probably edit your post to make this more clear.

You should not gem for hit (except for matching yellow socket bonuses) above the specials cap.

Edit: This is not true as gear improves. Eventually hit rating becomes good enough for it to be desirable up to the poison cap. The only way to be 100% certain on whether you personally should gem for hit or not after the specials cap is to use a spreadsheet.

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Q u o t e:
It's not "ideal" to reach the poison cap, because hit rating is inferior to AP/agility when you are above the specials cap. You should probably edit your post to make this more clear.

You should not gem for hit (except for matching yellow socket bonuses) above the specials cap.

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I agree, you need to edit your post to clarify that once you're over the special hit cap, you only 'aim' for hit in the sense that the yellow component of your orange gems is still hit.

Furthermore, that this is only true until you reach the poison(spell) cap, in which case the yellow component of your orange gems should be changed to crit.

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Q u o t e:
There is a single caveat: If you are Mutilate, and are running best-in-slot gear, then hit rating becomes one of your more valuable stats, due to poison scaling. If you have to worry about that, though, you probably know your hit rating stuff already, though!

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I didn't understand what you meant by hit rating and poison scale for mut specs.

I'm with Drumbum. (Good company to be in, IMO.) Make that part clear and this is sticky-worthy.

Ok that's it. Screw this. I'm gemming 100% armor pen and you can all rot in hell.

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Q u o t e:
Reported for sticky-ness.

Good post.

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Q u o t e:
Hit rating changed in WotLK. Because Windfury is no longer a proc, and due to poison scaling and critting, hit rating is no longer as desirable as it once was. The "white hit cap" that many rogues worshiped in BC is not only effectively unattainable, but it's likely not desirable to even try to gear to hit it.

There are three milestones for hit: yellow hit, poison (spell) hit, and white hit. Only the first two are of practical concern to raiding rogues in WotLK.

First: Hit rating converts at the rate of 32.79 rating/1% melee hit, and at the rate of 26.232 rating/1% spell hit. Additionally, a draenei in your party grants 1% spell/melee hit.

Yellow hit: You have a 8% chance to miss against level 83 bosses. This is down from 9% in Burning Crusade, and has been exhaustively tested. All of our specials are melee attacks. You need:

• 66 hit rating with a Draenei party member and precision


• 99 hit rating with precision, or


• 263 hit rating without precision

This is a minimum hit that must be maintained at all times for PVE. If you are under this hit cap, you are severely damaging your DPS potential.

Poison hit: Poisons are spells. Spells have a 17% chance to miss versus a boss. Additionally, a shadow priest/moonkin provides 3% spell hit to your raid. Precision also increases your chance to hit with spells by 5%. You need:

• 210 hit rating to poison cap with a moonkin/shadow priest and a Draenei in the party.


• 237 hit rating to poison cap with a moonkin/shadow priest without a Draenei in the party.


• 315 hit rating to poison cap without a moonkin/shadow priest/Draenei


• 446 hit rating to poison cap without a moonkin/shadow priestDraenei/precision

The poison cap should be ideally reached for raiding, and is quite easy if you have a +spell hit debuff in the raid. Most any 25-man raid should assume the presence of that debuff, making your 25-man poison hit cap either 210 or 237 depending on group composition. This is a general target cap, but this is not a hard cap. You can go over it and still get benefit (albeit diminished) from hit.


White hit: White hit refers to autoattacks. Autoattacks have the base 8% chance to miss, plus a 19% dual-wield penalty, requiring 27% hit to fully eliminate them. You need:

• 669 hit rating with precision, and with a Draenei


• 722 hit rating with precision, but without a Draenei


• 886 hit rating without precision or a Draenei

You absolutely do not need to hit this cap. In fact, it's not possible to do so without utterly gimping yourself.

There is a single caveat: If you are Mutilate, and are running best-in-slot gear, then hit rating becomes one of your more valuable stats, due to poison scaling. If you have to worry about that, though, you probably know your hit rating stuff already, though!

Additionally, expertise and hit do not interact. They have similar functions, but accomplish it in different ways.

You need 26 expertise (not rating) to eliminate boss dodges.Weapon Expertise and racials will count towards this value on your character sheet. Anything past 26 expertise is completely wasted for raid DPS, and should be avoided.

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Very good write up bubba... very good!

everyone report for sticky and someone report for porn so it gets looked at and stickied.

kthx

Excellent post! But I found a few errors I wanted to bring up.

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Q u o t e:
669 hit rating with precision, and with a Draenei

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This is actually 689 hit rating with precision and a Draenei.

886 hit (27%) - 197 hit (6% for precision and Draenei) = 689 hit



Also I thought I should add the expertise values needed in terms of rating to make this a one-stop shop.

For 6.5% boss dodge chance (26/26 expertise):

26 expertise (214 expertise rating) to cap.

16 expertise (132 expertise rating) to cap for rogues with 2/2 Weapon Expertise.

13 expertise (107 expertise rating) to cap for rogues with 2/2 Weapon Expertise and if you are a human wielding a sword or a mace.




editted for grammar.

excellent post.

this should be stickied right at the top of the forum just to take away one more excuse the short-busers in this class might use for not knowing how to search for the answer.

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Q u o t e:
It's not "ideal" to reach the poison cap, because hit rating is inferior to AP/agility when you are above the specials cap. You should probably edit your post to make this more clear.

You should not gem for hit (except for matching yellow socket bonuses) above the specials cap.

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Well, what I meant is that it's going to be a DPS increase to be at the poison cap, so for yellow sockets with an offensive set bonus while you're under the poison cap, agi/hit is better than agi/crit. Definitely needs clarification, though!

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Q u o t e:
Excellent post! But I found a few errors I wanted to bring up.

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Thanks for the typo catch - I'll fix the OP.

I didn't break down expertise by with combat expertise/human/whatever, because your total expertise shows in your character sheet. You just want your character sheet showing "26" and you're good to go.