I've noticed a disturbing trend when looking through the profiles of the best fury warriors on many different servers: hit rating above 250 and crit % below 26%.. In zerker.

For the longest time I looked at these profiles and agreed. "You can't hit, you can't crit" I kept thinking to myself. But the fact of the matter is that with the glancing blow change, the crit cap is no longer an issue. Attack from the back like a reasonable dpser, and the crit cap will be 100 -24.6 -5.6 -5.6 -25= 39.2%, without any hit at all!

So the question is this: with the crit cap essentially a non-issue, how do we value hit % against crit%. I believe that any hit rating past 5% (8% with precision), the point where it stops affecting your special attacks, is somewhat of a waste. The reason for this is twofold:

1. Hit % past this point only affects your white damage.

2. As gear improves further, the fraction of our dps that is white will decrease. More heroic strikes as a result of more and more rage.

Even using the gear of a fairly baseline dps warrior, such as myself, we see that about 50% of his damage is yellow, and 50% is white. Since hit rating only affects the white portion of this damage, we can tentatively say that 15.8 hit rating equals a .5% increase to dps. And since crit rating affects both the white and yellow portions of this damage, we can say that 22.1 crit rating equals a 1% increase to dps.

Both of these percentages ignore the benefit that increased damage, and thus increased rage, can give a warrior, but since that benefit is the same in both cases it is irrelevant for comparison.

By this logic, 31.6 hit rating is approximately equivalent to 22.1 crit rating, even though the stats are itemized in a 1/1 ratio. This says to me that past that initial 8% with precision, crit rating is by far the superior stat. Would love to hear some feedback on this, agreement or disagreement.

Well, I can't comment on fury warriors for certain, but I'd like to mention one consideration that you may have overlooked, that has proved to be a significant factor for rogues: procs.

There are any number of items with excedingly powerful procs floating around (Dragonspine Trophy is the notable one, but there are others) - and these cannot proc unless they hit. Rogues have started to find that even though hit only affects white damage, and crit effects all damage - *and* we do more than double damage on crits - hit is still the superior stat. Now, some of the effects that make this true (poison, combat potency) aren't relevant to fury warriors; but others (such as Dragonspine Trophy) still are. Something to think about when you're comparing the relative values of hit and crit.

As far as I know white hits for a warrior only add 50% damage on crit, not 100%. So turning a miss into a hit adds 100% of a hit's worth of rage while turning a hit into a crit only adds 50% of a hits worth of rage.

All melee hits add 100% damage on a crit. Even warlock melee crits

Correct. All white melee hits add 100%.

Aldriana, that's an interesting point that I hadn't considered at all. I feel that combat potency and poison procs are the majority of the reason that rogues are finding hit the superior stat though, as you said.

Regarding haste as Aldriana said, you gain a huge haste increase due to flurry, which yes, is procd of crits, but doesn't it become essentially less useful based on the amount of hit you have.

You may have 35% crit but with only 8% /9% hit percentage, flurry doesn't seem to be used to it's full potential. Very similiar to a rogue, if you don't have enough hit, if affects the benefit of SnD as well.

Those are pretty impressive numbers. I hadn't considered that windfury only procced on hits as well.

And one more thing, you can not raid buff your CTH (chance to hit), but you can raid buff your crit chance by potting, aura, and weapon stones.

"You can't hit, you can't crit" is wrong
crit replace a hit. what I mean is you could have 70% miss/block/dodge/parry with 30% crit wont mean you'll never dmg the target, it only mean each time you'll dmg the target, it will be with a crit.

why the +hit it so important? you said it. It only affect the white dmg. More white dmg = more rage.
so instead of missing, you hit and you gain rage.
faster rage generation = more special attack
faster rage generation = more execute, not only that, but for more dmg since I was able to generate more rage than needed for the next execute during the global cooldown.
When playing my warrior, I was almost always full of rage, no matter what I could use. I was a point where Tactical Mastery was almost useless when I was doing dps in raid since I could regenerate a full bar in a matter of second.

if that is overrated... then I think there is something I never understood while playing my fury warrior.
Once you neglated the 24% miss, +hit become almost useless.

True - if you're below the hit cap. But prior to the recent glancing blow nerf, the crit cap was low enough to be a concern; if you stacked crit to the exclusion of hit too strongly, you *could* get into a situation where you were losing crits because they weren't hitting.

Yes, but increasing your crit% also increases your rage generation since (I believe) crits give more rage than regular hits.

Obviously, more rage generation is good, and hit provides that; but other stats grant rage generation as well, so the relevant question is the relative values.

Of course, I don't think this a question that's gonna be solved without some careful computations being done; the full impact of Dragonspine Trophy on the value of hit for rogues has only come into focus in the past month or so with the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet (or at least, I hadn't seen anything about it previously). Honestly, that's sort of what spreadsheets are for - I haven't honestly looked at the fury warrior sheets lately to see if they model this sort of thing, but if they don't it might be a worthwhile project to develop one that does.

1% crit will increase your rage/s as much as 1% hit. But then the +crit also affects your specials, while beyond a certain point +hit will not. Why so many still sacrifice to get +hit past that point I still dont know. Even with only 124 hit + talents (10.86%) I average about 10 hits in 10 secs so I dont think procs would have that much of an effect, though I am going to try to see how much.

What is the current values for:

Yellow Hit cap? (7.6%?)
Crit cap?

The one benefit of hit over crit is that it makes your rage come in more reliably. But overall, it is a decrease in DPS since it has no effect on special's damage, but equal in rage generation in comparison to crit.

Hit will make you gain more rage from unbridled wrath.
Crit will make you gain more rage and dps from flurry.

Hit rating costs fewer points in item budget than crit rating.

Due to the item budgeting formula, an item with both crit and hit gets a bit of a bonus to both of them. I wouldn't be so quick to quantify 1% hit as .5% dps increase and 1% crit as 1% dps increase. There's too many variables, especially with a class with as complex mechanics as a warrior.

Impale increases the crit damage by 20%, but only on yellow damage; crit triggers deep wounds. Hit past the cap only effects white damage, but then white damage is what gives you rage, thus begets more yellow damage, which is not affected by the extra hit.

I would say that at some point there's an optimal ratio of Hit & Crit on an item that would effect the most damage, where hit is not equal to 0, even after you hit the cap on hit rating, just because the item valuation gives some of those stats as bonuses.

Remember though, a majority of a Fury warriors damage is White damage, thus has a hit cap.

Unless you have like a 70% crit, you dont have to worry about it now.

My originial thoughts when gearing were similar to the OPs, that past say 11% or 12% hit with talents, I'd prefer crit rating point for point to hit rating. However, since then, I realized what the rogues here are saying: it's all about procs. Especially as I use Dragonmaw (Soon will be Dragonstrike) and dual mongoose enchants, missing kills proc rates, even if its "only" white swings. Now, I don't have a DST due to bad luck, and probably never will, as we've largely eliminated Gruul from our schedule. However even with "just" my metagem haste proc, mace haste proc, and dual mongoose, I'm finding that boosting my hit has had massive dps gains. And I'm only now up to 243 hit, I'd like to get around 300 or so. Of course, I haven't sacrificed AP to get there, I'm still over 1800 unbuffed in berserker, but my crit is a bit low these days (just over 26 in zerker). But I figure with dual mongoose my crit rate is effectively way higher, generally on the order of 31-33% over the course of a boss encounter.

I've been saying this since BWL. I used to get reamed by the warriors in my guild about how +hit is the #1 stat for warriors.

They stopped when they realized their dps couldn't even touch mine.

This is not even because of the crit cap. 1% hit increases white damage by 1% once you have 8.6% (ignoring the benfeits of procs and consistant rage generation). 1% crit increases your total damage by 1% (ignoring flurry, impale, and deep wounds). Since white damage is only around half of a warrior's damage, I generally value .5% hit as just barely better than 1% crit. I still consider AP king, however. It may not be as flashy, but I find the consistent increase in DPS more valuable than adding spike damage.

Get 200 HR... spec into 3% that puts you at 15.7% ish hit... stack crit and AP... Now go download KLH threatmeter and spam heroic strike until you get too high on threat. That or figure out how to space your HS' so you're just below the tanks.

Pretty much.. unless your a rogue, Hit Rating isn't the be-all end-all. Shamans and Warriors don't have Combat Potency. The more often I can get my offhand to land hits on the target, the more yellow dmg I can do. Doesn't matter if my attacks crit or hit, they just have to land. Warriors get rage based on damage done, thus crit and hit are equal for rage generation, but crit also helps yellow damage.

I would consider how often you have a WF-dropping shaman with you though, warriors. You may be able to crit alot, but if you can hit, you can't WF .

You cannot miss a critical strike, as a regular hit does not somehow become a critical strike. If you have 30% crit rate, 30% of all attacks you attempt will always be a critical strike, the other 70% might entirely miss but you will still have the 30%.

Obviously this doesn't take into account level difference or defense.

Aha, so lets assume 1000 attacks and this conversion:
Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance
Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical strike chance

1) 280hit rating = ~17,7% hit
2) 100hit rating = ~6,3% hit


Warrior (fury) 25,5% miss chance for for lvl 73 mobs.

1) miss chance : 7.8%
2) miss chance : 19.2%


1) out of 1000 attacks you miss 78 = 932 attacks
2) out of 1000 attacks you miss 192 = 808 attacks

assume: difference 1) and 2) = 124 attacks
assume: average white attack 400dmg = 49600dmg


And here is what i dont get now (from the quoted post), out of my 1) 932attacks or 2) 808 attacks white dmg i would assume that you first have to HIT a mob to even get a CRIT, am i totaly wrong here?
Is it not that it rolls first if you HIT and then it rolls for glance/crit/etc.....

Meaning that lets assume crit rate for 1) 25% and 2) 30% it would be for:

1) 932attacks and 25% of those attacks crit = 233 crit attacks
2) 808attacks and 30% of those attacks crit = 242 crit attacks

Difference between crit attacks is that 2) gets 9 more, and i dont think you can do 50k dmg in 9 more crits......

Am i totally off here, i mean doesnt the game roll first for a HIT/MISS and if its a HIT it rolls for glance/crit etc???

Crits are not a subset of hits, it's a single roll system. One roll of the die decides whether you hit/miss/crit/etc...

As far as I'm aware, it's generally accepted that there is a single roll for each attack that encompasses hit/crit/miss/dodge/parry (the same is true for incoming attacks, but obviously that includes block, dodge, etc.)

Let's say I have 30% crit, and 0% chance to miss, the game rolls 1-100, and say if it rolls between 1 and 30 I land a critical strike and between 31 and 100 I land a regular hit. If we introduce a 10% chance to miss I now have a 30% chance to crit, a 10% chance to miss, and a 60% chance to hit.

I can reduce the 10% chance to miss by acquiring hit rating if I so desire, and return to 70% chance to hit. Consider a level 73 mob as something that introduces additional chance to miss into the roll, which you must overcome with hit rating. Essentially, regular hits are least important in the roll table and will be 'pushed off' as it were by other attack categories. Critical strikes on the other hand are rated more highly than hits/misses and as such will always take precedence.

It is possible that there is more than a single roll per attack, but empirical evidence suggests that this is not the case. But do be aware that there is no concrete evidence that there is only one roll, merely the mathematics of people more inclined to that kind of thing than myself, along with empirical testing.