I know I read this in some thread a few weeks ago but I cant seem to find now. I looked over the usual suspects but didnt see it or perhaps I may have overlooked it. (please forgive me)


From what I recall up until you reach the spell hit cap 16% affliction spells, 10% Destro spells, pound for pound spell hit is a better stat vs Crit/Spell Damage. I seem to recall someone posted some math to support this.

The reason this has gotten my attention is because recently I noticed that I was very low on spell damage, ~300-400 when compared to my fellow locks (tailors). However I can stay with them in DPS or flat out beat them. We are all relatively specced the same (affliction) but I noticed that I had way more plus hit than them. So I am wondering if that is the reason why I am able to keep up with them like I do. I have 9%, them 3%, 2%, 6%. I do notice the 6% lock is the one that gives me a run for my money although he out spell damages me so I think that makes up for the 2% difference??

I think we are all relatively equally skilled and if I can support the idea that plus hit is better maybe I can convince them to add some plus hit gems/items in favor of pure spell damage. This would ultimately increase their dps which would help our guild overall.

Any information which supports this or not would greatly be appreciated.

Not counting the mana wasted on a resist, every 1% chance to hit is 1% of your time spent dpsing that you're actually doing dps. so your 6% hit should account for 6% more of your potential total damage that you're doing.

Generally speaking, until you cap out hit (16%) you generally will be losing DPS to resists and other related factors.

Suppression can and does act as Spell Hit for Affliction spells only, but generally 30% of an Affliction warlock's DPS is Shadowbolt so it's still important to stack spell hit even if you technically meet the cap with 5/5 Suppression and 6% Hit from gear.

While I would need to see the gear of you and the warlocks in question (I honestly do not believe that a 300-400 Damage difference lets you maintain top DPS because of your 9% hit) but I suppose it is entirely possible.

But, you are correct in your assumption that Spell Hit is important enough to stack. Not to the exclusion of all other stats - it is entirely possible to pass 10% hit from gear AND 1000-1100 spell damage - but this requires time and luck with drops as well.

If you really want to convince them, just continually surpass them in damage. When they see that a lower spell damage warlock is beating them, you can bet that they will figure out the why.

Also remember that having a DoT resisted means you only lose 1.5s (again ignoring efficiency) of tick time and 1.5s of a shadowbolt, you don't lose the whole dot. So it's not AS important as it is for, say, mages or destro locks, but due to the fact 1% hit is so easy to get due to how the rating system and itemization is made, hit is still a good stat to get for an affliction warlock according to the spreadsheets flying around.
If you want to max your DPS though, getting frozen shadoweave and spellstrike with good gems is your top priority, over maxing your +hit... Worry about stat balance when you actuall have to choose between high quality items that are close together, not when you have to choose between a piece of oblivion to a sick epic.

I don't know about alot of luck just some..

CE - Gives you ~2% to hit ring ... Spirit Shards x 50 gives you another 1% spellstrike set gives you another ~3%.. Thats already ~6% right there. Doesn't even matter if your a tailor or not they should all have a set of spellstrike..

Then you just need 10% from the rest of the gear... If you lucky you can 15-20 man BWL for some gold + trinkets.. Good some lucky drops off doomwalker / karazhan. If your in SSC there are 2 sets of boots ( 1 BoP crafted / 1 off hydross ) + 2 belts ( Lurker and BoE craftable ) that also have alot of hit on them.

Unlike Mages with ignite... Shadow vul... gets eaten by other locks / SPs more than yourself so critting has less issue with your dps.. so you are able to rock alot of % hit gear without feeling much loss / if any in DPS..

Here are some quick stats, I mis-spoke before I was was close.


Lock1: 1077 spell damage 3.49 hit

Lock2: 1162 spell damage 5.95 hit

Lock3: 903 spell damage 1.9 hit <-- destro

Me: 825 spell damage 8.88 hit


I just went home at lunch and got my spell hit up to 9.83 with dawnstone and veiled gem.

The other argument I get when I bring this up which may or may not be valid is that spell hit only counts towards the initial landing of the spell and doesnt affect partial reisists on dot ticks.. I'm not knowledgeable enough to debate that point. But either way I figure landing a spell is better than not. (I might be confusing that with spell penetration)


edit: here is my armory link... Ignore the riding crop I logged off in a hurry, I have a crit trinket there


http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...r&n=Muertoloco

I suggest updating your EJ profile.

Are you talking abotu this?

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24266#z0z


I thought that required tailoring to wear?

You only need tailoring to get the set bonus.

No, it just requires tailoring to get the set bonus. The set bonus is extremely nice, though.

Very interesting. I currently have doomcallers ( yes dont laugh) I will get with our guild tailors to have one made for me. Thanks for the info

I agree lock 2 is probably the best lock we have in terms of skill and gear. I am having the spell strike hood crafted. I have the Handwraps of Flowing Thought, but go with voidheart just for the bonus. Do you think its worth losing the set bonus proc? It sure seems to proc a lot. If I do go with the handwraps instead what gems would you suggest in order to make up for the set proc loss. I'm saving my RKP for the next Voidheart piece hopefully the shoulders or BP.

EDIT: Does 5/5 Suppression automatically give you 10% hit which means you only need to come up with 6% more hit? Also is the 5/5 taken into account on the character sheet? (I think not) Currently I am 4/5 Suppression and my plus hit shows 9.83%

Saying that someone else eats your imp shadowbolt is a very selfish attitude. When that person ate that shadowbolt, you increased his DPS. That DPS wouldn't have been there without you. Therefore it's EXACTLY as effective as if you used it up yourself. The only loss of imp SBs wearing off because of someone else is a reduction in uptime and thus less effect on DoTs, but if it's another warlock with the same crit as you, he also puts it back up. If it's affliction, while he does reduce the uptime for you, you increase it for him, so overall you increase his DPS and he decreases yours, which, while hard to math accurately, is roughly as good as if he never took your charges away.
Just remember personal DPS isn't everything when it comes to debuffs on mobs, or else you would never use curse of elements as a shadow lock now would you? But that 10% more damage for mages is a lot more than your CoA/CoD will every do.

I'm in the same type of boat as you, I also have Handwraps of Flowing thought but use Voidheart for the 2 piece, which procs way more than is even reasonable!

5/5 Suppression counts as 10% hit, but doesn't get counted on your character sheet.

If you can get your hands on the Voidheart Chest or Shoulders then by all means use one of those for the 2 piece and use the superior Handwraps; but until then you're probably better off with 2 piece using gloves.

Basically, you don't want to rely on Suppression, because Suppression doesn't help you with Shadowbolt (30% of Aff-lock DPS usually) and Soulshatter. So, as you increase spell hit from gear, you can drop down points in Suppression.

p.s. ISB uptime is all that matters, whether you use it up or one of the other warlocks or even if a shadow priest uses it, it is increasing DPS. Ideally, you want at least 1 0/21/40 warlock in the raid who has gear to maximize ISB uptime - he may not be top DPS, but he will be helping everyone else out.

+hit is extremely easy to get now with the new crafted gems. Depending how far you are into the raiding scene, just about anything with sockets is pure gold with the new Veiled Noble Topaz +4hit,+5dmg orange gem and the +8 hit Great Dawnstone yellow gem.

When that patch hit I completely redid my sockets.

People continue to say this and it continues to not be true. Suppression doesn't affect Shadowbolt, Immolate, or Soul Shatter, which works out to generally more than 40% of your DPS plus your ability to DPS in aggro-limited situations. Suppression is generally just a crutch to avoid annoying DoT resists; it can't replace having hit rating on your gear.

In terms of gear, Voidheart BP + shoulders and Handwraps of Flowing Thought are really the best 3 pieces you can get for those 3 spots before SSC.

Best Hit rating advice for different lock builds

Demo/Destruction: Always always always max hit whenever possible it is, point for point, your best stat for DPS.

Affliction: Suppression does change the equation somewhat largly because it is there and it is essentially free because it does not require you to move points out of raid DPS talents to spec into it. That said you should not shoot for 6% hit from gear and stack +dmg and +crit after that. Ideally you will want to hit cap soulshatter no matter what, this does not require DPSing in gear with 16% hit on it, however. Taking an extra set of weapons that raises your hit rate will allow you to stack less than 16% hit on your DPS gear set and still maintain 16% hit on soulshatter, banish, and enslave. You should spec enough points into suppression to maintain 16% hit on your DoTs without your high hit weapon swap.

Why would you want to do this? Item budgets. Hit capping your DoTs in an affliction spec, even after accounting for SB resists, LT/DP cycles, and everything else, will make one point of shadow damage add more DPS than one point of hit rating. The thing is shadow damage is less item budget than hit rating. This means that, given a fixed item level, you will do more dps if shadow>hit rating than the other way around.

This leaves only one real question, how much hit can you gain from a weapon swap? Depends on what you have available to you in the way of DPS and +hit gear. You're probably looking at 2-3 points in suppression at most. Stray on the high side, if you need 3% hit for dots go ahead and get 4% not 2%. A decent swap at pretty much any level gear is the staff from mana tombs with 20+ hit on it.

Make no mistake, suppression is a crutch and you should never ever just get 6% hit to hit cap dots and ignore the utility of extra +hit. However, the talent is there, it is basically free , and it does increase your DPS if you carefully balance your hit to take advantage of hit capped DoTs, hit capped soulshatter, and shadow damage on gear adding more to dps than hit from gear.

See Zoner's posts on page 28 of the long Warlock theorycraft thread: Warlock dmg at lvl 60/70: afflic/demo/destro - Theory

The math shows pretty convincingly that DoT damage doesn't scale at the same rate as +hit, due to the difference between damage-per-casttime and damage-per-second. So adding 6% hit increases DPS by less than 6%.

Here is an example of achieving hit outside of tailored sets.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gannon&n=Deuel
I'm looking to add the ring from mag to replace my kara ring, and come next arena season i will be switching my weapons to either the 1her spell blade or staff(leaning toward staff more atm). I am willing to sacrifice a little damage for hit, while still maintaining a solid amount of spell damage and crit. Also with my current stats I am able to hold top spots in raid damage.


**Edit: forgot to mention shoulder wise i will be switching those with either tier 4 or 5, which drops first but HKM and VR hate me and wont drop them >.<