With my gear (T4/T5 with Dragonmaw), combat maces is coming out about 1-1.5% increase. You lose a couple of filler points in the combat tree to fill out WEX.

It seems to me that tanks are now, more than ever, going to build separate "Max Mitigation" and "Max Threat Gen" sets.

My guild's main tank, Rholr has 7.99% to hit (he has the BT axe, I told him to lower his hit, but he disagrees), so could get even more hit with the BT or SSC +hit neck (around 18 more hit), so could have over 9% to hit.


I think expertise is better than hit though.

Doesn't look like you guys bothered to read more than the last sentence of my post, which is kind of a pity for this thread.

I wanted input on if we all agree that due to the removal of weapon skill bonus and the impact it had on chance to miss vs raid bosses, if that means you do in essence have a higher hit cap now as opposed to before, which is technically a negative.

I guess I'm sort of answering my own 'question', but it was moreso for a topic of discussion...

The answer is that we don't know yet. My best guess would be that your chance to miss a boss will remain at 9% (28% for dual wielders), and I know for a fact that you won't be able to reduce that with weapon skill (because there won't be any way to increase weapon skill above 350). However, it'll take data from the PTR before we can say for sure that the base miss chance will be the same.

If it does stay the same, assuming you don't get any chance to hit from talents (e.g. prot warrior), your hit cap will be 142 (442 for dual wield).

May it be just for anecdotal purpose, but the hitcap seems raised. I've been running Zul Aman yesterday with 2 different gear sets, once with around 320and the other with 348hit rating. Usual 10 expertise specced and i saw a drop in dodges vs bosses, but saw a noticable amount of misses with the lower hit rating.

wws of the run with 348 hitrating: http://wowwebstats.com/mio6oj1lpyxwk?a=7

Can it be confirmed that Expertise does not reduce the chance for an attack to be blocked? To me, it seems curious that Block should've been overlooked?

I do not understand you. If you get expertise the mob will dodge less.

In 2.2 you may never miss, but the mob dodges more often.
In 2.3 you may have higher miss (since you do not reach the cap), but the mob dodges less.

Your dps should stay ~ the same.
What is important to know now is: How much dodge does a boss have?
And thus: How much expertise do I need to bring it down to zero.

From page 1, I believe this is accurate. You would need ~23 expertise to remove dodges completely from a boss, parries too I think. A tank would get double duty out of the stat, you would get parry and dodge reduction at the same time, which is pretty sexy.

Parry is around 12-15% for bosses, so I doubt you'll be able to remove that part with expertise (237 rating).
Dodge seems to be around 6-6.5%, so I'd rather speculate with 26 expertise / 103 rating.

No, it's technically a positive. Hit is the cheapest stat in the item budget for raising your DPS. Once you reach the hit cap, you have to start gemming for other stats and thus get less added DPS per gem. Raising the hit cap therefore means you can use more hit gems and thus get more bang for your buck.

I think it's more like: To do the same DPS you need more +Hit and thus loose other stats.

The comparison +Skill/+expertise from a Pure +hit/-dodge point of view seems to be a little off since (old) +Skill was believed to also reduce enemy doges and add some crit (although the numbers are not known) so you need more than the mentioned 16Points of +Skill to not lose dps by the conversion into expertise.


Point for Point Expertise is clearly superior to +hit but until high numbers (16++) the old +skill was simply better

How much better than +hit? This depends on the composition of your total damage.

Example:

I am combat (15/41/5) and have no other +skill Items, on a typical Raidnight 52-55% of my damage is white, 33-35% is Backstab, rest are finishers/poisons/whatever
Assuming at least +9% hit from talents/gear specials will never miss and as combat finishers can't be dodged.

adding 16 Hitrating I get ~1% +hit
adding 16 expertise I get -1% dodge (I'm perfect at positioning so no parry )

while +hit only affects the 55% white damage -dodge affects white and backstab damage, thats about 85-90% of my total damage so its 1.6times as effective.

This is not an exact calculation but i think its ok to get the picture.

It's speculation at this point, but my thought is that 9% is the cap that all tanks will need to hit to cap.

For me, without downgrading my gear, it will be very difficult to reach that cap. We haven't seen any cloaks from Hyjal, but I am currently running ~4.5 hit. The cloak will boost me to about 5.75 (I think). I could push even higher by using T5 chest (or the Hyjal one) instead of T6 (which would require that I break the 4pc <10% to SS>). Using hit food instead of stam food would help as well.

To me, it's not worth it. With the expertise change and the fury change, threat will be less of an issue than in the past. I am anticipating a nice boost to threat (~7-9) with teron gloves, brutalizer, defiance, and the badge reward bracers. The change should be great for warrior threat, and I am glad they are doing it.

On top of that, any reduction in the dreaded parry attacks from bosses will make healers happy. I'm honestly looking at the belt of one hundred deaths as part of a tanking set now.

See, this is confusing me as a hunter. Hit rate is still there, they are just adding a new stat of expertise which....makes you more likely to hit? But hit rating is still there. Hit rating just makes you less likely to ...miss? Also, is my expertise going to affect my pet since shots don't get parried very often.

For a warrior tank, sure, you lose out on 3% easy-to-achieve hit via those first 5 points of weapon skill.

However, you get 6 free points of expertise through a talent all tanking warriors take anyways. Which converts 1.5% dodge and parry into hit - so you gain 3% hit. Any weapon skill you previously had is now expertise, so if you already had 5 points, that's another 2.5% chance to hit.

Net gain: 3% hit becomes 5.5% hit.

Is the "hit cap" higher? Technically, yes. Do tanks have any reason to complain whatsoever? Nope. We could turn it into a topic of discussion but it seems moot.

How does the conversion work? If gettign 26 Expertise thus reducing the dodges to 0 and parries, with them being converted into Hit, can that Hit still be missed thru not having the hit cap? or would it just balance itself out with normal unconverted hits being missed instead, with white hits being anywhere from 30-45% of a tanks threat, reducing that isnt a great idea either, instead of my Shield Slam being dodged, it will be missed instead?

There was a post about the conversion on the previous page. Basically, +hit reduces your chance to miss, +expertise reduces your chance to get dodged or parried. Either turns the swing into a hit.

Thanks for pointing that out, only skimmed it previously, with expertise seemed to gain around 17% more successful attacks so its a direct conversion and reducing the dodge/parry will only result in a hit, unless ofc if he had more +hit in his gear with the Expertise.

I can currently achieve over 9% hit with the gear i use when getting max dodge, Drakefang Talisman ftw. but what i'll end up with using Expertise i wont know until i get it, theres always the option of +hit gems to compensate.

Would seem the best tanking class, threat wise, 2.3 would be Draenei after the patch with the 1% hit aura, 1% crit aint all that groovy.

Got it got it, understood, ok cool, wait. Explain the numbers. I've never seen those numbers before in my WoW life.

I'm sure a hunter will correct me if Im wrong, but ranged attacks cannot be dodged or parried. Since Expertise reduces the chance a target has to dodge or parry, Expertise for ranged weapon attacks is pointless. You'll want +hit gear, as that reduces the chance you miss.

For most hunters, this new stat is a non-issue, as Cheeky mentioned. For dwarf and troll hunters though, we kind of got shafted. Our racial ability gave us +3% hit, and now that's gone, so we have to adjust our gear/gems to compensate. And we can't adjust using the new Expertise stat.

Ranged attacks have a 9% miss rate against a level 73. You need 142 Hit Rating to get +9% Hit and remove the chance of missing.

If you max out the Survival talent Surefooted, it gives you +3% Hit, lowering your miss rate to 6%. You then need 95 Hit Rating to get +6% Hit and eliminate your chance to miss.