Okay, so the cap for Rogues and Cats is .667 sec. How do they get it? Melee haste reduces swing time by the same amount for all classes, does it do the same for GCD reduction? If so, Rogues cap out earlier than Warriors. If not, it has less effect for a Rogue than a Warrior point for point.

Also, I like the idea of uniform time compression, but I doubt Blizzard would ever make it happen.

Right there is exactly what the issue is. Protection and Retribution Paladins are caught in a nebulous world between being a melee class and a caster class, and our abilities have some wonky stat feeds as a result. Just to throw a few examples out there:

• Judgement of Righteousness is subject to spell-based resists, but Seal of Righteousness only works if your melee attack hits.
• Righteous Defense has melee-based failure, but appears to be subject to the spell hit cap like Warrior Taunt.
• Judgement of Command crits based on your melee crit chance, but hits based on your spell hit chance.
• Hammer of Wrath is only improved via your spell damage, but crits based on your melee crit chance.

It's rather buggered up, to say the least. Of course, I don't necessarily think that merging stat feeds is the correct answer; rectifying the core issues that cause these inconsistencies is the proper solution. It would certainly fix the problem, but it would probably create other unintended problems in the process.

You see the root of he issue that spell and melee hit are separate stats.
I see the root of the issues that some abilities use the wrong type of check.

Guess we'll just have to agree that we disagree there


Hm, Theras? Is spell hit any good for protection paladins? Does it affect anything else than Judgement of Righteousness?
Been wondering that since I saw the 2.4 Shattered Sun shield.

Righteous Defense was formerly based on spell hit, however, like the Warrior and Druid taunts it now relies on melee hit.

It is rather poor as a threat stat. Of the frequent abilities a Protection Paladin might make use of, only the JoV 5-stack hit, JoR/JoV, possibly the 1st Consecration tick, and possibly Holy Shield rely on spell hit. I say possibly Holy Shield, because it is difficult to track due to its peculiar language in the Combat Log and the consequential effect on WWS parses. It should also be noted that resists of Consecration are currently under debate on the maintankadin forums. It would seem the resist messages are in fact a remnant of old coding, and that Consecration may not be miss-resisted at all (though it is subject to partial resists.) Here is the thread in question if you are interested in pursuing it further: Maintankadin :: View topic - Consecration first tick resist in question?

It's hard to pinpoint am objective value for spell hit until these issues have been clarified, but for most Protection Paladins, it's not something worth going out of the way to stack. Unfortunately, Blizzard loves to put spell hit on Paladin-oriented tanking gear. In most cases, these itemization points would be better spent on pure Spell Damage or Avoidance/Tank-oriented stats.

Actually, from a purely mechanical point of view, merging the two might make sense.
The thing is, to me at least, it doesn't when going beyond mere mechanics.

Hit rating is physical, it's about accuracy, skill at arms, superior eyesight and the like.
Spell hit, however, is some rather undefined mystical property that, in my mind, doesn't fit into a generic hit rating, especially since spells do not miss, but are resisted.
I suppose you could consider fireball, frostbolt and other single target spells to be similar enough to ranged attacks that the same principles might apply, but what about arcane explosion or frost nova?
How does that go together with, say, improving one's chance to hit an enemy in melee oder to put an arrow through somebody?

If you want to be completely role-player about it, then melee hit and ranged physical hit should be two different stats, because the ability to swing a sword effectively is very different then the ability to shoot an arrow accurately over long distances.

And you could certainly make the argument that greater coordination and sense of space dictates whether a caster can accurately shoot a fireball at something.

It's all about concentrating and focusing, in my opinion. Interpreted like that it works for physical and magical abilities alike.

Well, you're getting into the plausibility argument, which really only has so much meaning given the other implausible things that happen and work in this game.

From a mechanical standpoint, because the two stats work on completely different abilities, it would be balance-preserving if they were both present in equal quantities on items (or that they were the same) of a given item level. In short, the combination of the two affects 100% of abilities. If one is more valuable than the other, we can conclude one uses more melee or more spells, which devalues the other, but combined, they have, if you will, 100% value.

Now that's an argument for combining them, but I think the dichotomy is important to keep strange circumstances like competition over a hit item spreading to even more classes. Yes, as it stands now, items have other stats that are more suited to a role--+spell damage and attack power, for example, but they too follow the same logic as hit. It's an all-or-nothing proposition, really.

I think the better solution is to ensure that all classes use only one hit mechanic for the same role. Paladins should, I think, use only spell hit or melee hit to increase the hit chance of their abilities.