I was in front of the dummy, with auto-attack on, but out of range. I'd place the treants either on the dummy, or just on my side of it. When they spawned, they would run a step or two towards me, and then run back to the dummy. They would spread out a bit, so that it looked like one was directly in front, and the others were somewhat to either side. It looked to me as if they were all in the front half of the dummy, but I'm not certain of that.

I did this back at the end of December with these results (copying and pasting a prior post that, for whatever reason, never made it to this forum):

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Post from 12/28/10:

At 17% spell hit (but all from spirit) 4 full duration FoN on a 85++ Raider's Training Dummy, yielded 162 hits, 39 glancings, and 3 crits. 0 misses at 0% melee hit (at least that Recount recorded). Interesting to say the least. Beginning to wonder if they are using our spell hit -- it doesn't seem to be a pet recording issue with Recount -- I sic my lvl 82 hunter pet on the same dummy and it records misses at the expected 2.5% rate I would expect based on that hunter's hit rating.

Next, I dropped some pieces of gear off to get spell hit down to 7% and recorded my first treant miss . . . dropped down to 0% spell hit and got 2 more misses on a single treant drop . . . getting comical. I'd love to be able to pull these guys up in WoL and see if they are missing at all currently -- over 500k damage now on a raiding dummy without a single miss when at 17% spell hit.

Finally, found a way to get to them reliably in WoL. Very low miss rate -- many bosses not a single miss. Highest I found on one boss was 3 misses X average hit of ~1,500 = 4,500 dmg over 4:12 fight = ~18 dps difference. That was the worst case scenario. Clearly the zero miss attempts of 0 dps difference are the best case.
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Since then, I've made most of my reforges to Hit instead of Spirit to see if I could reduce Treant misses to nil in raid content (no reason not to as the Spirit isn't buying me anything). I'm at currently just over 17% spell hit and just over 7% melee hit right now. Recent WoL reports for T11 content show me averaging about .1% Treant miss rate (true misses, not talking dodges, parries, etc.). Back when I had no melee hit, I was around 1.5% true Treant miss rate.

Late December WoL (all hit through Spirit, no melee hit) 23 misses on 1562 swings:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Recent WoL (17% spell hit and 7.19% melee hit) 2 misses on 1613 swings:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

There's a definite positive effect with stacking melee hit - it's just that Treants don't seem to be following normal rules. All in all, given the low amount of misses, and the relative dps gain of reducing those misses, going out of our way to stack Hit is probably not a good strategy.

That said, there are some easy things we can do to up our melee hit rate that are pretty much neutral impact other than increasing our Treant accuracy. The main thing is use Hit where you would otherwise use Spi: things like gemming Veiled Demonseye instead of Purified, using a Hit Cogstone instead of a Spirit cogstone, reforging to Hit instead of Spirit when we are trying to up our spell hit rating, and reforging Spi gear to Hit when there is no better reforge on that gear are all things we can do that don't have any negative effect (unless our gear does double-duty resto spec) and yet reduce treant misses.

Is it worth the trouble for the smallish positive impact? Up to preference I guess but I see no reason not to make those sorts of changes. Definitely don't sacrifice useful throughput stats just to get Hit rating, but I don't see any reason not to do 1:1 Spi>Hit conversion / trade-offs -- again unless you use this gear for Resto as well.

Arythorn,

For your December WoL, most of the Treant misses were on Chimaeron, and you also had a significant number of misses on that fight. It looks like you weren't hit-capped for that fight (or Chimaeron has a higher-than-normal hit cap).

Every other Treant miss (5 total) in that log occurred during a newly summoned treant's first swing. Perhaps they are slow to pick up your Spell Hit, or had issues related to getting into position. Of course it may be that whatever the issue is, Melee hit avoids the problem.

Remember that Chimaeron uses Caustic Slime, which lowers your hit chance by 75%.

I have not been able to generate a single miss on a Treat with a target dummy yet when casting the Treants slightly behind the dummies. My sample size isn't as large (~600 hits to your +1500), but still, 0 misses thus far. As noted before, I have only a very small amount of Hit (only 197) the rest is all Spirit. Given the mechanics of melee attacks though, position should not effect whether or not you hit or miss the target, that will only effect blocks and parries (mobs cannot block or parry you from behind, but they can dodge). Also, the concept of "behind" a boss is relative to their hit box and a target dummy has a relatively small hit box when compared to a boss, giving a much larger window for the treants to be "behind" the boss, possibly resulting in less parries/blocks.

Edit:
Okay, I'm now up to over 2000 Treant melee hits (40 casts). Not a single miss so far. Not quite sure what is going on here for you guys, but I at least am not seeing this rare miss problem.


Edit 2:
Ugh, I was planning on putting the full extent of my results on here, but somehow Recount ended up eating the majority of it. I retested the entire set, just not as thoroughly as before. I don't remember the exact numbers from before as I didn't write them down at the time (I was still running tests). Anyway, here's what I was able to reproduce (notice still no misses).
Total Casts: 11
Treants Melee Count: 570
Hits: 427 (74.9%)
Glances: 134 (23.5%)
Crits: 8 (1.4%)
Dodges: 1 (0.2%)

Every single cast was directly behind the dummy, eliminating any chance for parries or blocks. My crit rate seemed a little low, but I'm guessing that's more just really horrible luck than anything. With regard to the low dodge-rate, my conclusion is that, with the exception of Crit (and maybe Haste), Treants function exactly the same as any other Pet-type creature. Our Hit is converted into a a percentage of Expertise, which negates the dodges when attacking from behind when we are hit capped. That one Dodge I believe came when I cast the Treants too closely to the training dummy and in the time they took to move behind the mob perfectly, one hit was dodged

When trying to change gems in WC in open office I get "Err: 502" in all the options. I can't choose any gems @.@
Also when i'm on the "Main" tab, on the right side were it says "T11 4-piece bonus: TRUE Err: 504 Err: 504" also gives me the error text next to Astral Leather Active and Meta Effect.
Also Under Raid Buffs/Debuffs when choosing the dropdown box there is no option for TRUE or FALSE only 1 or 0. I don't know if they still work choosing either 1 or 0 but it is a little buggy.

Which version is this (what's the filename of the sheet) and are you in Excel or OpenOffice?

Try the "No Tables" version that I just put on the main guide here: http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110353-...dated_4_0_6_a/ . You can't use the data tables in OpenOffice, but the rest of the sheet (the main DPS calc) works.

In general, I meant to note on this thread that I'd put a new patch-ready version on the main thread. (I'll probably keep doing that, so there's a main WC version always with the guide, and use this thread for discussion and smaller intermediate updates).

The wrathcalcs 110118 PTR has just a few minor bugs. Perhaps try that mullie.
Dont forget to switch to Open Office mode (switch is located at charsheetdata page)
Tecton is currently finalizing wrathcalcs for Open Office.

I'm not sure whats going on either on my end or maybe its just OO but the latest sheet, 110207 No Tables, is full of 502 errors. I have yet to get any version of WC up and working at all. Just made sure my OO was up to date ect and that I have OO mode enabled on the Charsheetdata tab. Is there any work around at all? I don't have access to excel unless there is a free version from Microsoft i don't know of.
Quickly looking at the spread sheet most boxes containing any information on Spirt, Haste, Crit, Mastery or Hit are showing a 502 error.

EDIT: Tectons slightly older 110117 sheet for OO is working, so I assume the newest posted here has not been "fixed" yet by him.

Where are the 502 errors appearing? In the gem selection, or in the DPS computations?