Har

Hit cap is only considered as valuable as it is because it's a cheap way to increase dps. The itemization budget on hit rating allows for it to give us the cheapest dps return on gear of any of the stats. It is not a requirement to run at 100% though. If the spreadsheet shows more dps, then that's the choice you make.

I've seen situations where the only way to get hit capped was to go over hit cap by 7 points. In that situation, I'll take that itemization in agility.

OutDPS

 

Nooska

Somehow I missed this.

For BM spec the 7 points over hit cap would be a better investment though, much as I hate it, at least as long as pet hit is only inherited in whole numbers; 8 hit rating for 1% more hit for the pet is better than the 16 ap you could otherwise gem for if you are bm specced.

As soon as pets inherit hit fully the 7 points over is a waste though.

 

daragh

When having to choose between two pieces of gear, choose the one that will increase your dps the most. which may not necessarily be the gear with the most hit rating. I'd choose the piece of armor with 100ap over the one with 20 hit rating anyday. If I need hit rating, I try and slot for hit. I rather have a bigger boost to attack power than miss 2% of the time and if need be carry along the big hit rating gear for the tough fights if you feel you need to swap out into it to reduce miss%

 

Pijn

Being hit cap is more important than some people might think, it is in my opinion the primary objective of any damage dealer to reach and keep the hitcap. Apart from the already mentioned reason that hit is the cheapest stat to come by regarding statistic costs/iLvl costs, there is another reason which i dont see mentioned alot.

As any dps class you would want as little RNG in your rotation/spec/gear as possible. You would want a steady rotation/gear/spec to fall back on, so that you do a consistent amount of dps each week (i.e. 5.5k dps on Patch every week, not 5k dps one week and 6k the next week).

For example, lets assume a hunter with 99% hit fights a boss for 3 minutes. It's quite obvious he will miss certain shots, we do not know which ones and when though. In theory he could hit every shot for the first 2.5 minutes, but miss everything for 10 seconds in a row at the end of the fight. Apart from the actual misses on itself, you also miss procs and debuffs on the boss. This differs alot per class, but almost every class has certain procs or debuffs that have to be refreshed and/or procced by hits (or crits, which again depends on hits ofcourse). Back when the serpent sting glyph only increased the uptime by 3 seconds to a total uptime of 18 seconds, a MM hunter could not afford to not be hitcapped, since even with a 99% hit ratio, there was a 1% chance your Chimera would miss and as such not refresh the serpent sting (which was still a powerful rolling DoT at this time, affected by the initial AP you had when applying the SrS at start of the fight).

Many classes and specs (if not all) still have elements of this in their arsenal. A survival hunter doesn't want to miss Ex Shots either, not just because of the damage on itself, but also since you dont want to take the risk of not refreshing Expose Weakness/Master Tactician/Quick Shots/Replenishment, which in turn weakens the shots after the miss (even though they hit).

Going from 99% to 100% hit is like crossing a magic boundary. You are suddenly guaranteed to have maximum potential uptime of buffs/debuffs and minimalizing the RNG element. As such it is extremely important in my opinion for any damage dealer to stay hitcapped, and worth giving up a dps increase gained from another gear/talent choice.

 

Nooska

This comparison is not valid though.

Unless the item has nothing except pure hit and pure ap respectively, and in that case the ap will wing by being 2.5 the itempoints of the hit rating piece. The correct comparison would be 50 hit rating versus 100 ap - or 40 ap versus 20 hit rating.

Now the choice will always favor the hit rating (provided that it is all used or you go a maximum of 7 rating over the cap)

The 7 rating is the smallest amount you can go over the cap without wasting any gem slots (8 hit rating being the lowest you can get from a split gem without wating other stats). The 7 hit over cap is mostly important for BM hunters as pets inherit the hit in integers, and those 7 hit rating over the cap is worth one full percent of pet hit - for MM and SV it would be a bit less important, though pet dps isn't insignificant. (Our wws reports show the SV hunters pets doing 6-700 dps - thats definately worth taking into account).

 

daragh

ok i'm going to contradict myself here in relation to what I posted earlier but it's a good way of playing devil's advocate...

So in other words it would be wrong to say hit rating is a cheap way to DPS cause it seems it's more of a foundation to DPS. Being hit capped generally should'nt be that hard considering most of your heroic hunter gear and raid gear has a good dose of hit rating in them.

when I mentioned that choosing gear with a higher DPS value to it was essential I was basing it on the fact that the player was already past the 200 hit rating... I was aiming my comment on hunters who blindly aim for hit as their major priority which i feel a little one sided...

Considering every 32.79 hit rating will increase your chance to hit by 1% so if i have an 8% chance to miss a raid boss that means i need to be capped at 263 to be sure never to miss right ?

now if I have a 200 hit rating that means I have a 2% chance to miss the boss... (correct me if I've got my maths all wrong) it's at this stage where I start too favour more DPS gear thinking 2% isn't too bad as a miss % if i'm putting out 4 to 6% more DPS.

 

Nooska

If you indeed face the choice of 100 ap or 20 hit;

100 ap will be more dps in the long run when your misses have been averaged out.
20 hit rating will be better dps but lower dps.

The reason the hit rating (until capped, or slightly over for BM at least) is better dps is that you can provide it on demand (or more on demand than without it - if considering the 20 hit won't cap you). For raiding high dps matters, because we need to kill stuff. But being able to deliver it on demand is often more important; if you start missing in the critical phase your generally higher dps isn't worth anything to the raid, while if you can consistently hit during the critical phases your lower overall dps is worth more to the raid.

 

• Nagisamuro

This is a key point that I think some people gloss over. Yes, it is possible to get higher average dps in some gearing decisions if you opt for higher AP/crit/haste stats in lieu of reaching the hit cap. HOWEVER, you should gear to miss only as often as you can afford to miss in the most sensitive situation you will be facing. If your raid depends on you to Tranq shot an enraged boss (for example), and missing that shot results in a wipe, then I'd say your acceptable miss rate is 0%, at least for that encounter, no matter how much more average DPS you could achieve by dropping under the hit cap.

--
edit: While I guess that's technically true, there aren't any such situations in the game currently, so there's no need to gear for 0% miss. You should gear for the highest average DPS achievable, which is exactly what the spreadsheet helps you determine.

 

Pijn

Yeah, this is exactly the line of thought i was on about in my reply above. Your intuition may say that 4-6% extra dps from gear may outweigh the possible 2% hit upgrade you could get instead to reach the cap, yet its in fact reaching the hitcap that will maximize your dps (maximize your dps overall i should say; not being hit capped will result in RNG dps, one week you might do 6k dps on Patch, other week you ll only reach 5k) for the reasons i mentioned above.

Not sure if this is your own opinion (since you mentioned playing devil's advocate), but im convinced going for hit cap is the main priority for all dps, no exceptions.

 

stickums

Correct. Get hit capped. Don't even question it. There is no debate, no tradeoff. Hit capping is the single most important thing you can do, and it's not difficult to accomplish.

When I first started raiding I wasn't quite capped but I was close. Another hunter was 'better' geared than myself but had 100 less hit than I. I utterly destroyed him on the damage meters. When we did heroics it was pretty even, the cap is lower, but stepping into Naxx was like night and day.

There is no valid justification you can give to not get hit capped. There are no items that are budgeted in such a way that you can gain more than you would lose. Use food, take up JC, enchants, whatever. It's really just that simple.

 

alarge

Sigh. This issue keeps coming up and the same backward arguments keep showing up.

The basic approach is simple:

* When you have a choice in gear/enchants/gems, you should make the choice that maximizes your average dps over the length of a typical boss fight.

* (For hunters) Until you are hit capped, hit rating almost always provides the highest dps rating per point of itemization

However, something about the notion of a cap leads people to faulty logic:

* Some people begin to believe that hit becomes linearly less and less valuable as you approach the cap (hitting value 0 at the cap). This is NOT how it works. While there is some scaling effect, 1 hit rating at 262 hit is almost always still better than 1 agility. 200 hit isn't "good enough". There is no such thing as "good enough" until you hit 263.

* Some people seem to think that getting hit capped should trump anything else. This is NOT true. While 1 hit will usually be more valuable than 1 agility (below the cap), it will also usually be *less* valuable (e.g., provide less of a dps boost) than 2 agility. Suppose that you had a choice between two pieces of gear: one has 30 agi, 30 hit, and 90 stam. The other one has 90 agi and 90 stam. Which do you pick? The right answer will depend upon your current stats, but it will almost always be the 90 agi piece.

It's true that there is a non-quantifiable benefit in knowing that you'll never miss. However, the relative value of this benefit shouldn't trump the common-sense approach to maximizing dps.

I should also point out that hit is *not* always the most valuable stat for other dps classes, particularly melee dps classes. Take feral druids for example. For feral druids, special attacks make up a large percentage of their overall dps. But yellow dps is generally limited not by cooldowns but by energy. And missed yellow attacks refund all or a large portion of their energy (so you can just try them again on the next GCD). Because of this, both agility and strength tend to provide a higher dps benefit (per point of itemization) to feral druids than hit.

 

Nooska

Correct, lets not talk about other dps classes, lets stick to hunters.

The faults lie, as you state, in the overvaluing of hit. It is important, very important, to be hitcapped so you can do consistent damage - and consistedn trumps better damage sometimes in all raid situations that are not strictly farming / ego runs.

1 hit rating is equal to 2 ap, 1 agi, 1 crit rating, 1 haste rating on the item budget.
As long as 2 items have the same budget, choosing the one with hit will not only make your damage more consistent, it will averagely be the same - not missing outweighs the slightly harder hits when everaged out.
This is true for each and every point of hit up until the cap.
Caveat: For BM this is true up until 7 rating above the cap due to the way pets inherit hit (in whole numbers) - meaning the 8 hit rating at 262 rating is worth more than any other stat as it is equal to a full percentage point of hit for you pet to "waste" 7 hit rating; in essence the single point utilized is worth 32,79 hit rating for your pet - meaning the 7 rating points over is in no way wasted, as you are still "saving" 25 hit rating compared to the worth of the single one.

As soon as 1 item has a higher budget than the other, the higherbudget (ilvl) one will generally provide higher dps over an average - but if you start to miss it will provide inconsistent dps, and again - in anything but farm/ego runs, incosistent is bad - you have to be able to push when called, not try to push and then miss.

So the addage: Hit > all else is true as a rule of thumb - just dont leave thinking behind.

 

alarge

Just a nit -- It seems like you are treating itemization as though it comes in groups of 8. While that's true for the current blue-quality gems, it isn't true once you factor gear and enchants into the picture. In particular, with the existence of +20 hit enchant to hands and Icewalker (+12 hit, +12 crit) to feet, you can often avoid being more than 4 over the cap.

While you are mostly agreeing with me here, I'll state again more explicitly my concern about the "consistency" argument. While it has some nominal emotional value, things smooth out (by definition) over time. For example, I would highly suspect that deltas between "expected" and "actual" dps due to unexpected misses are overshadowed by the same RNG factors applied to crits. But I don't hear people giving advice to stack AP at the expense of crit because it provides more "predictable" dps. Bottom line: gear based upon expected average dps -- don't overvalue hit just because it provides better consistency.

 

Pijn

Hmm alarge, the point i was trying to make, and i think you got it, but ill try to emphasize it again;

Apart from the obvious mathematical reasons one should cap their hit (but you are right, one could give up this hit rating and go for agi/AP/crit gear if that gives more dps on the spreadsheet somehow), being hit capped takes an important RNG element out of your dps arsenal. What i mean isnt the simple 'fire 1000 arrows with 99% hit, 990 might hit, and 10 might miss' since in theory you could hit 1000 times, or (astronomically small chance) you might miss 1000 times. My point was that you should look abit further than the math involved; just like you brought up the example of a feral druid with his yellow attacks, you should also look at specific cases for other classes (hunter in particular, since this is the hunter forum).

The example of the old serpent sting glyph for MM hunters: surely you can see the importance of a MM hunter before patch 3.0.8 to be hit capped? With a chimera shot cooldown of 10 seconds, a powerful rolling SrS and a 18 sec duration, you simply couldnt afford to miss that one chimera. Losing your powerful SrS DoT would not only mean you will lose a significant portion of your dps directly to a weaker SrS, but also the Chimera-Serpent part will have been weakened.

A survival hunter with 99% hit could potentially miss all three explosive shots during a LnL proc...and again the next LnL proc. Sure, these numbers are astronomical, but the simple fact it can happen is enough reason for me to not go for that very nice chestpiece that gives +20 agi if it means i lose the hit cap.
The survival hunter buffs (Expose Weakness, Master Tactician, Replenishment in 10 mans, and in a way even our great Darkmoon trinket) all must be procced. If I miss one or several shots, this also means that the shots right after these misses, will hit without me having the buffs since i didnt refresh them (either on the boss as a debuff, or on me as a buff). If I had gone for the hitcap instead of that nice +20 agi bonus, the benefit of that +20 agi bonus would have been present in the buffs that i now refreshed with my hitcap.

I assume you got my point, and i do get yours, but in some cases mathematics isnt the answer. You mentioned the term 'common sense', well that implies for me being hit capped so i take away an important RNG element which i simply can't ignore.

On a final note: you are right about 'crit' being the same case, where thats also a RNG element. However, 100% crit is practically impossible to reach, so thats a random element we will just have to contend with. Hit on the other hand is in our own hands.

 

alarge

I suspect that we'll just have to agree to disagree, but I'll make my point again...

Missing can hurt. A lot. No argument. But all of the potential negative impacts of missing are already built into the stat rating for hit. Giving hit any more value than what is implied by the relative stat weighting might make you feel better, but it is bad theory-crafting. It _might_ result in higher dps in a specific fight, but most of the time, it will result in lower dps.

 

Har

Hit is worth more than its blizzard itemization weight, however its value should not be over-stated. If you have a choice between taking a "lighter" item that keeps you hit capped and a "heavier" item that would make it impossible for you to remain hit capped, run them both through the spreadsheet and take the higher DPS.

There is currently no end game content that requires a hunter who can't miss. Especially not at gear levels where you have to twist around to get hit capped. We have content that requires priests, but that's it. If you miss a tranq, another hunter (or rogue) can pick it up. In the statistically unlikely event that you both miss an important non-DPS shot and don't have anyone to cover it, the wipe was worth it because all the extra DPS you've been doing up until this incredible rare event saved you more time and wipes than the one miss did.

OutDPS

 

alarge

Your second paragraph is exactly the point I was making.

By "itemization weight", I didn't mean any sort of Blizzard-assigned number. I meant the number that is developed based upon models of how various stats impact your resulting dps (e.g., the values that come out of the spreadsheet). So I suspect we are in agreement on the first paragraph as well.

 

Pijn

I'm sorry to say, but this makes no sense at all to me. The attitude any high end raider should have, should not be 'well i might do crap damage now, but hopefully i will do more dps next week, it will average out in the end'. This is not the attitude one should have when facing Sartharion3d 10 man, or Malygos 6 minutes, or later on hardmodes in Ulduar (or easy mode bosses for that matter). 'Lets wipe until all our damage dealers do more than their average dps, then we have a kill!'

Chance says that your dps may even out in the long term, yet it may not work like that alltogether. Following your logic (blindly listening to what the spreadsheet tells you, and ignoring hitcap) you could easily ignore all hit on your gear, heck even ignore crit, and stack agility as high as you can (this is being suggested by many hunters). Math isnt everything, the spreadsheet only sees numbers, not real situations (i only described a few in my posts above, but the list goes on). Hit should not be overrated, like any other stat, but i dont think that's what i am doing.

In an extreme case, where we have a hunter with 0% hit on his gear for a total of 92% hit and *real* crappy gear (read: green gear with spirit/strength on it) agility will overshadow hit by far, this should be pretty obvious. However, in our current Naxx gear, and later on in our Ulduar gear (hit isnt a real problem in Ulduar though, but just mentioning it) 1 agi < 1 hit when not hit capped. That may be a bold statement, since i dismiss anything the spreadsheet will tell you otherwise. Mathematically speaken though, going from 99% hit to 100% hit will yield a 1.01% dps increase, regardless of how much agility you have at this point (simplified math perhaps, i know, but it remains true). This means that 20 hit rating will yield the same relative dps increase in crap gear as it will in high end raiding gear. However, 20 agility (same itemization) will not yield the same relative dps for a hunter with 1200 agility vs one with 1600 agility unbuffed. Therefor i highly doubt the spreadsheet will ever tell you to lose your hitcap in favor of a 'minor' agility upgrade, no matter how appealing it may look.

(This is not even considering that 'magic boundary' i mentioned before, when reaching 100% hit, where you completely eliminate a RNG element that no high end raider should say no too, but again, like you said, thats just my opinion. Feel free to ignore the hit cap if the spreadsheet tells you otherwise, even though i highly doubt it will when you have high end Ulduar gear)

 

Nooska

One nit-pick:

"[Hit] _might_ result in higher dps in a specific fight, but most of the time, it will result in lower dps."

Its actually quite the opposite - as you factor out the rng for consistency it becomes:

Hit _might_ result in lower dps in a specific fight, but most of the time it will result in higher dps (because you don't miss).

The fights where it _might_ result in lower dps are the ones where choosing against hit randomly doesn't have you miss.

It is true that if you average it out the higher dps option will yield averagely higher dps - but as was demonstrated in the crit reduction thread tests, RNG needs a HUGE amount of shots to even out (we were still seeing a pretty big swing at 10k shots)

 

alarge

At no point in (at least the latter part of) this discussion, did anyone claim that 1 agi is preferable to 1 hit. There may be cases where it is, but at least for my toon, this has only ever been the case when I'm already over the hit cap.

All I'm saying is "trust the model". If the model is correctly built, it will already factor in all the issues that you continually raise. Don't second-guess the model by saying things like "Well, the spreadsheet says that 30 agility gives me a larger dps boost than 20 hit, but I'm going to ignore it because ZOMG I NEED TO BE HIT CAPPED".

I bring up the crit analogy because the two are fundamentally the same issue:

* If you stack hit at the expense of damage, you might hit every shot, but your hits will be anemic.
* If you stack damage at the expense of hit, you'll hit less often (but harder).

Change "hit" to "crit" and "damage" to "AP" and this is the exact same argument about stacking crit.

The right answer is an informed balance of stats that maximizes your dps at any particular gear level. There is no "fixed" stat valuation that holds at all gear levels. As you point out, relative stat values will change based upon a number of factors, including raid buffs, fight duration, talents, and current gear. The spreadsheet deals with all of these factors far more accurately than any simplistic "rule of thumb".

 

alarge

The particular context here is the idea that you are faced with two choices:

* One that directly increases my damage (e.g., AP and/or crit)
* One that increases my hit%

With just that much information, THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. You need to know how much of an increase to your damage vs how much of an increase to your hit%. Even if you had that information, comparing the two choices is a decidedly non-trivial task that has to factor in a very large number of variables. Which is why a lot of us are saying not to try to use a simple rule of thumb like "Get hit capped before worrying about anything else". Instead, the right answer is "Plug both choices independently into the spreadsheet and pick the one that gives you the higher resulting dps".

 

Bloudd

I have been following this forum for a while now, and what i am trying to figure out is why arent more hunters using the draeni card while in a 25 man raid, i am very well geared, but still attempting to get the gun from kel 25, and i need it 2 times, so that i can put +40 haste, and then +30 hit on the other so that if a draeni cant be in my group, i can atleast be hit capped do you think that is a wise decision on my behalf?

 

KraxisSingular

Say what? Any sensible reason you don't use the Crit scope?

 

Pijn

Bah, i have made my arguments, if I can't convince someone to always go for the hitcap so be it (with always i mean a high end raiding hunter in full Naxx/Ulduar gear, not a lolhunter who has just dinged 80 and wants to enter Naxx)

Like someone else said on this page; you either choose to go for higher dps by following the spreadsheet (which is still 'just' a mathematical approach to the real deal, you cant make programs to predict the weather on the long term either), or choose to go for better dps (read: consistent dps, knowing you wont miss any shot...ever)

If your guild/raidleader asks you when he brings you to Yogg Saron hardmode 'can you do good dps?' I would rather say I do a consistent amount of dps, opposed to saying I 'can' do alot of dps, but not guaranteed. (Ofcourse when your guild reaches YS that leader should have a pretty accurate idea of what your dps is like )

On a side note: you said the spreadsheet, if correctly modeled, accounts for those 'reality' situations i described earlier. Apart from the fact that chance is very hard to model, the model will look at the differences between 98% 99% and 100% as just numbers. It doesnt recognize the 100% hitcap as a magic number where suddenly no misses will occur. Perhaps people with more understanding than me of how the spreadsheet actually calculates dps can reply here.

One more example, because i like examples: we have three hunters, hunter A with 98% hit, hunter B with 99% hit, and hunter C with 100%. They each have similar gear (same iLvL, not BiS, since 2 of them arent hitcapped), do around same dps each week (which is perfectly possible ofcourse, even though two arent hitcapped), and all 3 have the Darkmoon trinket. Only hunter C knows that his trinket will proc the first second he attacks the boss, only hunter C knows the trinket will proc again 45 seconds later, and again 90 seconds into the fight. Hunter A and B, both not hit capped, have no guarantee that they will hit.

This is for me the most important reason to be hit capped; procs depend on hits, not on damage done, and the spreadsheet 'only' calculates the average uptime. The trinket doesnt say you need to do 20000 damage in 5 seconds to proc it. No, it says you need to hit. When you miss a few shots 45 seconds into the fight (and believe me, you will at some times) you will not refresh the trinket proc (I could have taken Expose Weakness as an example too ofcourse). This in turn also means that the shot you fire at 48 seconds finally procs the trinket, but this shot wasnt affected by the DM trinket buff in the first place. Hunter C however knows that the shots he fired 48 seconds into the fight, were in fact affected by the DM trinket. You delay all your procs by not being hit capped. That's what i meant earlier by saying that any possible upgrade you could have chosen over the hitcap, would have been present in the very hitcap itself, in the form of maximum possible uptime of procs.

I don't like RNG, any opportunity to eliminate it is a chance worth taking. Anyway, i believe we can both see that at the end of the day the spreadsheet will usually tell you to be hitcapped in order to do maximum dps (this goes for endgame gear); it's why you and i are both hit capped. What started this argument was a question from a hunter asking whether he should go for the last 2% hit he needed, or take another gearchoice giving 4-6% damage increase. I would say the first no matter what, you probably the last.

 

◊ Lactose

Some procs activate when the attack is made instead of when the attack actually connects with the target.

Given a correct model, 2 different gear sets with the same DPS listed (using e.g. one gear set favoring crits and procs another favoring Hit Rating to cap and Attack Power), both will result in the same DPS if averaged out over a long enough period of time.
In such cases, it's down to personal preference. Some prefer consistency over high potential, and vice versa. There's not really a point arguing for several pages about what's the "right" choice.

Using the term "better DPS" while arguing for Hit is also misleading. Better in the case of DPS meaning higher, consistent meaning with less variation.

The examples with missing several Chimera Shots in a row forcing you to use a global cooldown on Serpent Sting again, or other adverse affects of missing are valid, but those concerns regarding the validity of the model used, not magical reasons for why the "right" thing to do is to always and without question cap Hit.

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max