Hi alarge, thanks for the post.

As I mentioned, my sample size was over several months of 25-man raiding. I was hit-capped & raided with two non-capped hunters, no Draenai in the group. I no longer have data because I quit raiding for a couple of months.

The raid numbers showed we were about even on DPS, but when adding the other hunters to the spreadsheet, it showed I should have significantly higher DPS. I dropped my hit to the level of the other hunters to allow for better gear/gems, which the spreadsheet showed would lower my DPS. In reality, my DPS went up to where I was consistently the highest DPS.

In trying to come to a mathematical conclusion, I noticed that the calculations did not look to be smooth functions & in fact have an adjustment. I unlocked the spreadsheet & changed the boss level to 82.999, which changed the hit needed dramatically (by 50 points), other values are incremental, by 1-2 points. This 50-point change is close to the amount I previously altered to increase my DPS.

I'm not sure, but i think he meant no draenei in his group (draenei aura only works on partymembers, not raidmembers). And yes i have seen some raids without shamans as well, but thats a guild/server issue; good shamans hard to find for us.

Anyway, alarge we had some previous discussions about hit rating of course, i won't be going into them again. You are right, one needs actual math to support his claims. I personally just believe that being hitcapped is priority number one, for several reasons (that i all named before). A hunter who does an infinite amount of dps and is hitcapped, can choose to 'lose' 1% hit (33 hit rating) or the equivalent in agility/AP/ArP/crit (so 33 of each). He ll notice a incredible loss of 1% of infinity dps if he loses 33 hit rating, but will barely notice a thing when he loses 33 agi.

Now, infinite doesn't make any sense of course, but this just gives an idea of what i mean; the higher your gear, the more important hit rating becomes (and yes i do know you realize this as well). I strongly believe that in Ulduar gear and beyond, not being hit capped is a poor use of talents/gem/gear (even it is just by 1 hitrating = 0.03% hit). For this reason the spreadsheet and femaledwarf.com will recommend an Ulduar geared hunter to be hit capped; it simply is a too powerful stat.

My bad on Heroic Presence. I thought it was raid-wide.

My argument with the OP is the same argument I had with you, albeit from the opposite side. Until you are capped, each point of hit rating has a particular impact on your dps. That impact is measurable and measured. It turns out that, for hunters, hit is almost always worth more per itemization point than any other stat. How much more is also quantifiable (though the answer is not fixed and depends upon current stats and ratings). It is almost never worth twice as much as agility, for example. Which implies that you'd never trade away 40 agility to get 20 hit. Because of the variability of hit on gear, enchants, and other factors, this isn't an academic question. It is not at all unusual to be (for example) at 259 hit rating and face a question of whether to gem a +8 hit/+8 agi gem ("wasting" 4 hit) or a +16 agi gem.

The simple answer I give is the same answer as others: do the math. If you can't do the math yourself (which is quite complex) then trust the modeling done by others (i.e. use the spreadsheet). Bugs can (and do) exist in the spreadsheet. But that is no rationale for ignoring it when you don't like the answers it gives you. It doesn't really matter *why* you ignore it -- either because you believe you have anecdotal evidence that others who ignore it do well or because you slavishly follow a pseudo-religious maxim. In either case, you've left the realm of theorycrafting and moved into the realm of subjective argument. You may even be correct -- but without concrete numbers to back up your position, it is impossible to have an objective debate on the issue.

I got some numbers off the heroic dummy using frostbite bullets, Aspect Dragonhawk, Trueshot Aura, Wolf, MM 7-57-7 & no other buffs. I shot until OOM & tested twice (accidentally changed ammo from light shot so I didn't average, but DPS difference was about the same.) The 260 hit setup should have 16 more DPS according to the spreadsheet, but as you can see was lower.

AS-autoshot, CS-chimera shot, SS-steady shot, ArS-arcane shot, CSS-chimera shot serpent, AiS-aimed shot, WQAS-wild quiver auto shot, SrS-serpent sting, PS-piercing shots.

Hit Rating 214
DPS-2,942
AS
Hit - 26
Crit - 10
Miss - 0

CS
Hit - 6
Crit - 2
Miss - 0

SS
Hit - 9
Crit - 6
Miss - 1

ArS
Hit - 4
Crit - 2
Miss - 1

CSS
Hit - 5
Crit - 3
Miss - 0

AiS
Hit - 5
Crit - 2
Miss - 0

WQAS
Hit - 3
Crit - 3
Miss - 0

SrS
Tick - 25

PS
Tick - 57


Hit Rating 260
DPS-2,828
AS
Hit - 21
Crit - 11
Miss - 0

CS
Hit - 5
Crit - 3
Miss - 0

SS
Hit - 9
Crit - 6
Miss - 0

ArS
Hit - 4
Crit - 3
Miss - 0

CSS
Hit - 6
Crit - 2
Miss - 0

AiS
Hit - 5
Crit - 2
Miss - 0

WQAS
Hit - 0
Crit - 2
Miss - 0

SrS
Tick - 24

PS
Tick - 53

You got 88 shots in not hit capped and 79 shots in hit capped. Your wild quiver procced more. If you go to outdps.com, you can get a better understanding of hit rating. I didn't go for hit cap for a long time, being in the same "i don't care about hit" boat as you, and then finally gemmed and enchanted for a little more hit to get to the cap (after a lot of pressure from friends and guildies). After raiding hit capped for a couple months, there has been a noticeable increase in dps.

Actually, the sample sizes are fine (and my previous data was over several months time) but I did it twice more with the same results (forgot to mention these were double-blind tests as well.) The wild quiver is less damage per shot, so having it proc more would only decrease DPS.

I was previously i the "hit cap is best group" until I saw that it didn't appear to be, tested it over months time & found it wasn't. I'd been creating a temporary modification to the spreadsheet myself to account for this, but with not having raided for months and with a lot of changes to the game/spreadsheet, I didn't know if this still held true. Apparently it does. Thanks for the link to outdps, it confirms I have the correct understanding of hit. Perhaps this is an anomaly given my particular set of equipment. I'll continue to test it before I put the work into permanently changing the spreadsheet.

Wild Quiver is actually free dps, it it impossible for it to decrease DPS. Also, why do you say that the sample sizes are fine? Try using the /roll command ingame 100 times and see if you have rolled every number from 1-100.

If you really want to test this, try stacking up 1000 pieces of ammo, and auto shoot at a target dummy until out of ammo. Remember to specc out of Wild Quiver, to decrease the impact of RNG. Do this two times, one with hit capped, one with less. Preferably you could switch a hitgem, in order to equal item budget (20 hit cs 20 agi). You might say that this is to simplify a complex problem, since I've left out all the other shots, but in a real raid situation you also have buffs and debuffs to consider. There is no real way of testing this unless you can gather a 25 man group and try it out.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to convince you or anything, but I think that it is a bit undermining to make such a bold statement without providing enough facts. It only leads to confusion.

I am hoping to get a little clarification here since I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else.

Past research and findings indicated that Focused Aim did not affect a pet's ability to hit which was causing a DPS loss for the pet.

The current patch notes state:

Am I to assume that Focused Aim will now properly scale to the pet as well?

Does this make obtaining hit cap through any means (gear + talents) no different vs. the old method of obtaining hit cap through gear only?

The Focused Aim issue was fixed several patches ago. The newest patch simply scaled expertise for pets.

Has the rounding issue been fixed, or does a 99.99% chance to hit for the hunter still translate into a 99.0% chance for the pet to hit?

Afaik it is not fixed.
So 7,99% hit rating for you is 7% for your pet.