After reading this thread, I decided to do some testing on my own... But before I share the results, I would like to state some this very important fact:

** Pre-3.0 I was Holy specced, and that includes the night before the patch... I did not have Precision, or actually ANY Protection talents prior to the patch night. I logged on the next day after patch still in my holy gear even.

Isolating Variables:

1) To further neutralize the whole variable of talents, and also eliminate a personal doubt that might be a 'typo' in one of our talents that gives us hit instead of crit, I performed the following test without allocating any talent points; i.e. I had 0/0/0 specc.

2) Both tests were performed on the Heroic test dummy in Ironforge.

3) Both tests were conducted around 3:30 a.m. in the morning to make sure the dummy was not afflicted by any debuffs of any sorts, and I had no buffs/potions/elixirs or external buffs of any sort, including my own blessings/auras.

4) The tests were done using the "Tabar" 2-handed white axe, bought from the weapon master in ironforge. The choice of the weapon was to also eliminate any expertise benefits that could be yielded upon using a 2h sword or mace from my Human racial.

First Test:

It was performed without any gear equipped on. I had zero hit rating, and zero expertise. I took a sample of 1000 melee swings, performed on the aforementioned dummy. The results yielded illustrated in the following recount screenshot:



I had a 5.2% miss chance on the dummy. Putting in an 0.2% margin of error, that rounds us very close to the claimed 5% hit chance.

Second Test:

It was performed on the same target dummy, I had equipped the following 3 items:
- Spiked Titansteel Helmet (60 hit rating)
- Collar of Dissolution (24 hit rating)
- Staggering Legplates (80 hit rating)
===========
Total hit rating: 164 (Precisely 5% hit chance)

The results of this test is represented in the following recount screenshot:



As you can see; from the 1,000 swings, I had ZERO misses on the dummy. Which in conjuction with the previous test of 5.2% miss chance, pushes me to the complete certainty that right now our hit cap is 5%, i.e. 164 hit rating.

Please analyze my testing and results, and provide any feedback if I had any wrong assumptions or testing mechanisms.

Prism, lvl80 Retribution Paladin, Ascendance Guild, Alonsus-EU

Have a Nice Day (tm)...

So basically with the Hit cap problems, Exemplar is on the money. There seems to be too much variation between Paladins (mileage may vary) and their hit cap.

I myself have about 6% hit cap, and I can gear accordingly to boost my own personal DPS.

Whether or not Blizzard will implement hit rating as a static 5% (to just give Ret inherent precision somewhere down the tree) for the class at all is distressing.

Until then, if you have ghost hit, then go for broke and utilize your gear to base yourselves around it - you will find yourself doing a lot more DPS than our 8% brethren.

Regarding rotation I read earlier:

This rotation is standard for bosses, however in bold I have added in things and changed it accordingly.

This rotation allows for mana regen, is just .5 seconds off of the other rotation, and takes in account that Consecration does more DPS than Divine Storm on a single target over a long fight duration. If you have the mana, that is.

This is my parse including judgement hits. The way recount was counting my judgements was strange. Seems like judgement misses are reported in the combat log as a separate spell. I did this with 0 gear, in ret raid spec. No aura or expertise racial weapon equipped. Well here it is, take of it as you will:








Through some simple math, I tested 1784 total judgements, of which 149 missed. Which calculates to about a 8.3% miss chance judgements. I'm not going to try to conclude anything with these results. I wanted to post them in hopes that someone could make a better judgment of my results (lolpunhaha)

I can conclude with utmost certainty that MY hit cap is 6% or less. I can also conclude that Questioner's hitcap is over 7.5%. It just seems absurd that we can't figure out why some people have ghost hit, and others don't. Because we know its not tied to weapon, race, talents before 3.0, or talents after 3.0. I'd certainly like an answer from Blizzard regarding this because if I intentionaly avoid gear with excess hit on it (Cloak of Mastery for instance) and they fix this issue to the theoretical 8-9% I'm going to be upset. Likewise for the people who are gearing for 8 or 9% hit. If they just say screw it and lower it down to 6% or whatever, that's a lot of wasted stats you've been collecting. It needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.