Prevailing theory before the advent of Northrend for DPS'ers has always been "stack hit until the cap, and then go for raw damage." For a ret paladin, that would mean stacking hit to ensure every attack lands, and then go for strength and crit. Later on, in The Burning Crusade, it meant strength, crit, and expertise (to cap).
Nowadays, however, there are doubts. Previously, 50% of a ret paladin's damage came from pure auto-attacks, and another 25-40% came from Crusader Strike, Seal and Judgement damage. The increase of Divine Strength from 10% to 15% strength scaling, coupled with the new-found AP-scaling of Judgement damage, have thrown things way out of whack. According to several sources, strength scales better than hit or expertise, even at 0% hit/expertise.
Add in some testing by rogues finding that the melee hit cap is 8%, not 9%, and the "ghost hit" bug that lowers some paladins' hit cap by 3%, and we're talking about a base 5% miss for some paladins that may not even matter. Call me crazy, but I'm seriously considering flat-out dropping some of my hit pieces for pure strength/AP gear. I re-gemmed and re-enchanted my PvE gear for pure strength this week, and dropped my glove-hit enchant for expertise - and I'm considering going for AP instead. I've also been eyeing my [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood] as a "replace next" item, which is weird since I love AP-click effects. If I find a trinket with a good amount of AP/strength on it to replace the Sphere, though, I might just drop the hit and not think twice about replacing it elsewhere. This goes against every gearing fiber I have, but it just seems like the way to go.
What's been your experience? Are you finding hitting the hit cap favorable or not?
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Hit Cap - Is It Worth It?
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3 comments:
Yep. Ive been over the hit cap for a good while. Then I started shaving off some hit until i got under the cap. Then i started building up some expertise. Haven't had a problem so far.
Well I can tell you that for PvP non of the core set has +HIT rating on it and I found I was missing attacks and stuns all the time. I've since picked up some added hit rating.
I'm currently sitting at 150 hit rating which is 4.57% and I stil miss occasionally (at least once per 1 min arena match). Looks like I'm going to have to hit that 5% at least.
The odd attack swing woudln't be such a huge issue but I realy see it on Stuns. That repentence or HOJ misses and you've got some serious problems.
I'd be looking at the Hit Cap more in terms of mana regen than DPS. Chained misses of Judgement are never fun when relying on DS and Consecration for DPS. But finding a sweet spot relies on getting a handle on the amount of mana regened through Divine Plea and Spiritual Attunement in raids, and no amount of theorycrafting can really judge that accurately.
New Ret Raiders with little raiding experience should still probably gun for the Hit Cap until they have a better understanding of their regen mechanics. Older raiders can tweak things as much as they want - getting to the cap doesn't magically mean you do 20% more damage - looking at like any other DPS stat once mana regen is settled (100% Judgement uptime isn't nearly as important as it was). It's probably wise to stress however that unlike Haste and Armour Pen, Hit isn't a 'wasted stat'. It's good, and you're not gimping your character if you have some.
Get a good stat balance for Str/Crit/Hit/Expertise, settle mana regen and socket for Strength. Simple really ;)
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