Here is where I am at though….I recently switched to BM to give it a fair shake after being Marksmana….er…Markswoman for years. I read somewhere on the actual WoW forums that hunters needed to hit some number like 229 or so hit rating…..so I busily went about looking up and finding all the +hit gear I could and training my pet to do maximum DPS. Here is my armory link as it stands right now (no laughing….I KNOW my swords are lvl 60, but they had the highest readily available +hit numbers I found):

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gilneas&n=Alinn%C3%A1

I went after the rifle on purpose, and am still working on a list of gear desire to have a high hit rating, but with a current hit rating of 164, should I switch over to get AP gear now to start hitting harder while still maintaining accuracy, or contimue on going after as higha hit rating as I can get, because my gear “wish list” from simple non-heroic & a few heroics yieling blue gear will pop me well over the 230+ number on my hit rating.

Any advice on this particular topic is extremely welcomed.

As for hit rating, bosses in raids have a base %9 miss. You can only cover 8% of that and the %1 is just something you can’t cover because Blizz thought things would be cool like that.

Personally, I say, get your hit rating to where it needs to be, then worry about agi and crit and AP.

As to the question about why teir 4 has only a base of +15 hit rating, the reason for this is, since we are hunters we do not have to worry about dodge and parries from raid bosses. Therefore the amount of +hit for us is much less than that of a rogue, fury warrior, or enhancement shaman. 142 hit rating is not a lot and should be easily available to us through weapons, rings, trinkets, necks, cloaks and gem slots (using +hit in gem slots becomes less necessary as you progress through end game, check out anyone raiding Hyjal or BT a majority of their hunters hit the cap and have no +hit gems), hence our gear does not have an excess of it like other classes might.

I’m not entirely sure how the theorycrafters came up with the number 136-137 Hit Rating, but it is the magic number that should ensure you always hit a boss (bosses are apparently all level 73, again how they came to this conclusion I don’t know).

Summa summarum:
79 Hit Rating for the average PvP/PvE hunter.
137 Hit Rating for the raiding hunter.

PS Beast mastery Rocks

But here I am.

And I return with this:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=102739549&sid=1&pageNo=1

for the readers that decided to delve this far back, kudos to you.

I have just linked a gem on the subject.

-guy

Every raid hunter needs to take their HR seriously and go by the numbers that they outlined.

Minimum for trash clears is 70. Minimum for bosses is 130 and should be as close to 136-137 as possible.

There is no sacrificing of Hit rating for agility. They are two different stats.

Missing your target = Does no dmg = Just a waste of good ammo

With all the plus hit gear that exist in this game my hunter can get up and over a 200 hit rating, I wouldn’t wear that much hit, my point is you can get the gear, OUTSIDE of raiding AND build up more than enough gear to choose from that you can customize gear sets to not maximize HR but to optimize it.

The numbers are not optional. In fact, I would say it’s the one thing in this game that’s static. Get your HR to these numbers, THEN work on your other stats.

For a raid hunters and especially MM hunters, there are only 3 stats.

Ranged Attack Power
Hit Rating
Crit Chance

Balance these three stats to be effective, but ALWAYS remember and NEVER forget that while RAP and Crit will change, at lvl 70, HR will ALWAYS be the same.

Now if your HR really is at zero and that bad, then by all means, spec BM, just because you can’t hit anything doesn’t mean your pet can’t and you will notice and immediate increase in your DPS cause suddenly you’re actually doing dmg.

I’m not trying to be mean, or pick on BM hunters, but lets be real here. If you spec BM and notice a DPS increase, it was probably because you weren’t doing something else right as a hunter (eg, running around the world at lvl70 with a HR less than 70).

*pet says Oink!*

Over at TKA a brilliant ol hunter by the name of Arcazua has done some extensive theorycrafting on the subject of Agility and the relative value of all other hunter stats when compared to agility.

http://forums.tkasomething.com/viewtopic.php?t=3824

is the thread … he’s boiled down a system called AEP (agility equivalent points). For any given item each point of a stat can be given a relative point score - the total value relative value of the item can be determined by adding up the sum of its point values.

Agi - 10 points
AP - 6 points
CR - 8 points
HR - 13 points
MP5 - 20 points
Int - 5 points

Is his final score … another bright little hunter named Arcuss (must be stacking intellect over there) came out with an Addon that tallies up the AEP and puts it on your tooltip

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/7005/hunteraep/

On this AEP system until you have 136 hit rating, it is more valuable
than agility in terms of itemization. After 136 HR - additional HR is worth nothing.

*pet says Oink!*