Comments on: The Hit Cap Trap

By: arc

arc — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:57:53 +0000

i agree.
i recently went with my guild into black temple on my hunter alt that has about 90 hit and only 2 epics.
on bloodboil i still ended doing 1100dps (blew all cds as soon as tank established aggro) before i died because i only had 7.5k hp buffed.

the biggest factor in hunter dps is the steady shot macro. i’ve out-dpsed hunter with 3times my gear in heroics because of it.

By: Inside

Inside — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:19:50 +0000

I’ve been raiding for three years now. Cleared all instances as all specs in the Hunter tree. Having max hit rating is WAY over rated and NOT needed. Like you said here, balance is key. Right now im sitting in full T6 with almost every possible upgrade for a hunter in BC. I roll with 120 hit rating, and its plenty. I haven’t missed a shot yet since I lowered from 143 to 120. And yes this includes bosses like Illidan and Archimonde. Now when the Sunwell comes out, I will probably change Signet of Primal Wrath back to Intent, but it probably wont be needed there either. Good luck.

By: Xizang

Xizang — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:47:21 +0000

I agree with 2ndworst. Balance may be one thing when just looking at raw DPS output, but missing a in critical task is, well, critical!

With my latest gear upgrades I had to socket +hit to remain capped. I am comfortable with that, and I know I will be able to (read: have to) put another gem in there once I get my hands on other hit gear.

But my personal epxerience is that capped on Vashj remains capped in Mount Hyjal and BT. There’s no diminishing returns in +hit, and a boss is a boss is a still boss, i.e. mathematically level 73.

So my advice:
Get capped, but don’t overcap. If this is a downturn of your DPS, you either eat it, or be ready to swap gear in favour of hit rating and eat the appropriate consumables if your task implies “you better don’t miss”.

By: Nercion

Nercion — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:24:22 +0000

Hey BRK, this might be a slightly different interpretation of his question but I thought it would be worth mentioning all the same.

I frequently find myself looking at items and wondering if they were an upgrade for me (especially the new items with reduce armor)

Cheecky’s Hunter DPS Spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks, is an invaluable resource to me, let me tell you if you thought WWS was a wealth of information just wait till you get your hands on this thing

This simple excel file, will, hands down tell you if that item is an upgrade (accounts for, well everything as you’ll see)

I would be very impressed if you took at look at this yourself, BRK. Maybe even suggest it to your readers, assuming it gets the BRK stamp of aproval

By: 2ndworst

2ndworst — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:53:39 +0000

Future note:Hit cap becomes more important the closer you get to end game ….. what was 100% never miss on Vashj is 1% miss on Kael and gets worse in BT. Using WWS as my source on my hunters has proved this over and over. 106 Hit will produce 8% to as high as 11% miss in Hyjal. If you have to do a quick MD(and you will do a number of these) and miss, could make a mess. Who wants to have to do all the trash waves again cause your MD didn’t build enough agro for the MT to bust Kaz’rogal past the NPC’s.

But I do agree with BRK, i have not sacrificed balance for Hit when +hit food is available for bosses.

By: Chromaoran

Chromaoran — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:04:43 +0000

I can’t see how the BoJ is better than the ebon. Yeah you get the hit with the Ebon but you also get way more mp5 and crit. So imho the Ebon is much better. Having the T4 set2 bonus is better than having the BoJ gloves, and having the leather BoJ legs is better than the mail BoJ legs.

By: aNTE

aNTE — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:03:39 +0000

what’s the pre-kara – i.e. heroic 5-man hit cap? i’ve read that’s around 96-99. is this true? i’m sitting at 97 at the moment and that seems to be fine.

anyways, i might never get into kara as i’m sort of a 5 man PUGing badge farmer now-a-days. i guess i’m wondering where i should be sitting hit-wise as i upgrade from my T3 blues into heroic badge vender items.

and oh – how about the NEW 5-man coming with the sunwell? i’ve read that the bosses will be dropping purples so will the hit requirements jump too?

thx in adv

peas

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:57:18 +0000

I’ve actually been using 122 as the hit cap anyway, since I can always eat some spicy talbuk for bosses. Particularly in Kara and heroics where the trash is only L71-L72 anyway. 142 is over the cap on those and, to paraphrase BRK, a colossal waste. So I run at about 110-115ish, and eat soem talbuk for bosses. As a result I hardly ever miss and I can gem for agility/crit/AP/Stam.

I do tend to neglect stamina though in PVE for most fights. I’m actually ok with being somewhat of a glass cannon. If I’m getting hit, I’m usually doing something wrong anyway.

There are a few fights that are exceptions to that, and I need more stamina, so I always carry different sets of gear with me. I’m a firm believer not only in balance, but also in having and using the right tools for the right job.

By: Taconite

Taconite — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:45:51 +0000

@ For the Pie. IMPO, I would not skip the Ebon DS set, but that depends on your gear. For me when getting into Kara, it was a significant and relative quick and easy upgrade for my gear pre Kara. In Kara there are not a lot of pieces that I like better for a hunter. (I bought the primals as I have a ton of gold from doing dailies and my alt is a miner, free primal fire FTW). I spent my marks on the Gauntlets of Sniping, first as those were the biggest upgrade for me.

By: Cuttooth

Cuttooth — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:08:54 +0000

I fully agree with the message of the post, that blindly racing towards the hit cap is sub-optimal, but “Balance” is a rather subjective and vague concept.

I think a rough DPS stats value guideline for BM hunters would be very beneficial. In my opinion for raiding BM hunters stats values are:

1 agilitiy is slighlty better than 1 crit rating or 1 hit rating or 2 attack power, which are all about the same value.

With “new” stats like haste and armour penetration it gets trickier, but going by ilevel values 1 agil is about same as 1 haste or 8-7 armour penetration.

The reason that agility is more valuable than other is because of Blessing of Kings, which adds 10% to your total.

Other important non-DPS stats that should not be neglected are stam and int. Their value are a bit more difficult to estimate, but we can use our collective experience to give some idea of what others should expect.

I think in previous posts BRK mentioned HP pool guideline of about 9k un-buffed and I’d agree. That’s a good target for a PvE hunter. Not sure about int/mana pool though.