Rogues: To Hit or not to Hit… That is the question…

Today i thought i’d discuss the Rogue “to hit cap” since i’ve noticed that this site has been getting a lot of searches on it (and it’s a good thing to know too).  Let’s start with the basic definition of hit:

Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The chance to hit increases by 1% per 15.77 hit rating points at level 70 and 10 hit rating points at level 60. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield.

Next let’s take a look at our chance to miss on various level raid targets (these are all dual wield values):

   * v. Level 70 mob: 24%
   * v. Level 71 mob: 24.5%
   * v. Level 72 mob: 25%
   * v. Level 73 mob: 28%

In the context of stats, the term “cap” refers to the point at which equipping more of a particular stat will have no additional value. For hit rating the cap usually discussed is in regards to raid bosses. For example, once you reach or surpass the hit cap, you will never miss an attack against a raid boss unless you are under the effect of some debuff that reduces your hit chance (for example, Attumen the Huntsman‘s curse).

As shown above, your base chance to miss a raid boss while dual wielding is 28% with auto-attack on both hands. Your base chance to miss a special attack is 9%. For each 15.77 hit rating you equip, you reduce your chance to miss by 1%. Thus we can calculate hit caps for auto-attack and special attacks:

For rogues there are two different caps we’ll look at. (Why two? Our talent Precision (Combat Tree) will rase our base change to hit, thus reducing our need for +hit gear).

Without Precision:

• Dual-wield auto-attack: 442 hit rating
• Special attack or Single-wield auto-attack: 142 hit rating

With Precision:

• Dual-wield auto-attack, with 5/5 Precision (Rogue talent): 363 hit rating
• Special attack, with 5/5 Precision (Rogue talent): 64 hit rating

As you can see Precision makes a HUGE difference in the amout of +hit gear that we will need to collect.  Until you hit the cap +hit will boost your dps usually more than any other stat… (less misses=more DPS)

I hope you found this helpful, feel free to comment and ask questions if you have any 🙂

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