+Hit and Arcane SubtletyFollow

My understanding of arcane subtlety is this, and could be wrong.
Reduces all resitances by 10:
When your spell hits a target for 100dmg. But the player has resist's. and resists 30 of it. making the spell only hit for 70. Those 10 lower resistances kick's in. Lowering the targets resistance to 20 and making your spell hit for 80. It has nothing to do with your chance to hit.
Reduce's arcane threat by 40%: is a lot better than it seems, if your riding the tanks agro line real close, you can spam arcane missles, to still do damage but letting the tank get some agro lead back.
as for hit caps.
With elementel precision:
Fire - 164
Frost - 126
arcane- 80ish? *with arcane focus*
Frost gets an additional 3% for whatever reason, so hit cap is lower because it has a 6% increase instead of 3%.

So you can actualy afford to lose a little bit of your +hit while being frost.

Also your spec, it is hard to critique it not knowing what it is in the game you are trying to do. Since you are worried about your +hit i'm assuming you are interested in raiding and instances.

In a heart beat i would take the points out of improved blizzard and frost ward. And top off your shatter. Though shatter isn't too usefull in raids, in solo'ing and 5mans it can save lives. Permafrost is nice, but not needed i would take them out of there and put remaining points into the arcane tree to get clearcasting. Having mana is great. Here is the frost spec i usualy use while raiding. *currently fire for a while*

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=2300040000000000000000000000000000000000000000535320310235010251551

Ice Floe's is a talent often left with 1 point in so you can get 5/5 clearcast. but i find that the extra 10% gives enough time to make coldsnap usuable in that many more boss encounters. So i go 2 icy floe. 4/5 clearcast.

For frost, you definetly want to be look at +hit till capped, then +haste and +dmg. Make sure you have a solid dmg base before sacrificing it for haste. but Crit is your least important stat to worry about.

And your gear is hit and miss. You have some great gear that wont be replaced in a long time, and some gear that hurts the eyes to look at. Get yourself into kara's. There are a lot of upgrades in that instance for you, as well as badges. which can be used to get you the icon of silver crescent trinket. and a new pair of pants.

Hope i helped in this long box of text. If i missed something or you have any other questions just ask.



Edited, Apr 28th 2008 4:54pm by CalenciaBlue

Edited, Apr 28th 2008 4:56pm by CalenciaBlue

Arcane Subtlety does NOT affect your Spell Hit chance.
Arcane Subtlety gives you 10 Spell Penetration.

Spell Penetration subtracts from the enemy's resistances, those 5 schools of resistance which you can see on the right of your character model in your character window when you press the "C" button ingame.

Elemental Precision adds to Spell Hit, not Spell Penetration.

Here's the explanation between the two:


Whenever a spell is cast, there are TWO checks by the game on whether the spell will hit or not. The FIRST one is based upon level difference and Spell Hit chance. Put simply, with NPCs, your character has a base 96% chance to hit a same-level NPC with a spell. If the NPC is a level higher, it is a 95% chance. 2 levels higher? 94% chance. 3 levels higher? 83% chance. (And something like 72% for 4 levels higher than you).

Spell Hit increases your chance to hit on this scale. So, you need enough Spell Hit Rating to bring your Spell Hit chance to its maximum, which is 99%. At level 70, to bring your Spell Hit chance to 99% on boss targets, who are always treated as 3 levels higher than max player level, you need at most 202 Spell Hit Rating, brought down to 164 Spell Hit Rating after taking three points in Elemental Precision. For PvP, you won't need more than 3% Spell Hit chance on same-level targets.

The SECOND check by the game is based on the target's Resistance. Unlike the level-based resist check, the Resistance-based resist check can yield results of partial damage. Direct damage spells that are NOT binary spells (binary spells are spells that have non-damage effects from them) have a chance to do 100% damage, 75% damage, 50%, 25%, and 0% damage. At level 70, if you have 210 resistance in a school of magic, spells cast at you from that school will have around a 50% chance of doing 50% damage to you, like a 20% chance to do 25% damage, a 20% chance to do 75% damage, stuff like that.

Spell Penetration's value is simply how much of your enemy's resistance values you ignore. If your enemy had 40 Arcane Resist, 9 Fire Resist, and 0 Frost Resist, and you had 2 points in Arcane Subtlety, your spells would hit and have its second resistance check as if the enemy had 30 Arcane Resist, 0 Fire Resist, and 0 Frost Resist.

I used colors to try to show distinctions with consistencies.

Edited, Apr 29th 2008 9:08pm by Raglu

Replaced the painful purple with light coral.

Edited, Apr 29th 2008 9:08pm by Raglu

Thanks for educmacating me in the advanced art of confusion called +hit.

Sorry. Maybe now the colors aren't distracting and it'll be easier on people's minds?

Yep.

12.6 Spell Hit Rating = 1% Spell Hit Chance.

Draenei have 1% more than other mages.

164 - 12.6 = 151.4 (and always gets rounded up).

So, 152. If you have too much spell hit, look at where you're getting it from. If it's from a gem or something, you know what to replace.

Sticking a +hit question here to avoid making a new thread about it.

I'm a frost mage with elemental precision and 139 spell hit (over I know, but I'm not sure whether I'll be switching to fire soon so haven't regemmed/enchanted yet).

I've noticed on quite a few WWS reports a rather high miss rate. Some examples (just for frostbolts):

Lurker - 78 hits (2.4% miss)
Leo - 30 hits (1.6% miss) I was dead for most of the fight
Kara - 73 hits (2.5% miss)
Tidewalker - 75 hits (1.8% miss)

Is it just a small sample size making me seem 'unlucky' on these fights or could there be another explanation?

Thought it might be that :(

I'm noticing a bit of a drop in my damage lately (both in terms of position overall and dps) and I'm trying to work out why.

I've upgraded my gear (so damage should be going up theroetically) and am trying to make sure I keep WC up by using IL when I have to move (which would lead to a loss in dps as I have more up time, but should be an overall increase due to more debuff time).

I'm planning to try fire this weekend and see if I fare any better, it may be I've just reached the pinnacle of what I personally can achieve with frost.