+Hit vs +Spell Hit -- Really Two Different Stats?Follow

As an extension of the discussion of hit from "Google has failed me" thread, (mostly because I can't stand non-descriptive thread titles) I want to ask about the fact/notion that hit and spell hit are (per everything I've ever heard and even alla and wowwiki) two different attributes. I fear I may be using up one of my "dumb question credits" but what the heck here goes.

In the character sheet, my melee and spell "chance to hit" numbers are identical. Always. All the casting gear I've collected for my off-spec kit has +hit, without distinguishing it as +spell hit. But that regular "hit" gear does increase my spell hit rating so the ratings are always the same. The actual % chance to hit shown when I mouse over the rating is different, e.g. 197 +hit increases melee chance to hit by 6.01% and spell chance to hit by 7.51%. Is it possible that like merging +healing and +damage they merged +hit and +spell hit into a single stat? There's no mention of that in wowwiki, but it sure seems to me like that's the case.

I have this hat, The Argent Skullcap, which is clearly a caster hat with intellect, stamina and +spellpower...but it has +61 "hit" not designated as "spell hit." I don't have a melee-oriented helm with +hit on it, so adding that squishy magical skullcap to my hit kit costs me almost 200 AP and 1.5% crit -- but boosts my hit (melee and spell) from 197 to 258. Huge boost. Since I'm not in heroics I don't need to shoot higher than my 197, but it seems like when I do it might be viable (but unfortunate) to reach for the hit cap with caster gear (shudder) if necessary.

Thoughts?

Edit: Funny enough immediately after posting this question I logged in and turned in a quest...and one of the reward choices was Rune of Infinite Power. Neither of the other two choices were big upgrades so I took this as another "low cost high hit" option for when I need to boost my hit through the roof.




Edited, Dec 30th 2008 10:41am by JeeBar

There were equipment with spell hit and equipment with hit, in TBC, if I'm not mistaken.
Nowadays, after they changed the +healing/+dmg and some other things, its all hit and there is no more +spellhit.

For melee, 32.79 hit rating = 1% to hit

For spells, 26.23 hit rating = 1% to hit


So even though you have the same amount of HitRating for both they % gained will be different.