The truth about Enhancement Hit?Follow

I've read the elitist jerks posts. I've read the random forum posts scattered across the internet. I've read the guides. But my recount over the last month isn't quite agreeing.

They claim that I should get my hit rating up to the spell hit cap to improve my DPS as my spells are a great part of my DPS. However, at ~350 hit (As a draenei) I have NEVER in the time I've respecced seen one of my spells miss in a heroic, a raid, or even questing. I have religiously checked my meter and our raid had no classes bringing a hit increase buff. On average I miss about %5 with white melee attacks in heroics. In raids the number can reach about 10%. Everything else hits just fine. My expertise needs to come up another point or two and then I'll have reached the soft cap.


Now to the other extreme I have a friend claiming that he and his friends have proven that he doesn't need to gear or gem at all for hit. That he gems straight attack power and does 5k+ damage. Mind you he's geared in Ulduar 25 gear /w some hardmoe stuff. However, in Naxx 10 I'm easily pushing 4k dps. He insists the difference lies in gemming/enchanting hit (I have accuracy/weapon chain), but I personally think that's a bit too far. White damage is still pretty significant. Its been a week or so since I've played my shaman but I recall normal hits for 1-1.5k not to mention static shock and maelstrom weapon proccs increased since I'm actually making contact more than say a 150 hit.


So am I just incredibly lucky, or is pushing for the 420 hit I need to be spell hit capped insane when I am from ALL recounts over hundreds of fights raid bosses included not missing with spells?

Now i am pretty sure imp dual wield still works for spell but what I would suggest is take off some hit gear get as close to 263 rating as you can and go to a dummy, now sit there and cast lightning bolts until oom, do this a couple times and see if you miss at all, using a dps recount helps here.

if after 5 times you have not missed your probably hit capped...

oh and make sure you keep your mh and oh equiped as this is what activates the talent.

I tried this in past when elemental had to go into enhancement to maximize dmg (which was nerfed to the ground I miss the 4000 sp as a fresh 80 lol), the 6% worked then but who knows it could have been nerfed, but ya with recount on lvl 80 boss dummy you should get an accurate number...

The super high hit rating is based off dual wield. Your MH needs a lower cap, but OH is very lame and needs a ton of extra hit and more expertise.

I'm sitting at 423 hit rating and just shy of the expertise soft cap myself, and there's no doubt about it, trying to maintain 420 hit rating with hunter gear blows. Your gear is a bit better than mine the last I checked but I'm sitting at roughly 3.-3.2k dps for 10-mans and did a couple of wings of Naxx25 where I ended the run at ~3500 dps. I would love, love, LOVE to be able to drop some hit rating if I was 100% certain that I could get away with it.

I actually applied to an off-realm guild with my shammy last week. Not surprisingly, my application was denied (the guild was only accepting new members who were geared for Uld25 hard modes) but one of their officers who responded to my application offered me a few suggestions to improve my performance and dropping hit wasn't one of them. Something tells me if he was going to point out that I only have %6.0 dodge reduction from expertise instead of %6.5, he would have also commented on my choice to stack over 160 hit rating beyond what I need. Also, looking at the current Enhancement Shaman BiS/max dps thread, the current "absolute best" setup for enhancement shaman (ie. T9 25-man hardmode stuff) comes with 424 hit rating baked right in...no need for gems, titanium weapon chains, enchants, +hit food, or anything else to hit that mark.

Right now my only misses are coming from off-hand attacks and they're sitting at about 7% of total swings.

I just ran some tests on the heroic training dummy in Ironforge.

With 342 hit rating (+13.04% chance to hit level 80 target (spell)) I missed 2 lightning bolts out of 20. That's a pretty lame sample size but it clearly demonstrates that 342 hit rating isn't adequate to prevent misses.

With 367 hit rating (+13.99% chance to hit level 80 target (spell)) I hit all 51 of the lightning bolts I cast on that attempt. I did, however, miss one Earth Shock which again reinforces that 367 hit rating on a Draenei is not adequate to prevent spell misses.

With 423 hit rating I've never noticed a missed spell.

As a Draenei you're only looking at a 2-3% chance to miss with spells if your hit rating is sitting in the 340 - 370 range. That works out to on average 1-2% dps you're losing for not being hit capped for spells. I'm not sure if I could make up 1-2% damage swap hit rating for AP or haste, but I'm fairly certain I could make up more than 2% damage swapping 2x Titanium Weapon Chains for 2x Berserking...it's just a question of whether or not I want to spend that kind of gold on a pair of iLvl 200 crafted epics.

Thats because the information is wrong. The miss chance from dual wielding affects both weapons not just the main hand.

The super high hit rating is based off of the spell hit cap. You'll be MH hit capped long before you'll reach the spell hit cap and your OH will still have a not insignificant chance to miss when you're at the spell hit cap.



You're MH chance to miss is the same whether you're dual wielding or not...it's your OH chance to miss that is substantial...something like 28% untalented w/o hit rating adjustments.


Edited, Sep 7th 2009 9:45am by AureliusSir