Dude, where's my +hitFollow

For much of this xpac I have been drowning in hit, absurdly over the cap in both tank and dps. Now in ICC I suddenly wonder how on earth I'm gonna get any.

I haven't paid attention to hit because I always assumed it would be there, so it took me until yesterday, when I got enough emblems for my third t10 tank piece to realize none of the t10 have hit. If I replace my t9.5 legs I'm gonna lose 74 hit. I've already managed to get below cap and am using +hit food to ensure my taunts don't miss.

Then I started browsing the upgrades available in ICC (which are underwhelming for bears anyway, whole separate QQ thread). It appears that almost none of them have +hit. Which leads me to ask -- how the hell are my fellow bear tanks maintaining their hit now? Gemming? Enchants? Pieces of gear I don't know about? Or 25-mans (which I hate to run)?

My armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Icecrown&cn=Naturecow

I'm really glad they took hit off of a lot of the gear. Before ICC I was often finding myself passing on 245 gear over my 232, just because it had too much hit and not enough other stats. From what I see, hit is going to be in the jewelry and back pieces, which is the way it should be. Save the optimal slots for stats that will have greater dps output. If you don't have the rings/neck/back to get up to the hit, gem for it. Gemming for hit instead of having it on your gear opens up the possibility for optimal gear setups via gem socket bonuses as well.

I plan on getting this chest to replace the Knightbane one.

Will take a bit to get the gold unless I start getting into a 25 man every week.

edit: It drops off the Gunship fight so I figure most PuGs should be able to get that far with relative certainty.

Edited, Feb 11th 2010 6:32pm by Horsemouth

As a Prot Warrior, I'm often neither hit nor expertise capped. Currently at 192 hit rating and 22 expertise rating. Depending on the fight, I'll either eat Stam/Hit or Stam/Expertise food. Up until last night I was actually at ~150 hit rating, and had no trouble with the early parts of ICC10.

Other than Taunt, what are you worried about hit specifically for? Wouldn't getting Expertise capped add more threat to you, or is there something about Feral Tanking that I don't understand?

I just fulltime the growl glyph...what's even worth putting in its place? Between Growl, Maul, and SI, you've got tanking covered.

Edited, Feb 12th 2010 9:31am by Norellicus

I dunno what kind of crazy server you're on but here glyphs are 20g a pop. I spend enough on wipe repairs, flasks, and potions already (the latter being more opportunity cost, since I farm most of the mats and make them myself), not to mention the bag space to have enough to swap back and forth for 4 hours of raiding. I can easily disable Maul during Saurfang (or even better, simply watch beasts timer and stop using it a few seconds before they come out, resuming right where I left off once they're out of range!) like I've been doing since...week 1 of ICC.

Never having a taunt miss is rather nice, we've had the occasional sketchy transition on Gormok in the past because another tank's taunt missed. The Maul is incredibly useful for stuff like Deathwhisper or Dreamwalker, and SI just makes that even better an oh sh*t button. A minor argument could be made for Berserk but using that is only useful to boost dps output for the duration and/or to break a fear; it's a subpar TPS tool and even glyphed won't last long enough to break two fears. FR is nice when the tank needs big heals but I just can't get over the rage starvation problem for the duration.

I find DPS is way too beastly anymore to afford the momentary rage loss of FR, on any fight. Not that I have super aggro problems, but my lead is only just ahead (at ~8k TPS!), and dropping rage attacks for 10 sec for FR is very likely going to end up with someone getting smacked. Only place I can conceivably use it is after a taunt rotation when I need to be absolutely sure that the boss will be hitting the other tank and not me (Festergut, PP, Saurfang). And in those cases unless we're in a healer pinch I can't see it being particularly useful anyway...

Edited, Feb 12th 2010 12:46pm by Norellicus

Most of the glyphs I've seen on my server run 4-5 gold if you buy them at the right time of the week. Guess I'm just lucky. I spent a couple hundred gold and bought stacks of the ones I wanted to be able to swap ... I think I've used maybe 3 (total, not stacks) in the past 2 months? They'll last me forever, lol.

Either way, the point of the post wasn't that you necessarily should run with extra glyphs just sitting around, it's that if you're ever REALLY in a tough spot you always can re-glyph. The comment about Glyph of Maul was mostly for Blood Beasts on Saurfang, and Frenzied Regen was thinking of 3-inhale Festergut where you should have a huge threat lead over everyone but the other tank.

It's very min-max to do, and probably unnecessary in most cases.

The other option is to buy a bunch of herbs and get a guildy to make them - it usually works out MUCH cheaper (especially if the glyphs are 20g eachon your server!)