melee-hit
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Totem Talk: Hit rating, expertise, and enhancement in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids as all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though. A long time ago, in a Mulgore far, far away, I was a young tauren shaman who was attempting to gear up as enhancement after hitting level 70 for the first time. Enhancement shaman who have only started playing within the last two years won't remember the confusing beast that was enhancement gearing of yesteryear, but it was an adventure. First off, we gemmed strength exclusively. Yes, strength. Despite sharing gear with hunters, we got more (read: any) attack power from strength than we did from agility. More importantly, and this is where Mists of Pandaria changes will come into play, the enhancement shaman of The Burning Crusade didn't try for hit rating on their gear. In fact, we avoided it like a bear tank gemming agility avoids sunders on Warmaster Blackhorn. We did like expertise, which made the few items it existed on like Shard of Contempt best in slot, but it was almost never included on items, and there were no expertise gems. As a result, the majority of enhancement shaman ran with nearly zero hit rating and zero expertise. If you're reading this today, your jaw might have hit the floor. Never, you'll say, while pulling up your character sheet and crying over the whopping 2,284 secondary stat points we need to put into hit rating and expertise. Yes, you read that correctly. We spend 2,284 stat points simply making sure we can actually hit the boss.
TheoryCraft 101: The melee hit table
TheoryCraft101 is here to introduce the more hardcore aspects of theorycrafting in a more casual approach. Ever wondered what the deal is with hit rating? Is expertise giving you a bit of a headache? TheoryCraft 101 has all your answers and more, as we explore the depths of the melee hit table. Back by popular demand, and loads of begging on my part, TheoryCraft 101 is here once again to teach you the ins and outs of the fickle little systems that drive World of Warcraft. Due to numerous requests, we'll be tackling one of the more complex systems within the game, the melee hit table. For all of the hate that armor penetration has taken for being "too mathy," melee hit honestly isn't any better. Caster hit is very simplistic. You have a specific chance to miss a mob, and getting more hit mitigates that amount. Melee hit holds very different values than that. Why just talk about it? Saying that it's complex is all well and good, but let's actually see it, shall we? As a preface to every TheoryCraft 101 installment, this post is going to contain calculations, figures, theoretical values/situations and other math-related information that, at times, can get a bit confusing. I will always attempt to simplify everything to the best of my abilities and explain the information as clearly as possible. After reading, if you still have any questions about the topic, then just ask. I'll do my best to address every question that you may have.
Combat stats and spellpower consolidated on Alpha
Sources are saying that a new Alpha build showed up on the WoTLK Alpha servers yesterday, featuring a few interesting changes. Kalgan's promised spellpower change we have mentioned, and it now appears to be on the Alpha servers. In addition, it looks like the dev team is working on consolidating even more stats. As of the latest build, all instances of haste rating, hit rating, and critical strike rating on gear will now modify both physical attacks and spells at the same time.
