I’ve received a few emails recently asking why Hit Rating is so important. Now, at first glance the answer seems obvious: if you’re not hit capped, you’re missing shots, and missed shots means less overall DPS. That’s still very true, and something we’re all aware of (or should be aware of) by now. However, what if there’s more to the story?

Focused Aim

This talent has become a bit controversial. If you’re not familiar with it (off the top of your head), Focused Aim is a three point talent that increases your chance to hit by 1% for each rank, resulting in a total of +3% Hit. (It also reduces pushback on Steady Shot from incoming damage.)

Now, some free +Hit sounds great, right? Why would people have a problem with that? The explanation is simple: it doesn’t provide pet hit. You see, our furry friends derive their stats from ours. If we’ve got buttloads of AP on our gear, our pets see a benefit from that. Likewise for Stamina, Crit, and — you guessed it — Hit. Now, the problem is our pets derive their stats from the stats on our gear, and as far as our pets are concerned, Focused Aim “artificially” boosts our Hit Rating (meaning we don’t need as much +Hit from gear), which means they don’t see a benefit from it. Therefore, we may be hit capped, but our pets are not, resulting in a loss of pet DPS.

Given that, the solution seems relatively simple, doesn’t it? Just forgo Focused Aim, and get all your +Hit from gear or gems until you reach the cap. Well, that is technically the correct answer, but the problem is that gear from normal and heroic 5mans seems to be distinctly lacking where +Hit is concerned, making it difficult for non-raiding hunters to reach the hit cap.

So what do you do? Do you get Focused Aim and say to hell with your pet until you can pick up enough +Hit gear to get you at the cap, and then spec out of Focused Aim, or do you skip Focused Aim and just hope you’ll get more +Hit soon?

Well, let me put it more simply:

• If you get Focused Aim, you’re at least increasing your own damage output until you’re able to pick up more +Hit.
• If you don’t get Focused Aim, you’re sacrificing your own damage output in the meantime.

With or without Focused Aim, your pet will be doing the same damage, the only thing that will change is you’ll increase your damage output by taking Focused Aim until you can reach the hit cap.

Q&A Time

Here’s part of one of the emails I recently received on the subject of Hit Rating:

I’m doing 4000 DPS on the meters during 25 man raids and 3000 on 10 mans. This is, from what I can gather, pretty damn good. My hit rating at the time was 160. That was around 5%. However, I had the so called hunter master in my guild tell me I’m not worth squat unless I have 8%, which is the cap. Is it right that I call bullcrap and keep my agi enchants? Or should I break down and add a few hit enchants and take some points from marks I’m not particularly using into Focused Aim? Tell me why Hit is important, and not a basic “it lets you hit the boss, lawl” that everyone seems to point to.

Now, before I get into my response, there’s some information this person has left out that may be pertinent:

1. Is there a Draenei in the raid?
2. What buff food do you use?

The reason these questions are important is because the Draenei racial, Heroic Presence, increases your chance to hit by 1%. Also, if you’re using +Hit buff food, that will also increase your rating and bring you closer to the cap.

So, say we’ve got 5% Hit Rating, and we bring a Draenei to the raid. That bumps us up to 6%. Now, also factor in the use of Snapper Extreme, which grants us another 2% (roughly), putting us at 8% — the hit cap.

Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that the player is Horde (and thus doesn’t have access to a Draenei) and was using +AP or +AGI food instead of +Hit food. That would drop them back down to 5%. What difference does it make?

The Big Picture

For every 1% you are below the cap, you miss roughly 4 shots out of 1000. If you’re 3% below the cap, you’re missing roughly 12 shots out of 1000. How much DPS is that, really?

Lets say each of your 1000 shots does 600 damage. If all of them hit, you deal 600,000 damage. With a 2.8 speed weapon (sans haste), that would take roughly 6 minutes, giving you roughly 1667 DPS. Now, what if 12 of those shots miss? You would end up dealing roughly 592,800 damage, giving you roughly 1647 DPS. That’s a loss of 20 DPS.

20 DPS doesn’t sound very significant, does it? Well, remember, I did a fair amount of rounding off, and I was using “fake” numbers. More accurate results would need to come straight from WWS logs, but you at least get an idea of what effect Hit Rating can have on your performance. The reason why people stress the importance of reaching the hit cap isn’t simply because “it lets you hit the boss”, its because without it, you’re needlessly gimping your DPS output.

So, to return to our question, if this player is getting 4000 DPS in 25mans, reaching the hit cap would bring him up to 4020 DPS using our fudged numbers. What kind of difference will that make to their overall damage?

Doing 4000 DPS over the course of 6 minutes results in 1,440,000 damage. Doing 4020 DPS over the course of 6 minutes results in 1,447,200 damage. That’s a difference of 7,200 damage. That still doesn’t sound really significant, but how many times have you gotten a progression boss down to 1% health and wiped? Say you’ve got three hunters in the raid, all of which are sitting at 5% Hit Rating, that’s a loss of 21,600 damage or 60 DPS across the raid.

And now, we find ourselves at the crux of the issue. One person being below the hit cap is only a loss of 20 DPS (if we stick to our example). Three people below the cap is a net loss of 60 DPS. Now, what if half the raid is under the cap? The average 25man consists of 12 DPS classes. If six of those 12 are 3% under the cap, you’ve just cost your raid 120 DPS, and now you’re getting into trouble. Allowing players to raid under the hit cap is a slippery slope, and for each player you let slide, your raid loses a chunk of damage that it didn’t have to lose. This is why Hit Rating is important. Its not just about increasing your own damage to help your own performance, but making sure you’re doing the best you can so that you’re not leaking damage needlessly for your group.

By making sure you’re Hit Capped, you’re not only maximizing your own damage output, but you’re making sure you’re doing your part to help your team, and its those types of people that Raid Leaders make sure to invite. Hit Rating isn’t difficult to come by just as base stats on gear if you’re running 10 and 25man raids, I know because I’ve looked. If you’re just running normal and heroic 5mans, Hit Rating is definitely harder to come by. But, because this person’s question specifically included the fact that they’re raiding, then reaching the Hit Cap should be no hardship.

Do your part to help your group — get to the Hit Cap and stop wasting DPS. Your class lead was absolutely right in telling you to do so, though they may have explained it poorly. The gear is available to you to reach the Hit Cap fairly easily. Make use of it and stop complaining.