Hi there, so I was reading up guides on wowhead about bis gear and what stats I should be prioritizing in two separate pages that are linked to each other. The bis page suggests basically going for big raw stats, with defense as a side thought and barely and crit or hit (like 2-3%) while the stat prior page says that Id need to prioritize 9% hit first. Can someone help me figure exactly whats more important, the raw stats or the hit chance (cause atm I have abunch of dps hit gear and am not sure how much plate hit gear is out there for pre-raid to replace it)
Well, I am no theorycrafter expert but here’s what I’m working with.
First off, I don’t love either list on their own. I prefer a more balanced play style between threat and survival. Survival is dependent on what you are fighting. Does the boss hit hard? Is the damage mostly physical or magic? From a survival standpoint, only stamina helps in all fights. Most gear I find is either stam/str/agi or it’s stam/armor/defense. Which means I tend to swap pieces out to tailor my gear to the situation. If I’m worried about survival, I will put the stam/def/armor belt on, if I want more threat and damage dealt, I will put the str/stam belt on.
Hit is critical to keeping threat easily. Also to interrupts where those are needed. I LOVE hit because rage is more consistent, threat is more consistent, and there are fewer times when something goes horribly wrong and I have to hustle to grab aggro back because I whiffed the boss with my shield bash. I think hit is indispensable. But I’m not going to put leather shoulders on for it, or anything.
As for plate hit gear, there isn’t too much. You want +hit on your ranged. You want +hit on your rings. You want +weapon on your weapon or hands (this is a spot where you may choose a certain incredibly expensive mail item). I think it’s doubtful you’ll ever be rocking +6 hit and +7 weapon skill, but it’s a goal. Pre-raid, you will prob be +3 or +4, but life will be better for it.
TLDR: Make space in your bags because you want ALL the gear in order to have the option of tailoring your gear to the fight.
Hit is imperative for raiding. Even better than that is weapon skill. If you can get your hands on a set of Edgemaster’s Handguards, do so. 5 weapon skill is equal to 3% hit. Edgies have +7 weapon skill, which lowers your hit requirement from +9% to +6%. The other great thing about weapon skill is it reduces the glancing blow penalty. Every glancing blow you experience against raid bosses will be a 40% reduction in damage. Weapon skill will severely diminish that, with some diminishing returns as you add more weapon skill.
Overall it’s usually not worth it to go over 5 weapon skill after you have hit that cap. You certainly can though, and it’s not a terrible investment at that point, but it’s certainly not great either. I definitely wouldn’t attempt any more than 10 roughly. So Edgies plus Maladath could be good for instance, as you would then slightly exceed 10 weapon skill and would then need 6% less to hit gear. That may open up other options for you.
Past that, gearing for Warrior tanks is definitely a balancing act. You definitely want to balance threat and mitigation.
Hope this helps.
you misunderstand how weapon skill provides hit chance
standard NPCs of your level have a 5% chance to be missed when your weapon skill is equal to their defense skill, which is always equal to npclvl*5
each point of defense they or a player gain increases the chance that they’re missed by .04%, however, for some reason, hit chance based on weapon skill vs. defense skill is only measured in integers(so says other posters) and is rounded in such a manner that the player always gets the short end of the stick
so, if you have 299 weapon skill and the enemy has 300 defense, you’ll have a 1% miss chance against that enemy instead of a .04% miss chance
also, NPCs that have 11 or more defense above you are given an extra 3% chance to be missed, as a mechanic that is exclusive to NPCs to make fighting high-level mobs harder; thats why raid bosses have a 9% chance to be missed instead of a 6% chance to be missed, while level 62 enemies just have a 6% chance to be missed
getting an extra 5 weapon skill above your maximum will negate that particular 3% miss chance, but getting another 5 weapon skill, bringing you to +10 weapon skill, will not further increase your hit chance vs. lvl+3 mobs
in fact, you’d only gain extra hit chance if you had +15 weapon skill, in which case your miss chance would go down to 5%
that said, the glancing blow reduction hard caps at +8 weapon skill, so sayeth the forums, so theres no reason to go past +8 skill outside of coincidence, unless you can somehow easily get to +15 skill, in which case the benefit is low
each point of weapon skill will regardless, vs. players and NPCs, reduce the chances that your attacks are blocked, dodged, or parried by .04%, and increase your critical strike chance by .04%
also @ OP don’t make too big of a fuss over hit chance
bosses will dodge and parry your attacks anyway
more hit is indeed better, but it isn’t everything
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Do you have discord? If so then join the Fight Club warrior theorycrafting discord. They have the correct information for just about any given scenario.
The stats you need v’s the stats you can get away with 100% depends on what you are intending to do within a given raid. Group comp, world buffs/consumes, clear times, strats all vary the gear needed to clear raids.
Do you intend to be a dw fury/prot tank in a 99-100% parsing guild where healer mana means northing - and you gear for 100% threat increases because boss fights can be as short as 17 secs?
Do you intend to be a deep prot tank built around mitigation and longevity?
Those two different mindsets/play styles will impact your gear choice heavily. There is no need to spec for dw fury prot unless members of your raid are breaking consistent 850+ dps and pulling aggro.
The basic end of it regardless of spec/gear - is in melee combat - you need 6% hit @ 305+ weapon skill or 9% hit @300-304 weapon skill to never have a special attack or (any main hand attack if 1h+shield) miss. Some people dont care about a missed attack - some people do. The only way to reduce your chance to have your attack be dodged/parried is by increasing weapon skill.
Correct. The damage penalty of a glancing blow (40% chance on every white attack - keep in mind specials cant glance) is 95% @ 308 weapon skill. Increasing it further for a tank (edgemasters + maladath for example) is still usefull because it reduces the chance for your attack to be dodged/parried.
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About 20% of the time. I think base raid boss parry is something like 14% and dodge 5%. So if you’re short 1-2%, it’s not the end of the world. It just means that you don’t hit with your attacks something like 21-22% of the time instead of 19-20%.
I love Fight Club’s gear lists and refer to them all the time, but I think their advice that you need to be hit-capped before even thinking about any other stats when gearing is oversimplistic and misleading, and it leads to some tanks wearing some $hitty +hit pieces at a significant cost in other stats, because zomg… have to be hit-capped or I can’t tank.
Getting another 1% hit is not worth giving up like 15-20 strength, for instance. The latter will probably give you more threat. 1% hit is also probably not worth giving up 15-20 stamina, either, in any content that matters, i.e. content that is not on farm/joke status. Or 15-20 agility, which gives you both crit and dodge. Or 500 armor, if we’re talking about wearing leather instead of plate.
So I would pick up +hit pieces where you can and shoot to be hit-capped, but not at the expense of everything else. Being a percentage or two short of cap is not that big of a deal. Nothing magic happens when you add that last 1% to get to hit-cap. You just do like 1% more threat. That’s it.
TLDR
6%to hit with 305 weapon skill
9% to hit with 300 weapon skill
Wear whatever you can, it mostly depends on your healers. Some you can wear more dps gear. Other gotta bulk up.
Find fight club discord, learn
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Thank you for pointing this out to me. It’s actually a huge help. I went out looking for information and it’s actually on the Fight Club Wiki:
There is some code in 1.12 that explicitly adds a modifier that causes the first 1% of +hit gained from talents or gear to be ignored against monsters with more than 10 Defense Skill above the attacking player’s Weapon Skill. This means that the so-called “hit cap” is in effect 9% rather than 8% for a player with 300 Weapon Skill fighting a level 63 monster with a Defense Skill of 315 . With a Weapon Skill of 305, such as from Sword Specialization (Humans) or Axe Specialization (Orcs), this hit modifier is no longer in place against +3 level monsters, provided that you are using the appropriate weapon type to gain the passive bonus. Needless to say, this makes +Weapon Skill very good against raid-level monsters.
Our data shows that Miss chance seems to follow Beaza’s formula found in his edits to Miss on wowwiki, which also agrees with Blizzard’s statement above. Summarized:
If the target is a mob and defense minus attack rating is 11 or more:
MissChance = 5% + (TargetLevel*5 - AttackerSkill) * 0.2%
If the target is a mob and defense minus attack rating is 10 or less:
MissChance = 5% + (TargetLevel*5 - AttackerSkill) * 0.1%
If the target is a mob below level 10:
MissChance = NormalMissChance * (TargetLevel / 10)
If the target is a player:
MissChance = 5% + (PlayerDefense - AttackerSkill) * 0.04%
In case anyone else is interested in the formula to calculate your hit%
Hit % > STAM > AGI > STR > Defense > Whatever else.
hit is important to hold threat. you have healers to worry about your health pool.
if the boss gets loose its a wipe.
the only time you should be concerned is if youre at risk of getting 2 shot, 3 shot is perfectly fine.
+defense is a late game thought when you want to push crushing blows off the enemy hit table.
so just worry about hitting at least 6% hit
and MC/ony will be a breeze.
(and kek, %spell hit so you dobt have your taunt resisted)
TLDR summary:
Prioritize in this order:
- 6% hit if you have 305 weapon skill.
- 9% hit if you have 300 weapon skill. (this will be hard to achieve, just get as much as you can)
- Stamina
- Armor
- Strength/Agility/Stats
- Defense