Hit Rating

[Vitandus]

One of the most important stats, and often one of those most overlooked, is melee hit and spell hit rating. Succinctly, hit rating is your chance to overcome the inherent miss chance of a mob. A player obviously wants to ensure every "swing" is a hit to keep up threat, damage, and debuffs.

For melee, the formulas:

7% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4% for single-wielded (whether two hander or one hander)
26% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4% for dual-wielded

Every 15.77 hit rating increases your chance to overcome the inherent miss built into the game by 1%. That means at level 70, your inherent miss chance against mobs - assuming you have a 350 weapon skill - is as follows:

Mob level	Single	Dual
Level 70	5.0%	24%
Level 71	6.0%	25%
Level 72	6.0%	25%
Level 73	9.0%	28%

You will always have a 1% chance to miss. Take the formulas above and you get the following hit rating caps - the point at which any more hit rating adds nothing.

Paladin: 142 hit rating; with precision this can be lowered to 95.
Rogue: Dual-wield auto-attack, with 5/5 Precision: 363 hit rating; Special attack, with 5/5 Precision: 64 hit rating
Hunter: Special attack or ranged auto-attack: 142; with Surefooted this can be lowered to 95.
Warrior: Dual-wield auto-attack, with 3/3 Precision: 395 hit rating; Special attack or Single-wield auto-attack: 142 hit rating; the latter can be lowered to 95 with Precision maxed.


For casters, your spell hit rating directly affects misses, overcoming resistance, and has an impact on critical hits.

Mob level	Miss
Level 70	4.0%
Level 71	5.0%
Level 72	6.0%
Level 73	17.0%

(As a side note, at levels lower than 70, your chance of missing/being resisted scales poorly and affects PVE and PVP!)

Eyonix from Blizzard details the mechanics behind the numbers which is a good quick read. Due to the tedium it would be for me to recreate the data, I am instead going to point to the chart on WoWWiki. A 202 spell hit rating is the base from which to work.

Gems, enchants, battle elixirs, food and so forth can help your hit rating. Food is especially cheap for buyout on the AH and can push you over the edge.

As we move into heroics and the smaller raids it will be important to get this as high as you can get it. We're not a raiding guild so we aren't dripping with gear but getting close is easily achievable!

[Vitandus]

From Kalgan:

54. Re: Upcoming racial ability changes   09/06/2008 07:09:50 PM EDT   

Q u o t e:

PvP casters do not stack excess hit rating. We currently tailor our gear around 3% spell hit, it's very rare to see a properly geared caster with more than ~3.5%.

If missing a fear (for example) is a gamebreaking event against some targets, then maybe one should consider sacrificing a percentage of damage for that extra percentage or two of hit chance.

Also, note that with the wotlk patch you can completely eliminate resist chance through hit chance (you can overcome that final 1% resist chance).