Mage DPS – Mage Hit Rating Caps And Spell Hit Rating
Posted on February 9th, 2010 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, Dranei, Efficiency Tips, Expansion, General Tips, Heroics, Horde, Human, Instances, Mage, PVE, Raiding, Tips, Troll, Undead, World of Warcraft, WotLKHit Rating For Spells And Mages Explained
There really isn’t an easy way to completely understand hit rating. There are so many variables involved when it comes to talents, abilities, resistances, and the fact that Blizz has a tendency to change their mind from time to time (such as making all hit rating just plain hit rating instead of both mele and spell hit rating, whew!)
But since you are probably looking for spell hit rating we’ll just leave it at that and separate out the different classes so that you can find what you need without having to root through some huge table (if you can even find one that makes sense).
So here we go with Mage Hit rating and caps. To keep thing simple we’ll just go straight for the kill shot and not go into some tedious explanation of combat ratings and all that other what-not. So here goes.
In order to maximize your DPS you need to get hit capped before you worry about anything else. For every 26.232 hit rating you will gain 1% DPS. There is simply no other stat that matters more until you hit the cap. Once you ARE hit capped, more is worthless and then spell power (up to about 4k spell power for mages) haste and crit become more valuable. Be sure to see our post on Making Gear Decisions For Your Toon.
So now that you know you must be hit capped to maximize your DPS, we need to talk about what the heck the hit cap is. You’ll hear two terms when people talk about the hit cap. One is the hard cap, the other is a so-called soft cap. The hard cap means that you have reached a point where more hit is worthless, the soft cap is a term used for abilities past which point have diminishing returns. There is no such thing as a soft cap for hit rating. You are either at the hard cap, or you are not capped and need to get there.
The absolute hard cap for hit is 446 Hit Rating = 17% in the tooltip
The hard cap represents the amount of hit necessary to ensure that you never miss. That means the hard cap is a 100% chance to hit any and every mob in the game. It may not seem like a big deal to have a 1% chance to miss, but if you miss on a big, fat Arcane Blast for 15K it will seriously erode your DPS in a big, fat hurry. Now let’s talk how to hit the hard cap without having to get to 446 hit rating from gear and gems.
We’ll start at the top and work our way down. For every one of these things you have available, your hard hit cap for spell hit drops to the next number down. Just find yourself in the list and you’ll know how much hit you need to have to be hit capped and never miss. Keep in mind that anything that adds +% chance to hit does not necessarily show up in the tooltip (like +17%), so the hit rating is a much better way of looking at things.
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Dranei or Dranei in Party – Hit Cap = 420
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Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 368
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Dranei or Dranei in Party Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 342
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Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 289
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Dranei or Dranei in Party Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 263
There are a few levels past this if you do a lot of 25 man raids, or have just the right combination in your ten mans. If you always run with a druid that uses improved faerie fire or a shadow priest using misery you can get by with just 210 hit rating. And if you happen to be a Dranei or have both a Dranei AND SP/ImpFf in your raid you can do as little as 184 and be capped.
Keep in mind that heroic Presence is party only, so folks may be fighting to get the Dranei in their group, meaning you might not always be able to count on this buff – plus it’s a 30 yard range so on fights with a lot of movement you may be out of range for it from time to time. Your best bet is to stick with the absolute cap of 289 unless you ARE a Dranei (in which case you will always be in your party and can’t get out of range without some wicked bipolar debuff) in which case you can always be safe with a hit rating of 263.
The bottom line is this. If you are an arcane mage your basic hit cap is 289. If you are a Dranei or always party with a Dranei your basic hit cap is 263. Everything else is just gravy. Now, the more gravy you get, the more hit rating you can drop in favor of other stats. But the reality is that it’s much harder to balance staying just barely above the cap than it is to find a bunch of gear without hit on it. It can be tough to get hit capped when you first hit 80, but later on you’ll be looking for nearly every chance you can find to dump hit for spell power or haste or just about anything else.
One more factor to consider, however is that many bosses will have a certain amount of resistance to one or multiple schools of magic. In the end the balancing act can be almost impossible to hit precisely between just enough hit to overcome both the regular combat hit rating and any resistances a boss might have. It’s not a bad idea to just go for 289 as a mage and anything above that is going to overcome a certain amount of resistances that might be present. But it would probably not be a great idea to carry around a hit rating of 350 at the expense of spell power or something else. You can get anal retentive about it if you wish and figure it out for every boss, but only if you have a lot of time to kill.
So there is hit rating for mages made simple. If you are arcane, your goal is 289 add in Dranei and it’s 263. Once you get hit capped it’s far better to try to stay as close to 289 or 263 as you can (and still be over) and then use the Simcraft Engine to figure out what else you should be stacking and how much. The less hit you can get away with and still be over the cap, the more of those other DPS stats you can stack which will really bring your DPS up to Domination levels.
“In order to maximize your DPS you need to get hit capped before you worry about anything else.”
You really need to stop advising people on classes that you have no clue about. Spellpower should be the first and only gem you ever use.
This comment was as bad as some things you said in the Feral Cat post the other day.
Your ignorance is showing.
Actually, until you are hit capped spell power doesn’t have as big an effect on your DPS. Show me where you can add 1% spell power and it directly relates to 1% more DPS. It doesn’t work that way. Until you can hit 100% of the time, spell power is a downgrade from hit. Show me one person anywhere who recommends stacking SP before the hit cap.
And this does not only apply to mages. Every DPS build, both mele and caster is slaved to the hit cap regardless of what their “top” primary gem is. I never said anything about gemming, and I wouldn’t necessarily gem everything hit, but only because of the expense of regemming every time you got a piece of gear with more hit. But for anyone interested in getting the absolute maximum DPS out of their toon, making sure you are hit capped comes first, since it doesn’t matter if you have 5k sp if you miss one out of ten because you’ve ignored hit.
And the rule only applies until you reach the hit cap. Since the hit cap is based on class, talents, race and even raid composition, it’s a balancing act from the very start. Once you are hit capped, you are correct that more hit is completely worthless – anything over the cap is wasted and should be spent on something else. But until then nothing translates more directly to more DPS than hit rating up to 100%.
What is obvious is that you know less than you think about how all of the combat ratings work and perhaps a little more research on your end is necessary.
1 spell missed = 0 dps for that cast and even when ur hit capped you still don’t gem only sp. A hit cApped arcane mAge best scaling stat is haste fyi
I thought this was a great post as well as laws rebuttal
Gj guys!
Yep, you are 100% right on the money when it comes to us casters, Lawbringer. Glad you immediately replied to the ignorant one, saying exactly what needed to be said.
Law is 100% correct. Point blank if you can’t hit a target then your dps drops to the point of no return.
It only makes common sense. If you miss, all that SP is totally wasted. You could have 4500 SP, but if you miss, you got NOTHING. So yes Lawbringer, for a mage (which I have played for several years) the absolute hit cap is a must before you start gemming and gearing anything else. Now the debate rages for crit vs. haste..but that is for another time..:)
rogues, fury warriors, and dual wield frost DKs get hit hard w/ the hit cap. I can only accurately speak for the rogue community, but here’s the deal:
The rogue naked, untalented, hit cap is 880. It’s crazy. But, every rogue should have precision which drops that cap down to 689. This is, for 99.9999+% of the rogue community, the hard cap.
Gemming to this cap might be necessary until you get and average item lvl of 226 or better. Once you start getting items from ToC and up, and T9 or T10- all the hit you need should come from gear.
For you Mutilate rogues out there, where the fear of a dodged envenom dropping your SnD, most of your expertise should come from gear as well. If your gear puts you at 18/18 or better, do not gem/chant for expertise. That last little bit of expertise will only top off your expertise percentage. While getting rid of that <2% dodge/parry would be nice, stacking another 200 AP would be much better.
Getting back to our caster friends, ignore that last bit about expertise. It is only for melee. Healers, hit rating is for dps and mP5 is for you. If no one wants a piece, either piece can go to either member. A little extra mana regen would certainly help that 10k dpser who goes OOM. Some extra hit would help for beating those ugly enrage timers. HOWEVER, crossing needing on these will give you the worst raid buff ever: Buff of Boot
Tanks- get spell capped! In order to check this, go to the spells tab on your character sheet. It will show you what percent you have. Long story short- a six letter word can wipe your raid. "Resist"
You are right – SP is NOT the only gem you should ever use for a mage. Looking at the plots for the Simcraft engine for mages SP and Haste scale equally well, so the best bang for the buck is the Reckless Ametrine, although I will generally use the Runed Cardinal Ruby in Red slots and Quick King’s Amber in Yellow slots. Gemming for SP only is definitely not the way to go.
I have played a mage for a long time now.. I have tried the all sp and all haste gem setups. I find that a 2 sec ab is nice and I dont go oom fast. so I stack up about 550 haste then sp. making sure to try and get me gem slot colors and meta gem active at the same time. I fine the most common mistake a new arcane mage makes is “1,1,2….1,1,2″ arcane is a lot about mana conservation and lasting the fight.( and not pulling agro off your tank with your 10 k dps) a dead or oom mage does how much dps? a big fat 0
just wanted do know if u were ever going to come out with a druid guide?
you can also include if there is a moonkin in your group with improved farie fire. so another 3% hit
Looking at Be Imba for my arcane mage, it says my arcane hit rating is valid and can be reduced by 7, then it says my fire/frost are deficient by 72. How does one add a specific hit rating? Don’t I just need to add hit rating or should I ignore it?
That is because in the arcane tree you talented 3/3 Arcane Focus, good for a 3% hit boost, but it’s good for Arcane spells only, hence the hit deficiency with Fire and Frost spells cast at level 83 mobs (raid bosses). Since you won’t be casting any Fire or Frost spells at raid bosses as an Arcane mage–unless you lose a bet–you can ignore the hit rating deficiency for your Fire and Frost spells. Happy raiding!