Hit rating matters
On Saturday night I ran my ToC10 raid. I took the main tank role while one of our Ret pallies donned his prot gear to handle OTing. This is of course the same gentleman that did the “I don’t think, I just do what I’m told” remark last week, so I wasn’t expecting much. It is only ToC10, after all.
And then when he logged on he announced in O chat that he was drunk, which prompted me to joke that he should stay sober enough to do his job. He replied by saying that it didn’t matter, tanking consisted of sitting there and hitting “my hammer” and then “my shield.” Oy. So he was going to have to take the MT role.
Anyways, we’re on Gormok–first fight–and I get my three stacks and I call for a taunt.
“Woops, guess he didn’t like that,” I’m informed. Gormok keeps wailing on me. Oh goody, taunt fail.
1.5 seconds later: “Nope, not that one either.” Stack number four applies.
A few more seconds pass, Hand of Reck comes off cooldown, and finally Gormok turns to face the other tank.
This continues the next time he needs to pull off me. “Do you have any hit rating?” I ask. He wonders aloud when that became a tanking stat. /headdesk
The next time I need him to pull Gormok off me, I just bubbled to remove my stacks, dropped aggro to him, and immediately salv’d so Gormok would stay with him after my bubble fell off.
The point I’m getting at is this: hit matters. It’s not just some ancillary threat stat, it also has really impacts on raid performance. Taunt misses can be the end of an attempt, easily resulting in a healer death if an add is running amok, or a dead tank if a boss switch doesn’t occur in time. Moreover, considering the threat nerf we’re taking next patch, we’re going to have to be a little smarter about how we’re generating hate. With attacks causing less aggro, it’s going to be critical those attacks land more consistently.
Now before I continue, a big caveat: don’t gem for hit, just swap in enough gear to maintain a healthy 6%. And augment that with the Glyph of Righteous Defense. Being hit capped (263 rating, 8%) is nice, but don’t sacrifice survivability for it. 6% is a happy medium and easy to achieve.
With the glut of expertise on gear in the Coliseum, it’s going to be harder and harder to reach that comfortable level of hit. You’re going to want to swap around pieces to compensate.
Running with zero hit rating is not a good idea.
Armory Feed
i value tanking items with hit rating quite a bit. the only reason for me to switch out a +hit item would be when the new item has quite a stat-load and is a big upgrade rather than just a side-grade. ex. i’m using a ring combo of mark of the relentless (from toc5 heroic) and signet of impenetrable fortress (valor bages), and i keep leviathan’s coil around but don’t really use it.
i am a comfortable place now with my hit (7.17%) that i switched out my +hit enchant to gloves and went for the stam enchant, and when the next patch comes around with the threat nerfs, may go back to the threat/parry enchant if i start to have issues there.
and i’m now expertise capped with 28 or so skill so i went and glyphed for the taunts so definitely good there :D
and i have definitely noticed since i’ve been tanking that when im hit-capped (and now expertise-capped) my threat gen is definitely higher than when i am not hit-capped.
@Rhidach
15 September 2009 at 2:06 pm #
I noticed the same thing. As I started picking up 245 gear my threat took a dive by about a thousand or so tps. Sure the boss was dodging less often by I was hitting him far less often.
haha exactly..
i have my 2pc tier 9 – i245 shoulers+gloves and my next item is gonna be the legs for the massive hit/sbv on them… already have the chest piece from 25man beasts and my 8.5 helm has too much block rating to give it up >.>
depending on how severe the threat nerf is, i may go back to a stricter 969 instead of the custom one i use
@Rhidach
15 September 2009 at 3:18 pm #
I’m really looking forward to the new Judgement Helm–not just because it’s an update of T2–but because it has a nice chunk of hit on it, and a lot of stam to boot.
I gemmed a little for hit and put the enchant on my gloves which kind of pains me. There’s no way around it until I get some more hit gear. I foolishly passed on the 10-man ToC boots. On the plus side, I’m at 38k unbuffed health.
The taunt glyph starts looking REAL sexy when you’re doing Northrend Beasts on heroic.
Just like every other tankadin, my hit has gone down way too much when upgrading to iLvl 245 gear, and when you start missing them taunts on Gormok, you are in for a world of pain :P
Don’t forget you can BoP your OT to get the threat off him, and clear his stacks. We’ve been playing with taking more stacks and just running up the deficit until we have to bubble out. Keeps our healers on their toes :)
The only time i recommended righteous defense glyph was for newbie tanks that just started out.
With my current gear i am still ok on threat, but i am foreseeing some issues that the TOC gear will have lesser hit so that is going be troubling.
Yes hit rating does matter, and obviously a noob tank would not realise this until it smacked them in the face like a sledge hammer when their taunts miss, their threat stinks and other tell tale signs….
Unrelated question but does hit rating matter for warriors?? Because my friend tank has awesome gear but his hit rating blows hard. So these days he gems some hit rating and eats hit rating food. Any thoughts?