Caps are confusing me ??

[Doplar]

I'm a dual wield DK frost tank spec (10/54/7). I'm trying to understand what I need for a Hit Cap. At 27% * 32.79 = 886. with NoCS (-98) the hit cap i need is 788? Is this what DW frost spec tanks are targeting for? Or should i just be trying to get above the 263 hit cap for specials (aka yellow dmg). Does Nerves of the Cold Steel effect this hit cap?

And expertise cap. my expertise shows as 2 numbers. right now im at 29/26. Should I be content both of these are above the 26 expertise soft cap? I thought I read somewhere that dw frost spec should get their experise to 30.

[Molecule]

You do not want to go for the dual wield hit cap as frost. Just shoot for the yellow cap, which is 5% (about 164 rating) after Nerves of Cold Steel.

The two expertise numbers are for your two weapons. I am guessing that you are a human and your main hand is a mace or sword (therefore granting you +3 expertise with that weapon) and your off-hand is an axe.

Note that if you are not having threat issues, neither hit nor expertise is an important stat as a tank. So the question of whether your expertise is high enough hinges solely on your personal experience. If you are having problems with threat, you may want some more, otherwise just get stam and armor.

[Steakdinner]

I have to disagree with you on that, hit and expertise are still of value to a tank. If your attacks don't hit your target (be it a miss, parry, or dodge), how do you expect to hold threat on what you're tanking? The soft cap for expertise is something you want to try to attain. There are ways to get around being hit capped.

[Satorri]

For general stat info for DKs:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...869#post337869

For Frost DK tanking:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...866#post337866

The long and the short is listed above. Ideally you don't need more than the ability to not miss with special melee abilities (8% base against raid bosses) and 26 expertise to remove dodge from the possible outcomes (while also removing equal measure of parry chance). If you're below it is not the end of the world, and if you're above on either stat as dual wield frost you are still getting value, just a little less so after passing those values.

The two numbers for Expertise while dual wielding reflect your racials giving you a boost with one sort of weapon and not the other. So in your case you're over the soft cap with both.

The 30 Expertise number was the magical point that someone calculated (with several assumptions if I recall correctly) where dual wielding would be generating roughly the same number of parriable attacks as a 2-hander. I don't recall what weapon set that came with, but I stand by what I said above. The same 26 soft cap is a good goal to shoot for, but don't stress it if you're over you are still getting good value.

[Molecule]

I have to disagree with you on that, hit and expertise are still of value to a tank. If your attacks don't hit your target (be it a miss, parry, or dodge), how do you expect to hold threat on what you're tanking? The soft cap for expertise is something you want to try to attain. There are ways to get around being hit capped.

I prefaced that paragraph with if you are not having threat issues. Realistically, threat is not an issue for any fight in ICC assuming the tank and DPS are geared equivalently. It is certainly possible for a tank to have threat issues if the are undergeared or don't use their abilities judiciously, but for the most part it should not be an issue.

[Insahnity]

I have to disagree with you on that, hit and expertise are still of value to a tank. If your attacks don't hit your target (be it a miss, parry, or dodge), how do you expect to hold threat on what you're tanking? The soft cap for expertise is something you want to try to attain. There are ways to get around being hit capped.

I in turn will have to somewhat disagree with you. The soft caps are what you should aim for. If you are spending your stat allocations to threat stats beyond soft caps, there is a very high likely hood that you are probably losing far too much possible survival stats. If you accidentally go a little over, it's gravy, and a little under in most cases is not the end of the world.

Expertise to soft cap has twice the effect hit until the soft cap. If you have never read this statement before, then I submit you need to look at the definition of expertise, the chance of boss dodge, the chance of boss parry, and then put the facts together. If you cannot, then read the various posts on the subject of expertise. Beyond the soft cap, it's as good as hit until the hard cap, which practically speaking nobody hits.

Hit is required for TWO main tanking concerns, connecting with the boss and landing spells (yes, spells, even warriors). The only spell of note is taunt, and the good news is if you satisfy hit with respect to damage, the various taunt glyphs will take you the rest of the way. Otherwise, stacking hit will increase your chance to hit, but you need to break it down in terms of abilities.
-Special hits require 8% melee hit, or 263 hit rating. This should be your main source of threat.
-White hits for a 2h weapon or a single 1h weapon is also 8%. Convenient, no?
-8% melee hit is approximately 10% spell hit. The spell hit cap is 17%, or a whopping 446 hit rating. As with hard capping expertise, it isn't something most tanks will achieve, with the possible exception of druids who get hit rammed down their maws through the $*@# rogue gear they are forced to wear. Rogues have to pick up lots of hit because they dual wield (see next).
-27% melee hit is required to cap white damage (normal hits) from dual wielding. Even the most determined DPSer will never actively aim for hitting this cap, at the astounding 886 hit rating. The reason for this is
-->It requires far too much hit to obtain without sacrificing other important stats
-->Your white damage is a small percentage of your damage, you are better off making all your hits hurt more and having a few miss.

[PatrikL]

I think that Insahnity post says it very well but I would like to add that while its good to be soft capped on both hit and expertise it far from required. Some ppl look at tanks (or dps for that matter) who are not both hit and expertise soft capped and call them idiots. I think a big part of this comes from the fact that people (who are not much into stats) tend to forget that even if you would have for example 0% hit you would still hit with the majority of your attacks.

Reading various recruitment forums for guilds on my realm I have seen that peoples opinion on how important caps are varies largely.

One has to remember that the option to be capped should always be weighed against something else, some other stat that you might be able to get instead. Beeing hit capped or not while tanking (assuming both cases generate a lot of threat) is largely a choice of whether removing the RNG that comes from not beeing capped is worth more than what you lose elsewhere by doing it.
We have a lot of boss fights requiring tank swaps todays which can become very complicated if a taunt fails. On the other hand we have a lot of fights requiring every possile piece of survivability possible. I tend to carry a few off pieces with me so I can be chose which is most important per fight. That together with extra glyphs as Insahnity said does the job.

Another example involving expertise is my current dps spec/gear where while expertise is a nice stat, it is still gives me less dps per point than strength does even though I am below soft cap. Hit on the other hand is worth a lot more per point than strength if I am below soft hit cap so while my expertise is very low (and this has to do with the fact that enough of my attacks are magical) I would never go below soft hit cap.

To sum it up what I wanted to say is that remember that while one way might be more correct than another when it comes to caps, the way thing usually isnt too bad either

[Doplar]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for some of your opinions. While I am not always worried about threat, I do want to be concerned about it. I mostly have 5-man gear (I'm looking to get more involved in 10 and 25 mans soon) and it is not too hard for me to reach the soft caps.

"Special hits require 8% melee hit, or 263 hit rating. This should be your main source of threat. "
"Just shoot for the yellow cap, which is 5% (about 164 rating) after Nerves of Cold Steel"
I really will hit the soft cap for Yellow attacks dual weilding at a hit rating of 164??

There is a big difference in 263 and 164.

And i will probably keep shooting for expertise at/above 26.

Here is my armory profile if anyone wants to take a look and see if my gear is way off. I want to be a better geared tank. I want to be prepared, at least gear wise, to be able to hold my own and tank for a guild.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mane&cn=Doplar

I do appreciate the help.

Thank you

[Airowird]

In raids, specials need 8% hit. But as said, if you have Nerves of Cold Steel, you only need 5% extra from gear. Although it wouldn't be extremely bad to go slightly over it, hit still helps white damage, which is a decent portion of your damage/threat.

[Leucifer]

I think that Insahnity post says it very well but I would like to add that while its good to be soft capped on both hit and expertise it far from required. Some ppl look at tanks (or dps for that matter) who are not both hit and expertise soft capped and call them idiots. I think a big part of this comes from the fact that people (who are not much into stats) tend to forget that even if you would have for example 0% hit you would still hit with the majority of your attacks.

Reading various recruitment forums for guilds on my realm I have seen that peoples opinion on how important caps are varies largely.

One has to remember that the option to be capped should always be weighed against something else, some other stat that you might be able to get instead. Beeing hit capped or not while tanking (assuming both cases generate a lot of threat) is largely a choice of whether removing the RNG that comes from not beeing capped is worth more than what you lose elsewhere by doing it.
We have a lot of boss fights requiring tank swaps todays which can become very complicated if a taunt fails. On the other hand we have a lot of fights requiring every possile piece of survivability possible. I tend to carry a few off pieces with me so I can be chose which is most important per fight. That together with extra glyphs as Insahnity said does the job.

Another example involving expertise is my current dps spec/gear where while expertise is a nice stat, it is still gives me less dps per point than strength does even though I am below soft cap. Hit on the other hand is worth a lot more per point than strength if I am below soft hit cap so while my expertise is very low (and this has to do with the fact that enough of my attacks are magical) I would never go below soft hit cap.

To sum it up what I wanted to say is that remember that while one way might be more correct than another when it comes to caps, the way thing usually isnt too bad either

I'm laughing here because I know right now there is the knee-jerk reaction from some folks who are ready to cry out "heretic!"
They also are likely the ones that cry that gear score is the end-all, be-all without taking into account how all of those pieces come together for effect. What is the effect you are aiming for?

With my tank set, it was survivability. As a DK, most healers say I'm "squishy". So, I push to get my avoidance stats up, armor up, and defense rating high. AoE threat is always going to be an issue for me, so I look at ways to improve this, for example, through the tier 10 set that boosts Death and Decay damage by 20% and gives me another damage mitigation tool with Blood Tap.

With my dps set, I have started building a cross-tier set. Why? Easy. The tier nine stuff, having two pieces gives me a +180 strength proc! And hey, look at this, two pieces of the tier ten gear give me a +10% to obliterate and +7% to Heart Strike! The 4 piece bonus for both sets, when I looked at it, was very "meh" to me. Gives Blood Plague a chance to crit?..... meh. The gives 3% increased damage for the next 15 sec after my runes all are on cooldown, not bad, but I'll be twitching waiting for my first rune to go live again so I can maximize that! As for which pieces I'm chasing for the dps set, I'm going for the items that will boost my 1) armor penetration, 2) crit, 3) expertise and hit. Anything with haste, can take a hike. I am however, looking closely at how the pieces I've assembled stack for hit. If I'm waaaaay over hit, believe it or not, I swap out my hit trinket for Ruby Hare. Might sound stupid, but when it's gemmed up with two +20 str gems and gives me +64 stam to boot? It's almost like being able to wear an additional ring, something like Titanium Impact Band. Yeah. That lowly trink with the right gems just bumped up my attack power 80 points on every hit I deliver. Proc that!

My advice, take a good hard look at your gear. The caps are something to aim for, yes, but they are not so important that they should take precedence over everything. Have a concept in mind when assembling gear. Sometimes you make do with what drops. Other times though, especially since badge equipment is easily attainable with some patience, you can take some time to try and build your set with a specific goal in mind.

[Leucifer]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for some of your opinions. While I am not always worried about threat, I do want to be concerned about it. I mostly have 5-man gear (I'm looking to get more involved in 10 and 25 mans soon) and it is not too hard for me to reach the soft caps.

"Special hits require 8% melee hit, or 263 hit rating. This should be your main source of threat. "
"Just shoot for the yellow cap, which is 5% (about 164 rating) after Nerves of Cold Steel"
I really will hit the soft cap for Yellow attacks dual weilding at a hit rating of 164??

There is a big difference in 263 and 164.

And i will probably keep shooting for expertise at/above 26.

Here is my armory profile if anyone wants to take a look and see if my gear is way off. I want to be a better geared tank. I want to be prepared, at least gear wise, to be able to hold my own and tank for a guild.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mane&cn=Doplar

I do appreciate the help.

Thank you

Just looking at what you have in Armory, everything looks great. If you were a blood spec tank, you'd be pretty much capped out. It's just that you dual-wield, and as dual wield, more hit rating will never hurt. But I wouldn't go ripping apart what you have over that.

I'd say at this point, work on skill. If you want to raid tank as a DK, work on your skills and read up on the fights.

[Steakdinner]

Say you had a draenei dual wield frost tank, I get 1% from the racial and 3% from nerves of cold steel. What hit rating do I want to shoot for (as far as a number and not a percent)? Would I want to go for 131.5 (rounding up to 132) to not miss with specials?