Hit & Expertise are they something u should care about?

[Nayre]

Yes, for most classes the base stats are better than hit/expertise. BUT in most cases you don't have a choice between base stats and hit/expertise. You have a fixed amount of base stats on gear and can chose between different secondary stats in the other slots, if you are comparing gear of the same ilvl. Further, you seldom have a choice with enchants. Most times there is only one or it is between some secondary stats. Or one is clearly better. Additionally, as you said, you cannot reforge your base stats (with the exception of spirit which is treated as a secondary stat all the time and does not matter for the discussion anyway).

So the ONLY things where you can make a decision between base stats and secondary stats (either hit/expertise or something else) are gems and trinkets. Everything else has fixed base stats.

Yes, that is the case most of the time that gems and trinkets are where it will come up. And when it comes up, I choose agility. The only time that this isn't true is if there is a socket bonus that gives me agility. If the socket bonus is anything but agility, then I gem pure agility.

So your point that base stats may be batter for many classes is just not valid.

How do you figure? For my rogue it is. For warlocks, it is. You can get to the spell hit cap by way of reforging, making gemming for hit strictly a DPS loss.

How is that not valid? It's in fact entirely the point.

I know that reaching hit-soft-cap and expertise-cap are the first goals for fury and probably most other melee. At least as you are not speaking about Str/Agi.

I still want to get to the hit cap on my rogue - just not by sacrificing agility. But similar to you not knowing about rogues, I don't know about all the other melee classes.

And for gems - you want to activate your meta. At the moment this requires more blue gems than red gems for most DPS. So that's probably hit again. (Well this will gladly be changed with the next patch but the patch is not life.)

The problem is, that meta requirement of more blues than reds means that a lot of classes simply don't get that meta. Period. Currently the best meta for a rogue is either the Mastery/run speed one or the crit/spell reflect one due to the fact that they do not have such horrible requirements (2 yellows and all red respectively). Using the RED or Chaotic meta as they are currently is strictly a DPS loss because of the requirement in a lot of cases. There's a reason that the metas next patch will only require reds when they're put in (this is assuming they haven't changed it since I last looked).

And even when you don't need so much blue later on, you may need some to get attractive bonusses.

Attractive depends on the class. Using my rogue as an example again, and using
these pants as an example: Assuming BiS gear and the EP values that come with that, gemming these 2x Mastery/Agility is exactly the same as gemming them 2x Agility. Anything less than BiS gear, and it's a loss to gem 2x Mastery/Agility.

I unfortunately can't even talk about hit rating, because as I recall, a rogue is over the spell hit cap in BiS gear and actually reforges away from hit, because white hit rating is god awful (it's without question our worst stat, compared to spell hit which is our third best after agility and yellow hit).

Once again, whether or not getting to the hit cap is better or worse than going for primary stats depends on the class and spec. It is not better to go for hit over a primary stat (int/str/agi) in every case - such as with my rogue, or a warlock, where it is in fact a DPS loss to do so.

[Lightmgl]

I've found Hit/Exp to be completely useless for Warrior tanking outside 10 man bosses where I need to interrupt (Nef, Omnitron, Maloriak). The threat is totally covered by Vengeance if you are doing it right and there is no more parry haste so any miitigation gained from this stuff is moot. Sure it'll stink a little bit when you get that bad fight where you miss your first two or three specials but that should be no problem and those are the lowest threat ones since you have no Vengeance stacked at that point in the encounter anyways.

DPS Warrior is a different story though, we still need Hit/Exp. We're not like Rogues who get virtually no DPS from Hit after spell hit cap and do not need Exp because they lose virtually no energy on an avoided special compared to us who lose large amounts of rage and deal with cooldown time.

Honestly the real problem I find with Hit/Exp isn't that I wouldn't like to have them (Its still nice for the early phases of a fight to let your DPS blow cooldowns without fear) but rather the mitigation you must give up to reach those #s is just way too high. Maybe that will settle a bit with heroic raid gear, but at entry raid level and doing some of those endbosses for the first time the mitigation is far more useful.

[Booi]

Xav strongly disagrees?
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...n/xav/advanced

Not sure which encounter he's gearing for with this... but, at the time of this post they are 8/12. So it's either Council/Al'akir/Cho'gall/Nef HMs. (8% hit, 42 expertise).

[Kojiyama]

He's gone all-out threat for a specific reason. He basically has every threat talent in the book as well.

Don't believe that's his 'normal' setup, though. Typically I see him reforged to Mastery. Xav is typically quite gung-ho about gearing for each specific progression fight.

[Katzazi]

Nayre: I was saying, that hit soft cap is something probably every dps class that can regularly interrupt wants to have. Because of this, tanks should not need to reduce their survivability for being able to interrupt if such a class is present.

Your fokus on additional hit and gems and whatever does not help further, especially since the only thing you need to have to interrupt is soft hit cap for melees (and spell hitcap for casters but they have much longer interrupt cds anyway). Every melee should have that hit anyway. It's - as you said yourself - on your gear. So it's just not important if hit after 8 hit is more or less important to your class than agility.

[Exiledknight]

Xav strongly disagrees?
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...n/xav/advanced

Not sure which encounter he's gearing for with this... but, at the time of this post they are 8/12. So it's either Council/Al'akir/Cho'gall/Nef HMs. (8% hit, 42 expertise).

You can't just look at high end tanks and look at their gear/reforging/spec to determine what they are doing, or their stance on an issue like this. More than likely this is for council HM, as if it is anything like normal the initial issue when getting to p3 with everyone alive is the soft enrage. I can not speak for sure since I am a paladin but I would be willing to bet he has used quite a few different specs over their progression, I know I have and we are quite a few HM's behind them.

[Kojiyama]

I often use Xav as an import dummy when testing Rawr as he's one of the few high-end Warrior/server combos I can somehow remember in the US. (The US armory is more reliable!)

I can attest to the fact that he changes gear and spec very regularly based on whatever he happens to be working on at the time.

[Lightmgl]

My guess is they are currently working on Heroic Cho'Gall and Xav has capped his Hit/Exp for interrupting the adds. Do non bosses still parry gib too? Cause those adds hit pretty damn hard so I would understand expertise for them.

The best bet is to gear out for mit and keep a few hit pieces or reforge to get hit for the encounters you need.

I really wish they would give us a Glyph of Shield Bash to give it a 100% hit rate and solve pretty much the only need for hit that we have as tanks.

[ironsides]

Those stats are like that purely from reforging. He did not regem or re-enchant anything, I would guess his gear is currently like that either because 1 like somebody said something parry hastes/interupting, which is unlikely. Or he did it because he/others in his guild are going for dps records on farm content and him capping expertise/hit allows him to do so. OR the most likely, which I imagine is correct because premonition logs are private... is that xav has been running with blue bracers for the last month or so and decided to farm out the ramkahen rep for the rep bracers. Obviously survivability is not needed for heroics and he probably reforged for threat stats to hold threat and finish the rep grind as fast as possible. I do know because I was looking at his armory a week ago or so that he was running with about 2% hit and something like 8 expertise, and I highly doubt he changed his mind since then. Also I know he had blue bracers until 3 days ago according to his activity feed.

[Lightmgl]

Those stats are like that purely from reforging. He did not regem or re-enchant anything, I would guess his gear is currently like that either because 1 like somebody said something parry hastes/interupting, which is unlikely. Or he did it because he/others in his guild are going for dps records on farm content and him capping expertise/hit allows him to do so. OR the most likely, which I imagine is correct because premonition logs are private... is that xav has been running with blue bracers for the last month or so and decided to farm out the ramkahen rep for the rep bracers. Obviously survivability is not needed for heroics and he probably reforged for threat stats to hold threat and finish the rep grind as fast as possible. I do know because I was looking at his armory a week ago or so that he was running with about 2% hit and something like 8 expertise, and I highly doubt he changed his mind since then. Also I know he had blue bracers until 3 days ago according to his activity feed.

He got the bracers to complete Cataclysmically Epic. I will bet all of my gold that he is tanking Cho'Gall's adds and dealing with parry haste/interrupts seeing as how they got Ascendant Council down in the last couple of days. He could have also been interrupting Feludius on that too. Threat is so not an issue unless they are exploiting druids on Heroic Nefarian.

Its not that he changed his mind. Its that he reached a boss where his interrupts matter which they weren't at before. Guarantee that his gear will change back for the other bosses. It'd be suicide to do Heroic Chimaeron in the gear he is in now.

[klausi]

He's already back on his mastery route. Parryhaste is gone and interrupt isn't connected to expertise, why throw up to ~ 800 rating out of the window? On 25m there should be thorns and md around for the initial aggro grab (plus high vengeance stacks thanks to vigilance).

[Illidra]

if you can kick,
cap that hit,
if you do not,
then lose your spot.

stop those casts
or get killed fast
or get my tank foot up your ass

i dont acp hit, but as i used to pvp alot i tend to still reflex interupt before my melles notice the cast starting.

[ironsides]

He got the bracers to complete Cataclysmically Epic. I will bet all of my gold that he is tanking Cho'Gall's adds and dealing with parry haste/interrupts seeing as how they got Ascendant Council down in the last couple of days. He could have also been interrupting Feludius on that too. Threat is so not an issue unless they are exploiting druids on Heroic Nefarian.

Its not that he changed his mind. Its that he reached a boss where his interrupts matter which they weren't at before. Guarantee that his gear will change back for the other bosses. It'd be suicide to do Heroic Chimaeron in the gear he is in now.

Last night they didn't have ascendant council killed, he was not working on cho'gal. Give me your money good sir.

[Lightmgl]

Last night they didn't have ascendant council killed, he was not working on cho'gal. Give me your money good sir.

Yeah you're right, he was doing it for Council and not Cho'gall. Guess he was tanking Feludius/Arion. Still can't imagine its for threat though unless heroic Arion resets aggro on his teleports. The point still stands though, Hit/Exp is for specific encounters. Just wanna drive that concept home because some tanks might be in for a bit of shell shock when they see what the worst of the bosses hit for.

Also I'm still a tad out of date. Did they remove parry-haste completely or has it just been removed from bosses? I was never quite clear on that based on what blues said.

[Kojiyama]

I think technically the mechanic is still in, but we have not yet observed anything that uses it.

[Vaxum]

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned blood DKs, wondering if they still needed hit/expertise. In general, no.

There is a vestigial theory floating around that hit/exp is good for mastery-stacking DKs but when you actually look at it, 8/10 of the top-geared DK tank on GuildOx have completely reforged away all hit and expertise, and the remaining 2 are clearly doing something specific that doesnt fit any of the cookie-cutter approaches. Furthermore, the 4.0.6 changes to stacking blood shields makes hit/expertise even more worthless since you no longer need to time DS to ensure maximum shields and therefore risk losing a possibly bigger shield to a miss/avoid.

[Boondockst]

Hrmm, that's the exact opposite of what I have been reading.
It's hard to find the post on EJ, as it's not the top post in a thread, but TGM's guide here says to get Hit to 8% and Exp capped out before stacking STR.
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...-Warrior-Guide

Stat wieghts don't care if you get the stat from a gem, an enchant, or any other source. If it says Hit to 8% before going for STR, it means that you do that. It doesn't mean - Get 8% hit, unless you have to use gems to get there. If you're under hit cap, and the stat weight says that Hit is better than STR, then putting a STR gem in your gear when a hit gem could go there, would yield less DPS than putting a hit gem in that socket. It being your primary stat is irrelevant - otherwise they would just leave it out of the stat weighting.

That's for DPS'ing - this is a discussion about tanking hit and expertise.
That being said, I think we should aim for a minimum 4% hit rating. It sucks, and it has all happened to us before, where where we have an unlucky string of misses and threat becomes a little tight for a few seconds. This is especially true in PUG LFG groups where marks on the mobs dont necessarily mean that the correct mobs are being attacked and killed in the order that we marked.
I'm sure for raids with your guild, you could more than likely get by with much less, but for LFG situations, I aim for 8% to guarantee my threat and guarantee my interrupts, because as it was said before in this post, idiot DPS dont interrupt - ever.

[Lightmgl]

That's for DPS'ing - this is a discussion about tanking hit and expertise.
That being said, I think we should aim for a minimum 4% hit rating. It sucks, and it has all happened to us before, where where we have an unlucky string of misses and threat becomes a little tight for a few seconds. This is especially true in PUG LFG groups where marks on the mobs dont necessarily mean that the correct mobs are being attacked and killed in the order that we marked.
I'm sure for raids with your guild, you could more than likely get by with much less, but for LFG situations, I aim for 8% to guarantee my threat and guarantee my interrupts, because as it was said before in this post, idiot DPS dont interrupt - ever.

Yeah, boy Cata really has shined the light on the good vs bad players. You can tell the ones who never had to deal with anything but DPS vs the ones who actually had to CC, kite, interrupt, etc. Interrupting and CC should be just as natural as DPSing and the DPS will have to learn that fast or they will not be raiding.

I still haven't been capping stuff in PuGs though. Rarely have I encountered anyone who can put out the sort of DPS to outaggro me even when we are AoE spamming so I really don't care who targets what. A good tank and healer can pretty much carry heroics due to vengeance as long as theres enough stunning/interrupting (which isn't too hard as a war).

I'd be more concerned about the pug healers which is why I tend to stack my mitigation as much as possible.

[Selene]

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned blood DKs, wondering if they still needed hit/expertise. In general, no.

There is a vestigial theory floating around that hit/exp is good for mastery-stacking DKs but when you actually look at it, 8/10 of the top-geared DK tank on GuildOx have completely reforged away all hit and expertise, and the remaining 2 are clearly doing something specific that doesnt fit any of the cookie-cutter approaches. Furthermore, the 4.0.6 changes to stacking blood shields makes hit/expertise even more worthless since you no longer need to time DS to ensure maximum shields and therefore risk losing a possibly bigger shield to a miss/avoid.

How are they making sure they land Death Strike though?
I found until I got my hit/expertise to cap, I was whipsawing around as far to how consistent my bubble was.

[Lightmgl]

How are they making sure they land Death Strike though?
I found until I got my hit/expertise to cap, I was whipsawing around as far to how consistent my bubble was.

I don't know too much about DKs directly but I know our DK completely ditched Mastery now because he found his tanking was much better as pure avoidance stacking and not having to worry about proccing the bubble. He was also concerned with it's effectiveness when they add the change next patch to give it a cap.

Dunno though since many of the top DKs are still reforging into Mastery though not quite to the same degree as Wars and Paladins.