Expertise Vs. Hit- cap

[dizzean]

We have 2 tanks in our 10man and as we work on Nef we are required to have a tank on interrupts for phase 2 which means that their interrupts can miss if not hit capped. This lead to a discussion/debate on what is more important expertise or hit, both of our tanks agreed that expertise soft cap of 26 is more important that hit cap and as a result neither of them are hit capped. Our Paladin is at 3% hit and our Feral Tank is at a paltry 1.4% hit.

Any thoughts? There seems to be conflicting reports. As it is both tanks would have to reforge avoidance/mitigation to hit to hit the cap.

[Loganisis]

Unless you're working on hard modes it's completely unimportant to be hit or expertise capped UNLESS you're on interrupt duty.

They could have over 7% more dodge/parry/mastery (well not parry for the bear) by dropping all hit or expertise.

If you need tanks to interrupt they should get to the hit cap. For threat, hard mode tanks are reporting landing more hits is important, so expertise > hit for threat (as it reduce dodge and parry, not just miss).

So from a threat standpoint, Exp > Hit. From a tanking standpoint neither are great unless there's interrupt duty or even with MDs and proper rotation tanks can't keep aggro or you really need that last fraction of DPS.

[Katarn]

Expertise is irrelevant.

If you need to interrupt something vital (Nef) before 4.1, you can get hit capped if you want.

[klausi]

An important node on this: For Nef interrupt's you only need 5% hit to not miss due to those Pillar Mobs are only lvl 85! And after patch 4.1 you won't miss any longer with your interrupts (that's pretty huge, especially because healing paladin/shaman can assist on interrupt if necessary!)

Hit or expertise being important is dependent on the tanking class, the encounter and your raid composition. A paladin with judgement, avenger's shield, hard cast exorcism, instant-3-holy-power talent and two 8s-cd-taunts shouldn't have any problems with snap aggro while a feral or a warrior might feel lost without md/tricks on Magmaw Heroic with over 1/4 of the attacks not landing.

[Illidra]

An important node on this: For Nef interrupt's you only need 5% hit to not miss due to those Pillar Mobs are only lvl 85! And after patch 4.1 you won't miss any longer with your interrupts (that's pretty huge, especially because healing paladin/shaman can assist on interrupt if necessary!)

Hit or expertise being important is dependent on the tanking class, the encounter and your raid composition. A paladin with judgement, avenger's shield, hard cast exorcism, instant-3-holy-power talent and two 8s-cd-taunts shouldn't have any problems with snap aggro while a feral or a warrior might feel lost without md/tricks on Magmaw Heroic with over 1/4 of the attacks not landing.

where is this over 1/4 coming form

mellee only has a 7% chance to miss with 0 hit.
bossses have 8% chance? not 100% on this number, to parry.
15% but heck RnG is RnG, vengeance is OP.


expertise is a threat stat. tricks + md on pull, then vengeance does the rest of the work for you.

hit cap of 5% for nefarion adds.
7% for halfus if your tan has to kick nova.
same for maloriak.

any other fight both stats are effectively useless.
and you sacrifice stupid amounts of avoidance + EH to get the caps.

[Katzazi]

where is this over 1/4 coming form

mellee only has a 7% chance to miss with 0 hit.
bossses have 8% chance? not 100% on this number, to parry.
15% but heck RnG is RnG, vengeance is OP.

Mobs can also dodge. Expertise lowers that chance, too. That's what you cover with those 27 expertise. The boss-chance to parry is much higher than those 7%. (However that's ONLY the case for lvl88 and boss mobs.) So even with hitcap and 27 expertise you will get some parrys from bosses / lvl 88 mobs.

[Loganisis]

Unless it's been changed in the last couple of days, it's 26 exp to 'soft' cap expertise. Which really isn't a cap at all for tanks - but that's also against level 88 monsters (bosses).

It's 8% chance without racials (7% would be space goat)
26 to remove dodge (6.5%)
and I think 56 to remove parry (14%)

From 0% hit to 8% and 0 exp to 26 you would remove 21% chance for your attacks not to land:

8% reduction in miss, 6.5% reduction in dodge, 6.5% reduction in parry = 8+13 = 21%.

I'm not 100% sure how these scale downward as I've only really ever thought about level 88 mobs, I'm sure there's a nice chart somewhere.

[klausi]

where is this over 1/4 coming form

14% parry
+6.5% dodge
+8% hit
= 28,5% attacks don't land on average

26 expertise removes 6.5% dodge and parry, that's why we only call it softcap and not hardcap, after that point it only reduces parry. With 26 expertise and style-hitcap (8%) you're still not landing 7.5% of your attacks on average.

any other fight both stats are effectively useless.
and you sacrifice stupid amounts of avoidance + EH to get the caps.

What's a stupid amount and who shall judge about it? For ~ 800 rating you can reduce the amount of not landing attacks by 13%, that's a noticeable tps increase and helps especially on snap aggro.. or gain 3-4% avoidance at best. Ever fought a heroic mode raidboss and had those nasty burn phases including aggro reset or spawning adds that have to die in time and a missed shieldslam+heroic throw combo on startup?

tricks + md on pull, then vengeance does the rest of the work for you.

Since everyone and his mom raid 10 mans.. there's not always a rogue and a hunter (or at least one of them) present.

[Destruyen]

Mobs can also dodge. Expertise lowers that chance, too. That's what you cover with those 27 expertise. The boss-chance to parry is much higher than those 7%. (However that's ONLY the case for lvl88 and boss mobs.) So even with hitcap and 27 expertise you will get some parrys from bosses / lvl 88 mobs.

mobs can't dodge/parry while casting so again hit is the only thing that matters if you are interrupting something. with only like 3% hit on my warrior and my bear i rarely missed an interrupt on 10man nef, and there was a resto shaman on my platform to catch a cast that missed so only one tick went off if at all.

Since everyone and his mom raid 10 mans.. there's not always a rogue and a hunter (or at least one of them) present.

in 10 man threat isn't as much of an issue since you only have 5-6 dps to out-threat instead of 16-18. as long as your dps aren't going balls out within the first 5 seconds of a pull you should be fine, otherwise the tank needs to learn the proper rotation. i've had 0 hit and 0 expertise on my warrior and the only time i ever had threat problems in 25 was if the ele shaman got a lucky lvb proc within the first 2 seconds...after that he learned to throw 2-3 lightning bolts at the pull then start going balls out.

[klausi]

Looks like you just have to experience those 372 geared fury or rets yet On Fights like Atramedes hc or Elementium Monstrosity hc phase 3 when you lust right of the bat they just pull off insane numbers teven with a blessing of salvation.

[Katzazi]

mobs can't dodge/parry while casting so again hit is the only thing that matters if you are interrupting something. with only like 3% hit on my warrior and my bear i rarely missed an interrupt on 10man nef, and there was a resto shaman on my platform to catch a cast that missed so only one tick went off if at all.

Yes, that's why I have only 1.3% hit at the moment and nearly never miss. But that't not the point. We were speaking about what you need to ever hit everything. And for that you have to reach all the caps.

in 10 man threat isn't as much of an issue since you only have 5-6 dps to out-threat instead of 16-18.

Very wrong concept. To out-threat you it only needs one dps. It doesn't matter where all the others sit. Threat is done indivifually. The only thing that may reduce threat in 10man is that certain group buffs are not there to push the DPS a little bit more. But since Cata most raid buffs are relatively easy to attain. And even if not, you don't need all of them in genreal, to have single DPS have all they need to go full out.


It's the difference between normal and heroic content that matters. In normal modes people can give you just a few seconds befor burning all CDs, in heroic modes they sometimes need to go out just from the beginning.

[ironsides]

Looks like you just have to experience those 372 geared fury or rets yet On Fights like Atramedes hc or Elementium Monstrosity hc phase 3 when you lust right of the bat they just pull off insane numbers teven with a blessing of salvation.

Gotta agree, fury is ridiculous threat wise, especially at the start. To say the only person who gives you threat issues is an ele shaman is nearly laughable. In my fury off-spec,(which is fairly geared) I can pull start dps with deathwish, orc racial, and recklessness of like 35k for the first 20 seconds or so. It's basically impossible to out-threat, this is why some hard mode tanks suggest hit/exp. I am an advocate of mitigation/avoidance over threat any day of the week. But as earlier suggested, if you want to hold aggro on elementium monstrosity with a lust at the start.. it is a huge burn phase anway.. you would need threat not mitigation at that point. I suggest keeping an open mind and perhaps reforging for specific fights where it's needed. Although atm all i can think of is elementium monstrosity.. Atramedies doesn't really need a face pull blood lust, especially since it's basically the easiest hard mode out.

TL;DR
: Hit/expertise is worthless except for hm elemental council p3. Keep your minds open for future fights, I recall a post on forums about this when xav reforged for hit/exp, everyone wondered why and it was the night they killed council. Reforge for the fight.