Cataclysm Hunter Hit Cap and Hit Rating – Level 85

View all WoW Cataclysm hunter guides here.

Welcome to the Level 85 Cataclysm Hunter Hit Cap and Hit Rating Guide, updated for patch 4.3. We’ll talk about everything you need to know in WoW about hunter hit, miss, hit chance, hit rating, hit cap, pet hit rating, how your hunter hit rating affects your pet hit rating and your pet hit cap. We’ll also explain how the Draenei racial affects your hit cap. Every raid hunter should know the basics of hit and miss chances, what the hit cap is, and understand how this affects gear decisions.

The Hunter Hit Cap Basics

As a level 85 hunter, you sometimes miss when you shoot your target. Your chance to miss depends on what level mob you’re attacking. This percentages have not changed with Cataclysm, but the rating has.

Level 85 Hunter vs:

Level 85 mob: 5% miss chance Level 87 mob: 6% miss chance (heroic boss) Level 88 mob: 8% miss chance (raid boss)

This means that against a raid boss, for example, 8% of your shots miss – that’s your hit cap. By increasing your hit by 1%, you’ll have 1% more of your shots hit, therefore you’ll be doing about 1% more damage (actually, it’s a bit different because of complicated stuff explained below). So it’s very much in our interest to increase our hit chance. However, since we can’t hit more than “always,” going above 8% does not help us at all, which is why it’s referred to as the Hit Cap. It’s the cap of the amount of hit you can have that will benefit you.

We hunters have two ways to increase our hit chance: “hit rating” found on gear (including gems/enchants/reforging) and the Draenei racial bonus.

Hunter Hit Rating

For a level 85 hunter, 120.109 hit rating gives you 1% hit. 961 Hit Rating is needed to reach the Hit Cap 841 Hit Rating is needed for Drenei to reach the hit cap

Therefore you would need about 961 hit rating to reach the hit cap and ensure that you (and your pet) always hit against a raid boss.

Furthermore, your bonus hit chance from hit rating is also applied to your pet’s hit chance.

Dreanei Bonus
The Dreanei have a racial bonus that grants a +1% hit to themselves only. So if you are a Draenei this counts toward reaching your hit cap. Currently this is not transferring to the pet; however, we’re pretty sure that’s a bug that will be fixed by the time Cataclysm goes live.

I should note that it is still not a good idea to roll a Draenei hunter — even with this bonus, you still have a tail. It’s just not worth it. Make a dwarf instead and enjoy the rugged good looks.

Pet Hit Chance

Your pet is a level 85 character just like you. It has the same miss chance as you do, and the same hit cap as you do. So increasing your pet’s chance to hit by 1% increases your pets overall dps by 1%. But how do you do this?

Any bonus hit you get from gear with hit rating on it will transfer to your pet.

Furthermore, your pet gain expertise equivalent to your hit rating. What does that mean? A typical raid boss has a 6.5% chance to dodge all melee attacks and a 14% chance to parry melee attacks from the front. By being at the hit cap, that means your pet cannot be dodged or parried (though since pets attack from behind and can’t be parried anyway, only the dodge matters).

This translates into a substantial increase in pet dps — one of the reasons increasing your hit chance by 1% will actually increase your dps by more than 1%.

Raid Tier Hit Scaling

We were told before Cataclysm launched that there would be a mechanic in which certain stats scaled differently with progressive tiers of raid content — so that you would need more hit rating to be hit-capped against a t12 boss, for example, than a t11 boss.

This is not happening for Cataclysm after all — the devs must have decided against it.

Is Hit Rating the Best Stat Ever?

For a long time hit rating was the best hunter stat in the game, but it appears this is no longer the case in Cataclysm. Hit rating is still better than our other secondary stats (crit, haste, mastery) but 1 agility actually contributes more to our dps than 1 hit rating does.

That said, you always want to be at the hit cap for whatever content you’re facing — though raiding hunters tend to prefer to carry 8% hit rating at all times. If you are below the hit cap, the best way to reach it is by Reforging your gear.

Some Technical Info

Interestingly, it seems that WoW uses a two roll system for special attacks. (ie: roll to see if it hits, then roll to see if it’s a normal hit or a crit), as opposed to the one roll table for regular attacks.

This means that the increased hit chance also increases your chance to crit — again, up to the hit cap. For example: you have a 30% chance to crit. If you increase your hit chance by 1%, on that extra one percent of the time you hit there’s a 30% chance that your hit will turn into a crit. Thus the 1% hit gives you 1% bonus to your auto-attack dps, and a larger bonus to your special attack dps.