Hit Gear Choices for the 3.3 Kitty

Hit is one of those stats that you don’t really want to get but you know you have to. Kind of like those awkward family reunions that you’re obligated to go to but you dread it immensley.

This post will focus on how to determine which slots to gear/gem for hit and how to make those choices. It will strictly focus on 3.3 loot and will not take into consideration any 3.2 or earlier gear (except TOGC25 cloaks!). Yes you can find more hit choices from earlier gear but the end goal of any player is naturally to upgrade their gear and its somewhat silly to use old gear to fill hit slots (even though I’m doing it right now). I’m going to try and use a logical train of thought (vs extremely mathy approach) to make these determinations. First, lets go over the basics.

Basics

As referenced in my Kitty Numbers page, to knock miss completely off your attack table, you need 8% or 263 hit rating. If you’re a Night Elf druid, then you’ll most likely have access to a Draenei and their sexy Heroic Presence buff of 1% hit. With that, the hit requirement drops to 7% or 230 hit rating. More details on how the attack table works can be found here.

Hit Enchant Options

There are three enchants that can provide additional hit:

1. Enchant Boots – Icewalker (12hit+12crit vs 16 agility)
2. Enchant Gloves – Precision (20 hit vs 20 agility)
3. Arcanum of Ferocity (16hit+36ap vs 50ap+20crit) TBC ENCHANT

*The comparison is against what is considered the optimal dps enchant*

All three options to me (personally) seem viable.  Remember, by using any of these enchants, you essentially free up 1 slot which can be used to socket a +20 arp gem which pushes you closer to the arp cap while only losing out on ap/agil/crit which is somewhat negligible.

Hit Gem Options

There are a multitude of gems (common, uncommon, epic) that can provide additional hit, here is a list of the primary ones but you can use Wow Gem Finder for a full listing.

1. Rigid Dragon’s Eye (+34 Hit) JC Only
2. Rigid King’s Amber (+20 Hit)
3. Glinting Amerite (+10 Hit, +10 Agility)
4. Accurate Amerite (+10 Hit, +10 Expertise)

While all of these gems are viable options, the amt of gear with hit on it is pretty limited so you will most likely be forced into using straight hit gems.

Hit Gear Options

Next, lets look at what gear in 3.3 has hit and what choices we actually have. To do this, we can use wowhead and the ever so useful filters which brings us down to this list here. This creates a list of 11 items that provide hit, basically one item per slot. It seems like a lot of choices but its not once you consider:

1. Kitty Kats want 4pt10, which essentially eliminate 4 choices immediately
2. Every item that has hit, has no Armor Penetration which makes the tradeoff very tough

So with that being said, lets get to work on what slots work best for hit. First, lets piggyback off Kalon’s work on gear weights for cats which essentially outline that gloves are the best offset item and your other four slots (helm, shoulders, chest,pants) are the most optimal for 4pt10. As such that means four items from the list above are immediately eliminated and unfortunately there are no gloves with hit either (bummer). In addition, Wodin’s Lucky Necklace is a BOE trash drop so I’m going to exclude this as well as the liklihood of this dropping is not high. That then leaves us with the following options:

1. Cloak – Shawl of Nerubian Silk – (41/48)
2. Ring – Band of the Bone Colossus – (54/62)
3. Ring – Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance (59)
4. Neck – Precious’s Putrid Collar – (55/62)
5. Waist – Soulthief’s Braided Belt – (46/54)
6. Weapon – Hersir’s Greatspear – (53/52)
7. Weapon – Shaft of Glacial Ice – (88/92)

*I’ve linked all the non heroic versions but I’ve included both (normal/heroic) hit amounts*

Rarren’s Personal Thought Process

I’ve somewhat made my decision on how to approach this and I’ll give you my logic on what fits best for my situation. Here are my stipulations on how I eliminated gear choices.

• I have generally good fps/lag so I do not value hit capping as a must, I try and sit at a maximum 1% below hit cap (6%)
• I will use Enchant Gloves – Precision enchant for +20 hit
• I will use Arcanum of Ferocity enchant for +16 hit
• I am a Jewelcrafter and I do have the ability to create Rigid Dragon’s Eye (+34hit)
• I fill yellow sockets (with +6 bonus) with Hit gems to help push closer to the cap
• As stated above, Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance is a must (+59 hit)
• TOGC25 insanity cloak Vereesa’s Dexterity is by far the best cloak in the game, as such I’m going to hold out for this. (hit cloak eliminated)
• Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General is also again by far the best weapon in the game, also I want to use a LK weapon which is a personal preference (hit weapon eliminated)

Based on these two criteria, I am down to 3 choices:

1. Ring – Band of the Bone Colossus – (54/62)
2. Neck – Precious’s Putrid Collar – (55/62)
3. Waist – Soulthief’s Braided Belt – (46/54)

The easiest way to make this decision is base it on ilv. Both the neck/waist are from 10 man and the maximum ilv is 264 whereas the ring is from 25 man and its maximum ilv is 277. The ring also drops from Marrowgar which is the first heroic boss so the liklihood of obtaining this ring should be quite high. This should give you a total of 59+54+16+20 = 149 hit which is still 81 hit short of 7%. Since I am a JC this is where I’ll start using Rigid Dragon’s Eye. 34 x 2 = 68 which is just enough to put us at 217 hit or 6.60%. In terms of where to fit these yellow gems, naturally we want to fit them into slots that will grant us the socket bonus and there happens to be 2 yellow sockets that grant +6 agility socket bonuses (Chest/Pants or Gloves).

This to summarize means we have 2 hit items + 2 hit gems + 2 hit enchant which brings us close to the hit cap. It also should keep you very close to the arp cap as well and with heroic ilv 277 gear both caps should be reached easily.

Making Your Decision

Again, here are some general questions you should ask yourself when making your choice:

• Are you a Night Elf (7%) or Tauren (8%)
• Are you a Jewelcrafter?
• Do you have access to 10 and 25 man gear?
• Do you have access to heroic 10 and 25 man gear?
• Do you value hit capping (lag/fps) more or less?

Lets use a mock example to illustrate a different approach. Lets assume I’m a moo-moo cow (moooo) and I have access to only normal 10 and 25 man ICC (excluding Arthas) and I have good fps which makes me not value hit capping as much and I am not a jewelcrafter.

• Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance still applies as a must have (+59 hit)
• Since I have no access to arthas weapons, Hersir’s Greatspear is a fantastic option to get hit without losing arp (+53 hit)
• Band of the Bone Colossus is still a good option at ilv 264 vs other options which are ilv 251 (+54 hit)
• I will use Enchant Boots – Icewalker enchant for +12 hit
• I will use Enchant Gloves – Precision enchant for +20 hit
• I will use Rigid King’s Amber for +20 hit x3 (+60 hit)

This means we now have 59+53+54+12+20+60 = 258 hit or 7.84%

Conclusion

Every person’s situation is different and as such a different thought process should be used, there is no end all be all “BIS”!

My choices are very specific to my play style, professions, gear options, aesthetic preferences. I strongly believe there is no right or wrong answer. Quite frankly, even if we were to find the most optimal set of gear (“BIS”), how often does a player actually hit their theoretical maximum on a regular basis? The beauty of 3.3 is there is choice and you can make different decisions and essentially come up with the same results/output.