Seen a lot of people asking about spell hit ratings, so I thought I might make a small informative post that might help people out.

All spell casting classes have a base chance to "miss" with spells vs bosses (said to be level 73) of 17%.

This means as standard, your spells have an 83% chance to hit the boss (this has nothing to do with resistances). As a caster you do not see the "parry/dodge/miss" that melee sees, they are all covered by "resist" for spells.

Your aim is to minimise your chance to miss. To do this, we gather +Spell hit items or gems. The maximum chance to hit you can get with spells is 99% meaning that there will ALWAYS be a 1% chance to miss, nomatter how much hit you have. So we aim to gather 16% chance to hit from gear.

This 16% can be reduced using talents.

Arcane focus in the arcane tree reduces your hit cap with ARCANE SPELLS ONLY by 2% with each point, to a total of 10%. This means with arcane spells and 5/5 arcane focus, you should aim to have 6% increased hit chance from gear (if using arcane spells as your main source of dps)

Elemental Precision in the Frost tree increases your chance to hit with FROST AND FIRE SPELLS ONLY by 1% with each point, to a total of 3%. This means that with 3/3 elemental precision, you should aim to have 13% increased hit chance from gear (if using fire/frost spells as your main source dps).

The Math...

12.6 Spell hit rating is equal to 1% chance to hit with spells.

Therefore...

Base Spell hit Cap of 17% = 17 x 12.6 = 214.2 Spell Hit Rating Needed.

Remembering that the last 1% is something that we can not remove we get:

Effective Spell Hit Cap of 16% = 16 x 12.6 = 201.6 Spell hit rating needed (rounded up to 202).

For Arcane Spells Using 5/5 Arcane Focus:

16% - 10% = 6%
6 x 12.6 = 75.6
= 76 Spell Hit Rating rounded up (arcane spell hit cap)

For Frost and Fire spells using 3/3 Elemental Precision

16% - 3% = 13%
13 x 12.6 = 163.8
= 164 Spell Hit Rating rounded up (frost/fire spell hit cap)

* Arcane Focus only afects arcane spells while Elemental Precision only affects Frost and Fire Spells maxing both out will not lower your hitcap further than mentioned above.

** There is/was a bug with Elemental Precision that granted an extre 3% (as well as the standard 3%) chance to hit with frost spells. Meaning for frost:

16% - 6% = 10%
10 x 12.6 = 126
= 126 Spell hit Rating (Frost spells only if the bug still remains).

Other factors that may affect your hit..

Gear, Gems and Enchants are not the only sources of +hit (speaking from a raiding point of view). Elemental shamans with the 41 talent point totem, "Totem of Wrath" will grant anybody in its party 3% spell hit and crit, so beg your raid leader for an elemental shammy. Alliance also have the dranei aura. Some more maths to follow!


Base with wrath totem

16% - 3% = 13% (Wrath totem deduction)
13 x 12.6 = 163.8
= 164 Spell hit rating for base cap with wrath totem

Fire with 3/3 elemental precision and wrath totem

16% - 3% = 13% (Wrath totem deduction)
13% - 3% = 10% (Elemental Precision deduction)
10 x 12.6 = 126
= 126 Spell hit rating for cap with fire spells using wrath totem.

Frost with 3/3 elemental precision and wrath totem

16% - 3% = 13% (Wrath totem deduction)
13% - 6% = 7% (Elemental Precision deduction)
7 x 12.6 = 88.2
= 88 Spell hit rating for cap with frost spells using wrath totem

Arcane with 5/5 Arcane Focus

16% - 3% = 13% (Wrath totem deduction)
13% - 10% = 3% (Arcane Focus deduction)
3 x 12.6 = 37.8
= 38 Spell hit rating for cap with arcane spells using wrath totem.


Alliance being that bit luckier if that shaman is also a drenei whose racial gives his/her party 1% hit chance have the following caps:

Base: 201.6 - 12.6 = 189 = 189 Spell hit cap with dranei aura
Base: 163.8 - 12.6 = 151.2 = 151 Spell hit cap with wrath totem + dranei aura

Fire: 163.8 - 12.6 = 151.2 = 151 Spell hit cap with dranei aura
Fire: 126 - 12.6 = 113.4 = 113 Spell hit cap with wrath totem + dranei aura

Frost: 126 - 12.6 = 113.4 = 113 Spell hit cap with dranei aura
Frost: 88.2 - 12.6 = 75.6 = 76 Spell hit cap with wrath totem + dranei aura

Arcane: 75.6 - 12.6 = 63 = 63 Spell hit cap with dranei aura
Arcane: 37.8 - 12.6 = 25.2 = 25 Spell hit cap with wrath totem + dranei aura


The last bits of information can be quite useful for your gear selections. For example, if your raid leader does give you the shaman, your hit cap is lowered by 3%, therefore having the full hit cap for your spell type is a waste, you could drop 3% hit rating from gear and take some more damage or crit in its place.

Reported for sticky xD

Reported for Sticky.

Perhaps you could also mention the frost issue where you get double the hit % from Elemental Precision. Making the effective cap for frost mages only 126 Spell Hit rating

Is this frost bug true? If so I've been running around in 166 spellhit when raiding while I could've worn other gear with more +damage :S

pretty sure the frost bug is fixed a while ago, looking at older posts

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=713977D119C0FA51469911F21C7D9ECC?topicId=3907978607&sid=1

Atleast these guys say they have noticed it is fixed anyway

I'd rather look on Elitistjerks to check confirmation that it has been fixed than take the word of one mage on the wow forums, to be honest.

maybe a blue can confirm it if we keep our fingers crossed. I'll add it in for now until we get it confirmed.

I don't think a blue will confirm it as a bug, it's been there for quite a while and they haven't said anything yet.

Although thinking about it if this gets stickied, they might do..

Very nice post mate.
I got a question for you guys...for pvp, spell hit rating or spell penetration and why?
Iam reading about the differences about those 2 for a while now but it doesnt make sense to me,
they say penetration is for pvp but i see high rated ppl getting the hit rating staff...
Is there anyone that can tell me whats better and why?

thanks a lot <3

In PvP you only fight people of your own level (70) and thus you only need enough spell hit to get 99% chance to hit against that level. The base spell hit rating you'd need untalented would then be 38. Now with Elemental Precision or Arcane Focus, you'd essentially need 0 Spell Hit Rating from other sources.

Spell Penetration is a stat to overcome the resistance of mobs and players to your particular school of magic. This stat can be handy when fighting players with high resistances, and especially against fel hunters, but this is such a situation dependant use that it's not worth stacking on your PvP gear. A small amount of Spell Penetration is good though, my personal goal is 50 Spell Penetration, this is enough to overcome a mages mana shield, a druids MotW or various other resistance increasing abilities, plus the small amount of resist a player might have because of a racial bonus.

Glue should be applied

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Q u o t e:
I don't think a blue will confirm it as a bug, it's been there for quite a while and they haven't said anything yet.

Although thinking about it if this gets stickied, they might do..

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They confirmed the Cheat Death bug.

EP getting fixed? OMG panic! :-p

BTW if you use frostbolts (binary spell, not icelance etc) then extra spell hit beyond 99% total works sort of like penetration(but at 3x cost of the uber cheap penetration) (tested this myself).
Still it's a waste usually in PvP.
In PvE this bug/feature is great for the 8/16/24 impenetrable (level based) resistance to all schools of 71/72/73 level mobs and bosses.

Fantastic, I've been trying to find this out for ages, Cheers mate :)







Oh and - Reported for Sticky ^^

Its easy enough to see if its bugged or not. Try 10% hit and see what happens. Recent references to it at elitistjerks says it still is.

Reported for Sticky.

All you need to know is

Spell hit cap for Frost & Fire is 164
ditto Arcane 78

Spell hit is good for end game PVE but dont exceed the cap rating

All this however is common knowledge, the maths is well known and there is nothing original in this post

I assume the sticky request is to boost the ego of the original poster rather than to add anything to the game

I therefore request NOT to sticky

Nice m8, reporting to sticky :D

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Q u o t e:
All you need to know is

Spell hit cap for Frost & Fire is 164
ditto Arcane 78

Spell hit is good for end game PVE but dont exceed the cap rating

All this however is common knowledge, the maths is well known and there is nothing original in this post

I assume the sticky request is to boost the ego of the original poster rather than to add anything to the game

I therefore request NOT to sticky

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No, its not. We're all fed up of posting the same information again, and again, and again every single day. Sure this information is in the "All about mages" sticky but its not easy to find. This hopefully might prevent the same 10+ "Spell hit?" threads being started on a regular basis. It's obviously not common enough knowledge given the number of posts made about it.

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Q u o t e:
All you need to know is

Spell hit cap for Frost & Fire is 164
ditto Arcane 78

Spell hit is good for end game PVE but dont exceed the cap rating

All this however is common knowledge, the maths is well known and there is nothing original in this post

I assume the sticky request is to boost the ego of the original poster rather than to add anything to the game

I therefore request NOT to sticky

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The point of this post was to cut down on the number of people who come on here and ask about spell hit ratings.. and to try and save people's time and effort in having this thread in an easy to find location, rather than having to trawl through the "All About Mages" Topic.

It is evidently well known, but not known by everyone, hence the amount of topics on it daily. The post does not claim to be original, but simply to try and benefit the forum as a whole.

This thread came about from another thread today in which someone asked a question about hit rating, and a few people stated that it would be a good idea for someone to create a post for sticky purposes.

Also, it has been tried and tested and from the most recent evidence Elemental Precision is still bugged and giving an extra 3% ghost hit to frost. But this thread is about the information provided in the OP, not an argument about mechanics.