Heigan, Hunters, Hit Capping

Kvasira's post made me wonder about hit-capping again. I mean, I know it's important, and I'm told I should stack it above everything else, but ... how much am I really missing by missing? I wanted to do the math myself.

Looking at the web stats, I can calculate the following --

Even with a draenei in the raid, I missed 1.6% of my auto shots. 0.1% was mitigated, but let's just ignore that, because it's too small of a percentage to work with. This means, since I landed 317 shots, 5 of them missed. Average damage was 859 on non crits, and 1682 on crits (14%). This means I missed on average 3694 non-crit damage plus 1177 crit dmg.

For my steady shots, I missed 0.5%, with 0% mitigated. This means out of 201 shots, 1 (JUST ONE) of them missed. Average damage was 1167 on non crits, and 2571 on crits (18%). This gives a probable damage for this shot of 1173.

So we have...

• Auto Shot: 308,597 done, and 4871 that I could have gotten if I were hit-capped.
• Steady Shot: 284,060 done, and 1173 that I could have gotten if I were hit-capped.

Now, what my Cheeky's (now Shandara's) spreadsheet tells me by modeling my gear and buffs from the exact raid setup I had then, is that Poached Northern Sculpin will buff my pet DPS by 5 and my hunter DPS by 12, as opposed to using no food at all. My pet was useless in the Heigan fight, so let's ignore the 5.

My time in the fight dps'ing was 706 seconds. My DPS was 928. Adding 12 dps to that and multiplying by my time in the fight gets me 8,472 that I could have gotten by eating AP food. Getting to the hit cap gives me 6,044, or 8.5 dps that I could have added.

• Eating cheap BC Hit cap food: 8.5 dps increase, or
• Eating mammoth 60AP food: 9 dps increase, or
• Eating expensive 80AP food: 12 dps increase

So missing only 1 steady shot and 5 auto shots in a 14 minute fight is roughly equivalent to 60AP lost!

Once again, the clear conclusion is... get ye to your hit cap, hunters. A little bit of hit is worth a lot of DPS.

(The postscript is, hug your local draenei.)

Future Gear Goals, Badge Things I want:

So, both Abs and Pos have a lot of badges.

85 and 65 respectively. Now the question comes, what do I do with them?

With Abs, the choice is relatively easy. He's saving up 100 badges for the uber new badge chest piece.

After that, he'll save up for new gloves and new boots.

So, he's short, 165 badges.

Future gear goals: As Abs has given up on ever getting a t4 chest... the goals now slide to what we may be able to complete and what I may be able to pug.

Drops off of Void Reaver (helm and t5 shoulders) are within Abs's reach, as are a few drops from ZA.

Pos, on the other hand.... well... I have no idea. I'm going to start knocking things off the BoJ pick list over at tankingtips.com, but I'm not sure what order to go in. Right now I'm debating if I go for the (current) belt, or the (current) legs first.

Suggestions are welcome. I'm leaning towards the belt.

As for Pos's future gear goals, I'm clueless. Really. I have started to look and hunt for upgrades, but other than the BP off of Nightbane I haven't seen many readily available pieces.

I'm just bad at looking, I suppose. Go go gadget... Badge of Justice maker!

Pos's slots & gear:

Helm: Freaking Uber.
Neck: Very nice from SSO
Shoulders: Blue, but very good (There's a tiny upgrade in Heroic Sethekk halls, but I hate that place)
Cloak: Pretty nice, especially for threat. Badge vendor has a couple upgrades.
BP: Mentioned.
Bracers: Badge Vendor, great for threat.
Gloves: Off of Maiden, equivalent to t4.
Belt: Mentioned.
Pants: Mentioned.
Boots: Kara random drop. Battlescar Boots from Chess would be nice.
Rings: Are pretty gosh darned good, but once again: badges.
Trinkets: I don't see upgrading these anytime soon.

Welcome aboard....

Well, for me, and my WoW career, today was an eventful day, after an eventful week. Eventful. The majority of the core raiding group I was with, left the guild, to pursue their interests (of SSC and TK and other things) elsewhere. My closest group of friends has remained. They've - I suppose I should say 'We've' - retained the Knights name, and have decided to move forward instead of sideways or backwards.

Nothing, for me, is more fun than a solid 10 man raid. Chatting with friends on Vent, while progressing, and simply enjoying ourselves. The problem was, the guild stopped progressing. Just 3 weeks after a guild first (downing Netherspite), the inflation of the ranks to "try to get enough people to do Gruul's" killed Karazhan. No one wanted to go and wipe on shade with people in greens.

As K and Orrarruuuu like to put it, "You don't gear for Kara in Kara."

Anyway, back to today. We made the decision to keep KoU together. To pursue our idea of a casual raid guild.

The definition of what that is?

We're casual. We have fun. We like to do crazy stupid things, and joke around, but, for those 4 hours, we're hardcore raiders.

No, we won't be giving "MINUS 50 DKP" or anything like that, but... we will be telling you if you're screwing up.

We will be running WWS to try to see how we can improve, individually, and as a result, as a whole.

Now, back to today: Posolutely hit 70 two days ago. Today, I tanked my first Heroic. Mech. Orzag, Tiandrah, Antigen and Tasogare (Gnome!) tagged along with me. Afterwards, BigP and Taso helped me out with some enchants, and a new cloak, and now Pos is probably set to offtank Kara. 12.8k HP unbuffed, 12500 armor, and over 490 Def.

The other eventful thing? I agreed to lead a Kara raid. I'm nervous. Thankfully, Annuubis will be there (along with Orzag, K, Boon and Orrarruu).

Now that I've rambled. Time for sleep.