12.23
One of my best friends is one of those silly, dress-wearing, spell-slinging, jerks that don’t have to deal with whirlwind ranged DPSers known as a Mage. I’ll keep him anonymous because he’s a big antisocial jerk who just likes killing things (one of the many reason we’re such good friends).
What does this have to do with anything? I’m glad you asked. Him and I are two of the biggest nerds you’ll ever come across and we love just talking numbers. As a mage he was constantly balancing and tweaking his gems and enchants as he got new gear so as not to go over the hit cap and “waste” a useful piece of stats. You see, it was often that he would tell me that once he gets this one piece of gear he’d then be “allowed” to use another piece that he’d been waiting on using but couldn’t because he’d lose too much hit.
You see, in The Burning Crusade rogues only had two hit caps, yellow and white, and it was very hard to get to the white hit cap (though you could do it with the right amount of Sunwell gear). In addition to this, there was so little gear with expertise on it that the expertise cap was just a number that you never really had to worry about. Because of all this, enchanting and gemming your rogue was simply a matter of putting on your latest piece of gear, getting it enchanted with the one “best in slot” enchant for its slot, throwing some +hit gems in there and calling it a day.
Things are different now.
Check out these table, straight from Elitist Jerk’s Pocket Guide:
Hit
| Extra buffs or debuffs | Specials | Poisons | White |
| None | 99 | 315 | 755 |
| Imp FF or Misery on target | 99 | 237 | 755 |
| Imp FF or Misery & Heroic Presence (draenei) | 66 | 210 | 722 |
Expertise
16 expertise (132 expertise rating) to cap for rogues with 2/2 Weapon Expertise.
13 expertise (107 expertise rating) to cap for combat human rogues wielding a sword/mace.
For starters there’s a lot more gear with expertise on it and most of it has a ton of it. In addition, you can gem and enchant for expertise now. More often than not, I see rogues with too much expertise. This is a waste and something that all rogues should look to correct.
Hit is a bit of a different story. The white hit cap (755) should basically be ignored. The number is so high that the value of hit diminishes greatly when you start to stack it over the poison cap. Unlike expertise, going over the poison hit cap is not a complete waste but if you’ve hit the cap you should take the opportunity to enchant or gem for Agility.
Gearing a rogue is a lot more interesting nowadays. We actually have a few caps to keep in mind and a number of different things we can enchant and gem for (haste, expertise, hit) to help round out our stats. The number-crunching nerd in me is very excited about all this.
In the near future, I plan to go over these new enchants and gems in greater detail. Any questions?
Happy Winter Veil
/bow
I’m one of those Rogues way over the Expertise cap. It just kind of happened. I did an evaluation after a good day in Naxx, and relized that most of my gear had Expertise and only ONE piece had any Hit. I lost well over 100 Hit rating from my level 70 epics. I’m not even gemmed for Expertise, and have considered dropping a point in the Combat WeX talent.
I love that name-not-to-be-mentioned mage. I have pieces of gear in my bank that are completely unused just because I can’t fit them in to my current gearing without having too many “wasted” stats. I even keep extra gear around with too much hit just in case I swap out some hit gear and need to pick up extra hit in another slot. It’s a non-stop balancing act.
And hey, grats on the Merrymaker title!