If you don't believe you need to be Hit-capped, you should probably just stop reading now. Long, long experience has shown me that, with the exception of dual-wielders, hit-cap is worth hitting. And with dual-wielders, they have a hit cap of their own, it's just more complex for them than never missing with anything.
So, from here on out, I assume the stance that a Moonkin should be hit-capped first and foremost for a given fight. OK, so how should we go about it?
If you have not, you should check out the basics of Spell Hit. When you do, you will start to appreciate that outside of boss fights, you can very easily be over the Hit Cap. The chance to Hit is based on relative levels. For targets four or more levels below you, you are Hit capped without any Hit gear.
Raid bosses, however, are a different story. Level 80 casters have an 83% chance to hit a raid boss, a level 83 creature; in other words, they need a total of +17% Hit. Without any other bonuses, that would require 446 Hit Rating, which is insane. I don't even know if it's possible.
Getting +Hit on Your Own
Luckily, Blizzard has put +Hit Talents in place to help us out. Moonkin get +4% from Balance of Power 2/2. This is a nice passive boost that brings the cap down to 13%, which would require 341 Hit Rating. That is hard, but possible. On to the gear!
Armor is an obvious source of +Hit, but if you are a Leather-wearer, like a Moonkin, you may be out of luck until you get your Tier pieces. In fact, of the PvE gear (IL 174+), the only Caster pieces that give you +Hit are the Tier Helm and Tier Shoulders; +65 total (+gems) for Heroes' and +77 total (+gems) for Valorous. I will leave discussions of Cloth armor to the Featherkins of the world; I still try to gear up with Leather armor. Call me old fashioned.
Oddly, PvP gear can help. Contrary to what you might assume, the PvP Helmet and Boots from Wintergrasp are actually not that bad and they confer some nice +Hit bonuses. Are they better then what you can get in Naxx? Probably not, but shards are not that hard to get, so they can be a viable option to "bootstrap" your way to where you need to be, and they are the only Leather boots that give +Hit.
Necklaces are a common source of Hit, giving anywhere from 25 to 43 Hit Rating. The necklace from Emblems of Heroism is on the low end of the scale. The whopping 43 comes from the Necklace of Taldaram (Heroic Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom, Prince Taldaram).
A few Cloaks help. A good one to pick up early is the Dark Soldier Cape, which is very easy to obtain via Honored Reputation with the Ebon Blade (Volkhan drops a similar cloak in regular Halls of Lightning). If you have the spare Honor, you can pick up one of the ...Gladiator's Cloak of Ascendancy while you wait for Noth the Plaguebringer to drop the Dark Shroud of the Scourge. Aside from those, not much else worth considering, just the IL 174 Shroud of Akali (Gundrak, Gal'Drah), which is pushing the bounds of gimping yourself.
What about Rings? The selection of +Hit rings is rather pitiful. Aside from IL174 items, you have exactly ONE +Hit ring before you hit Naxxramas, unless you are on a good Arena team. That ring would be The Prospector's Prize (Heroic Halls of Stone, Krystallus).
Trinkets tend to be a decent way to rapidly re-itemize for a given situation. They have no Enchants or Gem Slots, and the bulk of your abilities do not derive from them. And there are a few nice Trinkets with piles of Hit on them.
Of course, those proficient in the Arena can pickup Battlemaster's Accuracy. Not a very useful "use" effect for PvE, but a very nice chunk of Hit if you are hurting for it. Still, you would be far better served slapping on some PvE gear with +Hit, as it will have all of the tasty stats you desire.
Good choices for your bag of tricks, pre-Naxx, are Mark of the War Prisoner (Heroic Violet Hold; thankfully, from Cyanigosa as opposed to one of the random bosses) and the Rune of Infinite Power (Mystery of the Infinite, Redux, Dragonblight). Yes, it's an Item Level 174 Uncommon, but if you need it, you need it. Try not to swipe physical DPSers' Hit trinkets, it will make them sad pandas.
There are a few good weapon choices, although many will likely buy the Flameheart Spell Scalpel until they get some Naxx drops, since you only need Revered with Kirin Tor.
A very good off-hand choice is the Ward of the Violet Citadel. You can get it with Emblems of Heroism and it should remain a decent choice for a while.
Food, of course, is obvious. You can carry a stack of Snapper Extreme for +40 Hit on the fly.
Practicality and +Hit
To hit a Level 83 Raid Boss as much as possible, with Balance of Power 2/2, you need 341 Hit Rating unless you have the benefit of +3% Hit from Misery from a Shadow Priest or Improved Faerie Fire. In that case, you need 263 Hit Rating.
341 Hit Rating is doable, and I piled on the gear to hit it, but I ended up having to slight my other stats quite a bit to do it. However, it was pretty easy to get a very strong set with 263 Hit Rating. That begged the question - is it smart for me to gear for 341 Hit Rating?
Misery is not too hard to come by in a 25-man raid, but it can be a challenge sometimes. You should be prepared to deal with that. You need to make up for that +3% Hit with either Improved Faerie Fire or more Hit gear.
Conventional wisdom has concluded that Blizzard more or less designed the game around the assumption that a 25-man raid will have someone with a +3% Hit buff. But sometimes you don't have that, especially if you are in a 10-man raid or a dungeon. Well, maybe that's OK.
In my experience thus far, the best bet is to have 263 Spell Hit, Balance of Power 2/2, and Improved Faerie Fire 3/3. This gives you the best of all worlds - the ability to just gear for a single Hit value. :)
When Do I Put Up IFF?
When there is no Shadow Priest, you have to know when to put up IFF, because otherwise it might be a loss of DPS. It's pretty simple.
- No Misery on a Level 83+ mob? Use IFF
- No FF being put up by someone else and a Level 83+ mob? Definitely put up IFF if there is no Misery, probably put if up if there is, as it still helps the raid.
- On trash, the benefit of FF is probably not a big deal, you will likely do more AoE, and things will die so fast, that IFF will seriously reduce your DPS. So, don't worry about it too much. Just kill the trash. You should be hit-capped for trash.
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