As of patch 6.0 and the eventual release of Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard will be removing both Hit and Expertise as stats from the World of Warcraft.  This is a fairly big change to the game, as Hit has existed since the beginning of the game and Expertise followed shortly after.  What does all this mean though, and how is the change being implemented?  Let’s take a look.

Chances to Hit or Miss

The ability to hit or miss an enemy, or for the enemy to dodge or parry an attack is an important consideration in combat.  It is what led most players to focus on making sure they were hit and expertise capped before moving on to other stats when gearing up.

As of patch 6.0 however, when players attack creatures up to 3 levels higher than their level they will have a 100% chance to hit enemies and 0% chance of the enemy dodging your attacks.  This means that essentially in the new system you count as being hit and soft-expertise capped without having any of those stats.  Enemies 4 or more levels above your level will still have a chance to avoid your attacks, so be careful with them. 

Enemies will still have a 3% chance to parry your attacks when attacked from the front, forcing DPS players to still attack from the rear to ensure that no attack can be parried.  All tank specializations will get an extra 3% reduction to enemy parry attack so that they can still tank effectively from the front of an enemy even though expertise has been removed as a stat.

One further note is that all players that dual wield weapons will still suffer a base 17% chance to miss.  This is to impose some balance on being able to deal damage with two fast weapons instead of just one slow weapon.

What happens to all the Hit and Expertise on existing items?

Since Hit and Expertise are no longer needed on items, Blizzard will be implementing changes to get rid of the stats.  Essentially all Hit and Expertise bonuses on items and item enhancements, which includes gems, enchantments, and other upgrades will all be converted to instead provide crit, haste, or mastery.

This will mean that those stats will be far more important for your character, as you will be able to focus more on them and stack them higher than you could before.

What about class or racial abilities that provided Hit and Expertise?

Much the same as on items, all class and racial abilities that provided hit or expertise have been either changed to provide other stats (crit, haste, or mastery), been removed from the game, or changed to some other ability.

Some examples are as follows:

  • The Dwarf Crack shot racial ability which provided 1% expertise with ranged weapons has simply been removed from the game.
  • The Dwarf mace specialization, which provided 1% expertise with maces, has been replaced with a new racial called Might of the Mountain.  This new racial ability provides a 2% boost to all critical strike damage and healing.
  • Death Knight’s Veteran of the Third War, Druid’s Thick Hide, Monk’s Stance of the Sturdy Ox, Paladin’s Sanctuary, and Warrior’s Unwavering Sentinel abilities all now also reduce the chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.

Is Removing Hit and Expertise a good thing?

Overall, I think that the removal of these two stats is probably a good thing, since they really were boring stats anyway.  There were stats that you needed to focus on so that your other key stats provided the most benefit and so that you provided reliable DPS or threat levels. 

They were also stats that casual players very often missed the importance of, putting them at a huge disadvantage when compared to players that understood the benefits of the stats.  Really though, they were stats that we were forced to prioritize until capped, before moving on to stats we wanted to focus on.  In that sense, getting rid of them is a good thing.

Is 100% hit a good thing?

While the removal or hit and expertise is a good simplification and evens out the playing field a little between casual and hard core players, I do question the values a little.  I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time believing a 100% hit rate against an even level opponent, let alone an opponent that is better than you.

Consider boxing or MMA in real life.  There are fairly even matches where both fighters are highly skilled athletes and the hit rates usually run at about 30% of power shots landed.  In heavily lopsided fights that number might get as high as 50%, but that is rare, and it almost never goes higher than that.

I understand that this is a game, and that players don’t want to miss, but I have issues with hitting 100% of the time.  I would feel a lot better if that number were a still very far-fetched 80% or even 90% instead of 100%.  The same applies to dodge and parry numbers.  I would rather see a 10% chance for enemies to dodge or parry, even though it is much lower than a realistic number, it would provide some chance.

Sure allowing misses, dodges, and parries would lower overall DPS and would make DPS and threat harder to estimate and maintain and even numbers, but it would be much more realistic in my opinion.  There should be a chance that the tank misses, or is dodged or parried a huge number of times in a row and threat drops suddenly.  This makes it harder for DPS to always go full out, it makes them have to pay attention, In my opinion it makes the overall game more interesting when there is more randomness.

I am sure that many players will disagree and state that they want to be able to know that they will always hit, and that threat will always be steady, and that’s fine, that’s their opinion.  My take on it is that I want to have to be careful as DPS, I want to have to watch for dodges or parries as a tank and warn players to slow down.  When everything is a straight line, the chance to interact is gone.

Again, I really like the idea of removing Hit and Expertise as they were boring stats that forced you to look at them as the number one priority.  I like the idea of everyone having the same chances (with the exception of dual wielding missing more), I just don’t like the unrealistic idea of 100% hit rates. 

Then again, this is a game with dragons, demons, and fighting panda bears, so arguing for a little more realism is maybe a bit of a stretch.

Comments

The Messiah has had his say on the removal of Hit and Expertise, now it’s your turn.  How do you view the removal of these two stats?  What do you think of hitting 100% of the time?  Make your opinion known in the comment section below.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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