My obligatory but customized! Hit Rating post

Hit capping is the first thing every hunter should do to increase their dps. Remove 1% miss[*] and you'll up your dps by 1%. It's also generally pretty easy.

So every hunter's pet really wants them to have a +263 hit rating to get to +8% hit for bosses. You only get hit rating from +hit and the hunter talent, Focused Aim, which has three ranks. Now that seems pretty basic. There are two gotchas and one bonus:

1) Pets inherit their hunter's hit percentage in whole numbers rounded down. So if you have a 260 +hit, then you have a +7.93% hit percentage. This means your pet only has a +7% hit percentage.

2) Pets do not benefit at all from a hunter taking Focused Aim. It only benefits the hunter.

3) Bonus: If you have a Draenei in your group and in range, you get an extra 1% to hit, so you only need 229.53 +hit.

What's all this mean? For the BM hunter, you want to have a solid 263 +hit rating or slightly more -- not slightly less. They should not take any Focused Aim! BM hunters also want Animal Handler 2/2 so their pet doesn't miss due to dodges. A BM hunter's dps lives and dies with their pet's dps.

For a SV or MM hunter, your pet is already missing a bit and is a much smaller part of your dps. You should avoid Focused Aim if you can, but it's an option. As I steadily improved my gear I lost more and more +hit. (Despite gemming for it a lot.) So, I've dipped one toe in.

As far as my latest gear connundrum, I'm trying to figure out if I should make a strong grab for Grim Toll next time it drops. It would let me get a talent point back, and/or re-gem for Agility. That's pretty nice. However, there are some other tasty trinkets out there.


[*] - "Miss" as far as WWS reports go may also include dodges (or aggro-forbid, parries). True misses may also occur frequently if you're in a Archavon cloud.