GrendelsBane

Right before WotLK we started hearing terms like Hit, Resilience, and Expertise. But what do they really mean and how do they do to help your character? With so many stats to keep track of I hope I can help a little to make sense of it all.

When you attack a mob either by spell casting or a melee hit, you basically roll a 100 side dice, and that roll determines if you hit a mob or not. If it was only that simple. Ah but it is. You first calculate all the way a mob can avoid damage, then hit and last is crit.

Mobs can avoiding damage in many ways: dodge, evade, parry, block, absorb, resist, immune, and reflect.

As you can see there are a lot of ways not to do damage and these are calculated first. Now the exciting part. There are ways to reduce or even eliminate the mob’s chance to avoid damage, these are called Hit and Expertise. Once you are hitting the mob more then you can increase your damage done by increasing your Crit, Attack Power, Spell Power, and Haste. And for you tanks out there, Migration (reduce your damage taken) is the name of the game. You can increase your Migration by Resilience (this is more of a PVP stat), Defense and Block.

First off, I would like to say that all my information has come from the resources I have cited, forums and website I can no longer find atm, and [2. Trade] Channel. I also want to point out that when I say or reference to Mob or Mobs that I am referring to trash mobs in dungeons. We all know what a boss is.

Hit

There is an 8% cap. Anything over that is a waste.

Reasoning:
WotLK all mobs have a 5% chance to Miss. Bosses have an additional 3% on top of that. So you need 8% or a 295 Hit Ratting to eliminate misses off the table. Both melee and casters benefit from this stat.

Update it looks like caster/range attacts have a 14% chance to miss.

Additional Information:
More Information About Hit

Expertise

You need 6% for melee, 14% for Tanks, and 0% for casters.

Reasoning:
Tooltip says it best: Reduces chance to be dodged or parried by X.XX%. Mobs and bosses have a 6% chance to Dodge and a 14% to Parry. Melee can eliminate Parry all together by moving behind the mob or boss, so you need a minimum of 6%. Tanks need to eliminate both so they need 14%, they cannot move behind the mob. Casters do not benefit from this stat.

Additional Information:
Is Expertise better than Hit
More Information About Expertise

Crit Chance

A crit is twice your normal damage. Crit does have a cap, its a hard cap and anything over that is wasted.

Reasoning:
There is a very complicated formula to figure your crit cap. I have tried to understand it, but what I can figure out the cap is pretty low, 15% or less, but Talents, Hit, and Expertise can raise the Cap for you and it does so pretty fast. So until you have your hit and expertise in place I would not stack crit exclusively.

Additional Information:
More Information About Critical Strike
More Information About Spell Critical Strike

Attack Power

I cannot find a cap on this stat, so stack as much as you want.

Reasoning:
Attack Power increases your melee damage you do. Melee Stat

Additional Information:
More Information About Attack Power

Spell Power

I cannot find a cap on this stat, so stack as much as you want.

Reasoning:
Spell Power increases your spell damage and healing you do. Caster Stat

Additional Information:
More Information About Spell Power

Haste

I cannot find a cap on this stat, so stack as much as you want. Haste does have diminishing returns.

Reasoning:
Haste reduces cast times and melee swings. This can serve as an increase in your dps when stacked. Haste does have Diminishing Returns when you start pushing close to your global cooldowns.

Additional Information:
More Information About Haste

Defense

You need 540 Defense. This is a soft cap and has diminishing returns so anything over this is alright. Defense reduces the chance mobs and bosses crit on you.

Reasoning:
There is a soft cap to defense why? Because anything over 540 defense has diminishing returns. Once you hit this mark its better to stack block, dodge, parry or armor.

Additional Information:
More Information About Defense

Block, Dodge, and Parry

I cannot find a cap on this stat, so stack as much as you want.

Reasoning:
Dodge, and Parry do have diminishing returns added to their stat. Higher chance to dodge, parry, and block attacks, makes you harder to hit, and makes mobs and bosses less likely to land a critical strike against you.

Additional Information:
More Information About Diminishing Returns
More Information About Block
More Information About Dodge
More Information About Parry

Crushing Blows

Crushing Blow is technically out of the game. Since 3.0, the real question is “Can I take a non-blocked hit?” (there is a macro out there to answer that question see crushing blows link to get it.) Crushing Blow may have been removed from the game but another and worse mechanic has taken its place. The new damage spike is typically magic in nature. Magic damage cannot be pushed off the boss’ hit table and cannot be dodged, parried, blocked. None of the three tanks (Warrior, Paladin, and Druid) mitigates this well, but Death Knight do.

Shifting Perspectives Crushing Blows
More Information About Crushing Blows and the Macro

Avoiding Damage

Taken from WoWWiki an Overview of Combat

Miss
Assuming that both attacker and attacked are the same level and have no modifiers to their hit rate, has a 5% chance to miss.

Dodge
Only applicable to melee attacks. Your chance to dodge is increased by agility and defense.

Parry
Only applicable to melee attacks. Your chance to parry is increased by defense. Only certain classes are capable of learning how to parry attacks, and only attacks from your front may be parried.

Evade
Applicable to any type of damage, or even non-damaging debuff. A mob that is in a position where the game believes players are using an exploit to avoid being damaged will go into Evade mode at which point it is effectively immune to all attacks.

Absorb
Applicable to any type of damage. This is usually the result of having a buff such as Power Word: Shield, which absorbs a limited amount of damage before failing. Certain shields can only absorb certain kinds of damage, so read the description before wondering why you’re still taking damage.

Resist
Only applicable to magical damage. This is basically the magical version of a miss. Your chance to resist a spell or other effect is based on your resist of that element, as well as your level. You can also partially resist some spells, taking only 25%, 50%, or 75% of the normal damage.

Immune
Applicable to any type of damage. This is the result of a mob having a coded ability to be immune to certain attacks (i.e. Scorpid Sting does not work on most bosses) or a player using some skill or item to protect them from damage (i.e. a Paladin’s Blessing of Protection). These are either permanent (mob immunity) or time-limited (Paladin blessing) and will not fail regardless of how much damage you throw at it.

Reflect
Applicable on non-AoE spells only. A Reflected spell will bounce back to its caster, acting as if it was cast on him. A Reflect can be caused by a buff such as improved Mage’s Frost Ward or Fire Ward, a Warrior’s Spell Reflection, Destructive Skyfire Diamond’s proc, or certain mobs’ innate abilities.

Additional Information

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/11/20/checking-your-caps-defense-block-hit-expertise/