Prot Pally Gear: Spell Hit… Why?

Since the new gear in 2.4 was revealed, people have been complaining that the Prot Pally gear sucks. Case in point: Shattrath Protectorate’s Breastplate.

The breastplate was originally supposed to have Int on it - something most Prot Pallies abhorred as useless. I suppose they’re right. However, many people have also maligned the inclusion of spell hit rating on top gear and claim that spell hit is not important for threat generation as a protection paladin. Some people have also made the claim that spell hit is useful, but not as useful as spell damage.

Is this true?

What Does Spell Hit Effect?

Well, that is a good question. After the most recent patch, Righteous Defense is impacted by melee hit rating - not spell hit. Wowwiki also reports that Avenger’s Shield is based on melee hit rating.

There are a few Paladin spells that can definitely be resisted, suggesting that they will be impacted by spell hit. Judging Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Vengeance can be resisted. Retribution Aura can be resisted. If you’re fighting Demons, Exorcism can be resisted. Consecration is also resistable, but WoWWiki suggests that spell hit doesn’t effect it (I’ll have to test this someday, too).

There seems to be some debate, but I’ve got a hunch that the damage of Holy Shield can be resisted. On the forums, Belarken posted a WWS report that showed approximately a 8% resist rate for Holy Shield. The WWS report has expired, unfortunately, so I can’t look at it anymore.

Other people have reported that Holy Shield is never resisted. Unfortunately, I’m currently Holy, so I can’t check it out myself. As soon as I re-spec Protection, I’ll be testing this for sure.

Finally, the actual damage from Seal of Righteousness seems to be un-resistable. If the melee attack lands, SoR does damage. Otherwise, SoR does nothing. Therefore, this is effectively impacted by hit rating.

How Much Threat Are We Talking About?

If we assume that Holy Shield is affected by spell hit rating, that gives us a few spells that require some spell hit - Judgement of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, and Consecration.

For boss fights, Retribution Aura is pretty negligible. However, if JoR, Holy Shield, and Consecrate all have a base 13% chance to miss (accounting for +3% chance from Precision), then Spell Hit would definitely be beneficial. Again, once I’m back to Protection I’ll use some WWS reports to analyze actual resists on boss fights.

Let’s ignore the overall miss rate for a moment, though, and just compare the effect of equivalent parts Spell Damage and Spell Hit. 12.6 Spell Hit Rating = 1% to hit with spells. According to item level calculations, 12.6 Spell Hit rating is equivalent to approximately 14.7 Spell Damage - which we’ll round to 15. In other words, 1% to Hit is equivalent (in item level cost) to 15 spell Damage.

Let’s start with Holy Shield. The Spell Damage coefficient is 5%. 15 Spell Damage would yield 0.75 damage per block. If we assume that the Paladin has ~450 Spell Damage (including Judgement of the Crusader) and is using max rank Holy Shield, each block would do approximately 177-178 damage. If we increase our chance to hit by 1%, we effectively increase our overall DPS of the spell by 1%, or 1.77 damage. That’s over twice as much damage as the equivalent +Spell Damage.

Next, let’s look at JoR. The Spell Damage coefficient is 71.43%. 15 Spell Damage would yield 10.7 extra damage. Our Paladin is already doing approximately 540 damage per judgement. An extra 1% to hit would only yield ~5.4 damage per judgement - about half of the equivalent spell damage. A Paladin would have to already have about 1000 Spell Damage for this to equal out.

Final Verdict?

Well, I’d have to say the jury is out until I do some more testing. I’m wondering exactly how Consecrate works with Spell Hit, and I’m also curious if Holy Shield does actually have a large chance to miss based on spell hit chance.

If it does, then spell hit does become important as your spell damage increases. Our poorly geared Paladin with about 450 Spell Damage against a single target (thanks to Judgement of the Crusader) won’t find Spell Hit to be too much more valuable than Spell Damage. The JoR and SoR may well offset the extra damage gained through Holy Shield (although this may vary according to people’s avoidance stats).

As a Paladin acquires more Spell Damage, though, I’ve got a hunch that Spell Hit becomes more valuable.

It’s kind of unfortunate that Paladins need to stack Spell Hit and Hit rating, and all of the skills should be standardized to melee hit rating. As it is, Paladin items are stretched thin over too many stats to include Block Value (for mitigation) and Spell Damage (for threat generation), as well as both Hit Rating and Spell Hit Rating for threat generation.

Warriors can simply focus on two of those stats - Block Value and Hit Rating - opening up a much larger pool of item level points for stamina and true avoidance. Bleh. Warriors cheat.

By the by, here’s what an uber Prot Paladin looks like. /drool

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