Elemental Shaman Hit Cap Gear

Recently I posted a simple and straightforward explanation about hit rating and the hit cap for elemental shamans. In that post I broke down how a raiding shaman should have 289 hit rating to be capped when you have a combination of the correct talents and raid members. To read that post, click here.

Today I am going to cover a couple of examples what items to use to cap your hit rating. Since an Elemental Shaman's best dps comes from our Tier Sets we will discuss the items you need to cap your hit rating. Lets take a look at the Tier 8.5 set since it provides a certain amount of hit rating.

Tier 8.5 Set: Conqueror's Worldbreaker Garb

This 5-piece set includes the following items:

Conqueror's Worldbreaker Hauberk

Conqueror's Worldbreaker Gloves

Conqueror's Worldbreaker Helm

Conqueror's Worldbreaker Kilt

Conqueror's Worldbreaker Shoulderpads

Set Bonuses Wearing more pieces of this set will convey bonuses to your character.
2 pieces: The periodic damage dealt by your Flame Shock can now be critical strikes.
4 pieces: Your critical strikes from Lightning Bolt cause the target to take nature damage equal to 8% of the Lightning Bolt's damage over 4 sec.

For this post we are going to take 4 pieces form the list above as this is all you need for the set bonus. We will use the Helm, Kilt, Gloves, and Hauberk. When you use these four items they provide the following base hit rating 180. Now we need to fill in the rest with either gear, enchants, or gems. This is where things can get a little tricky depending on which items you have acquired. Lets try to keep it simple. First have your boots enchanted with Icewalker which will provide you with an additional 12 hit rating bringing us up to 192 total hit. Second head into Ulduar and down Auriaya for an Elemental Focus Stone. With the 108 hit rating provided by this trinket you will have a hit rating of 300. HIT CAPPED!!! it is that easy.

Ok so what if you can not get you hands on an Elemenal Focus Stone which is OK because I prefer to use a different hit rating trinket that provides much more dps. I recommend grabbing Dying Curse, this trinket provides a base hit rating of 71 which will give you a total of 263 so you will still need an item or 2 to become hit capped. The reason you will want to use Dying Curse instead of EFS is the proc. The proc from DC is an extra 765 spell power for 10 secs. verses EFS's 10 second 522 haste proc.

Ok so we are missing 26 hit rating right now what item can you use to get that last 26. There are quite a few jewelry pieces in game that can make that up like Pendant of Fiery Havoc or Emerald Signet Ring. There are tons of items you can use to get hit capped so DO NOT waste gems on hit rating, save them for spell power and haste. Another thing to remember is that is is ok to go over 289 hit rating if you have to but always have at least 289 hit.

I will cover our Tier 9 set later this week.